" Understand those instructions, and they have all been carried out. We will continue with the plan to spot you in the regular place. There will be a ramp LEFT FRONT, a ramp RIGHT FRONT, a fork lift LEFT REAR, press area LEFT FRONT. Over."
The casket containing the President was loaded onto Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas by hand, carrying it up the passenger steps.
In Washington, the casket was off-loaded using a scissor fork-lift and taken by ambulance to Bethesda Naval Hospital, accompanied by Jackie Kennedy and Roy Kellerman of the Secret Service.
Only, by now it was empty.
Wasn't Jackie always with the casket? Clearly not, since she was present for the swearing in of President Johnson in the front cabin of the plane, along with most of Kennedy's aides, Jack Valenti and others.
Roy Kellerman of the Secret Service was claimed to be the only person accompanying the President's body every second of the way from Dealey Plaza to the morgue.
He lied.
So too did Maj. Gen. Chester V. "Ted" Clifton, Jr., whose words are quoted above and heard on the tape accompanying these images.
His estate sold this recording last year for half a million dollars.
Even this tape is edited for content. It contains no mention of Oswald, the Soviet Union, Cuba, communism or the Police Investigation, even though Oswald's name and guilt was announced on the plane to the assembled passengers and a communist plot would have been one of the first ideas floated as to motive.
The tape provided by the Johnson Presidential Library does not contain this exchange, or many others. But they DO know where a complete, unedited copy can be located, most likely in the Johnson Library archive.
I, for one, would like to hear that tape.
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