ASSASSINATION ARCHIVES

AND RESEARCH CENTER

Courtesy of Michael Swanson and WallStreetWindow: JFK Assassination Presidential Protection Oddity

The Man Invited To Join In On Presidential Security Meetings (George Lumpkin Interviewed On The Motorcade Route)

By

Michael Swanson

–

 Thousands of JFK files have been released by the US government in the past few years and digitized and put online for anyone to access them. The Mary Ferrell Foundation also has created a wonderful website and database to search them and to go through even more information. However, there are a few previously released JFK files that are not online. You can get access to these files by going to the National Archives or by requesting a copy of them from NARA. I did that with a few files this year and one of them is a fascinating one that consists of an interview of former Dallas Police Captain George Lumpkin.

Lumpkin was involved in meetings about the planning of President Kennedy’s security and his motorcade route. He traveled in the lead car of the motorcade with a friend of his, General George Whetmeyer. After gunfire erupted in Dealey Plaza, the two traveled to Parkland Hospital and then went to the Texas School Book Depository. As the highest ranking police officer on the scene, Lumpkin took control, sealing off the building and remaining at it until a search of it was completed.

Despite being a key figure that day, the Warren Commission never interviewed him.

This file i requested consists of an interview of Lumpkin with Congressional HSCA staff members.

In it Lumpkin answers questions about how the Presidential motorcade was chosen and reveals how he invited Whetmeyer to attend DPD and Secret Service meetings about security planning and the motorcade as his “guest” – even though he seemingly had no reason to be there, because his Army Reserve unit played no role in the President’s safety that day.

I wish they would have asked him why and how people just get invited to meetings like this as a “friend.”

It’s curious.

Also Lumpkin makes it sound like Police Chief Curry had a lot do with the motorcate route, but according to Vincent Palamara’s book, Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy, “DPD Chief Jesse Curry testified that he was not even consulted about the motorcade route.”

This is important, because according to DPD Sergeant Samuel Bellah, who was one of the advance motorcycle officers in the motorcade, he “reviewed the planned route with his captain. The route was not the original one that was to go straight through Dealey Plaza, but a revised route. The original plan would have skirted the Texas Book Depository building by a block, but the altered plan turned to pass directly in front of the building.” – this also is from Vince’s book (page 105).

In the first sentence of the staffer’s account of their interview with Lumpkin, they declare that he “was involved in the planning of the JFK motorcade” even though he distances himself from that specific activity in his answers.

Here is the file:

[Click to enlarge]

CONTINUE READING AND VIEW THE COMPLETE FILE AT WALLSTREETWINDOW.COM

Michael Swanson is the author of The War State and Why the Vietnam War?. His Amazon author’s page is HERE.

Rex Bradford: State of the JFK Releases 2023

Rex Bradford is the president of The Mary Ferrell Foundation

State of the JFK Releases 2023

The National Archives has released thousands of documents online between 2017 and 2023, many of which still feature redactions

On June 27 of this year, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) put 1,103 documents online, all of them updated versions of documents previously released, with some blacked-out areas (“redactions”) removed to reveal the underlying text. The vast majority of these documents still feature some redactions, as do a few thousand other records in the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection (JFK Collection) that NARA maintains at its facility in College Park, Maryland.

This release was the fourteenth time since the summer of 2017 that NARA put JFK records online, in the wake of the triggering of a “sunset clause” of The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Records Act). This clause mandated that, absent specific presidential action, all records in the JFK Collection would be released by October 26, 2017, 25 years after the JFK Records Act was passed. But instead of allowing full release, two successive presidents authorized agencies to postpone disclosure of certain records and presided over a process of release of some records and repeatedly kicking the can down the road on the remainder.

Apparently the can has now been kicked well down the road. Despite thousands of records remaining partially redacted, an order from President Biden decrees that further review and disclosure of withheld records will be done not in accordance with the JFK Records Act, but rather under “Transparency Plans” developed by each relevant government agency, and approved by NARA. The outcome is predictable, and the intent appears to be to kill off the stringent disclosure requirements of the JFK Records Act without bothering to try to officially terminate an act of Congress.

This essay starts with a bit of background on the history of revelations in the JFK assassination saga. It then reviews the last 6 years of document releases, and discusses where we are now, coming up on 60 years after the murder of a U.S. president in broad daylight at the height of the Cold War.

CONTINUE READING AT MFF

NEWEST EVIDENCE CONFIRMS AND CORROBORATES THE JFK ACOUSTICS … AGAIN

D.B. Thomas|16 September 2023

When President Kennedy was shot to death on the streets of Dallas, a motorcycle in the police escort had its radio microphone open and captured the sounds of the assassination gunfire over the police recording system. For his recent book, Last Second in Dallas, author Josiah Thompson arranged for a sound-processing expert named Richard Mullen to provide measurements on a set of audio artifacts that occur at places on the same Dallas Police recording. The results are counter to the misrepresentations about the artifacts used by the National Research Council as a pretext to declare the acoustical analysis invalid. The results likewise discredits the study by Sonalysts, the firm engaged by Larry Sabato for his otherwise inconsequential book on John F. Kennedy. The NRC panel and Sonalysts exploited these artifacts in a cynical effort to obfuscate the scientific evidence of a gunshot from the grassy knoll. What the new measurements tell us about the artifacts is explained herein. Clarification: the NRC panel claimed that the acoustical evidence was invalid on the grounds that the putative “gunshots” were not synchronous with the time of the assassination. The claim was spurious as it was contrary to the evidence then available. The new evidence contradicts the NRC claim and corroborates the acoustics. Similarly, Sonalysts asserted falsely that the motorcycle with the open microphone was not in Dealey Plaza (Fig. 1) at the time of the assassination, an assertion that was contrary to the evidence then available. The new evidence further contradicts Sonalysts claims and adds another layer of corroboration to the acoustical identification of gunfire.

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AARC Board Member

Donald B. Thomas received his Ph.D from the College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri. Following graduation, he held post-doctoral research appointments at the University of Arizona and the University of Nebraska. He is currently a senior scientist with the United States federal government and is on the graduate faculty at the University of Texas. He is a former President of the Coleopterists Society and presently serves as a subject editor for the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.

Dr. Thomas is the author or co-author of more than one hundred scientific journal articles, book chapters and books. His 2001 article in the journal Science & Justice, The Acoustical Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination Revisited led to publication of Hear no Evil, a book which places the acoustical evidence in a larger context. He currently resides in Texas with his family.

Secretary-General’s remarks Commemorating the 62nd Anniversary of the Death of Dag Hammarskjöld

Courtesy of Dr. Susan Williams

13 September 2023

Secretary-General’s remarks at Wreath-Laying Ceremony Commemorating the 62nd Anniversary of the Death of Former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld

 

 Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,

We gather to pay tribute to Dag Hammarskjöld on the 62nd anniversary of his death.

We honour a virtuoso of multilateral action.

With passion and compassion, courage and curiosity, diplomatic skill and boundless stamina, Dag Hammarskjöld lived – and died – for the ideals of our United Nations.

I welcome the General Assembly’s resolution in December 2022 to continue the investigation into the cause of the plane crash in which Dag Hammarskjöld died, and echo the General Assembly’s call for Member States to release any relevant records in their possession.

We have a shared responsibility to pursue the truth – for Dag Hammarskjöld and those who died alongside him, for their loved ones, and for the United Nations and the people we serve. I remain personally committed to that quest and intend to write to relevant Member States on the matter.

Dag Hammarskjöld shaped our United Nations in innumerable ways – setting new standards of public service and launching our Organization on its active career as the custodian of world peace.

His legacy endures, not as distant memory, but as a living guide for our shared mission.
He recognized that the United Nations may be imperfect – but he knew it was indispensable. And he summoned us all to reach higher.

As he once said: “It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”

Let us take inspiration from the courage of his convictions and the power of his example.

Let us move forward together in unity and purpose.

And let us keep striving to narrow the gap between the world as it is, and the world as we know it can be.

I would like to ask all of you to join me in a moment of silence.

[Moment of silence]

Thank you.

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MULTIPLE ARTICLES RELATED:

Investigation into the conditions and circumstances resulting in the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjöld and of the members of the party accompanying him

 

 

 

Publication Spotlight: PRAYER MAN: MORE THAN A FUZZY PICTURE

 The publication of Prayer Man: More Than a Fuzzy Picture represents an unprecedented decade-long investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald’s last 48 hours.

Author and archivist Bart Kamp has produced a comprehensive work which delves into Lee Harvey Oswald and the other Texas School Book Depository employees inside the building during and shortly after President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22nd 1963.

Kamp’s detailed research also examines the period of Oswald’s incarceration and interrogations. It presents an entirely new and deep perspective of how the law enforcement agencies gathered their evidence that weekend. It reveals a dramatic new context in relation to understanding Lee Harvey Oswald’s innocence.

Within these pages are many new and never before published revelations that contrast the altered accounts that were represented before the Warren Commission and challenges many commonly accepted assumptions and interpretations.

Excerpt from the Back Cover:

In Prayer Man: More Than A Fuzzy Picture, Bart Kamp has produced a rare and meticulous compendium of what exists within the documentary record about Lee Harvey Oswald, the employees of the Texas School Book Depository, the local police and federal investigators, the reporters, witnesses and peripheral figures associated with the minutes leading up to and the immediate aftermath of the attack upon President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dealey Plaza.

Bart’s journey from commercial and fashion photographer to JFK assassination researcher and author is an inspiring reminder of the first-generation critics of the Warren Report. His indefatigable determination, matched with reason and an innate intolerance of BS, has brought us closer than we have ever been to being able to assess for ourselves, without being told what or how to think, the questions associated with history’s unstable verdict on the enigma of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Order now now in Kindle and Paperback formats from Amazon.