JFK Remembered: Dan Rather and James Swanson talk at The Henry Ford

[Mc Mike]

26. Your post # 460, last Jan 22 (in your o.p. of Jan 15), had info on an alternate route.

Last edited Sat Dec 21, 2013, 03:43 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2242472

I mistakenly thought the road was 'Commerce' or 'Commercial', it was 'Industrial'. Deputy Chief Lumpkin (who was Army Intel Reserve, and in the motorcade's pilot car), said in your link that Industrial was not a good route, because it was run down and winos hung around there.

Lumpkin's name came up twice in Russ Baker's Family of Secrets , once in connection with the motorcade and its route (On the re-routing, Baker said on p. 110 that "Officially, the decision to reroute the motorcade from Main Street to Elm, in front of the Book Depository Building, was made only a week before the event--by two Secret Service agents", but Baker didn't name the official source or the agents who changed the route). Lumpkin is first mentioned on p. 115: "on the day of the assassination, Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin was driving the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade...Lumpkin was a friend of Jack Crichton, Poppy bush's GOP colleague" (Crichton was running for statewide office alongside Poppy bush, Crichton for Gov, Poppy for Senate)..."Like Crichton, moreover, {Lumpkin} was a member of an Army Intelligence Reserve unit. (Lumpkin would later tell the HSCA that he had been consulted by the Secret Service on motorcade security, and his input had eliminated an alternate route.)" Baker didn't mention that the route was via Industrial, unlike your HSCA link. "In the car with Lumpkin was another Army officer, Lt. Col. George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in East Texas, who happened to be Jack Crichton's boss in the Reserve. Although Whitmeyer was not on the police list of those approved to ride in the pilot car, he had insisted that he be in the vehicle and remained there until the shooting. The only recorded stop made by the pilot car was directly in front of the Depository building. Lumpkin stopped briefly there and spoke to a policeman handling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm."

A bonus mention of Army Reserve unit involvement comes from Russ on page 188. He pointed out that the Bottlers' convention, which was scheduled at the same time as Kennedy's visit to Dallas, held a rodeo to entertain 200 orphans, and the Army Reserves volunteered to provide trucks and drivers to transport the kids to and from the arena at Fair Park (close to the site of the Crichton-led Dallas Civil Defense group's underground emergency bunker and communications facility. Crichton, like Ferrie and Oswald, was big on Civil Defense.) Baker pointed out that the bottlers' convention brought Nixon to Dallas, brought 8,000 strangers to Dallas, sent army vehicles into action on city streets the night before the assassination, and by taking the biggest Dallas venue, helped determine Kennedy's venue and the motorcade route.

The other mention of Lumpkin in Baker's book is on page 119. Within hours of Kennedy's death and Oswald's arrest, a right wing repug party activist and precinct chairman, white Russian emigre Ilya Mamantov, stepped in and functioned as an interpreter between Marina Oswald and investigators, embellishing her comments to establish in no uncertain terms that 'leftist' Lee Oswald was the gunman-the lone gunman-who killed the President. "It is interesting of course that the Dallas police would let an outsider--in particular, a right-wing Russian emigre--handle the delicate interpreting task. Asked by the Warren Commission how this happened, Mamantov said that he had received a phone call from Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin. After a moment's thought, Mamantov then remembered that just preceding Lumpkin's call he had heard from Jack Crichton. It was Crichton who had put the Dallas Police Dept. together with Mamantov and ensured his place at Marina Oswald's side at this crucial moment. Despite this revelation, Crichton almost completely escaped scrutiny. The Warren Commission never interviewed him."


Harrison Livingstone's The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy discussed motorcade planning while talking about a problem with the postmark for the money order Oswald allegedly sent to obtain the murder weapon. It was for 10:30 a.m. on 3/12/63, but during this time Oswald was working for Jaggers-Chiles at some distance from the post office, he was punched in before the post office opened, and his time sheet accounted for each of the jobs he did that morning. "... the job he was working on the longest that morning was for his employer's client, Sam Bloom, the man who later worked closely with the Secret Service to set up the motorcade and Kennedy's visit to Dallas eight month's later. Sam Bloom was an 'associate' of Jack Ruby who was reputed to be Oswald's friend." (p. 209, Livingstone, source cited Warren Commission vol. 22, p. 516.) Mr. Livingstone's book is poorly indexed, and jumps around topically quite a bit, and he says 'Sam Bloom' instead of Mae Brussell's 'Sol Bloom'. Maybe 'Sam' is an Americanized version of 'Sol'; I've never seen them both written together in any source discussing the P.R. agency who was handling the publicity and political side of the motorcade planning, as opposed to the security side.

James Hepburn's Farewell America said on p. 352 that Secret Service advance man Winston Lawson and Dallas S.S. head Sorrels drove the motorcade route with Chief Curry on Monday, Nov. 18. "After they had driven through the center of the city and reached Dealey Plaza, Curry pointed down Main Street past the railroad overpass and said, 'and afterwards there's only the freeway.' But instead of turning right into Houston Street in the direction of Elm Street, as the motorcade did on November 22, Curry turned left in front of the Old Court-house, and neither Lawson nor Sorrels followed the parade route past that point...This type of double turn is contrary to Secret Service regulations, which specifiy that when a Presidential motorcade has to slow down to make a turn, 'the entire intersection must be examined in advance, searched and inspected from top to bottom'. Curry, however, brought the reconnaissance to an end at the very point where it became unacceptable (as well as unusual) from the point of view of security."

When Curry pointed down Main and said, "and afterwards there's only the freeway", that might have been the route Senator Yarborough remembered taking in previous motorcades, Curry's implied route seems to match the 'Main St. to Stemmons Freeway' route description. Why Sorrels, who was the head of Dallas S.S., would need a guide or be unfamiliar with Dealey Plaza and the Freeway ramps, is beyond my ability to explain reasonably. But given his frenetic activity post-assassination to deal exclusively with Zapruder's footage, maybe some 'Occam's Razor' advocate could offer the simplest explanation of Sorrels' activities, abilities, and motivations. To me, it seems like Hepburn's source for the 'dry run' events and conversation was either Lawson or a written report from Lawson.


Thanks for the link to the N. R. article, and the Agents Go On Record link, Octa. There had to have been a lot of good Secret Service agents on the job, or Kennedy wouldn't have lived as long as he did. But none of those agents were in command on 11/22, instead Pat Kirkwood's drinking buddies were in charge. The New Republic article from Dec. of '63 is excellent, it does a good job of compiling the constantly altering details of the emerging 'official story'. I like those early sources, watching the authorities trying to explain things that are known and undeniable, then their explanation trips them up, then they have to re-explain. I really like lines about the '30 Cal Enfield/7.65 mm Mauser/.25 cal Army or Japanese rifle they found on the 2nd, 5th, and 6th floor and in the stairwells, which changed into the 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano that Italian rifle-makers 'customarily' leave their name off of, to prevent their products from being immediately identifiable. Even better that Oswald was across town at work when he purchased the money order at the post office in another part of town to pay for this remarkable weapon. I'm pretty sure he would have faced some kind of wire fraud charges for a transaction like that, had he lived.