Sen. Stennis Shot in DC (1973 AFVN Radio transcript)

In the top of the News, Senator John Stennis underwent a lengthy operation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after he was shot during a hold up in front of his Washington home today.

The surgery was for the removal of two bullets, one from the Senator’s chest, and one from his left leg.

White House News Secretary Ronald Ziegler says that President Nixon has been informed of the shooting, and has instructed the FBI to assist in every possible way.

A 1971 law makes it a federal crime to assault or kidnap or kill a member of Congress.

Stennis, who entered the Senate in 1947, is Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Police spokesman say the 71 year-old Mississippi Democrat was shot as he stepped from his car in front of his home.

They say the assailants got Stennis’ gold watch, wallet, and 25 cents in change.

The Senator reportedly offered no resistance to his assailants, and, after being shot, crawled fifty feet to his house, where his wife called the police.

Police say they are searching for two black men in connection with the shooting.

Coincidence?

Senator Stennis was shot on January 30th, 1973, and the Paris Peace Accords were signed January 17th, with the cease-fire taking effect on January 27th, 1973.

AGREEMENT ON ENDING THE WAR AND RESTORING PEACE IN VIET-NAM
The Parties participating in the Paris Conference on Viet-Nam,

With a view to ending the war and restoring peace in Viet-Nam on the basis of respect for the Vietnamese people's fundamental national rights and the South Vietnamese people's right to self- determination, and to contributing to the consolidation of peace in Asia and the world,

Have agreed on the following provisions and undertake to respect and to implement them:

Chapter I
THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE'S FUNDAMENTAL NATIONAL RIGHTS

Article 1

The United States and all other countries respect the independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Viet-Nam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Viet- Nam.

Chapter II
CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES - WITHDRAWAL OF TROOPS,

Article 2

A cease-fire shall be observed throughout South Viet-Nam as of 2400 hours G.M.T. [Greenwich Mean Time], on January 27, 1973.

At the same hour, the United States will stop all its military activities against the territory of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam by ground, air and naval forces, wherever they may be based, and end the mining of the territorial waters, ports, harbors, and waterways of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam. The United States will remove, permanently deactivate or destroy all the mines in the territorial waters, ports, harbors, and waterways of North Viet-Nam as soon as this Agreement goes into effect.

Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam
signed in Paris and entered into force January 17, 1973

IIRC, we continued bombing between the 17th and 27th, because the North kept fighting.

Of course it is obvious, but JFK's assasination was in yet *another* neighboring Southern state, Texas. Of course, that's a pretty weak connection since it was 10 years earlier *and* the other events did not occur in the Southern states themselves, but rather, to Southern Democrats (conservative ones, or at least all anti-Communists) from those neighboring Southern states.

Before sharing some thoughts on this, I'd want to preface with a caveat by echoing Sabertooth's caution in Post #1 against tinfoil links, as it will be difficult for me to document what I have to say here through online references only without linking to tinfoil sites, and it's a bit late at night for me to go digging up offline references. So some of the sites I'm going to link here, I link with the assumption of a large grain of salt and without endorsing everything claimed on these sites.

That said, I've done my share of research on various assassinations, and I will mention one of the more intriguing possible links I've found between the shootings of JFK, RFK, and George Wallace. Lee Harvey Oswald's alleged associate David Ferrie belonged to a schismatic cult called the "the Orthodox Old Catholic Church of North America -- also known as the Old Roman Catholic Church, Old Rite Orthodox Catholic Church, and Orthodox Catholic Church, among many other similar names." (David Ferrie and Earl Anglin James: Bishop in the Old Roman Catholic Church--Note: this group should not be confused with the Roman Catholic Church, nor with another church that also uses a similar name but predates Ferrie's group.) According to (I believe, off the top of my head) one study of the RFK assassination (William W. Turner and Jonn G. Christian LV, The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: The Conspiracy and Coverup--see review at http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01/WI) and page references at http://www.namebase.org/main4/William-Joseph-jr-Bryan.html), another associate of this group was psychologist William Joseph Bryan, who was an expert in "Manchurian Candidate"-type applications of psychology and was allegedly linked to Sirhan Sirhan. Bryan was also allegedly linked to Arthur Bremer, according to research summarized at this site:

In fact, Bremer had checked out two books on Sirhan from the Milwaukee Public Library in 1972 and had made comments about them in his journal. But perhaps the most interesting connection yet is the one discovered by Betsy Langman. Langman flew from her New York home to Los Angeles to talk to Dr. William Bryan, suspected hypnotist of Sirhan in the RFK assassination saga. On the pretext of doing an article on hypnosis, she encouraged the egotistical Bryan to elaborate at length on his ventures with "Boston Strangler" Albert Di Salvo, "Hollywood Strangler" Henry Bush, and about hypnosis in general. But when she brought up the subject of Sirhan, Bryan became suddenly curt and short-winded, charging out of the office declaring "This interview is over!"

A sympathetic secretary of Bryan’s joined Langman for coffee across the street, and dropped an interesting item. As Bill Turner and Jonn Christian recounted it in their book on the RFK case,

According to the secretary, Bryan had received an emergency call from Laurel, Marlyand, only minutes after George Wallace was shot. The call somehow concerned the shooting.25 [cites Turner and Christian, p. 227.]

Could Bremer have been hypnotized to shoot Wallace?

Also, while looking up the above references, I found one site (very tinfoil, I'll caution, as I haven't had a chance to fact-check this against other sources yet) which alleges:

Sirhan Sirhan

A co-worker of Sirhan at the stables was Thomas Bremer, whose mind-controlled brother Arthur, shot Governor George Wallace in 1972.

Whether these connections are coincidental or substantial or what they mean I don't claim to know; I post this in case anyone researching these subjects finds the information useful. However I will say this: ever since I've heard about the VVAW's assassination plans, I have suspected a connection to the George Wallace shooting; I've also been reminded of the Symbionese Liberation Army and Manson cult's attempts on President Ford in September 1975 (note that the SLA and the Family had formed an alliance at that time, and the SLA was in turn linked to a Maoist group that I would suspect of having at least distant kinship to the VVAW--for some interesting info on this, see Jim Martin, America's Al-Qaeda: The SLA-Venceremos Connection; also on the Family see the work of Ed Sanders and Maury Terry who link the Family to a Scientology-derived cult with various terrorist ties); and what I've read so far in this thread reinforces my suspicions that the VVAW assassination plot may have been part of a larger terrorist plot by the antiwar movement against pro-war politicians. If that was a case, I'd assume such a plot was ultimately KGB-directed (which would not be unprecedented given what is now known about KGB assassination operations in North America, Trotsky's assassination being one well-documented non-tinfoil example, Stalin's attempt to assassinate John Wayne being another which has recently come to light). How that may or may not relate to the two Kennedy shootings is a huge subject I won't attempt to address here at approximately 3:00 in the morning my time. And am I suggesting Kerry would've been aware of all this if it was going on?--no, if there was such a plot he'd be a very low-level conspirator on the outermost fringes of the process, I'd imagine; though even that would be scandalous given his negligence to report what plotting by the VVAW he was aware of, IMO.

At any rate, that's all on this for me for tonight. I'll check the thread again tomorrow, and if anyone has any further thoughts on this topic I'll be interested to hear them. Gonna go sleep under my tinfoil sheets now :) G'night all!

Thanks for the Nixon/Stennis doc. I found it in a non-pdf format:

Richard M. Nixon: 1969-1974
32 - Informal Exchange with Reporters After Visiting Senator John Stennis at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center
February 7, 1973

REPORTER. How is the Senator this morning, sir?
            THE PRESIDENT. Well, I just talked to the doctors, and they say that he is considerably improved over what he was yesterday. As you know, the situation was considered to be quite grave yesterday morning and yesterday afternoon, and late last night, at midnight, I called Dr. Tkach, our doctor, and had him check with the doctors here, and they said he had had a very good night, up to that time, and apparently it went on for the balance of the night.
This morning at 8 o'clock I called again and found that he could take visitors. They have not encouraged visitors up to this time, so that is also a good sign. You can't judge these things. The doctors say he has been a remarkably resilient patient, that he has, of course, very enormous problems because of what happened to him, but he is in excellent shape.
They make the point, for example, that his tissues are much younger than a man of 72 would normally have. Now, I judge it by another thing--his handshake. He has always had a grip of steel, and I reached out and I thought after what he had been through that, you know, he would sort of be limp, but that handshake just came on as strong as it ever was. So as far as his spirit is concerned, it is excellent. That will help him some. He has excellent medical care, and he has made a remarkable comeback from where he was yesterday.
It still, of course, is a very serious situation. But the doctors are much more hopeful today, and being--everybody is an amateur doctor to an extent--I think he is going to make it. And he is going to make it.
Q. What did you say to him this morning, Mr. President?
            THE PRESIDENT. Well, I said to him that the whole country was praying for him, that he was one that had done so much to help his country, that now the country was trying to help him, and that he was really an indispensable man in the Senate, with his strong leadership of the Armed Services Committee.
I told him how much I had depended upon him and that I was just waiting for him to get back so we could still have him there. I think one of the most important factors in a patient's recovery--and I would say this to all the people in the hospitals here and around the .country--is that the individual must know that he is needed.
Of course, Senator Stennis knows that, but it is good to hear it, and I would urge that when people call on patients at hospitals, rather than sympathizing about all of their symptoms and the rest, to make it pretty apparent that they are missed and that they are needed, and that gives people that extra will to live. And that will to live is what you really need when you get close to that border point, as to whether you are going to make it or not.
The Senator's got that will to live in spades, and he has an awful lot of people pulling for him, not just in the Senate, not just in his own party, not just in his own State, but all over the country, because he is a national Senator. He represents the Nation, not one region.
And another thing that is rather characteristic of him is he is such a kind man. I would say I don't know of anybody in the Senate, Republican or Democratic-many disagree with him because he is a strong national defense man, and those who want to weaken the national defense, for this reason or that, disagree with him-but there is no one that dislikes John Stennis. They all love him because he is such a fine man. That is why you want him to get back there. Thank you.
Q. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
            THE PRESIDENT. Okay. Good luck to you. I told the doctors--incidentally, I congratulated them all--I said I hope I don't ever have to come out here to have them work on me. I don't expect to, either. Thank you.
NOTE: The President spoke at approximately 9:20 a.m. outside the Center.
Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi was shot during a robbery in front of his Northwest Washington home on January 30, 1973.
Richard M. Nixon: 1969-1974 | Doc #32 - February 7, 1973
Informal Exchange with Reporters After Visiting Senator John Stennis
at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center
The American Presidency Project

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