Monday, June 28, 2021

1969 - Air Force General Joseph J. Cappucci told Jan Amos that Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK

Video link on Rumble: https://rumble.com/vj5m0h-major-gen.-joseph-j.-cappucci-said-that-lbj-was-behind-the-jfk-assassinatio.html      

In 1969 Air Force General Joseph J. Cappucci told military friends that Lyndon Johnson killed JFK

Bio on Cappucci - http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/Biographies/Display/tabid/225/Article/107495/brigadier-general-joseph-j-cappucci.aspx

On 11/21/2013 (the day before the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination) in Dallas while standing in Dealey Plaza, I met an 84 year old Dallas woman named Jan Amos. Her husband was Col. Bill Amos and he was assigned to Air Force intelligence in the 1960's.

 In 1969, several months after Ted Kennedy-Chappaquidick incident, the topic of the Kennedys came up among her social group over drinks. Needless to say her social group of Air Force men and their wives pretty much hated the Kennedys.

 At this point Gen. Joseph J. Cappuci, a man very high up in Air Force counter-intelligence and a man who had a personal friendship with J. Edgar Hoover said that Lyndon Johnson had murdered John Kennedy.

 That was the first that Jan had heard that bit of blockbuster information.

 After the intimate party had broken up, probably from the Hilton in Rome, Italy, Col. Bill Amos told his wife Jan Amos "Jan, you are never to repeat a word that Gen. Capucci spoke."

 Gen. Cappucci had clearly indicted Lyndon Johnson for the JFK assassination and said that his close personal friend J. Edgar Hoover had confirmed this to him.

 I am getting Jan to more fully write this up and I want to get her on video. Also, she has another military wife, alive today in 2014, who is also a valuable source.

If you want more info on Brigadier General Joseph J. Cappucci, please google him. A lot comes up; he was high level Air Force intelligence and not a bit player.

Gen. Joseph J. Cappucci, the head of Air Force counterintelligence & a close friend of FBI J. Edgar Hoover, told Jan Amos and her husband Col. William Henry Amos, that Lyndon Johnson killed JFK. Cappucci was the direct superior to Col. William Henry Amos. Cappucci made these comments after a party at the Hilton Hotel in Rome in 1969.

Go to the 6 minute mark of Robert Morrow’s July 31, 2014 interview with Jan Amos at her condominium in Dallas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVIaxNX3WRU&list=UUvhfKIv7hWWdcdB5iUChjvA

Gen. Joseph Cappucci was very close to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who in turn was very close to Lyndon Johnson. Col. Bill Amos was the bright star working directly under Cappucci at that time, but he was an alcoholic and later had to leave the military.

After Cappucci made these comments indicting LBJ for JFK’s murder, on the way home Col. William Henry Amos told his wife Jan Amos to never utter a word of what she had heard. Cappucci said “No wonder Lyndon Johnson had JFK killed” and he said this after the topic of Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick had come up. Mary Jo Kopechne, a passenger of Sen. Ted Kennedy, had drowned at Chappaquiddick on July 18, 1969.

Additionally, Jan Amos reveals that in 1964 President LBJ gave a direct order to the military to seize and destroy all copies of “A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power” by J. Evetts Haley on military bases and commissaries nationwide. Col. Amos was given direct orders by his superiors to incinerate every single copy of this book which correctly implied that LBJ was murdering people to cover up the Billie Sol Estes LBJ-kickback scandal of the early 1960’s. Col. William Amos told his wife Jan that LBJ was the rudest and most uncouth bastard he had ever been around or worked for.

Jan Amos later moved back to Dallas and worked in high end clothing retail where she became friends and a personal shopper for the wives of the social elite of Dallas. She knew the Murchison and Perot families and numerous prominent Dallas families.

1) Go to the 6 minute mark of Robert Morrow’s July 31, 2014 interview with Jan Amos at her condominium in Dallas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVIaxNX3WRU&list=UUvhfKIv7hWWdcdB5iUChjvA

2) http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=21162

3) http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/Biographies/Display/tabid/225/Article/107495/brigadier-general-joseph-j-cappucci.aspx

BRIGADIER GENERAL JOSEPH J. CAPPUCCI

Retired   September 01,1974     Died  June 10,1992

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Brig. Gen. Joseph J. Cappucci is director of defense investigative service, Office of the Secretary of Defense.

General Cappucci was born in Bridgeport, Conn., in 1913. He attended elementary and high schools in that city. He graduated from the University of Wyoming and received his commission as a second lieutenant, Army Air Corps Reserve, from the Reserve Officers Training Corps program in June 1935.

General Cappucci entered active military duty in October 1940 with initial assignment at Westover Air Base, Mass. In May 1942 he attended the Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kan., upon completion of which, he was transferred to the European Theater of Operations and placed on special duty with the British Intelligence Service. After his return to the United States in 1944, he performed duties as a counterintelligence and intelligence officer with the Army Air Corps until July 1946, when he was placed on detached service to the Central Intelligence Agency. He was integrated into the Regular Air Force in 1946 and in May 1947 he was transferred from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Directorate of Intelligence, U.S. Air Force.

He was assigned to the Counterintelligence Division, Directorate of Special Investigations, in August 1948 when the Office of Special Investigations was activated. In January 1952 he was transferred to the Directorate of Special Investigations, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, and served as chief, Counterintelligence Division. While in USAFE, he was a member of various intelligence boards in Germany, France and other areas in USAFE, and was responsible for putting into effect a counterintelligence program throughout all USAFE areas of interest. General Cappucci was awarded the Legion of Merit by the Commander in Chief, USAFE, for his outstanding performance of duty during this period of service.

Upon his return to the United States in August 1955, he was assigned to the Counterintelligence Division, Directorate of Special Investigations, U.S. Air Force. In August 1958 he was assigned as commander, OSI District 13, Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., and held this position until February 1961, when he was assigned as director of special investigations, Pacific Air Forces. General Cappucci was awarded another Legion of Merit by the commander in chief, PACAF, for outstanding service as director of special investigations, PACAF.

He was transferred to the Office of The Inspector General, U.S. Air Force, in January 1964 and assumed the duties of deputy director of special investigations for operations in the Directorate of Special Investigations. He was appointed director of special investigations, and commander, 1005th Special Investigations Group in June 1964, which at that time was a worldwide, centrally directed organization.

 

General Cappucci retired Aug. 31, 1967, and was recalled to active duty Sept. l, 1967,to again serve as director of special investigations and commander of the 1005th Special Investigations Group. He was awarded two Distinguished Service medals for exceptionally meritorious service in a duty of great responsibility as director of special investigations. On Dec. 31, 1971 the Air Force Office of Special Investigations was created as a separate operating agency. General Cappucci retained his position as director of special investigations while also becoming Commander, AFOSI. At that time, the 1005th Special Investigations Group was disestablished.

In April 1972 General Cappucci was appointed director of Defense Investigative Service, Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Besides the Command and General Staff School, he also has attended the U.S. Air Force Special Investigations School, British Secret Intelligence School, Air Intelligence School, Radar Observer Intelligence School and the Airborne School, and holds the ratings of parachutist and gliderman.

In addition to the United States military decorations, he has been awarded the National Order of Vietnam in grade of Knight; Vietnamese Medal of Honor, 1st Class; Vietnamese Air Service Honor Medal; Philippine Legion of Honor; Philippine Legion of Honor (Commander); Most Exalted Order of White Elephant (2d Class-Knight Commander) (Thailand); Republic of Vietnam Air Force Distinguished Service Order (First Class); the Special Cravat of the Order of Cloud and Banner - Republic of China; Republic of China Police Medal; and the Order of National Security Merit Cheon-Su Medal, Republic of China.

He was promoted to the temporary grade of brigadier general effective June 1, 1965, with date of rank May 22, 1965.


(Current as of April 15, 1972)

Saturday, June 26, 2021

JFK-hating Secret Service criminal Elmer Moore and his role in the JFK assassination cover up

 Jim DiEugenio has a nice article on new revelations about Secret Service Criminal ELMER MOORE and his very significant role in the cover up of the JFK assassination. Remember LBJ's man Rufus Youngblood was in de facto charge of the Secret Service after LBJ became president. Everything Secret Service chief James Rowley did had to be approved by Youngblood. That nugget came out in Carol Leonnig's new book on the Secret Service Zero Fail.



Sincerely,

 

Robert Morrow

 

Presidential Historian, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Institute for the Study of Presidential Crime and the World’s Foremost Authority on the JFK Assassination as well as the Top Historian in the World on Lyndon Johnson.

 

Austin, TX     512-306-1510

 Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore and the Ordeal of Malcolm Perry:
JIM DIEUGENIO:

 

Using recent evidence discovered by Rob Couteau, Jim DiEugenio revisits the experiences of Parkland Hospital Dr. Malcolm Perry regarding the anterior neck wound he observed in President Kennedy and the concerted and persistent efforts to manipulate his testimony and obscure the clear evidence of a frontal entrance wound.


On the afternoon of the JFK assassination, within an hour or two after his death, there was a press conference at Parkland Hospital. Three important pronouncements were made. In fact, they were so important that they should have shaped the case in a permanent manner.

First, acting press secretary Malcolm Kilduff talked about how Kennedy had died.

When he did so, he pointed to his right temple and said something like: it was a matter of a bullet through the head. Very shortly after, Chet Huntley said the same thing live on NBC television. On the air, he revealed his source to be Dr. George Burkley, President Kennedy’s own personal physician.

Dr. Kemp Clark, chief of neurosurgery—the man who actually pronounced Kennedy dead—said he observed a large gaping hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 80) Dr. Malcolm Perry, who cut a tracheostomy across the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck, said that the wound was one of entrance. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 367)

Therefore, from these three pieces of evidence, one would have had to conclude that Kennedy was hit from the front. That implication would be almost inescapable. Therefore, some strange things happened with this key press conference. First of all, there is no film available of it today, which is remarkable in and of itself, because, as one can see from pictures and film snippets, there were many reporters in that conference room. It is very hard to comprehend how not one of them called for a film camera to cover the initial public pronouncement of President Kennedy’s death. Second, initially, the Secret Service told the Warren Commission that they did not even have a transcript of this conference. According to former Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) analyst Doug Horne, there are two real problems with the Secret Service saying this. First, according to Horne, the Secret Service went around collecting the films of this press conference. Thus making it disappear. (See Horne at Future of Freedom Foundation conference of May 18th. This is at the FFF web site.)

But further, the Secret Service lied to the Commission about having the transcript. In responding to Commission counsel Arlen Specter’s request, Chief of the Secret Service James Rowley wrote a letter to chief counsel J. Lee Rankin. He said that he could not locate either the films or the transcript of this press conference. (DiEugenio, p. 367) As the ARRB proved, this was a lie, because they found a transcript of that press conference that was time stamped, “Received US Secret Service 1963 Nov. 26 AM 11:40”. (ibid) Does it get much worse than that? In other words, the Warren Commission’s own investigators were keeping important pieces of evidence from them—and then lying about it.

As most of us know, Perry was pressured to alter his first day story. By the time of his appearance before the Commission, he now said that the edges of the wound were neither ragged nor clean and that the wound could have been an exit or entrance. Gerald Ford got him to say that the reporting from the press conference was inaccurate. Allen Dulles applied the icing on the cake: he said Perry should issue a retraction—which, of course, he just had. (DiEugenio, pp. 166–67)

The reason Ford and Dulles could do this is because, in all probability, the Secret Service had absconded with the films and the transcript. But further, Perry had been worked on. As the Church Committee had discovered, a man named Elmer Moore had taken it upon himself to convert Perry to the Commission’s point of view. Moore was a Secret Service agent who was forwarded to work for the Commission. One of his first assignments was to take up a desk at Parkland Hospital and convince the doctors there that they were wrong and the autopsy report was correct. One of his priority targets was Perry. (DiEugenio, p. 167)

As Pat Speer later discovered, this story about Moore gets even worse. After he performed his assignment in Dallas so effectively, he got a promotion to a longer term one. He became the aide de camp to Commission Chairman Earl Warren. (DiEugenio, p. 168)

But it was not just Moore—and it was not just a couple of weeks later. As Horne stated during that FFF conference, Nurse Audrey Bell testified that Perry told her he was getting calls that evening directing him to alter his testimony.(DiEugenio, p. 169) This is now backed up by a startling piece of evidence surfaced by author Rob Couteau. Martin Steadman was a reporter at the time of the JFK assassination. Couteau discovered a journal entry by Martin that is online. Steadman was stationed in Dallas for several days after the assassination gathering information. Some of it got in print and some of it did not. From all indications, the following did not.

One of the witnesses he spent some time with in Dallas was Malcolm Perry. Steadman was aware of what Perry had said at the press conference about the directionality of the neck wound. Steadman wrote that, about a week after the assassination, he and two other journalists were with Perry in his home. During this informal interview, Perry said he thought it was an entrance wound because the small circular hole was clean. He then added two important details. He said he had treated hundreds of patients with similar wounds and he knew the difference between an exit and entrance wound. Further, hunting was a hobby of his, so he understood from that experience what the difference was. And he could detect it at a glance.

Steadman went on to reveal something rather surprising. Perry said that during that night, he got a series of phone calls to his home from the doctors at Bethesda. They were very upset about his belief that the neck wound was one of entrance. They asked him if the Parkland doctors had turned over the body to see the wounds in Kennedy’s back. Perry replied that they had not. They then said: how could he be sure about the neck wound in light of that? They then told him that he should not continue to say that he cut across an entrance wound, when there was no evidence of a shot from the front. When Perry insisted that he could only say what he thought to be true, something truly bizarre happened. Perry said that one or more of the autopsy doctors told him that he would be brought before a Medical Board if he continued to insist on his story. Perry said they threatened to take away his license.

After Perry finished this rather gripping tale, everyone was silent for a moment. Steadman then asked him if he still thought the throat wound was one of entrance. After a second or so, Perry said: yes, he did.

What is so remarkable about this story is that it blows the cover off of the idea that the autopsy doctors did not know about the anterior neck wound until the next day. Not only did they know about it that night, they were trying to cover it up that night.

But things always get worse in the JFK case. And this issue does also, because, if the reader can comprehend it, that night was not the first time Perry was told to revise his story—or to just plain shut up. Bill Garnet and Jacque Lueth have written, produced, and directed a documentary called The Parkland Doctors. It was shown at the CAPA Houston mock trial a few years back, but only to those in attendance, not to the viewing audience.  Robert Tanenbaum is the host of the documentary. He let me see it at his home two years ago. It is a good and valuable film, since it features seven of the surviving doctors at that time, 2018.

Towards the end of the program, Dr. Robert McClelland made a bracing comment about Perry. He said that as Perry was walking out, a man in a suit and tie grabbed him by the arm. After he got his attention, he forcefully said to Malcolm, “Don’t you ever say that again!” I turned to Tanenbaum and said: “This is about ninety minutes after Kennedy was pronounced dead.” Tanenbaum said, “Jim, they knew within the hour.” At the very least, someone knew that there had to be a cover story snapped on.

Malcolm Perry was a victim of a large-scale crime. The evidence above indicates that the cover up was planned with the conspiracy. I would love to know who that well-dressed man who accosted him was.

One last point. When Elmer Moore was asked to appear before the Church Committee, he brought a lawyer with him. (DiEugenio, p. 168)



Doug Horne: on the importance of Dr. Malcolm Perry
 
Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, Key Parkland Hospital Witness to JFK's Wounds, Dies 

 

December 8th, 2009
Dr. Malcolm Perry's passing, at the age of 80, was just announced in Texas newspapers.

Dr. Perry attempted to save President Kennedy's life on November 22, 1 massage in Trauma Room One at Parkland hospital.

The tracheostomy he performed was a small, transverse incision 2.5 to 3 cm wide, which he made through a puncture in the President's throat---below the Adam's apple and just to the right of the midline---a puncture which he characterized as AN ENTRANCE WOUND three different times during the televised hospital press conference that afternoon following JFK's death.

On the day President Kennedy was treated, all of the attending physicians who saw the bullet wound in the throat characterized it as a typical entrance wound.
 Their observations have always stood in stark opposition to the official U.S. government cover story that President Kennedy was killed by an assassin firing from above and behind, and that he was not shot from the front by anyone.

What most of the public does not know---and what is detailed in my book, "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board," is that late on the night of President Kennedy's autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital, Federal officials located at Bethesda began harrassing Dr. Perry on the telephone in an attempt to get him to change his mind about having seen an entry wound in the President's throat earlier in the day. Nurse Audrey Bell told me in 1997 that Dr. Perry complained to her the next morning (on Saturday, November 23, 1963) that he had gotten almost no sleep the night before, because unnamed persons at Bethesda had been pressuring him on the telephone all night long to get him to change his opinion about the nature of the bullet wound in the throat, and to redescribe it as an exit, rather than an entrance.

In his 1981 book "Best Evidence," David Lifton documented that the Secret Service confiscated videotapes of the Parkland hospital press conference from at least one local television station, and that Secret Service Chief James Rowley had informed the Warren Commission in 1964 that no videotapes or transcripts of the press conference could be found. But as Lifton revealed, a White House verbatim transcript of the press conference (White House Transcript 1327-C) later surfaced. In my own book, "Inside the ARRB," I reveal that Chief Rowley lied to the Warren Commission when he said no transcripts could be found, for on the last page of transcript 1327-C, the document is stamped as received by Rowley's office on November 26, 1963. His statement to the Warren Commission was therefore false.

A graduate student, James Gochenaur, revealed to both the Church Committee and to the HSCA in the mid-1970s that Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore had confessed to him in 1970 that he had "leaned on Dr. Perry" shortly after the Bethesda autopsy to get him to stop describing the bullet wound in President Kennedy's throat as an entrance wound. (The Bethesda autopsy report concluded it was an exit wound.) According to Gochenaur, Moore also told him that the Secret Service had to investigate the assassination in an expected, predetermined way or they would "get their heads chopped off." Moore, unfortunately, also told Gochenaur that sometimes he thought President Kennedy was "a traitor" because he was "giving things away to the Russians."

[According to Arlen Specter, this same Elmer Moore was present when Chief Justice Warren, Gerald Ford, and he interviewed Jack Ruby in Dallas; and Arlen Specter also revealed in 2003 (at a conference in Pittsburgh) that Elmer Moore was the Secret Service Agent who showed him an undocumented photograph of President Kennedy's back wound during the May 1964 re-enactment of the Dallas motorcade conducted by the Warren Commission.]

Unfortunately, after Federal officials at Bethesda (on November 22-23, 1963) and Elmer Moore (between November 29-December 11, 1963) "leaned on" Dr. Perry, he spent the remainder of his life straddling the fence and saying that the bullet wound in JFK's throat "could have been either" an entrance or an exit wound.

But that is not what he said on the afternoon of the assassination, before there was an official explanation for the crime to fall in line with. White House Transcript 1327-C makes that very clear, as I reveal in my book, in Chapters 7 and 9.

Former Chief Operating Room nurse Audrey Bell related to me in 1997 that Dr. Perry was in a state of torment on November 23, 1963, after being pressured by Federal officials all night long to change his mind, because, as he put it, "my professional credibility is at stake." Sadly, he appears to have decided for the remainder of his life that discretion was the better part of valor.

The story does not end here. The chief prosector at the President's autopsy, Dr. James J. Humes, described the throat wound in the autopsy report as having "widely gaping, irregular edges," and in his Warren Commission testimony, Humes said the gaping wound in the throat was 7 to 8 cm wide. In contrast, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, a third year resident at Parkland in 1963, told ABC's "20/20" news magazine in 1992 that after the tracheostomy tube and flange were removed from the President's neck following his death, that the very small incision made by Dr. Perry closed of its own volition, and that the bullet wound had NOT been obliterated and was still clearly visible. When Dr. Crenshaw viewed the widely published bootleg autopsy photo (from Bethesda Naval hospital) showing the incision in JFK's neck, he expressed the opinion to ABC's "20/20" that the incision in that photograph was DOUBLE the width of the incision Dr. Perry originally made on the President's body.

The descriptions of the incision in the anterior neck, provided by Dr. Humes and Dr. Crenshaw, together constitute de facto evidence that JFK's throat wound was tampered with prior to the start of the Navy autopsy at Bethesda Naval hospital. President Kennedy's body was in the custody of the U.S. Secret Service while enroute Washington D.C. from Dallas, Texas. END

 

 

Secret Service Agent Elmer Moore sent to Intimidate Dr. Malcolm Perry into saying there was no frontal entry wound into the neck of John Kennedy

 

 

Phil Nelson: A Dallas Secret Service agent named Elmer Moore admitted years later that ". . . 'he had been ordered to tell Dr. Perry to change his testimony.' Moore said that in threatening Perry, he acted on orders from Washington and Mr. Kelly of the Secret Service Headquarters.' . . . Moore [admitted that he] 'badgered Dr. Perry into 'making a flat statement that there was no entry wound in the [front of the] neck. . . [and, Moore continued] 'I regret what I had to do with Dr. Perry'. . . [but] he had been given 'marching orders from Washington. . . I did everything I was told, we all did everything we were told, or we'd get our heads cut off.

 

Ron Bulman (1-1-2021) on Elmer Moore:
QUOTE

 

Moore is a key to the fact the assassination was a conspiracy.  Perry's initial certainty the throat wound was one of entrance is first hand, same day, expert analysis.  He was a experienced trauma room physician well familiar with gunshot wounds in the ER of a major city's main hospital.  He only changed his opinion to a possible exit wound after pressure from Moore.
Perry later confirmed to Dr. Donald Miller Jr., Professor Emeritus, University of Washington (with whom he taught there),  as well as Anchorage surgeon Dr. Robert Artwhol that the throat wound was one of entrance.  No matter what he said to the Warren Commission.
Moore later admitted in an interview to Washington Graduate Student James Gochenaur he regretted having to pressure Perry to change his story.  And stated JFK was a traitor.  Gochenaur testified to this.
Moore's refusal of the HSCA is interesting given he was one of three SS supervisors of the SS investigation into the JFKA.  If Moore thought of JFK as a traitor was this belief prevalent within the Secret Service or at least a part of it.  
If as mentioned earlier in the thread by Micah, Moore called Burris of the Dallas Times Herald about a back shot exiting the throat, was he the true father of the magic bullet?
Moore stymied the fact of a frontal throat shot.  He admitted it.  A frontal throat shot means a conspiracy.  WC bs equals dust in the wind.
UNQUOTE

 

Micah Mileto (12-29-20) on Elmer Moore
QUOTE

 

Elmer Moore personally called Dallas Times-Herald journalist Bill Burris and leaked the autopsy's conclusions of a bullet entering Kennedy's upper back and exiting his throat. David Lifton was personally told this by Burris himself. 

 

UNQUOTE

Jim DiEugenio on Elmer Moore:

 

QUOTE

 

Elmer Moore was in on the cover up up to his neck.
He was one of the best and most important discoveries of the ARRB.
In fact, the belated discovery of Moore shows how deep the cover up went.
And to show you how bad it was, Moore ended up being the aide de camp to Earl Warren on the Commission.

UNQUOTE

Gerald Ford - the CIA's "best friend in Congress" covered up the JFK assassination AND also sanitized CIA murder plots from Rockefeller Commission Report

Gerald Ford in 1970 was called by Newsweek the "CIA's best friend in Congress." Ford also was an informer to the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover regarding the inner workings of the Warren Commission where he had been appointed by JFK assassination perp Lyndon Johnson SPECIFICALLY because he had close ties to the CIA. 

Web links - 

1) https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/JFK/ford.html  

2) https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2016-02-29/gerald-ford-white-house-altered-rockefeller-commission-report

LBJ appoints Gerald Ford to the Warren Commission and specifically says he (LBJ) wanted someone on the House Appropriations Committee “who knows CIA over in your shop” (referring to Ford).

 https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/secret-white-house-tapes/lbj-appoints-gerald-ford-to-the-warren-commission


(Ford): Yes, Mr. President. How are you, sir?

(President Johnson): Happy Thanksgiving. Where are you?

(Ford): I'm home, sir.

(President Johnson): You mean Michigan?

(Ford): No, no, I'm here in Washington—

(President Johnson): You're here in Washington? Well, thank God there's somebody in town! [Ford chuckles.] I was getting ready to tell [James] MacGregor Burns he's right about the Congress. They couldn't function.

(Ford): I thought your speech was excellent the other day.

(President Johnson): Why, thank you, Jerry. Jerry, I got something I want you to do for me.

(Ford): Well, we'll do the best we can, sir.

(President Johnson): I've got to have a top, blue-ribbon presidential commission to investigate the assassination. And I'm going to ask the Chief Justice to head it, and then I'm going to ask John [J.] McCloy and Allen Dulles.

(Ford): Right.

(President Johnson): And I want it nonpartisan. Now, I'm not going to point out I got five Republicans, two Democrats, but I'm going to do that, and I'm just . . . then you forget what party you belong to and just serve as an American.

And I want [Richard B.] Dick Russell [Jr.] and [John] Sherman Cooper, John Cooper, of the Senate. [Ford acknowledges.] Dick's on Armed Services over there, and I want somebody on Appropriations who knows CIA over in your shop—

(Ford): Right.

(President Johnson): —from the Appropriations angle, 'cause I'm covering the Armed Services angle with Russell.

(Ford): Right.

(President Johnson): I want to ask [T.] Hale Boggs [Sr.] and you to serve from the House—

(Ford): Well, Mr. President—

(President Johnson): —it'll be McCloy, and Dulles, and Ford, and Boggs, and Cooper, and Russell, and Chief Justice Warren as chairman.

(Ford): Well, you know very well I would be honored to do it, and I'll do the very best I can, sir.

(President Johnson): You do that, and keep me up to date, and I'll be seeing you.

(Ford): All right. Thank you very much—

(President Johnson): Thank you.

(Ford): —and I'm delighted to help out.

(President Johnson): Thank you, Jerry.

(Ford): Thank—

 

Gerald Ford became a member of the House Appropriations Committee in 1951

 

https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/events/centennials/ford/biography.html

 

Ford became a member of the House Appropriations Committee in 1951, and rose to prominence on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, becoming its ranking minority member in 1961. In 1963 President Johnson appointed Ford to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1965 Ford co-authored, with John R. Stiles, a book about the findings of the Commission, Portrait of the Assassin. He once described himself as "a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist in foreign affairs, and a conservative in fiscal policy."

 

Robert Morrow: In 1970 Newsweek called Cong. Gerald Ford “the CIA’s best friend in Congress.” Web link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Newsweek+calls+Gerald+Ford+the+CIA%27s+man+in+Congress&va=b&t=hc&ia=web&iai=r1-4&page=1&sexp=%7B%22cdrexp%22%3A%22b%22%2C%22recipeexp%22%3A%22b%22%2C%22biaexp%22%3A%22b%22%2C%22msvrtexp%22%3A%22b%22%7D  

 

By MIKE FEINSILBER

The Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON (July 2) - Thirty-three years ago, Gerald R. Ford took pen in

hand and changed - ever so slightly - the Warren Commission's key sentence

on the place where a bullet entered John F. Kennedy's body when he was

killed in Dallas.

 

The effect of Ford's change was to strengthen the commission's conclusion

that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and severely wounded Texas

Gov. John Connally - a crucial element in its finding that Lee Harvey

Oswald was the sole gunman.

 

A small change, said Ford on Wednesday when it came to light, one intended

to clarify meaning, not alter history.

 

''My changes had nothing to do with a conspiracy theory,'' he said in a

telephone interview from Beaver Creek, Colo. ''My changes were only an

attempt to be more precise.''

 

But still, his editing was seized upon by members of the conspiracy

community, which rejects the commission's conclusion that Oswald acted

alone.

 

''This is the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission

report,'' said Robert D. Morningstar, a computer systems specialist in New

York City who said he has studied the assassination since it occurred and

written an Internet book about it.

 

The effect of Ford's editing, Morningstar said, was to suggest that a

bullet struck Kennedy in the neck, ''raising the wound two or three

inches. Without that alteration, they could never have hoodwinked the

public as to the true number of assassins.''

 

If the bullet had hit Kennedy in the back, it could not have struck

Connolly in the way the commission said it did, he said.

 

The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that a single bullet - fired by a

''discontented'' Oswald - passed through Kennedy's body and wounded his

fellow motorcade passenger, Connally, and that a second, fatal bullet,

fired from the same place, tore through Kennedy's head.

 

The assassination of the president occurred Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas;

Oswald was arrested that day but was shot and killed two days later as he

was being transferred from the city jail to the county jail.

 

Conspiracy theorists reject the idea that a single bullet could have hit

both Kennedy and Connally and done such damage. Thus they argue that a

second gunman must have been involved.

 

Ford's changes tend to support the single-bullet theory by making a

specific point that the bullet entered Kennedy's body ''at the back of his

neck'' rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission staff

originally wrote.

 

Ford's handwritten notes were contained in 40,000 pages of records kept by

J. Lee Rankin, chief counsel of the Warren Commission.

 

They were made public Wednesday by the Assassination Record Review Board,

an agency created by Congress to amass all relevant evidence in the case.

The documents will be available to the public in the National Archives.

 

The staff of the commission had written: ''A bullet had entered his back

at a point slightly above the shoulder and to the right of the spine.''

 

Ford suggested changing that to read: ''A bullet had entered the back of

his neck at a point slightly to the right of the spine.''

 

The final report said: ''A bullet had entered the base of the back of his

neck slightly to the right of the spine.''

 

Ford, then House Republican leader and later elevated to the presidency

with the 1974 resignation of Richard Nixon, is the sole surviving member

of the seven-member commission chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

 

Washington, DC, February 29, 2016 – The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). The changes included removal of an entire 86-page section on CIA assassination plots and numerous edits to the report by then-deputy White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney. 

Today’s posting includes the entire suppressed section on assassination attempts, Cheney’s handwritten marginal notes, staff memos warning of the fallout of deleting the controversial section, and White House strategies for presenting the edited report to the public. The documents show that the leadership of the presidentially-appointed commission deliberately curtailed the investigation and ceded its independence to White House political operatives.

This evidence has been lying ignored in government vaults for decades. Much of the work of securing release of the records was done by the John F. Kennedy Assassinations Records Board in the 1990s, and the documents were located at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland; or at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Additional mandatory declassification review requests filed by Archive fellow John Prados returned identical versions of documents, indicating the CIA is not willing to permit the public to see any more of the assassinations story than we show here. The documents in this set have yet to be incorporated into standard accounts of the events of this period.

Among the highlights of today’s posting:

·         White House officials of the Ford administration attempted to keep a presidential review panel—the Rockefeller Commission—from investigating reports of CIA planning for assassinations abroad.

·         Ford administration officials suppressed the Rockefeller Commission’s actual report on CIA assassination plots.

·         Richard Cheney, then the deputy assistant to the president, edited the report of the Rockefeller Commission from inside the Ford White House, stripping the report of its independent character.

·         The Rockefeller Commission remained silent on this manipulation.

·         Rockefeller Commission lawyers and public relations officials warned of the damage that would be done to the credibility of the entire investigation by avoiding the subject of assassinations.

·         President Ford passed investigative materials concerning assassinations along to the Church Committee of the United States Senate and then attempted—but failed—to suppress the Church Committee’s report as well.

·         The White House markup of the Rockefeller Commission report used the secrecy of the CIA budget as an example of excesses and recommended Congress consider making agency spending public to some degree.

 

The Rockefeller Commission, the White House and CIA Assassination Plots

By John Prados and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi

The current controversy over drone attacks has an important backstory. During the 1970s it became known that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had plotted the murder of foreign individuals. These persons for the most part were prominent leaders or even heads of state. That the U.S. government had in any way been engaged in murder became a dark charge against the CIA, and helped inflame the political climate in a way that ensured investigations of the U.S. intelligence agencies would occur.

During those 1975 investigations, particularly those of the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, allegations of CIA involvement in assassinations were among the most important lines of inquiry. President Gerald R. Ford himself had a key role in triggering the investigations, inadvertently but artlessly revealing the fact of CIA involvement in plotting assassinations during a meeting with press editors.[i]

There had already been revelations of illegal domestic activities by the CIA. These led to the creation of a presidential panel under Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, and committees of inquiry in both houses of the United States Congress. Ford’s January 1975 admission of CIA involvement posed a dilemma for the administration. Vice President Rockefeller attempted to head off inclusion of the subject, restricting consideration of assassinations to the question of what role Cuba might have had in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That proved unacceptable to some members of his own commission, among them then-Governor of California Ronald Reagan. When the Rockefeller Commission took a vote on whether to include charges of CIA assassination plots in its inquiry, the group overrode its own chairman.[ii]

Rockefeller’s key opponent in the fight over investigating assassinations was the panel’s staff director, David W. Belin. A lawyer for the Warren Commission, empanelled to look into the Kennedy assassination in 1963-1964, Belin had been handpicked by Ford for the Rockefeller group. Ford, one of the Warren commissioners, was confident of Belin’s loyalty, but this time the lawyer fought hard to investigate deeply.

The investigators sought CIA documents on assassination plots conducted in its history and information on administrative routines. They also questioned key witnesses. As CIA lawyer John S. Warner admitted under questioning, the agency “certainly” had “no specific authorization” to conduct assassinations (Document 7). Warner additionally admitted he was “not clear” that a president had the constitutional authority to order an assassination, though that “might” lie within his powers.

Documents in this electronic briefing book reveal the views on the assassination reports of not only Belin but key members of his staff. At the time, in the spring of 1975, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee) was just being constituted but the Rockefeller Commission inquiry was already in progress. Days after Church Committee members met with President Ford, press adviser David Gergen advised the president to say nothing about assassinations (Document 1).

The jurisdictional and procedural issues regarding whether to include an investigation of assassination plotting, so far as the Rockefeller inquiry was concerned, were fought out over this same period (Documents 2,3,4,5). White House officials, including panel chairman Rockefeller, continued a rearguard action in opposition, first to covering CIA assassination plots at all, and later to including that material in the Rockefeller Commission report. Belin continued to press for the coverage, took a primary role in interviews the commission conducted for this part of its inquiry, and became the main author of the portion of the report dealing with CIA plotting against Fidel Castro (including Operation ZR/RIFLE).

The Rockefeller Commission collected a wide array of evidence, as illustrated by a staff member’s report on what could be learned from the papers of former CIA Director John McCone, and a CIA compendium document on the ZR/RIFLE project (Documents 8, 9, 10).

As of mid-April 1975, Belin expected to have the assassination portion of the panel report complete by the end of the month. He so informed White House officials. However, the CIA dragged its feet on providing materials, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who initially promised cooperation, provided little. Kissinger became a major actor in the struggle to suppress the Rockefeller assassinations report.[iii] When Belin scheduled a press conference to announce the panel’s assassination findings, deputy assistant to the president Richard Cheney and White House Counsel Philip Buchen, citing Kissinger’s concerns, intervened to induce Belin to cancel it.

As the Rockefeller Commission moved toward finalizing its report, panel staff concluded that the assassinations issues were going to be buried. Several recorded their objections to this course (Documents 11, 12). The Rockefeller Commission’s public affairs director, for one, observed that leaving out assassinations would make the report seem like a cover-up and cast doubt on the Commission’s entire project (Document 13). Nevertheless Belin and staff could not prevent determined superiors from holding back the entire subsidiary report that dealt with assassinations.

Meanwhile at the White House, Cheney led the way in “editing” the Rockefeller report—including suppressing the assassinations section. The final draft of the full report contained a brief passage noting that President Ford had asked the panel to investigate the assassination plots after its inquiry began, that the staff had not been able to complete the investigation, and that Ford had then asked that assassinations material be turned over to him. The Cheney edit inserted doubts by adding that it was unclear whether assassinations fell within the scope of the Commission’s mandate, thus resurrecting jurisdictional issues which had previously been resolved. The revised language also reduced President Ford to a bit player—asserting only that he had “concurred” inthe panel’s decision to investigate rather than that he had revealed the existence of CIA plotting and then been obliged to modify the Commission’s terms of reference to include an investigation of the matter. White House editors also changed the original text, from indicating that records were still in the process of being turned over to the president, to the statement that it already “has been” done.

Document 19 reviews the substance of the Commission’s evidence and findings relating to assassinations. In Document 20, White House lawyer Buchen discusses the substance of the findings.

The White House “edit” (Document 15) provides clear indications of the direction of the White House’s concerns vis-à-vis the conclusions of the wider Rockefeller Commission investigation. The report had determined that various intelligence agency actions were illegal and explicitly called them “unlawful.” The edit resisted that formulation and talked instead about actions that merely exceeded agencies’ statutory authority. The Cheney-supervised edit made a single exception—the White House changed Commission language which found the CIA had exceeded its authority in the course of drug experiments to say that these had been “illegal” (p. 37).

Rockefeller investigators had probed White House-CIA relationships that landed the agency in trouble during Watergate as a result of White House instructions to provide psychological profiles of prominent individuals, disguises for White House operatives, and documents on past CIA activities. The full Commission had then approved a recommendation (number 23 on its list) which specified that a single, authoritative channel be established for all White House requests to the CIA and that this be routed through the NSC staff. Following CIA internal directives (ones that had, among other things, resulted in the compilation of the “Family Jewels”), the Rockefeller Commission made clear that any CIA employee who questioned the “propriety” of any White House order should take that concern either to the CIA director or the agency’s inspector general. The White House editors changed this directive (in renumbered Recommendation 26 of the published report). Now, employees were to be instructed only to question requests that came outside the authorized channel, and to state their concerns only to the CIA director. Improper requests came off the table, and the inspector general was not to have automatic jurisdiction.

Among the abuses that led directly to President Ford creating the Rockefeller Commission were charges the CIA had compiled dossiers on American citizens and infiltrated political groups that opposed the U.S. war in Vietnam. In this instance the Rockefeller panelists entered a blanket finding that the files and lists of citizen dissenters were “improper.” The White House edit changed this conclusion, indicating that the “standards applied” had resulted in materials “not needed for legitimate intelligence or security purposes,” and that this merely applied to “many” records gathered about the antiwar movement (see unnumbered page revising p. 41 in the report).

White House editors eliminated a Commission recommendation (number 17 in the original text) that applicants for agency positions and foreign nationals acting on behalf of the CIA be informed more clearly that they could be subjects of U.S. security investigations. The Cheney-inspired edit also added recommendations the Rockefeller panel had not voted. One (Recommendation 29 in the published report) advocated for a new civilian agency committee to be formed to resolve concerns about the use of CIA-developed intelligence collection mechanisms (overhead photography) for domestic purposes.

Another White House-originated point (Recommendation 20 in the published report) sought to increase public confidence in the integrity of the intelligence agencies by instructing them to review their holdings of secret documents periodically with the aim of declassifying the maximum amount of material. This recommendation was more honored in the breach.

In a related case, White House editors eliminated a lengthy commentary from one of the commissioners, the former solicitor general of the United States, Erwin N. Griswold. A detailed footnote quoted Griswold as saying that an underlying cause of the problems confronting the CIA was its pervasive atmosphere of secrecy, and recommending Congress consider making public the CIA budget (page 132-3, renumbered p. 15 in Document 15, footnote 2). The commission quoted Griswold in the context of a recommendation about the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. White House editors converted Griswold’s statement into part of the main text which the entire Rockefeller panel had supposedly agreed upon, and used it to buttress a recommendation to create a joint committee of the Congress to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies and went on to Recommendation 4 — that Congress consider making the CIA budget, to some degree, public. 

Thus the White House edit both put words into Rockefeller Commissioners’ mouths and dispensed with concerns they had expressed. Apart from the substantive issues raised thereby these actions amounted to direct political interference with a presidential advisory panel. Ford may have been comfortable with his subordinates’ maneuvers, but they helped drain credibility from the Commission’s investigation, as the panel’s own staff had warned in discussions of whether to include its assassinations report (Documents 11, 12, 13, 14).

The White House strategy for releasing the Rockefeller report is detailed in talking points and strategy memoranda (Documents 16,17,18). In the end, in a complete reversal of the actual inquiry, the only assassination material to make it into the report concerned whether the CIA had conspired to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.[iv]

Richard Cheney and Gerald Ford failed in their effort to suppress the assassinations portion of the Commission’s work. Rather, the media, alerted to the issue by the president himself, kept pressing until Ford declared he would turn over the assassinations material to the Church Committee. The president essentially kicked the controversy down the road. The Commission’s files and interview records related to assassinations gave Church investigators a blueprint and a boost in their own inquiry. Senator Church’s committee moved quickly and completed its investigative report in October 1975. Along the way investigators compiled more than 8,000 pages of depositions or testimony, covering 75 witnesses over 60 days of hearings, most held in executive session. Committee staff analyst Loch Johnson, who later authored a classic account of the “Year of Intelligence,” found many revelations almost unbelievable, in some cases “requiring a suspension of disbelief few serious novelists would ask of their readers.”[v] 

With the committee at the point of asking that the full Senate release its report, on October 31 President Ford wrote Senator Church to ask that the report be kept secret on national security grounds (Document 21). Several days later the committee voted to reject Ford’s demand, and Church answered his letter on November 4, writing, “in my view the national interest is better served by letting the American people know the true and complete story . . . . We believe that foreign peoples will, upon sober reflection, admire our nation more for keeping faith with our democratic ideals than they will condemn us for the misconduct itself” (Document 22). In a display of legislative strategy, on November 20 the Senate convened in a secret session to debate releasing the Church assassinations report but failed to delay or prevent its being made public, because the committee had approved the report while the full Senate took no vote on whether to enforce a rule that would have held up release.

The sordid story of CIA assassination plots came into the open most authoritatively in the Church report. Its revelations did not destroy the republic, contrary to White House and intelligence community warnings. The committee recommended that a prohibition on assassinations be written into law, even supplying language that could be used in such a statute. Their prohibition would have covered not only foreign officials but members of an “insurgent force, an unrecognized government, or a political party.”[vi]

The White House took a different tack. A steering group of officials working on the political crisis of the “Year of Intelligence,” proposed that President Ford issue an executive order (E.O.) to govern intelligence agencies and operations, and that the order include a prohibition on assassinations. Senator Church objected that anything a president set by fiat could be changed by fiat as well, by means of a future executive action. Besides, the Ford executive order, issued in February 1976, lacked the definition that would have been supplied by the Church Committee-recommended statute. President Jimmy Carter issued his own executive orders on intelligence, in a preliminary form in May 1977 and in a reworked version in January 1978. The assassination prohibition would be widened somewhat, by removing the word “political,” which the Ford E.O. had used as a qualifier (as in “political assassination”), and by extending the ban beyond government employees to anyone working for or on behalf of the United States. The Carter ban would be repeated verbatim in President Ronald Reagan’s E. O. 12333, issued on December 4, 1981. Every subsequent president has continued the ban, and the Reagan E.O. itself remains in force.

[i] See John Prados, The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy and Presidential Power. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013, pp. 160-161.

[ii] Nicolas Djumovic, “Ronald Reagan, Intelligence, William Casey, and the CIA: A Reappraisal,” Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, April 2011, pp. 7-8.

[iii] Prados Family Jewels, pp. 163-165.

[iv](Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States(Rockefeller Report), June 1975, pp. 251-269.

[v] Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985, p. 50. A new edition of this book will appear very shortly from the University of Kansas.

[vi] United States Senate (94th Congress, 1st Session). Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, pp. 289-290.