1. Introduction

“It appears as though something has happened in the motorcade route, something — I repeat — has happened in the motorcade route. Stand-by just a moment, please. Something has happened in the motorcade route. Stand-by, please...”

“Parkland Hospital – there has been a shooting. Parkland Hospital has been advised to stand-by for a severe gunshot wound. I repeat, a shooting in the motorcade in the downtown area... It appears as though someone in the limousine might have been hit by the gunfire... We can’t see who has been hit, if anybody has been hit, but apparently something is wrong here, something is terribly wrong... At this point it looks as though it could have been one or two or even all of the people within the car may have been the victims – may have been struck by shots. We don’t know. . .”

“And just now we’ve received reports here at Parkland that Governor Connolly was shot in the upper left chest, and the first unconfirmed reports say the President was hit in the head. That’s an unconfirmed report. . .”

“The President of the United States is dead... President Kennedy has been assassinated. It’s official now, the President is dead.”

These excerpts from contemporaneous radio broadcasts still evoke chilling memories for those of us old enough to remember the tragic events of Friday, November 22, 1963, the day that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Not only did the President die that day in Dallas, but the hopes and aspirations of many died with him. Gone are the magical days of Camelot, replaced by a world of wars and famine, of hate and mistrust. In the years which have elapsed since the Kennedy assassination, the United States has suffered the traumas of war, terrorism and political scandal, and yet we still ask why and how — why was Kennedy killed, and how did his death change the course of history? Today, more than forty years after the nightmare of Dallas, the truth about the assassination is still shrouded in mystery, and we still ask — what really happened in Dealey Plaza?

The key dictabelt — the one that ran from 12:05 to 12:40 and included the supposed shots.

The acoustics evidence is central to the question of whether or not President Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy. If, as this paper suggests, the most fundamental aspect of that acoustics evidence – the authenticity of the police radio recordings – is questionable, then the very foundation upon which the question of conspiracy is based is unreliable. The authenticity of the currently existing radio recordings is greatly dependent on the establishment of an unbroken chain of possession for that evidence, from November 22, 1963 up to the present time. This paper, therefore, reflects the results of my research into the completeness of the chain of possession which can be established from the documentary and other evidence which is currently available. The research is based on official documents and reports from the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the HSCA), the Ramsey Panel and the Department of Justice, numerous recordings and transcripts of both police radio channels from November 22, 1963, as well as correspondence with many of the key figures involved in this aspect of the case.

2. Background

On November 22, 1963, the Dallas Police Department (the DPD) utilised two radio channels, identified simply as Channel 1 and Channel 2. Both channels were voice activated, either by radio communications from officers in the motorcade, communications to those officers from the DPD Dispatcher, or by one of the regular time annotations given by the Dispatcher.

Channel 1, the more significant of the two in the context of this document, was the one ordinarily used to handle DPD radio communications, and was designated for the transmission of routine police radio messages on the day of the assassination.

Channel 1 transmissions were recorded onto thin blue polyester dictabelts on an A2TC Model 5 Dictaphone machine. This machine operated two drive mechanisms running off the same motor, so that a new dictabelt was in “standby” at all times. In this way, the Dictaphone could automatically begin recording on a new belt when the previous belt ended.

Channel 2 was an auxiliary channel, used to handle the additional radio traffic generated by special events, and was designated for use by DPD officers in the motorcade on November 22, 1963. The transmissions on Channel 2 were recorded onto 8.5-inch flexible discs by means of a Gray Audograph recorder.

On September 24, 1964, The Warren Commission published its report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy. The Warren Report stated that no indication of a conspiracy had been found, and that if evidence of any such conspiracy existed it was “beyond the reach of all the investigative agencies and resources of the United States.” It is significant in the context of this document that among the 26 volumes of supporting material published by the Commission were three “official” transcripts of radio transmissions over the Dallas Police radio on the day of the assassination. While all three transcripts differed significantly, the Commission published all three without appearing to attach any significance to the many discrepancies.

Within weeks of the publication of the Warren Commission Report, and the subsequent publication of its accompanying twenty-six volumes of “Hearings,” researchers were testing the evidence and questioning the conclusions. Diligent research uncovered many inconsistencies in the work of the Commission, and unearthed many facts which the Commission had apparently overlooked or ignored. The Commission’s credibility was undermined to the extent that, at the trial in 1969 of Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman accused by District Attorney Jim Garrison of conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, the Warren Commission Report and its twenty-six volumes of evidence were deemed inadmissible as evidence in a court of law by the judge, on the grounds that they were fraught with hearsay, unsworn testimony and contradictions.

By the mid-1970s, public uncertainty about the validity of the Warren Commission’s conclusions was at an all-time high. On March 6, 1975, ABC-TV’s Good Night America programme showed the now-famous Zapruder film for the first time. Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas dress manufacturer, took the only complete motion picture film of the assassination. The tiny 8-millimeter colour home movie, consisting of 486 individual frames and running for a mere 26 seconds, which was once described by Life Magazine as “the only unimpeachable witness” to the assassination, was filmed from a vantage point above and to the right of the motorcade’s route through Dealey Plaza. The film shows, in graphic and horrible detail, the impact of the shots which struck the President. Three weeks after its first public showing, the film was shown again on television. Prompted by the public outcry for a new investigation, the United States House of Representatives began on September 14, 1976 to vote a series of enabling Resolutions into effect, setting up a fresh examination of the facts surrounding the Kennedy assassination.

The final report of the United States’ House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (the HSCA) was published on July 29, 1979. This second official investigation into the Kennedy assassination found the President Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” although Lee Harvey Oswald did fire three of the four shots, and he fired the shot that actually killed the President. The HSCA’s report stated that “scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired” at the President – Oswald from the Texas School Book Depository building above and behind the President, and a second, unidentified gunman from the grassy knoll in front and to the right of the motorcade. The HSCA recommended that the U.S. Department of Justice review the Committee’s findings and determine whether further official investigation was warranted. The Justice Department’s findings were to be reported to the House Judiciary Committee.

On November 8, 1979, Robert L. Keuch, Special Counsel to the Attorney General, wrote to the FBI Director requesting a review of the theory and application of the acoustical principles applied by the HSCA, and asking that the FBI make recommendations as to whether further scientific tests and analyses should be carried out. On December 1, 1980, the FBI released a report dated November 19, 1980 and prepared by its Technical Services Division, which found that the HSCA’s conclusion of conspiracy based on the acoustical analysis of sounds transmitted over channel 1 of the DPD radio at the time of the assassination by a microphone which was jammed in the ‘transmit’ mode, was both invalid and unproven.

In order to obtain a private and independent review of the acoustics evidence, the Justice Department turned to the National Research Council, the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Science (NAS). On October 1, 1980, the Justice Department asked the Council to perform a study of the methodology used by the HSCA’s acoustics experts, and the validity of their conclusion of a shot from the grassy knoll. The Council’s Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Resources created a “Committee on Ballistic Acoustics” under the Chairmanship of Professor Norman Ramsey of Harvard University to perform the analysis. The Ramsey Panel, as the NAS committee has become known, reported on May 14, 1982 that “the acoustic analyses do not demonstrate that there was a grassy knoll shot,” and that “reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman.”

The Ramsey Panel’s finding was based primarily on evidence (developed and documented by researchers Steve Barber and Todd Vaughan) which the panel received in the first weeks of 1981, and which constituted a serious obstacle to the conclusions of the HSCA. The panel’s report devoted considerable space to an exhaustive – and highly conclusive — examination of a statement made over channel 2 of the police radio, which was simultaneously recorded on channel 1 by the open microphone at the time of the shooting. According to the Ramsey panel, the channel 2 order from Sheriff Bill Decker to “hold everything secure” was actually given at least 30.9 seconds after DPD Chief Jesse Curry had instructed the motorcade to “go to the hospital” after the shots were fired. However, since the Decker statement appears on channel 1 at the same time as the impulses said by the HSCA’s experts to represent the third and fourth shots, and since the panel established that the crosstalk from channel 2 to channel 1 occurred at the time the channel 2 recording was made (and not as a result of subsequent re-recording), the panel was forced to conclude that the impulses studied by the HSCA’s acoustics experts were not caused by the recording of shots on channel 1. Quite simply, the HSCA experts were looking at “shots” which were fired almost one minute after the assassination took place.

The panel found “no evidence” to indicate that the channel 2 order from Decker had been superimposed onto the channel 1 recording at any time after the assassination. The converse hypothesis, that the inaudible shot sounds were later recorded over the Decker message on channel 1, was also rejected by the panel, since they believed that they were in possession of the original channel 1 recording, and it contained no physical manifestation of any such over-recording. It should be noted, however, that the panel “never worked with” the original recordings. According to Ramsey Panel member Charles Rader, “nobody on our committee ever had custody of any of the dictabelts. There was always an official of the DOJ or FBI who controlled the belts and I was never alone with them.”

The authenticity of the channel 1 dictabelt recordings which currently exist is perhaps the single most important issue still outstanding. Suffice to say at this point that, if the authenticity of the channel 1 recording cannot be established beyond doubt, it is technically possible for both the HSCA and Ramsey panel experts to be correct. If that were to be proven, the acoustics evidence – officially, the only basis for a conclusion of conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy – would again become a live issue.

In compliance with the HSCA’s recommendation, the Ramsey panel’s report was submitted to the Justice Department for evaluation. The Justice Department’s conclusions, submitted to Hon. Peter W. Rodino Jr., Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on March 28, 1888, stated that “no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy,” and “no further investigation appears to be warranted . . . unless new information which is sufficient to support additional investigative activity becomes available.” The Justice Department report noted that “all investigative leads which are known to the Department have been exhaustively pursued,” and added that while further acoustical tests would not be cost justified at that time, “it is the Department’s intention to continue to review all correspondence and to investigate, as appropriate, any potentially productive information.”

3. The Early Days (1963-1964)

So what happened to the Channel 1 dictabelts in the immediate aftermath of the assassination?

Secret Service records [Fig 1] show that on or before November 29, 1963, DPD Chief Lumpkin provided the “recordings” to Special Agents Roger C. Warner and Elmer W. Moore for “transcription .” Rather than transcribing the recordings himself, Warner copied them to tape. The tape was then sent to the Secret Service Protective Research Section in Washington for “filtering, rerecording and transcription,” after which it was supposed to be returned to the Secret Service office in Dallas. In 1970, researcher Paul Hoch asked both the Secret Service [Fig 2] and the National Archives to search for this tape, but no trace of it could be found. The HSCA also tried unsuccessfully to pursue the issue of Secret Service access to the dictabelts. Staff researcher Margo Jackson contacted Tom Ferrell of the Secret Service on January 24, 1978 [Fig 3] and “inquired about material regarding the filtering, rerecording, and transcription requested to be performed on the above tapes.” Ferrell replied that he “would have to check with the Assistant Director of the Washington Protective Research Section, whose name he would not disclose,” and promised to call Ms. Jackson back. Unfortunately, there is no record of any further communication with or from Ferrell. On September 23, 1981, Paul Hoch suggested to Professor Ramsey that a search for Warner’s tape — requested by the Ramsey Panel as opposed to an individual researcher – might be worthwhile. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that such a request was made by the Ramsey Panel, or that any search was made on their behalf.

The Warner tape was copied in Washington, and a transcript was made. This transcript first came to light in 1982, when researcher Mark Allen found it among the records of the Secret Service. The transcript was apparently omitted from the agency’s material given to the Warren Commission in 1964. As a result of Allen’s discovery, I again requested both the Secret Service and the National Archives [Fig 4] to renew their search for the tape made by Warner and the further copy made by the Protective Research Section in Washington. However, no trace of either recording could be found in late 1982. The transcript itself resurfaced again in 1992, when a photocopy of it was included among assassination-related records which were transferred by the DPD to the Dallas Municipal Archives and Records Centre (DMARC).

DPD Sergeant Gerald Dalton Henslee prepared an edited transcript of the channel 1 and 2 transmissions in the first few days of December 1963, and his testimony before the Warren Commission on April 8, 1964 clearly states that the transcripts were made directly from the original recordings – “They were prepared from the tapes on the channel 1. We have a tape on channel 1, and we have a record on channel 2. Two separate tape records, but they are prepared from those records and tapes.” The record shows that Henslee’s channel 1 transcript was given to Police Chief Jesse Curry on December 5, 1963. Curry gave the transcript to Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley, who forwarded it to his superior under date of December 6. The transcript was later entered into the records of the Warren Commission as Sawyer Exhibit B on April 8, 1964 at the time of Henslee’s testimony.

By December 19, 1963, the DPD internal investigation into the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit and the lack of security in police headquarters at the time of Oswald’s murder by Jack Ruby was ended. All materials gathered in the course of that investigation, including “tape recordings of the Dallas dispatcher tapes” which consisted of “a tape recording and a Dictabelt tape,” were handed over to Chief Curry.

In 1990, researcher Dave Dix was browsing in the Minneapolis Public Library and found a Scotch Brand 90-minute cassette tape containing a taped copy of the DPD recordings for November 22, 1963. The label on the cassette contained little information, and had been typed over the original cassette label. According to the library’s computerised card catalog, the cassette had been placed there in December 1963, and had been published by a company called “Lava Productions.” The card simply read, “22 November, 1963: The Dallas Police Tapes Lava Publications, December, 1963.” At Dix’s request, a researcher in the Audio/Visual department of the Library of Congress carried out an archive search on “Lava Productions.” The search revealed no reference to that publisher being involved in ANY form of publication. A subsequent Combined Library Catalog title search, which searches all available electronic catalog entries in the US & Canada, revealed that the tape appeared in only one library – the Minneapolis Public Library.

Someone, it appears, had created a fictional publishing company for the sole purpose of placing the cassette tape in the Minneapolis Public Library in December 1963, and one can now only speculate as to why they might have done so. This tape copy of the dictabelts would surface again in the late 1960's. . . .

Former DPD Communications Supervisor, Sergeant Jim Bowles, was interviewed by the FBI on August 27 and September 15, 1980. The interview report [Figs 5-1, 5-2, 5-3] dated October 1, 1980, and covering both interviews, states in part:

“The original belts and discs, containing recordings of radio transmissions at or about the time of the assassination of President Kennedy were provided to the FBI within a few days of that event. Several days later an FBI Agent returned the belts and discs to Captain Bowles personally.”

In an interview with Dallas researcher Gary Mack in March 1982, Bowles corrected his statement to the FBI, and said that it was the Secret Service who “took those blue belts” out of the DPD building a few days after the assassination. Asked when the belts were returned, Bowles said, “not for a few days, we were awfully busy then.” Bowles also told Mack that he could not give any assurance that the belts which were returned were the ones which left the possession of the DPD.

In October 1983, Bowles gave me a slightly different sequence of events. He said that Chief Lumpkin gave the belts to the Secret Service, who in turn passed them on to the FBI, who then returned them to him in March 1964. When he received them back, Bowles said he returned the belts to Chief Lumpkin.

Author Larry Sneed interviewed Bowles for his 1998 book, “No More Silence.” By that time, Bowles recalled that:

The tapes themselves were in our custody until we turned them over to the FBI, which would have been in late November or early December, right after the assassination. I believe it was around March of the next year that they returned them to us where they were placed in a safe, probably in Chief George Lumpkin’s office. Eventually they came under the custody of Paul McCaghren within the police department. . . .

So, it appears that the Secret Service copied the dictabelts to tape in late November, and then either they or the FBI physically took the dictabelts away “a few days” after the assassination (or at the latest in late November or early December). The belts were then returned to the DPD by the FBI in March 1964.

The reason the FBI came back with the dictabelts in March 1964, according to Bowles, was that “they found that they couldn’t comprehend the tape traffic because they couldn’t understand the speech style used on the radio. The things that were said by the officers on the radio made complete sense to the officers, but they didn’t make a bit of sense to the transcribers. So an FBI agent brought the tapes back to the department, and the chief gave them back to me and asked me to transcribe them for him. . . .” Bowles said he made copies of the dictabelts “with a nice reel to reel tape recorder which the FBI furnished to me” before making a transcript from the original dictabelts which “were in as good a condition as you would expect considering the fact that the FBI had tried to transcribe them using a single stylus. . . .”

On March 20, 1964, Dallas Police Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer provided the Dallas FBI with another transcript of the Channel 1 transmissions, which they forwarded to FBI Headquarters in Washington on March 23. As already noted, it was prepared by Bowles following a request from the FBI on March 6, and identified the police officers using Channel 1 by their radio “call number” rather than by name. On April 7, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent the transcript to the Warren Commission [Fig 6], and it subsequently became Warren Commission Exhibit (WCE) 705 on April 22, during the testimony of Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. It is this March transcript to which Bowles was undoubtedly referring in his 1980 interviews with the FBI, when he said that he prepared a transcript for the FBI after they had experienced “difficulty in preparing a transcript of those recordings due to a lack of familiarity with the Dallas Police Department radio parlance and terminology.”

As previously noted, Bowles made four reel-to-reel tape-recorded copies of the dictabelts prior to making the above transcript in March 1964. He recalls that the dictabelts were still in very good condition at that time, although “they were well worn when I finished.” This is hardly surprising, given the cumbersome process which he had to follow in making the transcript and his four tape copies of the dictabelts.

The DPD only had one Dictaphone machine, which used a switching mechanism to alternate between two drives so that a new belt could automatically begin recording when the previous belt ended. Using that Dictaphone machine to make direct copies of the dictabelts would necessitate disabling the switching mechanism, so Bowles obtained permission from Chief Lumpkin to rent a second Dictaphone machine, which handled only one belt at a time, and was strictly a playback machine. Then, according to the FBI:

It was necessary to stop and start the playback machine many times in order to prepare an accurate transcript. The stylus . . . was inserted into previously recorded track on many occasions and in many different locations. It is Captain Bowles’ opinion that the playback process, including the numerous placings of the stylus on the previously recorded track, may have created degradations of the original recorded material, as well as actually adding new impulses to the track. . . . Captain Bowles stated that he made a reel-to-reel tape recording of the original dictaphone belts using a Wollensak recorder provided him by the FBI.

Bowles also raised the possibility of his having inadvertently added impulses to the original dictabelts in his manuscript, “The Kennedy Assassination Tapes,” in which he wrote:

Shortly after the assassination the author made reel-to-reel tapes of the recordings for the Warren Commission prior to his using the recordings in preparing a transcript. The tapes were made with and without a scratch filter, and were necessary if the contents of the recordings were to be preserved. The belts had already been subjected to uncounted replays prior to their being preserved on tapes. Past experience had shown that multiple replays lowered the recording’s quality considerably. Moreover, the repeated lowering of the replay needle against the Dictabelt added minute dimples in the belts. It is possible if not probable that these dimples, when read by the acoustics experts’ sensitive equipment, generated “impulse patterns” present throughout the belts. Is it possible that these indentations were concluded to represent gunshots but only where it was essential for gunshots to appear? (Emphasis in original)

The DPD’s inability to copy the dictabelts to tape (or any other medium) raises another interesting question, however. If Chief Lumpkin gave the channel 1 recordings to the Secret Service on or about November 29, and they were “recorded by SA Warner” onto tape, how was that recording made? Is that when the FBI first became involved with the dictabelts?

In March 2003, Dr. Bruce Ledford, formerly on the faculty of East Texas State University (now Texas A&M – Commerce), placed a three-CD set of DPD recordings for auction on the Internet. According to Dr. Ledford:

In 1976… I consulted with a colleague from the Physics Department of the University. This colleague, who was a former FBI agent in the Dallas area, was asked, as I recall, by the DPD to transfer their transmissions… from dictabelt to audio tape. In 1963 the dictabelt was the storage medium. For some reason unknown to me, the signal was on the belt in reverse. As I understand it, because the special techniques required to make the transfer were within my colleague’s area of expertise, he was asked to make the transfer. Through him I came into possession of 1^st generation audio tapes of the transmissions from Channel 1 and a portion of Channel 2… I have continued over the years to honor the request of my colleague to remain anonymous concerning this audio.”

If the FBI had the dictabelts prior to November 29 for the purpose of transferring them to audiotape, it would explain how the DPD were able to make recordings available for copying by the Secret Service on that date. It would also explain the apparent confusion in Bowles’ recollections regarding the original recordings being returned “within a few days,” or not being returned until March 1964. Did the FBI take the belts away for copying on the weekend of the assassination, and return them a few days later, after which they were given to the Secret Service on November 29, and by them to the FBI again, who finally returned them in March 1964? Dare one ask – did the FBI make tape dictabelt copies of the original dictabelts in the immediate aftermath of November 22? This would also explain the discrepancy between the dictabelts being removed from the DPD’s possession “a few days” after the assassination, yet being available for Sergeant Henslee to make a transcript from the “original” dictabelts early in December. We will return to this possibility later.

Of the four reel-to-reel tape copies he made in March 1964, Bowles kept one for his own files, one was given to Chief Curry, and the other two (one “filtered” and the other “unfiltered”) were given to the FBI. One of the FBI’s tapes, which became the Warren Commission’s official copy of the dictabelts, was later deposited with the Commission’s files at the National Archives, from where it was reported “mislaid” in 1976. The whereabouts of the other FBI tape copy of the dictabelts is currently unknown, although Bowles told Gary Mack in 1982 – and this author in October 1983 – that he understood it was sent to a laboratory for analysis, and he heard that it was or might have been in Oklahoma.

The FBI’s request to the DPD for a transcript on March 6 followed a letter dated March 3 from J. Lee Rankin, Warren Commission General Counsel, to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Rankin was apparently unhappy with the Henslee/Secret Service transcript from the previous December, and was presumably aware of the early access to the dictabelts – and the transcript made from them – by the Secret Service, because he subsequently initiated contact with the Dallas Secret Service office with a similar request. On May 28, 1964, Rankin drafted a letter to Forrest V. Sorrels, Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) of the Dallas Secret Service, asking if he would “please arrange to record the Dallas Police Department tapes of radio broadcasts over police channels 1 and 2 on November 22, 1963, between the hours of 12:30 and 2:00 pm.” Unfortunately, neither the Secret Service nor the National Archives [Fig 4] could find any reply from Sorrels to Rankin when requested to do so in September and November 1982. It is, of course, possible that the letter was never sent; as Paul Hoch has correctly pointed out, it seems strange that Rankin was bypassing the FBI and Secret Service hierarchy by going directly to Sorrels.

On July 16, 1964 Rankin went back to Hoover and asked that “your Bureau obtain the original tapes of the radio broadcasts and prepare a new transcript from these tapes.” Rankin also requested that “the name of the reporting police officer be listed alongside each message.” [Figs 7-1, 7-2, Fig 8]

Five days later, Chief Curry made a series of sixteen channel 1 dictabelts (ten from November 22 and six from November 24) and five channel 2 discs (from November 22) available to an unidentified FBI agent. The agent reviewed and transcribed the dictabelts and discs at DPD headquarters during the period July 21 to July 24, inclusive. The belts for the day of the assassination covered the period 10:00 am to 3:00 pm, and the belt which was recording during the period in which the shooting took place was the fifth in the series. This belt, according to the transcript, began at 11:51 and ended at 12:40. It is perhaps worth noting at this point also that, on July 21 at least, DPD Lieutenant Doug H. Gassett was in attendance with the FBI agent. Gassett, no longer with the DPD, was last known to be working in Austin, Texas.

The FBI’s transcript, which by implication in all the related correspondence was verbatim, was completed on or before August 11, 1964. On that date, the transcript and a covering memorandum were sent from Dallas to Washington [Figs 9-1, 9-2, 9-3]. The memo related how the “dictabelts are badly worn from being played and, in many places, the dictabelt skips and some messages are garbled.”

A copy of the FBI’s transcript was obviously given to Chief Curry, because he wrote to Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr on August 20, 1964, attaching a copy of the transcript. The letter, signed by Deputy Chief M.W. Stevenson, clearly states that the transcript is the one prepared by the FBI.

On August 21, the day after Curry sent a copy of the transcript to the Texas Attorney General, Hoover wrote to Rankin [Fig 10] confirming that the transcript had been made but adding: “However, due to the badly worn condition of the original tapes, certain portions are being checked for accuracy. The transcription will be furnished to you in the immediate future.” The transcript, which later became WCE 1974, was handed over to the Commission four days later, on August 25 [Fig 11].

Eddie Barker, News Director of KRLD, the CBS affiliate broadcast station in Dallas, requested a copy of the radio transmissions from the DPD sometime during 1964, in preparation for a CBS “Special” on the Warren Commission. While Barker cannot recall whom he spoke to at the time, he believes it could very well have been Chief Curry himself. Barker’s request was granted, although he does not know how the DPD made the copies, or from what source they were made. The existence of this copy of the radio recordings only came to light on January 4, 1979, during an interview given by Jim Bowles to Jerry Cohen of the Los Angeles Times and Patti Kilday of the Dallas Times Herald. According to the recording of that interview which was made by the DPD, Bowles said that the tape they were listening to was “a copy... made off of one CBS made for their production some years ago, and they used the Warren Commission tape” — in other words, the one Bowles made for the FBI and Warren Commission in March 1964. Researcher Gary Mack later got confirmation of this from Bernie Birnbaum, an executive producer for CBS News in New York.

4. The Lull Before The Storm (1965-1977)

Sometime prior to early 1967, either DPD Sergeants Gerald Hill or Gerald Henslee gave a tape recording of the original dictabelts to Judy Bonner who was, at the time, writing her book “Investigation Of A Homicide.” In June 1969, Ms. Bonner’s tape was given to, or copied for, Dallas researcher Mary Ferrell, from whose tape most of those in the hands of researchers until the early 1980's originated. Interestingly, examination of this version of the tape shows that it contains identical splice sounds (caused by shorter individual tapes being joined together in making the Bonner tape) to those on the recording found by Dave Dix in the Minneapolis Public Library — in other words, the Bonner/Ferrell tape unquestionably came from the same source as the one found by Dave Dix, which is supposedly of December 1963 vintage.

DPD Chief Curry retired on March 10, 1966, and was succeeded by Chief Charles Batchelor. In a locked metal filing cabinet outside his new office, Batchelor found the evidence which had been turned over to Curry when the internal DPD review was concluded in December 1963. On some unspecified date in 1969, Batchelor called Paul McCaghren, then Director of the DPD’s Intelligence Division and a former member of Curry’s investigative team, into his office and told him to “take charge of the material. Make sure no unauthorized person comes in contact with the material.” McCaghren kept the evidence in a box, measuring 2.5 by 1.5 feet and 1 foot deep, in his office until 1971 or 1972, at which time he decided to remove the box to his home for safekeeping, where it remained until 1978. According to McCaghren, he “had control of this property at all times, from 1969 until this year (1978). No one, no one tampered with that material.” But what about the three-year period between 1966 and 1969?

If this early chronology has become somewhat vague through the ravages of time, the more recent chain of possession is a monument to documented inaccuracy, if not indeed downright dishonesty. Much of the blame for this rests fairly and squarely with the HSCA.

5. The HSCA (1977-1979)

In the latter part of 1976, Gary Mack discovered the existence of Mary Ferrell’s copy of the DPD radio transmissions, and obtained a copy from her in January 1977. Mack made a detailed study of the Channel 1 recording and, with the help of a radio station engineer and sophisticated recording studio equipment, filtered out much of the identifiable background noises and interference during the period of the “open microphone” sequence. This study, conducted over a period of months, finally led to the production of a “filtered” version of the recording which showed a series of noises coinciding with what Mack believed to be the very moments of the assassination. These noises, seven in all, were not repeated anywhere else on the recording, and Mack concluded that what he had in fact discovered was the only known sound recording of the shooting in Dealey Plaza.

In August 1977, an article detailing Mack’s research and conclusions appeared in Penn Jones Jr’s newsletter, “The Continuing Inquiry.” In early to middle September 1977, shortly after the August issue of Jones’ newsletter was mailed to subscribers, Mack received a telephone call at work from a HSCA attorney. The attorney told Mack that the HSCA was aware of his research, and wanted the tape recording which he had used. Mack suggested that they obtain the tape owned by Mary Ferrell, from which his own had been made, but the attorney insisted that the HSCA had to have Mack’s tape, and would be prepared to issue a subpoena in order to get it. Several days passed before Mack had an opportunity to copy his tape; in the interim, the attorney had contacted Mack’s employers at radio station KFJZ-FM in Fort Worth, and once again threatened in a polite way to issue a subpoena. Mack duly made a copy of his tape, and the HSCA had it no later than the third or fourth week in September.

Gary Mack’s story differs significantly from that told by HSCA Chief Counsel, G. Robert Blakey. According to Blakey, the tape was first brought to his attention on September 17, 1977, at a conference of Warren Commission critics which the HSCA had convened in Washington. At about 4:30 pm, says Blakey, Mary Ferrell announced the fact that she had a recording of the DPD radio transmissions, and that she had given a copy of it to Mack, who “thought he could detect seven shots” on the recording. Blakey said that the Committee “immediately” got Mary Ferrell’s tape from her, and makes no mention of receiving a copy from Mack. Using Blakey as a source, therefore, gives no direct indication of whether or not the HSCA had both tapes before the end of September.

Chief Counsel Blakey’s chronology suggests that the HSCA’s acoustics consultants, Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc. (BBN) received — and rejected because of its poor quality — Mary Ferrell’s copy of the Channel 1 recording sometime between October 9, 1977 and early February 1978. According to Blakey, the HSCA then assigned investigator and former homicide detective, Jack Moriarty to search for a better quality copy of the recording. The search was necessary because, apparently unaware of Paul McCaghren’s box of evidence, the DPD had told the Committee that all of their assassination evidence had been handed over to the FBI. So why did the HSCA not go to the FBI immediately?

According to Blakey, Moriarty’s search “located” Paul McCaghren on or about February 11, 1978. McCaghren’s story is slightly different, however. He said that he was sitting in on an interview, which Moriarty was conducting with a former colleague, when he mentioned to Moriarty