The First 72 Hours
JFK assassination research and dialog has largely focused on the attack in Dallas and the events of November 22, 1963, with virtually never ending discussions of the crime scene, evidentiary issues, the autopsies and related forensics. Given the problems in all those areas, including chains of possession, conflicting testimony and the very real indications of manipulation in both the areas of the evidence put into the official record and the autopsy of the President, those discussions will likely never come to a satisfactory conclusion.
Much less attention and dialog has been associated with the period of time beyond that evening’s autopsy at Bethesda, in particular the indications that a variety of meetings, and conversations which would have pointed towards an early suspicion of conspiracy in the attack have been intentionally obfuscated or entirely deleted from the historical record.
In the 2010 edition of Someone Would Have Talked, I tried to present considerable detail and a chronology of the first 72 hours, extending into the iterative efforts by LBJ to control the narrative of the assassination, beginning with his hope to circumvent anything beyond the production of a report by the FBI – which by Sunday afternoon can be shown to have consisted of no more than a “difficult task” (as described in an internal FBI memo) of preparing a report to portray Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole individual involved in the attack.
That 2010 edition was built around the then newly released material from the ARRB and the work and writing of Douglas Horne, the work of Rex Bradford on a key conversation between Johnson and Hoover on Saturday, November 23, and my own research into the earliest work of William Manchester as compared to extant records at the Johnson Library – suggesting that the Johnson call logs had been altered to conceal a very critical Friday night call between Johnson and Hoover which had simply resumed the following morning.
Later work by Bill Kelly and some of my own studies related to the Air Force 1 radio transmissions suggested that there was also considerable communication while that aircraft was in the air that did not make it into the final transcripts which were released to the media, including the fact that LBJ specifically had the materials reviewed and cleared for release when the press eventually learned they existed.
Those elements, plus some anecdotal reports of conversations with senior national security figures, support the idea that there were discussions and decisions made to suppress indications of conspiracy – and a full, open ended inquiry into that possibility during the first 72 hours. Beyond that, even more recent remarks and document releases prove that the possibility of a Cuban or Cuban exile conspiracy in the attack was investigated quite seriously and the results suppressed within the CIA – not just internally but officially in testimony to the Warren Commission and records provided to the Church Committee.
Click to access 104-10103-10024.pdf
Most recently, my friend Mike Swanson has discovered and written about even more evidence that certain early conversations very likely related to the assassination and having national security impact were also either suppressed or literally removed from the historical record.
The Mystery Of The Missing JFK Assassination Related LBJ Presidential Tapes (The First 72 Hours) – Mike Swanson
Considered as a body of information, these elements all seem to me to lend support to the fact that there were two conspiracies involved in the murder of President Kennedy, the one which killed him and a separate one which occurred after the fact which suppressed even the idea of conspiracy. That second effort was hastily and iteratively implemented, to the extend that conversations, tapes, photos etc had to be cleared from the record and those involved had to overtly lie and obfuscate about what had gone on in the first 72 hours after the assassination – not the execution of some well planned and structured coverup planned as part of a grand conspiracy, but rather something separate where actions that were critical and even reasonable at the time, in the interest of national security, had to be dealt with and obscured piece meal, after the fact, once the decision on a lone nut solution became set as a top level policy.
