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ASSASSINATION 11/24/2013 8:18:11 AM
Fifty years! Half a century!
I was 22 years old that fateful day in 1963—the on-duty announcer Friday at 12:26 PM at WROC-TV in Rochester NY—situated in the darkened Announce-Booth just three steps up from the hallway to Master Control, where I was watching the end of NBC’s current episode of YOUNG DR. MALONE, anticipating the 12:30 break.
At 12:30, or thereabouts, I began to read a Canada Dry Ginger Ale commercial (a commercial normally done live) but today the studio crew was nowhere to be found.
Irv Hoffman, an engineer, came into the Announce-Booth and said, You better come quick! All hell has broke loose there! The newsroom. The bells on the AP and UPI machines are going crazy! All hell is like broke loose!
What’s going on? I wanted to know. A hurricane destroyed downtown? An atom bomb go off? What?
I dunno. Kennedy’s been shot. In Dallas, or someplace! You better come!
I gave Hoffman explicit instructions: Save every scrap for me! Tear it off, cut it up, but save it all! Stack it up and pile it on the desk, right here!
You got it, boss! But you better come — LIKE QUICK! he repeated.
Hoffman was right. The newsroom, down the hall, was madness and mayhem.
By the time I got back to the Announce-Booth, David Brinkley and Chet Huntley had taken over. BULLETIN…BULLETIN the screen exploded.
HUNTLEY: Reports from the scene say President Kennedy has been shot from numerous gunshots allegedly from the rear of his Dallas motorcade. He was hit frequently, many times.
BRINKLEY: Also hit and killed during the attack was Mrs. Kennedy, the vice president and Mrs. Johnson, as well as the Texas governor and Mrs. Connelly. Secret Service agent Clinton Mills was blasted from the Presidential limousine.
Of course, it was later learned that Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Connelly were not hurt, as well as the Johnsons who were not even riding with JFK, Mrs. Kennedy, and John Connelly and his wife. The Secret Service agent, who turned out to be Clint Hill, was unhurt while trying to shield Mrs. Kennedy and her husband.
At around 2 PM (CST) President Kennedy was pronounced dead, after his heart stopped functioning and a priest, a Rev Oscar Huber, administered the last rites of JFK’s religion.
What is so fascinating about this story is not what we knew but what we do not. Sure, Lee Harvey Oswald threw a monkey wrench into history with his three well-placed rifle shots. But what if he had missed?
Yeah. WHAT IF? Well, for one thing, there never would have been a FOURTH term. A second was already a fait accompli. A third? Laws were made to be changed! But not abused.
WHAT IF? Well, there would never have been a George W. Bush and never in anyone’s imagination an Iraq or Afghanastan or Dick Cheney—maybe not even a G.H.W. Bush! Certainly not a Richard Nixon..
Ironically, the greatest what if’s are the conspiracy theories, which abounded up until the year 1998 — even to date, as late as 2013, there is no consensus on who, among the many players, may have been involved in a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.
Those often mentioned as being part of a conspiracy include Jack Ruby, organized crime as an organization or organized crime individuals, the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, the KGB, right-wing groups or right-wing individuals, President Lyndon Johnson, pro- or anti-Castro Cubans, the military and/or industrial groups allied with the military.
The actor, Burt Lancaster, starred in a 1970 movie called EXECUTIVE ACTION, which was the first Hollywood depiction of the sad events of 1963. In 1991 Oliver Stone’s movie JFK portrayed the incident — and most of the conspiracy ideas — to brand new contingent of citizens who were not yet adults when the events were first orchestrated (I cannot recall who was in that film).
But I digress. Getting back to my implicit instructions to Irv Hoffman, he did precisely has I had told him, realizing the value of the original AP and UPI documents that would be mine to correlate and show within ten short years (it never occurred, even to me, their intrinsic monetary value in 50 years!).
The limo had sped away toward Parkland Memorial Hospital where the President was pronounced dead at about 1 PM (EST). The agent, riding in the front with the driver, told him which way to go. That agent, later criticized for not following Secret Service procedure to the fullest, was Roy Kellerman, and he made no effort to cover the President’s body with his own—the quickness of events notwithstanding.
About three hours later, having received a memo from my boss telling me to go home, my services were not needed until a regular shift on Tuesday, I returned to the Announce-Booth to retrieve my bounty. I found only the space where Hoffman had piled the AP and UPI material — the space cleaned out, gone and bare, somewhat like Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard.
There, by the desk, was my CEO’s secretary, on her knees, in solemn prayer.
What are you doing? I asked her.
Praying, she said.
I instantly recalled a conversation I’d had with Satan, a conversation I’d had in Ireland (which will be published on December 21 next month), during which Satan said something to the effect that the only thing gained from prayer was arthritic knees . . .
But all I said was, Oh . . .You did not happen to see —
Robert A. Mills
Copyright. 2013, all rights reserved
