John Kerry on JFK Assassination Conspiracy

John Kerry on JFK Assassination: 

John Kerry Believes in JFK Assassination Conspiracy - YouTube

“To this day I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I have doubts that he was motivated by himself. I’m not sure if anyone else was involved, with respect to the Grassy Knoll theory and all that, I don’t go down that road and the Grassy Knoll thing. But I have serious questions as to if they got to the bottom of Lee Harvey Oswald’s time and influence in Cuba and Russia.” 

Sec Of State John Kerry Says Oswald Didn't Act Alone In Assassination Of President Kennedy! - YouTube

John Kerry doesn't believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot President Kennedy as he says the government investigation didn't 'get to the bottom' of the assassination | Mail Online

As a Massachusetts native, Kerry chose to volunteer for Ted Kennedy’s senatorial campaign in 1962 and they remained close for the rest of the Senator’s life.

Kerry told Brokaw about the one time that he met John F. Kennedy at the White House when he was working for his brother and got a call saying that they were all going to go out for a sail in Washington.

‘I'm in between high school and going off to college and he said "Where you going?" and I said Yale and I grimaced knowing he was a Harvard guy and he looked at me and he said "No, no that's great now because I now have a Yale degree," Kerry said.

‘He had just gotten his Yale honorary degree and he couldn't have been nicer about it and talked to me about the campaign and what Teddy was doing, and we raced off and went sailing.

‘It was totally surreal.’

History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

Assassination Records Review Board - ARRB Director Jeremy Gunn is reported to have shown the tables of contents for five volumes of a History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Board (at a December 1997?) meeting to ask them to decide which volumes are responsive to the Act.

Included were two Volumes – Volume VIII: 1961-1964, Part II: ‘The Succession of Crisis,’ and Part III: ‘The Global Challenge,’ by Walter S. Poole.

If anyone has seen these records I'd like to hear from them: 

billkelly3@gmail.com 

84 NSA JFK Assassination Documents

In August 1997, the now Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), in a press release, stated that they were announcing the release of documents from the National Security Agency (NSA).

It was the responsibility of the now defunct Board to determine which records are to be made public immediately and which ones will have postponed release dates.

According to the announcement, the Board reviewed 84 NSA documents related to the assassination and released 6 open in full, 75 that are postponed in part, and postponed 3 documents in full.

The original records were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration for inclusion in the JFK Collection, which is housed at the Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland.

Has anyone read these released records? 

If so please contact me: billkelly3@gmail.com 

With John Judge at the Archives II

With John Judge at the Archives II

I went to the National Archives with John many times, first to the old, original Archives, on Pennsylvania Avenue, and then to the Archives II when it opened in the early 1990s.

On the wall just outside the original Archives is the inscription: “WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE.”  We thought that Prologue was a great name for the newsletter of the Committee (for an Open Archives), but after a few issues we learned that the official publication of the NARA was already called Prologue, so once COPA got going the name of the newsletter was changed to Open Secrets.

Once the Archives II in College Park opened, that’s where all of the attention shifted because that’s where they moved all of the JFK records and began to accept millions of documents from other agencies to become part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection. 

I had been registered at the old Archives as a Research Associate, but at the Archives II you have to sit down at a computer and register all your details to get an access pass, and they are very strict about entering with pens, books, papers etc., especially after Clinton’s former national security advisor was caught lifting some of his old memos in his socks.

One memorial occasion, while I photocopied the Andrews Log for 11/22/63, John had requested a number of boxes concerning the US military response to the assassination – DEFCON status.  He was also looking for any references to missing code books aboard B-52 bombers on 11/22/63.

While John was sitting at a table, reading from a cart of document folders next to him, I photocopied the Andrews Log, and then went into a little booth to read it. After concentrating on that for awhile I sat back and stretched, and recognized the guy in the next booth a few feet away from me. It was John Dean, the former White House lawyer and Watergate whistleblower. He said he was working on a biography of President Warren G. Harding, who I also had a personal interest in. Dean autographed the back of his business card for a friend of mine named John Dean, a Jersey Shore realtor, and he walked over with me so I could introduce him to John Judge.

John was all excited, having found the DEFCON status for 11/22/63 – which showed that the DEFCON status did not change for the CONUS, only in the Southeast Asia.  He also showed me a newspaper clip – a news report that Gen. LeMay was reported to have been killed in an airplane crash that day, later proved erroneous.

I was later disappointed in John Dean’s bio of President Harding, as I suspect Harding was assassinated by his enemies, and didn’t die accidently of food poisoning while on a train trip, as Dean relates. I base my opinion, not only on the very questionable circumstances of his death, but the fact that Clarence W. Barron, the founder of the Wall Street Journal, expressed foreknowledge of Harding’s impending death, as related by Mary Bancroft in her book “Autobiography of a Spy.”

I also got a phone call a few months ago, before John died, from a guy researching the DEFCON status and the missing code books of the Cabinet Plane 86972 and the B-52 SAC bomber, as reported by John Judge. 

John Judge and the Army Inspector's Report

John Judge and the Army Inspector General’s Report

One significant event happened in the summer of 1976, the Bicentennial year in Philadelphia when Legionnaires disease struck the Belleview Stratford hotel and nation was awash in intelligence agency scandals.

John Judge was living in Philadelphia and working at a Quaker Peace action organization on Walnut Street, just a block from Rittenhouse Square, where there was an Oswald sighting in the summer of 63’ and where all the hippies hung out. It was also where the hippest radio station WMMR FM was located.

When I was in high school, MMR was by day an elevator music station, but on Sunday nights guy by the name of Dave Herman changed the world by playing entire 33 1/3 record albums – an entertaining revolution that was labeled “Album Oriented Rock – AOR.” The success of Herman’s “Marconi Experiment” show led MMR to go with AOR 24-7, and they hired University of Penn grad Bill Vitka to run the news department, and he tailored it to the young and hip target audience.

From a friend in Washington John had acquired a recently released report by the US Army Inspector General on the Use of Human Subjects in Chemical Agent Research, which documented all of the military contracts with academic institutions and corporate companies that experimented with LSD and other psychotropic chemicals, ostensibly to learn their attributes for interrogation purposes.

I recalled meeting Ken Kesey at John’s Dayton apartment a few years earlier and talking with him about his early experimentation with LSD. Kesey said he first got it from a San Francisco professor who did his experiments for the CIA and he explained that they experimented mainly on students, soldiers and prisoners, who were all paid for participating.

Among the contracts listed at the end of the Army Inspector General’s Report were some local Philadelphia institutions including the University of Pennsylvania and Ivy Labs and a Dr. Kligman was affiliated with both places.

Knowing WMMR-FM radio news director Bill Vitka was a University of Penn grad, John and I walked to Rittenhouse Square to the WMMR studios where Vitka was glad to get a copy of the report and immediately began to make some phone calls to Penn and Ivy labs and he eventually got to Kligman and interviewed him. Vitka did a segment every day for over a week on the Philly connections to the military experiments, and credited me and John Judge for supplying him with the basic research and report.

While we were working with Vitka, some bells went off and he went over to a wall of reel to reel tape recorders and turned some on, and a few moments later a major Associated Press radio wire service news report came in. Two bells, Vitka said, was important breaking news – a fire or earthquake.  He’s heard three bells but the only time he knows of five bells being used was the Kennedy assassination.

Vitka left WMMR a year or so later and began working for a San Francisco based radio syndicate before returning to Philadelphia to get married and begin working for CBS radio in New York City. He is now a radio news reporter for Fox News radio network.

Kligman later became the subject of Allen M. Hornblum’s book “Acres of Skin”  (Routledge, 1998).

ARRB Final Report on ONI Docs

Final Report of the ARRB:
Chapter 8 Compliance with the JFK Act by Government Offices
14. Department of the Navy

After passage of the JFK Act, the Navy's Criminal Investigative Service transferred, in 1994, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) records that had been maintained on Lee Harvey Oswald.6 In 1995, the General Counsel of the Navy directed that a further review of the Navy's files be undertaken pursuant to the JFK Act. This directive went to the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and the Naval Historical Center. The Navy identified no additional assassination records. 

In early 1997, after the navy consulted with Review Board staff regarding categories of potentially relevant records, the General Counsel's office issued another search directive to the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Secretary of the Navy's Administrative Division, and other components within the Navy. The Review Board asked the Navy to search for files of high-level officials of the Marine Corps, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Navy during the years 1959 through 1964.

The Navy conducted an extensive review of files, including a review of files from the Secretary of the Navy's Administrative Office, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the Marine Corps. The Navy located miscellaneous documents relating to the Warren Commission and HSCA from files of the Administrative Office for the Secretary of the Navy as a result of this search. Among the records found was an unsigned copy of an affidavit by the Director of ONI, prepared at the time of the Warren Commission, stating that Lee Harvey Oswald was not used as an agent or informant by ONI.

The Navy confirmed that it had not, however, located the 1959 1964 files for the Director of ONI.

Office of Naval Intelligence.

The Review Board pursued the matter of ONI records separately. Accordingly, the Board requested that ONI submit its own certification of its compliance with the JFK Act. In its Final Declaration of Compliance, ONI stated that it conducted an extensive review of ONI records held at Federal Records Centers throughout the country. ONI did not identify any additional assassination records. ONI was unable to find any relevant files for the Director of ONI from 1959 to 1964.

ONI also acknowledged that there were additional ONI records that were not reviewed for assassination records, but that these records would be reviewed under Executive Order 12958 requiring declassification of government records.

Rufus Taylor Director of Naval Intelligence June 1963 - May 1966

The Review Board requested that the Navy and ONI search for the records of Director of Naval Intelligence Rear Admiral Rufus Taylor. The Review Board acquired a copy of an unsigned September 21, 1964, affidavit regarding Oswald that Taylor appears to have executed and forwarded to Secretary of Defense McNamara. The affidavit states that that ONI never utilized Lee Harvey Oswald as an agent or an informant. ONI did not locate any files belonging to Taylor.

SF 135 Request Forms

SF 135 Requests

http://www.archives.gov/frc/forms/sf-135-intro.html

Records Transmittal and Receipt, SF-135

Agencies can store records that are covered by a NARA-approved records disposition schedule or the General Records Schedule on a reimbursable basis.

Consistent with 36 CFR 1228.154(c)(vii), NARA records center facilities can accept unscheduled record series that have a SF 115, Request for Records Disposition Authority, logged and pending with NARA's Records Management Services (ACNR). Please insert "pending" in block 6h on the SF 135 and cite the schedule, the item number, and the date it submitted to NARA with a copy of the schedule.

No original signature is required.

One SF 135 is suggested for each transfer of temporary records. A separate SF 135 is required for each series of permanent or unscheduled records.

The NARA records center receiving an e-mail request to transfer records will complete the SF-135 and reply back via e-mail to the original e-mail address. Approved forms returned as "undeliverable" will be mailed. Please be certain that the transferring agency's mailing and e-mail address is included on the SF 135.

Preparing the Standard Form 135 (SF 135),

Records Transmittal and Receipt

General Instructions
Filling Out the SF 135

Item 1: Enter the name and address of the FRC to which you are submitting records. See the FRC Directors page for the most current address information. 

Item 2: Enter the name of the transferring agency official. To expedite and improve the transfer process for our customer agencies, FRCs will accept SF 135s without original signatures. Please note that your agency may have internal procedures that require signatures. If you are in doubt, please contact your agency's records officer. 

Item 3: Provide the name, office, business telephone number (including area code), and e-mail address of the person to contact about the records. 

Item 4: Completed by the FRC. 

Item 5: Provide the complete address of the transferring office. If records come from one office, but the SF 135 should be sent to a different office, please include BOTH addresses. Specify where the approved SF 135 should be sent, and where the final SF 135 should be sent. 

Item 6: This three-part number comprises the transfer number (formerly known as accession number) and is completed by the FRC after they receive the transfer. 

Item 6(a): Enter the NARA record group number assigned to the records of the agency (or component) making the transfer. 

Item 6(b): Enter the last two digits of the current fiscal year. 

Item 6(c): Unless NARA has granted authorization to your agency to pre-assign numbers, FRC staff will assign a sequential number in this column. 

Item 6(d): For transfer and billing purposes, a standard-size box equals one cubic foot. Enter the total number of boxes included in this transfer. If the records do not fit in a standard records center box, leave this column blank, add the dimensions of the container to item 6(f), and contact the FRC staff to verify acceptance. 

Item 6(e): Enter the inclusive range of numbers (e.g., 1-30). 

Item 6(f): Describe the records in sufficient detail to allow FRC personnel to verify compliance with your records schedule. You may wish to use the series description provided in your Records Control Schedule or the General Records Schedule. A complete series description includes the series title and inclusive dates (start and end) of the records.

Include the organizational component that created the records if the component is other than that described in item 5.

Indicate in this section if the series of records is subject to the Privacy Act. Since SF 135s are public records, information included on SF 135s (including folder title lists) should not contain National Security Classified information or information restricted by exemption B6, the Freedom of Information Act.

If the records are scheduled for permanent retention, are unscheduled, or if disposition instructions indicate sampling records is necessary, you must include a detailed folder listing for each box in item 6(f) (if space permits) or as an attachment. If you are submitting the SF 135 electronically, you may send the listing as a separate e-mail attachment.

Special description requirements apply for certain records and should be stated in item 6(f):

Stratified Report Invoicing: For agencies participating in Stratified Report Invoicing, a caret (^) followed by a valid two-digit charge code must be placed at the beginning of the series description.

Site Audit Records: State "GAO Site Audit" if the records have been so designated by the Government Accountability Office, and indicate whether the site audit records pertain to Native Americans

Non-paper-based and special format records: These can include records such as microfilm, engineering drawings (because of their special format), electronic media, etc. Include the format type in 6(f) (see www.archives.gov/frc/codes.html for information on specific codes for non-textual record types). 

Item 6(g): Restrictions

If your records pertain to National Security Information, you must complete this section using one of the three National Security Classification codes (C=Confidential, S=Secret or T=Top Secret). Please note that the codes Q, R, or W (listed on the back of the SF 135) should no longer be used. If you designate a National Security Classification, you MUST also indicate whether the records are designated as Code E (Restricted Data or Formerly Restricted Data). For further information, please see EO 12356  (http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12356.html), later amended by EO 13292. Only the Washington National Records Center at Suitland can store classified records.

If there are no special restrictions on your records, you may designate code N or leave this section blank. In this case the default restriction (restricted to authorized agency users and researchers) will apply.

Cite the appropriate schedule identifier and item number in your agency records schedule or the General Records Schedule (GRS). For accountable officers' records, cite the appropriate item from GRS 6. You may also use the General Records Schedules (36 CFR 1228.40-46) when dealing with records common to most offices such as contracts, travel and transportation records, and similar records. If you need further assistance, contact your agency's records officer. Also indicate in this section if the records are subject to extended retention, commonly known as a "freeze" on destruction. The "freeze code" is a three-letter designation created by FRC staff to identify the freeze pertinent to the records. 

Item 6(i): Follow the instructions on your Item 6(i): Follow the instructions on your records schedule to compute the disposition date. Because disposal is accomplished in quarterly cycles (i.e., January, April, July, and October), advance the date to the beginning of the next calendar quarter to obtain the actual date of disposal. For example, if the ending date of your records is September 2006, and the retention period is three years, then the disposal date will be October 2009. Permanent records are offered to the National Archives on an annual basis; no month is shown in the disposition date field. Place "P" after the offer year. If records are unscheduled, please indicate "U" in this section.

Item 6(i), 6(k), 6(l), and 6(m) are completed by FRC personnel.

Stratified Report Invoicing refers to billing that is broken out by different functions and/or geographical locations within the same agency. If you are unsure whether your agency participates in Stratified Report Invoicing, contact your agency's records officer, or your NARA FRC account representative (www.archives.gov/frc/acct-reps.html).

SUBMITTING THE SF 135

Agencies may transmit the SF 135 to FRCs either in hard copy or electronically. Submitting the form electronically reduces mail time, is more secure, and allows revisions to be made in a timely manner. You may obtain an electronic version of the SF 135 online in Word or PDF format.

Before shipping records, you must send a completed SF 135 to your local FRC and receive approval of the form from the center. The "transfers" e-mail address for each FRC is available on the FRC Directors page (www.archives.gov/frc/directors.html). A separate SF 135 is required for each individual record series having the same disposition authority and disposition date. For instructions on completing the SF 135, please see page 2 of the SF 135.

Each individual record series being transferred requires a separate SF 135. See 36 CFR 1228.160 (e) for more details.

Approval of the Standard Form 135 Sean Preparation
for Transfer

After you submit the SF 135, the FRC staff will review it to ensure that it is complete and accurate. FRC staff will then assign the transfer number and will return one copy of the SF 135 to you within 10 working days, authorizing shipment of the boxes. You must include a copy of the approved SF 135 in box #1 of each transfer. If you submitted a SF 135 electronically, print out the approved copy of the SF 135 that was e-mailed back to you by the FRC and place it in the first box as the "shipment" copy. If the boxes or other containers are sealed and must not be opened by NARA staff, place this shipment copy in an envelope securely taped to the outside of box #1.

Always retain a copy of the detailed box content listing so that you may provide agency box numbers when requesting reference service. We also strongly recommend that you include a copy of the box content listing in box #1.

FRC staff can prepare detailed folder indexing for your transfers on a fee for- service basis. Please see the "Special Services" chapter for more details.

After the FRC staff shelve the records, they will issue a records center location number and will return a completed, signed copy of the SF 135 to you as an official receipt. FRC staff will add the location of the records to the receipt copy of the SF 135. Your agency staff will use this location information when requesting records. This receipt copy is your official record of the transfer and should be retained in your files.

Freeze--In records disposition, those temporary records that cannot be destroyed on schedule because of special circumstances, such as a court order or investigation, require a temporary extension of the approved retention period.

Unscheduled records are Federal records whose final disposition has not been approved by NARA in a records schedule.

An active record is a record necessary to conduct the current business of an office.

Transfers typically contain one series--the records all have one subject, function, or activity in common.

Mixed series are records grouped together into a transfer that do not have any relationship with each other, aside from being from the same agency or office. Mixed-series records may have different disposition authorities but must have the same disposition date.

Permanent records are records that warrant preservation by the Federal Government beyond the time they are needed for administrative, fiscal, or legal purposes because of their historical or other value. The National Archives makes the final determination on permanent records (see 44 USC 29).

Items to be Completed by Records Center:

Item s 4, 6j thru m.
Specific Instructions for the MS Word Electronic SF 135
Specific Instructions for the Electronic SF 135 [PDF]

NOTE: You must have a full version of Adobe Acrobat in order to save the annotations made to this electronic form.

John Judge and the Inspector Generals Report

John Judge and the Inspector Generals Report on the Use of Human Subjects in Chemical Agent Research 

One significant event happened in the summer of 1976, the Bicentennial year in Philadelphia when Legionaires disease struck the Belleview Straford hotel and Washington DC was awash in intelligence agency scandals.

John Judge was living in Philadelphia and working at a Quaker Peace action organization on Walnut Street, just a block from Rittenhouse Square, where all the hippies hung out and where the hippest radio station WMMR FM was located.  From a friend in Washington John had acquired a recently released report by the US Army Inspector General on the Use of Human Subjects in Chemical Agent research, which documented all of the military contracts with academic institutions and corporate companies that experimented with LSD and other psychotropic chemicals, ostensibly to learn their attributes for interrogation purposes.

I recalled meeting Ken Kesey at John’s Dayton apartment a few years earlier and talking about his early experimentation with LSD, and Kesesy said he first got it from a San Francisco professor who did his experiments for the CIA. I recalled that Kesey explained that they experimented mainly on students, soldiers and prisoners, who were all paid for participating. Among the contracts listed at the end of the Army Inspector General’s Report were some local Philadelphia institutions including the University of Pennsylvania and Ivy Labs, where a Dr. Kligman was affiliated with both places.

Knowing WMMR-FM radio news director Bill Vitka was a University of Penn grad, John and I walked to Rittenhouse Square to the WMMR studios where Vitka was glad to get a copy of the report and immediately began to make some phone calls to Penn and Ivy labs and he eventually got to Kligman and interviewed him. Vitka did a segment every day for over a week on the Philly connections to the military experiments, and credited John Judge for supplying him with the basic research and report.

FROM ANOTHER REPORT 
JFKCountercoup2: With John Judge at the Archives II

I went to the National Archives with John many times, first to the old, original Archives, on Pennsylvania Avenue, and then to the Archives II when it opened in the early 1990s.

On the wall just outside the original Archives is the inscription: “WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE.”  We thought that Prologue was a great name for the newsletter of the Committee (for an Open Archives), but after a few issues we learned that the official publication of the NARA was already called Prologue, so once COPA got going the name of the newsletter was changed to Open Secrets.

Once the Archives II in College Park opened, that’s where all of the attention shifted because that’s where they moved all of the JFK records and began to accept millions of documents from other agencies to become part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection. 

I had been registered at the old Archives as a Research Associate, but at the Archives II you have to sit down at a computer and register all your details to get an access pass, and they are very strict about entering with pens, books, papers etc., especially after Clinton’s former national security advisor was caught lifting some of his old memos in his socks.

One memorial occasion, while I photocopied the Andrews Log for 11/22/63, John had requested a number of boxes concerning the US military response to the assassination – DEFCON status.  He was also looking for any references to missing code books aboard B-52 bombers on 11/22/63.

While John was sitting at a table, reading from a cart of document folders next to him, I photocopied the Andrews Log, and then went into a little booth to read it. After concentrating on that for awhile I sat back and stretched, and recognized the guy in the next booth a few feet away from me. It was John Dean, the former White House lawyer and Watergate whistleblower. He said he was working on a biography of President Warren G. Harding, who I also had a personal interest in. Dean autographed the back of his business card for a friend of mine named John Dean, a Jersey Shore realtor, and he walked over with me so I could introduce him to John Judge.

John was all excited, having found the DEFCON status for 11/22/63 – which showed that the DEFCON status did not change for the CONUS, only in the Southeast Asia.  He also showed me a newspaper clip – a news report that Gen. LeMay was reported to have been killed in an airplane crash that day, later proved erroneous.

I was later disappointed in John Dean’s bio of President Harding, as I suspect Harding was assassinated by his enemies, and didn’t die accidently of food poisoning while on a train trip, as Dean relates. I base my opinion, not only on the very questionable circumstances of his death, but the fact that Clarence W. Barron, the founder of the Wall Street Journal, expressed foreknowledge of Harding’s impending death, as related by Mary Bancroft in her book “Autobiography of a Spy.” 

John Judge Historic Tour of Washington D.C.

John Judge’s Tour of D.C.

If you didn’t get an historic tour of Washington D.C. from John Judge then you certainly missed out on not only some interesting but neglected historic sites in our nation’s capitol, you missed some of his penetrating and insightful perspective of what happened there.

Usually driving around in John’s old beat up grey Oldsmobile, with him behind the wheel, I think film maker Randy Benson may have filmed him while they were driving around DC, so maybe there is something saved on celluloid, but these are the Top 30 DC historic sites that I remember that are on John Judge’s Assassins Tour of Washington.

They are listed in the order in which you would encounter them if driving into town from John’s house in Anacosta, - aka the COPA Bunker, which is just across the river from Capitol Hill, SE

1)      Quaker Meeting House – South East Capitol Hill – William Penn House – where some of the early COPA organizational meetings were held, and around the corner and down the street from

2)      The Hawk and the Dove – a 1960s era bar and grill that has maintained its motif through many wars and still in the same family. The whole two block long strip is pretty cool, with a half dozen good bars and restaurants from the cheap neighborhood dive – the Tune Inn, next door to the Hawk and Dove – an Italian-Thai bar where the American Free Press crowd meet, the Pour House sports bar and a coffee house – all with sidewalk café tables, a good book store and the Hunan Chinese where John and I dined often.

3)      The Forestal Building – a quick drive by, which he points out – has sealed windows you can’t open, fittingly naked after the former Navy? – who killed himself by jumping out of a window of the Bethesda Naval Hosptial.

4)      Just behind the Captiol and past the Supreme Court building is the Mott House – a convenient staging area for meetings run by good friends, across the street from the

5)      A block away is the Teamsters HQ and the American Legion post where the Warren Commission often met and a few blocks from

6)      Then there’s Union Station where you can park for free in the parking garage if you eat in any of the restaurants or go to a movie, which we often did.

7)      The Dubliner and Kelly’s Irish Times are across the street from Union Station – to the Southwest – where I would often go after arriving by train and where John would pick me up or join me, sometimes in the summer at the sidewalk cafe.

8)      Comfort Inn Chinatown. Driving west towards the White House, you pass through China Town, where an early important COPA organizational conference was held at the Comfort Inn.

9)      Then there’s a unique little neighborhood that we called the Bus Stop, because its where most of the school buses stop. There’s the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) – Hard Rock Café – the JE Hover Building – Fords Theater – the Spy Museum and further down the street is the Secret Service not-so-secret annex. That’s the neighborhood where the old AARC was located, and the area originally targeted for the Hidden History Museum and Assassination Research Center.'

10)  Not on any other historic tour of Washington – John Judge is the only one who always makes a stop by back door of what he calls the “Hinkley Hilton,” where John Hinkley shot President Reagan.

11)   After drive bys of the MLK memorial and

12)  Vietnam Veterans Memorial, its heading southwest you pass the

13)  JFK Center for the Performing Arts and after a few blocks is

14)  Dupont Circle – where the Assassination Information Bureau once had an office, where the Chilean ambassador was killed in a car bomb by crazy Cubans and where John John Judge often enjoyed dining at an old, historic Italian restaurant or a late night meal at Words --- where he was somewhat of a celebrity for having appeared in a TV segment with Ali G – the Jewish-Arab comedian and film maker.

15)  Nearby there’s the location of what once was Blackie’s Steakhouse – which, when we were there, was still haunted by some unpopular Vice Presidents who used to sneak in the side door, Col. Jose Rivera and Blackie, a decorated World War II combat vet. Blackie’s is where we dined on a few occasions and where we discovered a little shrine to JFK that Backie maintained in one of the back dining rooms.

16)  In Georgetown there’s a stop at the canal path were Mary Pinchot Meyer was murdered, (a still unresolved case), and a drive by one of

17)  JFK’s former residence – a distinguished colonial row house at 1528 – 31^st Street NW – a neighborhood where you can also drive by the residences of local Georgetown Social Set.

18)  Past the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory – note Collins Contract, and check out the security today – how many cameras can you count on the front lawn? Then there’s

19)  American University – the JFK Monument – and a Thai restaurant often frequented when in that neighborhood.

20)  Further Northeast is Bethesda Naval Hospital –

21)  Cobbs Creek – Sheraton – where Earl Warren resided in a special apartment and where a number of important COPA conferences were held.

22)  A short hop along the beltway is the Archives II – in College Park, Maryland.  - Back south along the beltway – there’s some close but rural historic sites

23)  Arlington National Cemetery – JFK Grave – Grave of the Unknowns – RFK Grave –

24)  CIA HQ – off in the distance, you can have your photo taken by the highway sign as David Atlee Phillips did.

25)  NSA – HQ – Collins Radio cover – security guard found dead –

26)  Hickory Hill – JFK – RFK residence in McClean, Va.

27)  Back in town there’s the Ronald Reagan Building – where we attended an inaugural ball – tickets compliments of Jersey Joe Piscapo, and nearby

28)   Old Ebbett Hotel Bar – which is popular with SS and was John O’Neill’s hangout when in Washington.

29)  Willard Hotel bar - the round wood bar where President Grant would visit nightly for his after dinner coniac and cigar, which Mrs. Grant wouldn’t allow him to smoke in the White House. Once it became known that Grant frequented the place, those who wanted a favor from the president would gather in the lobby and wait for the President to arrive at the bar, and thus the term “lobbyist” was coined. It is also said to be where Francis Scott Key wrote some of his poems, including the national anthem, and where Martin Luther King put the finishing touches to his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech. There was also an Oswald sighting on the sidewalk in front of the Willard Hotel, where Oswald ostensibly handed out Cuban leftist literature a block from the White House.

30)  The National Press Club – just down the street – about a block from the Willard and the White House – the NPC was pretty much a convenient base of operations whenever something was going on. And where a celebration of John Judge’s life is scheduled to occur.

Dealey Plaza COPA Memorial - 11/22/98 - 35th Anniversary

The Event That Never Happened

DEALEY PLAZA MEMORIAL SERVICE - Sunday, 11/22/98 THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY.  Edited and transcribed by William Kelly

"Build the news upon the rock of truth and righteousness. Conduct it always upon the lines of fairness and integrity. Acknowledge the right of the people to get from the newspaper both sides of every important question." - George Bannerman Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News.

    CNN news reported that for the first time in 35 years there was to be no memorial service at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1998, the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

     CBS News with Dan Rather reported that the Final Report of the JFK Assassinations Records Review Board "did find enough evidence to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only gunman," while the Final Report never concluded any such thing.

    Then the Associated Press (AP) reported from Dallas on November 22 that, "JFK assassination hype fades" and that "other than the usual handful of curious people milling about Dealey Plaza, the day was expected to be uneventful..."

    Bob Porter of the Fourth Floor Museum told a reporter that nothing was scheduled to happen at Dealey Plaza that day, even though, if he looked out his office window, he could see hundreds if not over a thousand people gathering around the Grassy Knoll for a memorial service in honor of the slain president.  

    Well, what actually occurred was that from noon until 1pm, the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) took a break from their fifth annual conference at Union Station, two blocks away, to hold a memorial service that was attended by a sea of people who filled the both sides of the street of the entire plaza. Participants in the JFK LANCER conference, also held in Dallas that weekend, also attended, as well as ordinary tourists, interested citizens and passersby.

    COPA is an organization composed of three independent groups - the Assassination Records and Research Center (ARRC) of Washington D.C., the Committee for an Open Archives (COA) and the Citizens for the Truth about the John F. Kennedy Assassination (CTKA). They are professional associations interested in developing the truth about the assassination that lobbied extensively for the passage of the JFK Assassination Records Review Act and have met with Cuban officials in the Bahamas to obtain information about the assassination from Cuban sources.

    In an address before COPA the previous day, the chairman of the Assassinations Records Review Board, John Tunheim reiterated the Final Report's first paragraph that it "will not offer conclusions about what the assassination records released did or did not prove," and that significant documents were missing and some were even destroyed by federal agencies after the board began its business of identifying and releasing records to the public.

    Others who spoke at the COPA conference included Philadelphia attorney Vincent Salandria, history professor John Newman, former FBI agent William Turner and others who have been instrumental in reviewing the recently released documents and attempting to make sense of what the government wants to maintain a mystery.

    At noon on Sunday, November 22, 1998, COPA board member, and Washington D.C. attorney Dan Alcorn began the memorial service at Dealey Plaza.

 Dan Alcorn : The federal board - The JFK Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) discovered that many of the records have been destroyed, and we do not have a complete record. Yet we have a much more of a documentary record than we have had ever before.

    There's a memorial down on the street that has a quotation from the bible: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

    That quote is also inscribed on the wall of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in McLean, Virginia, so there is a commonality of thought there. Many of us are here today because we have never believed that the government has told us the truth about the assassination, and we believe that unless we know the truth, we are not free.

    Unless we know the truth about these events we are not a free people and we have not been a free people as long as we have been lied to about the events that occurred here. The spirit of our commemorative event is to take those words to heart, and until we know the truth and the full truth of what occurred in the street before us today on a day very much like today, a clear, sunny day in the fall of 1963.

    On behalf of our organization I will make a challenge to you. Everyone here must be here because you care very deeply about the meaning of this event and what it means to our history as a nation. I will make the challenge to you to join us in our efforts in seeking the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. And not just the truth as pieced together by citizens who put in the time and effort to this, but to actually cause the government to tell the truth about this event, and for the government to come forward and give us a full and truthful accounting of what happened here in 1963. Otherwise, we in fact are not the free people we want to be, have been and we should be as a nation.

    You know, it is a crime for a citizen of this country to tell a lie to a federal investigator, but it is not a crime for your government to lie to you. And we feel this is an unfair relationship. If it's a crime for us to lie to our government, it should be a crime for us t o lie as well.

    It is in that spirit of investigation and of honest inquiry that our organization has worked closely with the Assassinations Records Review Board to get materials out. They ran into an obstructive wall of secrecy at the federal agencies. They told us that they ran into a Cold War system of secrecy that refused to relent on the documents and information as it related to this event. And this was thirty-five years after the event occurred, and after a federal board was set up by the Congress to try to get information released about what happened here.

    So we call on you to join us in our efforts. We think that great nations and civilizations cannot survive the kinds of doubt and turmoil that have been raised by the events that happened here. If you study the history of great civilizations you will find that when they lost their way in terms of truth, self-governing, democratic and republican institutions began their decline and was one of the reasons for their ultimate collapse. We do not want the decline and decay of our public and political system. We want to be a part of a healthy revival of those institutions.

    We have experienced a decline in the public's trust in government since November, 1963, a blimp in the charts that notes the significance of these events. Today a majority of people don't even bother to vote. The largest turnout of voters in American history was in 1960. The decline in public confidence in the government began with the ambush at Dealey Plaza and has continually declined since then. These trends are very troubling.

    So we ask you to join us and support the effort we have started to try to pursue the truth of these events, to try to pursue credibility, honesty and openness on behalf of our governmental institutions. And by that effort to try to turn our nation in a healthy direction, to build stronger democratic institutions, to build a stronger faith between the pubic and its government. We feel that is essential, and we call on you as free citizens of this nation to join us in that effort.

    I'm going to introduce to you a series of speakers who have been very involved in this issue and can give you the benefit of their experience as well. The first is Mark Lane, one of the earliest researchers in this case who did tremendous ground-breaking work, recorded much of his work for posterity and has written extensively about this case.

Mark Lane: I remember coming here thirty-five years ago and there were no crowds on the grassy knoll. But now, after all of these years, although they have a museum over there on the 6th Floor, which is a museum dedicated to a place where nothing happened. They don't have a plaque over here, on the grassy knoll, and they should.

    Thirty-five years ago today the Dallas Morning News published a full page ad with the sarcastic heading: "Welcome To Dallas Mr. President," and then went on to practically call him a communist and a traitor. That was then.

    Today's Dallas Morning News has an editorial: "Kennedy's Legacy - The Time Is Ripe For Idealism," with no references to him being a communist or a traitor. Now he's a great man. They'll tell us everything about John Kennedy, everything, except who killed him. Because look at the rest of the Dallas Morning News, thirty-five years later, when every survey in America shows that 75 to 95% of the people are convinced that there was a conspiracy to kill John Kennedy, here we go in the guise of a book review in today's Dallas Morning News: Oswald Alone Killed Kennedy, Oswald Alone Killed Tippit, One Man Two Murders, they're sticking with the same story. I have but one word for the Dallas Morning News:

    Shame. Shame on you, you are disgracing the city of Dallas, and it is not fair to do that.

    I'll tell you where there should be plaques in this city. There were a number of brave, courageous residents of this city, longtime residents of Texas, who had the courage to speak the truth to power in the face of intimidation and threats. Right over there was Jean Hill, and she's still there thirty-five years later, one of the first to tell the truth that shots came from behind that wooden fence. And they attacked her and ridiculed her. There should be a plaque over there commemorating her right on the spot where she is standing...

    The Grassy Knoll should be called "Lee Bowers Memorial Park," the railroad bridge should be the Holland-Dode-Symmons Underpass - that's the monuments that should be named after the people of this state, people who had the courage to come forward with the truth, while the Dallas Morning News lied thirty-five years ago and continues to lie thirty-five years later.

    This is the place where our leader was murdered. This is hollowed grown, and the people of this country know it. It is suppose to be the largest tourist attraction in Dallas. There's people here all the time, at the grassy knoll, nobody looks for the truth from the 6th floor of the Book Depository building, because the people of America know the truth, even though the Dallas Morning News is unwilling to share the information with us.

    That day in Dallas, in this city, at this location, when the government of the United States executed its own president, when that happened, we as a nation, lost our code of honor, lost our sense of honor. And it can only be restored when the government of the United States - and it will not do it without us insisting, and marching and fighting and voting, and putting this matter on the agenda,...but when that day comes that the government of the United States tells us the truth and all the factual details about the assassination, including their role in the murder. When that day comes, honor will be restored to this nation. Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, a medical doctor from San Francisco who has researched this issue and has written about it in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Columbia Journalism Review, Dr. Gary Agular.

Dr. Gary Agular: It's hard to follow such a powerful speaker as Mark Lane and I certainly can't hope to match his eloquence, wit or command of this case, but what I can share with you is evidence...that autopsy photos are missing. This is something that you will not read in the Dallas Morning News, Time or Newsweek, but is something that is very clearly established, the ARRB releases are very clear on the point, the autopsy pathologists have described autopsy photographs that are missing. One of them defiantly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was supposed to tell us the truth about the assassination...which not only did not report that, it wasn't released until the ARRB came along.

    There is enormous evidence in the forensic, in the medical area alone that indicates there was more assassins, but what is most shameful of all is the government's willingness, even in subsequent investigations, to lie about that evidence. Thank God there was an Assassinations Records Review Board, thank God they did the work they did, because now we no longer have to rely on government appointed authorities to tell us that we can trust the government's original conclusions, because we know we can't.

    We know they've destroyed evidence, not only in the medical-autopsy area, not only among photographs, we know that witnesses have been intimated, and it is a shame that you won't read about that. No credible journalist will touch the story. It is a story not unlike the story of the CIA and crack cocaine, which led to the downfall of Gary Webb, before two volumes of the CIA Inspector's Report that confirmed much more than what Gary Webb even alleged about the CIA's complicity in the cocaine importation. But you won't read about that in the Dallas Morning News. You barely get a small column about it in the New York Times after they devote many, many column inches defamed journalists who talk about the subject.

    I think it is important that those of you who are here today continue to insist that your government is accountable to you and does not conduct its operations in secrecy, that it does not deny you the evidence that is collected in its investigations and that it be as accountable to us as it insists we be accountable to it.

    I hope you will continue to work with us to force the government to be responsible and admit the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, a professor at Dartmouth, and the author of a number of books about the assassination, Dr. Phillip Melanson.

Dr. Phillip Melanson: Thank you. As we commemorate the 35th anniversary of this terrible political tragedy that so negatively affected our lives, our policies, our political system and our faith in our own government, we should remind ourselves that the tragedy of the President's assassination is compounded by a separate but related tragedy - the failure of our law enforcement institutions, the failure of our political institutions and the failure of the media to affectively discover the truth of who killed President Kennedy and why. And until that happens, and it is never too late to find the truth if the citizens demand it, and until that happens the original tragedy will be compounded like a bad political debt into the next millennium, and the faith in our political system will continue to erode.

    I think also the failure to come to grips with who killed President Kennedy and why is related to the other assassinations in the 1960s, and that's why Martin Luther King's is begging the Justice Department to look for justice in that case, and we hear from Siran's lawyer in the case of Robert Kennedy.

    If we had come to terms with what happened here at Dealey Plaza, discovered the truth and admitted it, the whole history of the 1960s would be different.

    If the vast majority of the public believes this case is an unsolved conspiracy, who are the minority in officialdom to deny us the truth and to cling to the lone-assassin theory like it was an absolute religion in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

    Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is an acclaimed author and professor of history at the University of Maryland. His books include JFK and Vietnam and Oswald and the CIA, Dr. John Newman.

Dr. John Newman: I would like to say a few words about the media, and a couple of new developments for all of you gathered here. When I come here at this time of the year, I remember another place, a place connected to this place, and without the events that happened here, the other place would not exist, and that's the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., which is like no other war memorial in the world. I've been to other war memorials in Russia, China and Germany, and people frequent those memorials, they eat lunch there and talk and its a nice place to be. I don't how many of you have been to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C., but nobody hangs out It's a very, very somber place because there's still something going on there, something deep, something that's still in our psyche, and our culture and it connects directly to Dealey Plaza. And I think most people know that.

    I'm not going to give a speech on the Vietnam War, but I think it is clear now that John F. Kennedy was on his way to pulling us out of Vietnam when he died, and the events that happened here catapulted us to that devastating debacle called the Vietnam War.

    I'd like to echo what Mark Lane said about the media. I just heard that CNN this morning said that for the first time in all these years there were no events planned for Dealey Plaza on this day. So you are not here, this gathering does not exist. Furthermore, the evening before last, none other than Dan Rather, the major icon of the network television, made the announcement that the Review Board had conducted this very large investigation and looked at all these millions of pages of documents and had discovered that the lone-nut hypothesis was true, which was attributed to Judge Tunheim. Judge Tunheim was here in Dallas and refutes this story, and all of you who have followed this story know that the Review Board has taken no such position.

    But it never ceases to amaze me how the media can twist and turn and obfuscate and block this mass movement to find the truth. Let me close by giving you a few examples of the information that is flowing out of these new files, and I think these are appropriate because of what happened here at Dealey Plaza. I am thinking particularly of a tape recorded conversation between President Johnson and Senator Russell, one of the Warren Commissioners. At great length they were able to save the situation and preserve the lone-nut hypothesis with that wonderful, sine qua non - CE399, the magic bullet that broke seven bones and came out pristine on a stretcher.

    The newly released tape is very interesting because Sen. Russell calls the President to explain to him what this single-bullet theory is, and at the end of it he says distinctly, "I don't believe a word of it." And President Johnson said, "I don't either."

   And I think that is appropriate thing to share with you the types of things that are coming out of the files. Then there is the     galley proofs of the Warren Report where our esteemed President Ford moved the bullet hole up, and these are the types of things that are in the newly released documents, but the mainstream media is not there to put them on page one.

    Occasionally they get noted, but it’s like ships passing in the night. I am heartened to see by the turnout here today, that with respect to the American people, this is not passing in the night and I hope as we stand here today and think about the events that happened here, we pass the torch to a younger generation, which we are doing, our movement and our desire for the truth in this case carries on. Thank you very much.

Dan Alcorn: We are approaching the time in our program which is a memorial to the events that happened here thirty-five years ago, so for that purpose I'd like to introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, a man who has devoted himself for a number of years to working on the projects we have as an organization, but has also done his own independent research on the assassination. I think that those who have had the experience of working with John Judge know of his serious and sincere commitment to investigating the issues that are at stake here and to his contribution that he has made to the the history of the investigation of the assassination. He has really been the heart and soul of the work we have done through COPA. He has put in a tremendous volunteer effort and sacrificed and suffered a great deal for the efforts he has made, which have gone largely uncompensated. So let me introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, John Judge.

John Judge: It is interesting to see such a large crowd. For the better part of the last 25 years, I have come out here every year, usually with only five or six people, often in worse weather than this, with researcher and newspaper editor Penn Jones, who some of you know as having done work on the death of the witnesses, who passed on this year.

    From the inception of the national security and military-intelligence state in the late 1940s, the history of this country has been a commodity that has been owned by that state. The people who don't own their own history are a conquered people.

    Much of the effort I put in has to do with the idea of taking our own history back, of owning it ourselves; since much is still locked up in government vaults and hidden from us and we are really the only ones who can restore it. 35 years ago, in my view, there was a coup d'etat here in Dealey Plaza, and the government has not recovered in any significant way, towards democracy, since that day. Kennedy began to represent for many people, hope and change and a response from the top level of government to the popular movements at the time for civil rights, for arms limitations, for an end to the Cold War, and Kennedy was responding to popular movements in a way that presidents after him rarely have. So what was assassinated here that day was not just a particular man or a particular president, but a sense of hope by the American people. And I think that the government has let us know over the years, fairly consistently, that they did kill the president, and they killed him from a very high level, and that if they can kill the president and get away with it that they can kill anyone of us that they would like to and that we should sit down and shut up and get out of the way.

    But I'm hoping that there is enough decency left in people in America, and I see evidence of that all the time, that we can understand that there are more of us, and that we can think, and we can take back our own democracy, if we want it.

    It is now 12:30, and 35 years ago President Kennedy was assassinated here, so lets have a moment of silence.

[Two minutes of silence]

Thank you.

    Peter Dale Scott, a researcher who could not be with us here today, sent an e-mail in which he said a few interesting things. He said that we've come into a new era in that one of the major tasks ahead of us right now is to focus on getting the government documents that are still locked up on the Martin Luther King assassination. The other thing he noted was a government statute that makes it illegal for a citizen of this country to lie to the government, and he suggested that a similar statute be passed that would make it illegal for the government to lie to its people.

    I hope you will take this topic seriously and continue to act to get the full release of the files and to get the truth, and you are welcome to join us at COPA in fulfilling the remainder of our agenda and what is to be done in the future. You are welcome to join us and take your democracy back.

Dan Alcorn: We have a few other speakers here, including former FBI agent William Turner, whose books have been translated into Russian, German, Japanese, French and Spanish. He is currently working on a new book entitled: "Rearview Mirror - Looking back at the FBI, CIA and Other Tails.

William Turner: Thank you Dan. It's been exactly 35 years ago and two days that I came here on assignment for a national magazine to do an article on the breakdown in security that resulted in the assassination being successful. I was assigned to it because of my background as a former FBI agent. I can tell you that when I arrived the mood was really somber, the floodlights were on, reporters from all over the world were converging, people had left floral wreaths along the curbstone where the shooting took place, and it was very erry. The headquarters of the Dallas Police Department was a feeding frenzy of reporters trying to find out what happened. I was on a very tight deadline, I could only contend with the security breakdown issue at the time, which was that Oswald had worked as an informant for the FBI and that was the reason they had not furnished his name to the Secret Service prior to the presidential visit.

    One thing I remember was talking to a Dallas patrolman named Malcolm Eugene Barnett who had been posted in front of the School Book Depository for crowd control at the time of the assassination. He told me that a women came running from the grassy knoll who told him that shots were fired from here. That being the case, I became very critical of the Warren Commission and when it's report came out I read it and realized it was pretty much a fairy tale. I am proud to say that I was associated with District Attorney Jim Garrison in New Orleans who tried to reopen the investigation into the assassination. Jim was a great American and was on the trail of the assassins, as his book says, when he was destroyed by the media at the Clay Shaw trial. The Garrison investigation paved the way for what we know today, and I believe that we know to a good degree of journalistic certitude what happened.

    First the motives were piling up, John Kennedy had supposedly with held air cover for the Bay of Pigs, motive number one. John Kennedy had failed to invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, motive number two. John Kennedy had promised to withdraw from Vietnam, motive number three. Motive number four is that John Kennedy, at the time he was assassinated, was on a second track, which was to secretly carry on negotiations with Cuba to bring about a detente. These motives piled up to the point where it became necessary to assassinate him. And I think it is very obvious with the compilation of information that we have today that the whole mechanism of it came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the rabid Cuban exiles and the Mafia, who already had an assassination apparatus set up to kill Castro. They switched targets and hit Kennedy.

And I hope you will join us, in recognizing the significance of the events that happened here, and try to do something about it. Thank you.

Hal Verb: The saying on the wall at the CIA: "Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," is wrong. When you know the truth, the truth makes you MAD!"