Posted on 05/05/2007 12:29:46 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
The fence of the Grassy Knoll. Two shooters are suspected to have been here on Nov. 22, 1963, one on the left ofthe photo, one of the right. 
View of the Texas book depository, with a car located at the exact location where JFK finally died of a shoot in the head.
I was eating it when I found the thread too and it seemed appropriate in light of the tone of a couple other threads dealing with this topic. This story has been rather contentious here on FR.
I hope popcorn is one of the 12 manner of fruits on the tree of life.
So, is there a book that summarizes your view of who killed JFK. I consider myself well read, and I’ve read a few books on the topic, but not for 10 years or more. Sounds like lots of new evidence is out there.
Who do you think killed Kennedy?
SOO Mafia didn’t do it right
Wikipedia says: "Hunt's wife, Dorothy, was killed in the December 8, 1972 plane crash of United Airlines Flight 553 in Chicago. Congress, the F.B.I., and the NTSB investigated the crash, and found it to be an accident caused by crew error.[4] Over $10,000 in cash was found in Dorothy Hunt's handbag in the wreckage.[5]
What really happened during the infamous “Watergate plane crash” at Chicago’s airport on December 8, 1972?
[From *The Spotlight*, Feb. 14, 1994]
United Airlines flight 553 out of Washington, D.C. exploded while landing in Chicago. Aboard were 12 people who were connected in some way to the burgeoning Watergate scandal. Among the victims was Dorothy Hunt, wife of former CIA man (and Watergate burglar) E. Howard Hunt.
Evidence indicated the plane was sabotaged, but independent investigator Sherman Skolnick made headlines when he charged thatthe sabotage had been covered up by the government.
Skolnick discussed his findings when he was the guest on the December 23 broadcast of *The Spotlight*’s nightly radio call-in talk forum, Radio Free America, with host Tom Valentine.
At the time of the crash, Valentine was a journalist working in Chicago and became acquainted with Skolnick during the furor over the loss of flight 553.
According to Valentine, “It was the flight 553 affair that really convinced me this government was corrupt. I was a meat head and believed in our government. I knew the medical establishment was corrupt, but this really convinced me the government was corrupt.”
Skolnick, who has been a regular guest on Radio Free America, and who is an adviser to Liberty Lobby’s Populist Action Committee, has a recorded five-minute commentary (changed several times a week) that people may call 24 hours a day at regular long-distance rates. The number is (312) 731-1100. Skolnick’s recorded message brings periodic updates on matters the investigator and his research team are working on.
An edited transcript of Valentine’s interview with Skolnick follows.
VALENTINE: The Watergate plane crash is the first investigation you and I worked on together.
SKOLNICK: This subject is one of the great forbidden subjects of this country. You are not supposed to talk publicly about airplanes that have been sabotaged. If sabotage is ever brought up, it’s always in some foreign country where a bomb blows up the airplane.
VALENTINE: Then the loss of the United Airlines flight 553 was not just fog or pilot error or something like that.
SKOLNICK: In the history of aviation there have been a number of situations where there was actual sabotage — not necessarily a bomb — and that sabotage put the plane down and killed people for political reasons.
I started writing a book about airplane sabotage right after the plane crash. I called it “The Watergate Plane Crash.” The reason why was because on this one plane were 12 people connected with the Watergate affair.
The disaster happened exactly one month after Richard Nixon had been re-elected. The Watergate affair had started, but it was not widely known at the time.
Former CIA man (and Watergate burglar) E. Howard Hunt, part of the so-called White House Plumbers, was under arrest. It later came out that Hunt was threatening to blow the lid off the White House if Nixon didn’t take care of him. Hunt wanted $2 million.
What Hunt reportedly had was information tending to show that Nixon, who was in Dallas at the time John F. Kennedy was murdered, was complicit in the assassination. Hunt’s wife Dorothy was carrying around “hush” money to various witnesses in an effort to silence them about the Watergate affair.
She was on flight 553, and this time she was traveling under her own name. She was so concerned about the baggage (which contained $2 million worth of cashier’s checks and money orders, which some astute people could have traced back to the Nixon White House) that she bought an extra first class seat for her baggage (and the valuables therein).
The press later said there was only $10,000 in her possession, but that was false. We know about this because of records of the National Transportation Safety Board which had the manifest of the airplane.
A year after the crash, an air baggage robbery gang was prosecuted in the case of *U.S. vs. Joseph Cirelli*.
I was the only journalist who covered the hearing. There an FBI document came out showing that this criminal mob, a Mafia family, had somehow penetrated the crash zone, stolen Mrs. Hunt’s luggage, and were fencing $2 million worth of valuables for $5 million.
Why? How? Because these money orders could be traced back to the Nixon White House and as a consequence were worth more as blackmail information.
The plane was steered into the ground. It’s not technically accurate to call it a “crash.” The plane was pancaked and then caught on fire.
Now bear in mind that every airport has what they call the “outer marker” which enables the plane to know his altitude. The outer marker was working for the plane ahead of flight 553 and for the plane behind flight 553, but as 553 approached the marker, it mysteriously went out.
Now here’s the mystery. There were 150 FBI agents waiting on the ground. The government’s own documents show that the fire department responded within a minute and a half. The FBI headquarters in Chicago is in downtown Chicago, 12 miles away. If they got on a helicopter off their headquarters roof they couldn’t have made the 12 miles faster than the fire department.
However, when the fire department came near the crash zone, the FBI had cordoned off the zone and kept the firefighters from approaching the plane. A number of police officers were also held back and kept in a nearby park and not allowed to approach the plane.
The only ones who were able to approach the plane were the FBI. I found out about this later, and for several months thereafter some of the press called me a liar, but finally a letter came from the acting director of the FBI, confirming that I was correct, and that there were a large number of FBI people there.
He cryptically put in his letter that it was justified cause they were investigating “airline piracy.” Which means, in other words, was somebody trying to steal luggage on that plane, *enroute*, and therefore the FBI was waiting?
We believe the FBI was waiting there to arrest Mrs. Hunt because of the blackmail scheme. I went to the National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB, which investigates crashes], and they set up shop in Chicago and held a hearing in the spring of 1973. They concluded there was ice on the plane’s tail.
I interviewed a number of their witnesses and found the NTSB did not bring out the correct facts. I brought a lawsuit against the NTSB, and, unknown to United Airlines, my friends liberated the entire government file of 1,300 documents and pictures, and we knew it was sabotage from the government’s own records.
I got on a lot of radio talk shows at the time, but I didn’t tell them that we had the entire file. United Airlines got upset about me being on radio saying these things, and they demanded that the NTSB reopen the hearings to prove that I was a liar.
At the two days of hearings in June, 1973, at which time they expected to prove me a liar, some 250 reporters showed up from all over the world. CBS had closed-circuit video coverage for their higher-ups since one of their reporters, Michelle Clark, had been sitting next to Mrs. Hunt.
SKOLNICK: At the two days of hearings in June, 1973, at which time they expected to prove me a liar, some 250 reporters showed up from all over the world. CBS had closed-circuit video coverage for their higher-ups since one of their reporters, Michelle Clark, had been sitting next to Mrs. Hunt.
Now remember, United Airlines didn’t know that my friends had swiped the NTSB files on the crash. So when they turned on all the lights for the videotaping process (for the CBS executives), at that moment I opened up my suitcase at the hearing and spread all of the documents on a great table before me.
There was a panel of five NTSB members there. I said,
“Now here’s your entire file. I admit that I swiped it. If you want
to arrest me, do it right now in front of all of these reporters.”
For two entire days I showed from their own records that they knew it was sabotage.
The *Chicago Tribune* took a picture of me at the table, but they chopped off the portion of me pointing at the documents, and they ran a headline saying “No proof whatsoever of sabotage.”
The Associated Press’s national wire ran an objective story, to their credit, saying that I presented a “heavily documented case of sabotage regarding a flight where Watergate figures died.”
Only one newspaper in this country, however, ran that AP story. It was a newspaper in Seattle. All of the other newspapers disregarded that major story carrietional wire (known as the “A” wire, which carries all the major stories).
The reason for this is simple: United Airlines was the largest airline in North America, and were this to have been publicized they could have lost their certificate to fly. Edward Carlson, United Airlines board chairman, was very close to Nixon.
Now as I mentioned, CBS News reporter Michelle Clark was on the plane beside Mrs. Hunt. She was also a friend of Rep. George Collins (D-Ill.) who also died on that crash. At the later hearings, we had the chief assistant of Congressman Collins. Apparently Collins had somehow found out about the Watergate affair before the break-in and had told Michelle Clark about it, and she knew about it.
What happened was that certain people decided to sit on matters for their own financial gain. Here’s briefly what happened. I had a mutual friend who knew Ms. Clarke’s family. They said that since Michelle had died in the crash, they were going to blow the lid off United Airlines, which is owned largely by the Rockefeller family’s Chase Manhattan Bank. They were also going to use this information against CBS (Michelle’s employer) which was part of the cover-up.
Using my material they got what was said to be as much as a $5 million settlement from CBS by remaining silent about what the family found out. Cardiss Collins, the widow of Congressman Collins, took his place, and from my information she was in favor of squelching the whole affair.
Another one that I think shook down the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] and the Nixon administration for a large amount of money was William F. Buckley Jr.
Buckley had not only served in Mexico City under E. Howard Hunt in the CIA (years before), but since Hunt was a convicted felon (as a consequence of the Watergate affair), Hunt could not be the executor of his wife’s estate.
Buckley, as the godfather of Hunt’s children, brought a lawsuit in the federal courts in Chicago against the FAA and in cryptic language said that the FAA allowed this crash to happen. The lawsuit didn’t quite allege sabotage but in a way referred to what we had uncovered, and [they] were using it for their own financial gain.
In other words, they strong-armed the FAA and the Nixon White House to get money out of them. The press didn’t cover the fact that Buckley had brought such a lawsuit.
Now in the NTSB reports that we had uncovered, we reviewed the toxicological reports. These reports showed that Dorothy Hunt and the other Watergate people on board the flight had a very high cyanide level in their body — higher than they could have breathed into their body in a fire. In other words, it had to have been injected.
We went to the leading toxicologist in the country, and he said that the cyanide had to have been injected.
In any case, after two days of hearings, I told a joke that was used against me. I said, “I am here to admit that I have absolutely no proof whatever that Richard Nixon himself or Edward Carlson, the chairman of United Airlines, was on the plane with a 38 and shot Dorothy Hunt.”
Do you know that the Chicago paper had a banner headline saying that “Skolnick admits no proof whatsoever.”
They left out the part of the sentence that was a joke.
Now there was a very interesting man on that plane who survived the crash. He was sitting right near the tail near the door. His name was Harold Metcalfe, one of the top narcotics agents in the United States working directly for the Nixon White House. When the plane crashed, he opened the door and got off at the tail. He was in a jumpsuit like he was going to parachute or something.
What happened was that he was supposed to testify before a grand jury in Indiana. An associate of mine found him and confronted him and said, “You survived the crash and came out of a plane in a strange jumpsuit. You knew that plane was supposed to crash.”
Metcalfe turned purple and started blurting out, “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”
We brought that up at the special hearing.
Finally, after two days of hearings a reporter for the Hearst newspapers came up to me, and I’ll never forget what he said. He said, “All of your documents are worthless. You didn’t prove that the plane was blown up with a bomb.”
I said, “We’re living in a modern world. Of those planes that have been sabotaged, not all have been blown up that way.”
He said, “Without a bomb, you have no case.”
That was the opinion of the top reporter of the Hearst newspapers.
I confronted the members of the NTSB panel with conflict of interest charges in that most of them were stockholders in the airline industry, but they refused to disqualify themselves. The panel came out with a revised verdict that the prophetically named Capt. Whitehouse (on the ill-fated plane) had committed pilot error, and that’s why the plane crashed.
In so doing they came out with a new set of documents. But I had their file, and I was able to show that their new documents were falsified and not the original records of what had happened.
Whitehouse had been one of the best pilots in North America and had been a stunt pilot. If there was anybody under heaven who could have landed that plane, he could have.
The plane’s electrical system had been sabotaged, too. But to protect United Airlines, they covered up what really happened. My book on the affair [which Tom Valentine was scheduled to co-author] was supposed to be published by Pinnacle Press, but the lawyer for Chase Manhattan Bank (which, as we said, owns part of United Airlines) said that the book was “not documented,” even though we had all of the documents from the NTSB.
VALENTINE: After my magazine *Newsreel* was going to publish your story, but our distributor, Fawcett, was purchased by CBS, and that was the end of that.
SKOLNICK: There have been a lot of mysterious plane crashes over the years. One of them was the disappearance of the plane (in Alaska) carrying Rep. Hale Boggs (D-La.), just a month before Nixon was re-elected.
I talked to a lot of people who investigated it, and there is reason to believe the plane was found. Boggs had begun making statements that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was wiretapping members of Congress. Boggs had also been a member of the Warren Commission that said Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in the JFK assassination.
Now his daughter, Cokie Roberts, who is a top reporter for ABC, recently said that she agreed with her father that “Oswald acted alone.” The fact is that her father had begun to have misgivings in 1972 about the Warren Commission, and it was at that point his airplane disappeared.
http://www.govsux.com/dsac.htm
Date of Accident: 08 December 1972
Airline: United Airlines
Aircraft: Boeing 737-222
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA (Midway Airport)
Registration: N9031U
Previous Registrations: -—
Flight Number: -—
Fatalities: 43:61+2
MSN: 19069
Line Number: 75
Engine Manufacturer: Pratt & Whitney
Engine Model: JT8D-7B
Year of Delivery: 1968
Accident Description: The aircraft crashed while executing the VOR approach to runway 13L at Chicago Midway Airport. Failure of the Captain to properly fly the approach, leading to a loss of airspeed, stall, and loss of control.
AirDisaster.Com Accident Database
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=12081972®=N9031U&airline=United+Airlines
The loony side of me says Jack had syphilis (or some other sexual transmitted disease) had didn't want it known and tarnish his brothers memory
Nothing that had to do with any assassination myths
Just my humble opinion
Immediately following the crash, over
40 FBI agents were on the scene,
examining and confiscating the control
tower flight tapes, conducting interviews,
and delaying a medical team’s entrance
into the area. At the National Transportation
Safety Board’s investigation into
the crash, the chairman of the NTSB
testified that he had never seen such
activities on the part of the FBI.
Medical examiners found unusually
high amounts of cyanide in the body of
the plane’s pilot. Just before the crash,
the flight recorders mysteriously ceased
functioning.
Just one day after the crash, President
Nixon appointed a new Undersecretary of
Transportation in charge of the NTSB
and the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA), which have control over investigations
into plane crashes. The appointee’s
name was Egii Krough. Ten
days later, Nixon appointed a new
director of the FAA. His name was
Alexander Butterfield. One month later,
United Airlines named a new executive
director. His name was Dwight Chapin.
Then there was the Wallace shooting.
Clip from 1973 Newspaper article
THETECH FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1973 PAGE3
http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_093/TECH_V093_S0320_P003.pdf
By KATHY GEORGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
"Ever since pleading guilty and serving a prison sentence, I have felt a growing need to convey my deep regret and apology to all Americans for my criminal actions as head of Nixon's White House plumbers."
-- from an unpublished manuscript by Egil "Bud" Krogh
You mentioned :Elvis
In 1994, Kro(u in spelling above post)gh published a book called "The Day Elvis Met Nixon."
It was an insider story, to be sure, relating how Elvis Presley showed up suddenly at the White House gate in 1970, gave the guard a letter saying he wanted Nixon to make him a secret "federal agent at large" so that he could influence young people to resist drugs, and tried to enter the Oval Office with a loaded Colt .45 that he said was a gift for Nixon.
Just one day after the crash, President Nixon appointed a new Undersecretary of Transportation in charge of the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which have control over investigations into plane crashes. The appointee’s name was Egii Krough(typos?)..
So the Smoking Man on the X-Files was E. Howard Hunt.
VERY true. And as they say, the politicians are the ones who are too ugly to make it in movies.
Interesting how the actor transition-into-politician is becoming more common, eh?
I understand, but was trying to make the obvious point that LBJ had ample reasons. It is not obvious that any assassins working for him would have had higher scruples. It is clear that if a president owes you a lot, it could be worth something.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.