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The Continuing Investigation into the Murder
of President John F. Kennedy By
Donald A. Adams, Retired FBI Special Agent , JFK Assassination Investigation Participant
More than 45 years later the truth needs to be told about the murder of President John F. Kennedy. That is why at age 77, Don Adams is working to surface the truths of the assassination investigation of the President.
I believe my findings, are the beginning of the unraveling of the thread of the conspiracy to murder President Kennedy. I am a first-hand witness to historically significant facts that have been altered and/ or misdirected to cover the conspiracy and the assassination. And, I am here and now going to attempt to set the record straight. ... Don Adams
As one of the original investigators of Kennedy's assassination, I believe that had the FBI followed proper procedure the assassination may never have occurred. Additionally, I have first-hand knowledge that senior FBI officials did indeed withhold and alter information that could have led to the uncovering of the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.
The biggest question is: Who or what organization was responsible for calling the shots in the killing of President Kennedy? Can they be identified?
Numerous books have been written and comments made by a variety of authors or speakers that the Cuban government was behind the assassination because of the failure of the Bay of Pigs. Others have said the "Mob," Mafia, or Organized Crime was involved because of President Kennedy and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy's fight against that group. Reportedly they retaliated because of these actions. (Please see the Links section of this website for the four theories I believe are most often cited.)
My investigative experience and first-hand knowledge of some of the people associated with the assassination, has brought me to only one inescapable conclusion: only our government leaders at the highest level were in control of the required resources to have caused the President of the United States to be killed and then alter or destroy the multitude of evidence that has kept the conspiracy under wraps for more that 45 years.
The Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation presented two separate Kennedy assassination articles in 12/1997 and 11/2003 in the Society's publication Grapevine. Bob Gemberling (deceased) author of those two articles was the agent in Dallas who prepared the FBI report which was used by the Warren Commission to prepare the Warren Report.
I knew Bob, as we both worked together in Dallas when I was transferred there in June of 1964. In 2003, long after I retired, he became aware of my views after reading a newspaper interview of me. He wrote to me and I responded in writing, giving him sufficient reason, I believe, to consider altering his vehement position of Oswald as the assassin and lone shooter. His response to me showed him to be even more firmly entrenched in his belief.
In 2006, as a retired Agent of the FBI, I presented my investigation and beliefs regarding the Kennedy Assassination in a researched and documented article to the editor of the Grapevine. My finds were in direct opposition to Mr. Gemberling's — that is to say, Oswald most likely was not the assassin and more than one assassin participated in the murder of the President. I asked the Grapevine to publish my 11-page, typewritten article. I felt that all of the retired agents should have the option of reading my views as well as Gemberling's and draw their own conclusions.
I received a telephone call form the editor of the Grapevine, who told me that Scott Erskine, the Society's Executive Director and others, had made the decision that my article would not be published. He further explained that they did not want the publication to be used to, "...pit one agent against another." I told the editor, that under my right of freedom of speech, I felt that my views should also be made known. The editor responded, "The decision is final."
... Don Adams |
The Facts
President Kennedy traveled to Texas for a trip through important Texas cities to help prepare the Democratic party and the people for the next election in 1964. They traveled on the President's plane from Fort Worth to Love Field in Dallas. The president, wife Jackie, and Texas Governor John Connally and his wife entered the President's limousine, an open-top convertible driven by a Secret Service Officer with a second Agent seated in the passenger's seat next to him. The motorcade drove to Main Street and then proceeded on Main with the intention to go to the Stemmons Freeway and end at the Trade Mart where a luncheon-speech by the president had been planned. As the car was beginning to end it's short ride on Main Street, the car turned right 90 degrees onto Houston Street, then made a 120 degree left turn onto Elm Street where within a few precious seconds the President was mortally wounded and later pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital. Lee Harvey Oswald was later arrested and charged as being the assassin. He was killed on Sunday November 24,1963, in the basement of the Dallas Police Department by Jack Ruby.
In 1963, any information that came to the attention of the Secret Service, the FBI or local law enforcement agencies, regarding a planned assassination was investigated by the Secret Service. If they need assistance they can request other agencies such as the FBI to do whatever investigation is needed. The United States Secret Service directs all of the planned travel for the President.
 The taped recorded conversation by the Miami Police Department and the FBI of wealthy white supremacist, Joseph A. Milteer, the leader of the White Citizens Council, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and a distributor of vitriolic anti-Kennedy literature, was obtained on November 9,1963, two weeks before Kennedy's assassination. In the recording Milteer says that the President will be killed with a high-powered rifle from a tall building. This tape-recorded conversation was investigated by the FBI in Miami, Florida.
I have first-hand knowledge of Milteer as I am the FBI agent who investigated him both prior to and after the assassination. On November 14, 1963, I began investigating Milteer. I surveiled him, put together a package of solid information, and turned my report over to Special Agent in Charge Jim McMann in Atlanta. Within an hour after President Kennedy's assassination, I was told by Mr. McMann to find Milteer and if located, interview and detain him. He was nowhere to be found. I checked all of his known haunts, three times each day, the first thing each morning, at noon and the evening before I finished my day's work. On November 27th, I observed his Volkswagen bus at lady friend C.C. Cofield's house. While I was away to call another agent for backup, Milteer left her home. She told us that he left in his VW bus for Atlanta, Georgia. We traveled 59 miles before we located him on the highway going to Atlanta. We returned him to Valdosta, interviewed him and then released him. The Special Agent in Charge (SAC) advised me that the Secret Service would interview him later.
Years later, in 1992, a friend sent me a copy of the book, High Treason, co-authored by Groden and Livingston, in which I learned about a tape-recorded conversation between Milteer and Miami Police and FBI informant William Somerset, which was recorded on November 9, 1963, containing threats to kill President Kennedy.  I also learned from the same source that Milteer had been photographed in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination. (See photo [right] of President Kennedy's limo at Dealey Plaza and a comparison of a known photo of Milteer, inset, and a close-up [below left] of the crowd behind the limo as it passed in front of them at Dealey Plaza. Milteer appears to be standing next to the man in the hat, looking into the camera lens.)
 A number of years after the 1992 finding, I discovered that my superiors in Georgia had interviewed Milteer a year prior to my investigation in 1963, but did not inform me that they had done so. More importantly, at that time, they knew of the tape-recorded threats to the President and that the Secret Service had taken the threats seriously and changed the President's Miami mode of travel to a helicopter to prevent an assassination attempt.
In 1994, I learned at 10:00 a.m. on the day of the assassination, that Milteer called Somerset and said, "I'm in jack rabbit country (Dallas, Texas), that the President is coming here and you will not see him in Miami again."
Six months after President Kennedy was killed, I was transferred to Dallas and assisted in the investigation concerning his murder.
In 2004, I discovered that my fellow agent, Royal McGraw, in Thomasville, Georgia, was contacted by the supervisor in Atlanta who asked him if Milteer was in Quitman, Georgia, after the assassination. McGraw told him that Milteer was in Quitman, an outright lie, knowing first hand that I had just left McGraw en-route to Quitman to locate Milteer. Facts Point to Conspiracy
1.
Alleged threats contained in a letter form Lee Harvey Oswald to FBI Special Agent James Hosty, was received in the Dallas office approximately two weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy. According to Dallas FBI clerk Nan Fenner, the letter contained a threat to blowup the Dallas FBI office and or to kill agent Hosty because of his
repeated contacts of Oswald's wife Marina.
If this was true, Oswald's name would have been turned over to the Secret Service as a potential threat since the President was coming to Dallas. This is standard procedure within the FBI. Hosty let the letter sit in his work box and forgot about it until Oswald was named as the assassin. The note was destroyed on the orders of the Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Office, J. Gordon Shanklin. Shanklin told Hosty to get the letter out of his office. Hosty tore it up and flushed it down the toilet in the men's room. Shanklin later denied ordering its destruction. Shanklin oversaw the entire assassination investigation. It's important to note that what happened to the Oswald letter doesn't happen to any document coming into the FBI. Each document is block stamped with the date and filed appropriately as an incoming document, should it be needed at a later date. |
12. Based on the results of the massive investigation being furnished to the Warren Commission Oswald in named as the lone assassin of President Kennedy. |
2. The travel route of the motorcade through downtown Dallas was controlled by the Secret Service and the Dallas Police Department.
For the safety of the President, the most direct route from point A to point B is the best procedure. Turns of any kind slow a motorcade down considerably. The 90 degree turn from Main to Houston Street and a block later a 120 degree turn onto Elm Street proved to be what every good law enforcement officer knows as a very life threatening situation for a President or dignitary in a motorcade. Within hours of the motorcade's departure from Love Field, the Secret Service and the Dallas P. D., in violation of sound security procedures, changed the route. This caused the motorcade to slow down and make two dangerous turns, thus affording the assassins more time to take their shots. The President's car could have traveled straight down Elm Street, which paralleled Main Street, the route used, thus avoiding any turns. |
13. Oswald, during his arrest and while walking down a crowded corridor in the Dallas Police Department, was asked if he killed the President. He replied that he was ‘just a patsy.' Based on information developed by the FBI they said he was the lone assassin. |
| 3. When on the detail of presidential protection the Secret Service agents must be careful to be prepared for duty at all times.
A number of Secret Services Agents visited a bar in Fort Worth some staying until the early morning hours on the assassination day. It was questioned why this occurred when it's against their rules and good judgment. |
14. The FBI took over the investigation of the President's killing on the orders of Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was ordered to do this by President Lyndon Johnson. |
4. The night before the assassination, according to the History Channel in a 2003 telecast, a meeting took place at the home of Dallas Millionaire Clint Murchison Sr. Reportedly, the principals in attendance were Murchison, H. L. Hunt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover. |
15. Oswald is killed in the basement of the Dallas Police Department at the time he was being moved to the County Jail. The shooter was Jack Ruby. |
| 5. The Secret Service at Love Field ordered that the police motorcycles protecting the President's limo leave the side of the limo and to follow some short distance from behind.
The Secret Service removed an Agent at Love field leaving the right rear side of the limo unprotected.
When the shots were first heard at the Book Depository the Secret Service driver of the President's car almost came to a complete stop, twice looking over his shoulder before being ordered to speed away. |
16. Governor Connally said he was shot separately from the shots fired into President Kennedy. He said he felt that President Kennedy was hit twice in the head and that he was hit twice by separate shots. If this had been explored or believed it would have destroyed the theory that Oswald fired three shots in seven seconds. The Warren Commission said the two were shot with the pristine bullet, which was later found on Connally's gurney at Parkland Hospital. |
6. The President's limo, once at Parkland Hospital after it was emptied of its occupants, was completely cleaned by the Secret Service. This is a serious destruction of evidence. |
17. Lyndon Johnson establishes the Warren Commission. Chief Justice Warren and an associate travel to Dallas to interview Ruby. Ruby reportedly told Warren, “Get me out of Dallas and I tell you the whole thing.” Warren and his associate locked the cell door and then left without saying anything. Ruby died in custody. |
| 7. A Dallas Police Officer and the General Manager of the Texas Book Depository after hearing the first shot ran up the front entrance stairs to a break room and confronted a man drinking a half-empty bottle of Coke-a-Cola. This man was not breathing hard nor winded, and was not perspiring. He was calm and collected. The officer asked who he was and he said he was Lee Harvey Oswald. (Note) From the moment of the shooting, if Oswald was the shooter, he would have to have traveled from the loft (shooting area), run to the opposite side of the building, hide the weapon under empty cardboard boxes, run to the stairs, down four floors and then buy and half-drink the bottle of Coke-a-Cola in the break room. |
18. In the book Murder in Dealey Plaza, edited by James Fetzer, Ph.D., page 252, The Back Wound, "It was Commission member Gerald Ford who initially elevated this wound to the back of the neck-in order to salvage the single bullet theory.” |
| 8. By force, the Secret Service removed the President's body out of the control of the local authorities. At the time, there was no Federal violation concerning the killing of a President, thus the Secret Service had no jurisdiction of a murder investigation. |
19. The autopsy on the President's body at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland was a complete farce. It was totally controlled by government agents. |
| 9. The President's limo was immediately taken to Love Field and loaded on the plane and was then flown to Andrews Air Force base near Washington, D.C. and immediately taken to the garage in the White House. Reportedly it was secretly taken to Ford World Headquarters in Michigan a day or two later and the windshield with a bullet hole in it replaced. |
20. Barr McClellan, noted L.B.J. authority and a partner in President Johnson's personal law firm, who authored the book, Blood, Money and Power -- How LBJ killed J.F.K., states, Edward A. Clark Johnson's long time personal attorney, planned and directed the killing of President Kennedy. Barr McClellan is the father of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. |
| 10. All of the witnesses in Dallas at Parkland Hospital, some seventeen or more, said that President Kennedy had the back of his head blown away. Additionally several doctors and staff saw an entry wound in the throat of the President. (A shot from the front) This fact would destroy Oswald as the lone shooter if it were proved and would destroy the Warren report and the entire FBI investigation. All of this information was ignored. |
21. After more that 45 years our government, as of yet, failed to properly question the results of the FBI investigation. |
11. All of the testimony, doctors' notes and sketches at Parkland Hospital showed a wound in the back of the President, some four to five inches down and to the right of his spine. His clothing supported that bullet hole location. |
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Summary
When one looks carefully at all that happened or did not happen, one arrives at the conclusion that the only possible answer as to who was responsible for killing President Kennedy falls to our government, from the very top down. Knowing the FBI as I do, I know when the FBI takes on a major investigation that it usually gets the results that are needed to solve the problem. If the effort is not put forth properly or facts are altered and changed deliberately then the matter remains unsolved, as in this case.
We now know for certain that in at least two instances evidence was altered or destroyed. I stand before you as a witness to the first. In the second instance, SA Hosty was ordered to destroy Oswald's letter by his Superior, SAC J. Gordon Shanklin.
Would the President's murder be solved today if the investigation of his assassination proceeded unhindered, without the destruction and alteration of evidence?
What if dedicated law enforcement personnel had maintained their integrity?
Please review the evidence...
... Don Adams
References
- High Treason, Robert J Groden and Harrison Edward Livingston, March 1989.
- The Killing of the President, Robert Groden, 1993.
- J. Edgar Hoover, The Father of the Cold War, R. Andrew Kiel, 2000.
- Murder in Dealey Plaza , edited by James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., 2000.
- Blood Money and Power, How L.B.J. killed J.F.K., Barr McClellan, 2003.
- Ultimate Sacrifice, John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba and the Murder of JFK, Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartman, (2005).
- Dr.Mary's Monkey, Edward T. Haslam
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