Fletcher Prouty Commentary - Sept



This article is from "People and the PURSUIT of the Truth" for June, 1978



This is the way the Warren Commission began. They had been appointed at the end of November. By the time of this January 27, 1964 meeting, they had seen and beard tons of FBI and Secret Service "opinions" and "findings." They were overwhelmed then, even as they started overwhelmed. This was exactly the way it ended. Kennedy was dead. Oswald was dead. The FBI and the Secret Service had "solved" the case. The Warren Commission was going to have to put its collective signatures on the verdict.



That is exactly what they did and not a bit more. That verdict, effectively dictated to them between November 30. 1963 and January 27, 1964 is still the vastest coverup of this century.



Nixon's Three Stories of Where He Was on November 22, 1963



In the first place, strange things which could scarcely all be coincidence happened even before JFK was killed. On the morning of November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was killed the New York Times carried an item on a back page, It was datelined Dallas. And it said that ex-Vice-President Richard M. Nixon had made a speech in Dallas before a group of businessmen,



Not only did the Times carry that story on the very day JFK died, but Nixon was in Dallas the day Kennedy died, and it is very possible that he was still in Dallas at the moment Kennedy died. Despite all other reports to the contrary. And of course the thing that makes this so very important is that Nixon and others have for some reason tried to conceal that fact for more than twelve years.



By itself, this would not be important. Being in Dallas on November 22nd. 1963 does not make just anyone. for example, Nixon, a murderer; but the record of Nixon's visit to Dallas has been deliberately obscured. Let's pick three "official" versions of Nixon's actions that day and see how they compare and then what the differences may signify.



Story One



Not long after Kennedy was shot, Nixon wrote an unusually long article for the Reader's Digest. It appeared in the November 1964 issue under the strange title, "Cuba, Castro, and John F Kennedy." Prepared as it was by Nixon or for his signature and prepared for the massive worldwide audience of the August Reader's Digest, we are asked to believe that this is the factual account of what took place. Nixon says



"I urged, in a statement to the press [ Dallas on November 21 that the President and the vice-president be shown the respect to which their office entitled them."



Nixon added,



"I boarded a plane in Dallas on the morning of November 22 to New York. We arrived on schedule at 12:56. I hailed a cab. We were waiting for a light to change when a man ran over from the street corner and said that the President had just been shot in Dallas. This is the way that I learned the news."



Story Two



Now let's look at another Nixon account of the same day The November 1973 issue of Esquire magazine carried the following Nixon quote;



"I attended the Pepsi Cola convention [ in Dallas ]and left on Friday morning. November 22, from Love Field. Dallas, on a flight back to New York , . . on arrival in New York we caught a cab and headed for the city the cabbie missed a turn somewhere and we were off the highway . . . a woman came out of her house screaming and crying. I rolled down the cab window to ask what the matter was and when she saw my face she turned even paler. She told me that John Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas,"



Story Three



Now let's look at the "official" account from "The Day Kennedy was Shot, by Jim Bishop:"



"At Idlewild Airport now JFK Airport) in New York , reporters and photographers had been waiting for the American Airlines plane among (the passengers) was Nixon. As he got off the plane he thought that he would give 'the boys' basically the same interview he had granted in Dallas . Nixon posed for a few pictures . . . got into a taxi-cab was barely out of the airport when one of the reporters got the message: The President has been shot in Dallas."



Comparison



Now let's compare these. Nixon was in Dallas on November 22. The versions agree that he took some plane out in the morning Bishop says it was American Airlines and that it went into Idlewild. Nixon says that it landed precisely at 12:56 nearly one half-hour after Kennedy had been shot. Certainly the crew would have heard over their radio that the president had been shot and would have told their passengers. Then Bishop says reporters and photographers were there. Certainly they too would have known about Kennedy's murder by then. Everyone else in the world did. Bishop says the photographers took pictures. Where are they?



Nixon says he traveled to New York from Dallas with a friend. Who? And what is his story?



Nixon says he got in a cab, presumably well after 12:56. What cabbie in New York City would have not known the news by then? And then Nixon tells a strange story. The first time a man ran out to the cab with the news, and the second time the cab was "lost" and a woman ran out screaming and crying the news. These different accounts do not hold water.



With all of this very contrived series of accounts it looks as though someone has been fabricating a cover-up of Nixon's actions that day. Why?



The True Story



Actually, Nixon was in Dallas when JFK was shot. On April 2nd 1975 a young man was listening to a talk at his school when he heard the lecturer tell about the Esquire account of Nixon's trip to Dallas, and how and when Nixon had learned about JFK's death. That young man then told the lecturer, "My father was an executive for the Pepsi Cola Company, and he was in Dallas on November 22nd 1963 at that convention. He has told me that Nixon was there in Dallas at the convention when the announcement was heard that JFK had been killed, Nixon left later that afternoon,"



This young man is the son of Mr. Harvey Russel of the Pepsi Cola Company. When Mr. Russel was informed of his son's account, he agreed that his son's story was true. Mr. Russel confirmed that Nixon was attending that meeting at the time the shots were fired. He added Nixon was there representing the Pepsi Cola Company's law firm Mudge, Rose, Nixon et al. The Dallas newspapers stated that Nixon was attending a board meeting.



Mr. Russel confirmed that the session Nixon was attending broke up when the assassination news came through. Nixon then returned to his hotel and later in the afternoon had been driven to the Dallas airport by a Mr. Deluca, also a Pepsi Cola official.



These surprising series of events and the manner in which they unfolded after all these years underscore that there was something unusual about Nixon's visit to Dallas. Telephone calls to Deluca and again to Russel did little more than highlight their growing concern over the inadvertent disclosure of this story.



