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.

ELSUR: Electronic Surveillance

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

AARC has obtained approximately 9000 pages of electronic surveillance indices from FBI ELSUR files, dating back to World War II.  These records are a history of FBI’s electronic surveillance activities during the period of the Cold War.

Here are the files associated with litigation initiated by Kel McClanahan, Esq., Executive Director, National Security Counselors on behalf of AARC:

1 – 2019-02-04-20230615T192031Z-001.zip

2 – 2019-02-28-20230615T215052Z-001.zip

3 – 2019-04-01-20230615T215601Z-001.zip

4 – 2019-05-01-20230615T215908Z-001.zip

5 – 2019-06-03-20230615T220307Z-001.zip

6 – 2019-07-01-20230615T221400Z-001.zip

7 – 2019-08-01-20230615T223228Z-001.zip

8 – 2019-09-03-20230615T223505Z-001.zip

9 – 2020-05-19-20230615T223742Z-001.zip

10 – 2020-06-30-20230615T224622Z-001.zip

11 – 2020-07-30-20230615T225153Z-001.zip

12 – 2020-08-31-20230615T225444Z-001.zip

13 – 2020-09-30-20230615T225816Z-001.zip

14 – 2020-10-30-20230615T230056Z-001.zip

15 – 2020-11-24-20230615T230238Z-001.zip

16 – 2020-12-31-20230615T230418Z-001.zip

17 – 2021-01-29-20230615T230606Z-001.zip

18 – 2021-02-26-20230615T230734Z-001.zip

19 – 2021-03-30-20230615T230901Z-001.zip

20 – 2021-10-05-20230615T231051Z-001.zip

21 – 2021-11-30-20230615T231239Z-001.zip

22 – 2021-12-30-20230615T231423Z-001.zip

23 – 2022-01-31-20230615T231626Z-001.zip

NOTE: Bookmark this page as additional details on all files will be shared:

RELATED: 2018 Release of FBI ELSUR Records

Press Release · Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Washington, DC

Dr. Colleen Shogan, 11th Archivist of the United States. Courtesy White House Historical Association.

Dr. Colleen Shogan, 11th Archivist of the United States. Courtesy White House Historical Association.

The United States Senate voted today to confirm Dr. Colleen Shogan as the 11th Archivist of the United States. Nominated by President Biden on August 3, 2022, Shogan will begin her tenure as the head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) next week. She will be the first woman to hold the position permanently, succeeding David S. Ferriero, who retired in April 2022.

Shogan most recently served as Director of the David M. Rubenstein Center for White House History and Senior Vice President of the White House Historical Association. She previously worked for more than a decade at the Library of Congress, serving in senior roles as the Assistant Deputy Librarian for Collections and Services and the Deputy Director of the Congressional Research Service. Earlier in her career, she worked as a policy staff member in the U.S. Senate and taught at Georgetown University and George Mason University. She earned a BA in Political Science from Boston College and a Ph.D. in American Politics from Yale University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and of the United States Capitol Historical Society’s Council of Scholars. Additionally, Dr. Shogan served as the Vice Chair of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission and the Chair of the Board of Directors at the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation.

As Archivist of the United States, Shogan will oversee NARA, an independent federal agency that serves American democracy by safeguarding and preserving the records of our government, so people can discover, use, and learn from this documentary heritage. The National Archives ensures continuing access to the essential documentation of the rights of American citizens and the actions of their government. From the Declaration of Independence to accounts of ordinary Americans, the holdings of the National Archives directly touch the lives of millions of people. The agency supports democracy, promotes civic education, and facilitates historical understanding of our national experience. The National Archives carries out its mission through a nationwide network of archives, records centers, and Presidential Libraries as well as online at www.archives.gov.