CHAPTER 6

ANY CONSPIRACY TO ASSASSINATE THE PRESIDENT WAS IRRELEVANT:

HOWARD DONAHUE

Donahue is full of conjectures and of the most dubious interpretations of the Zapruder film. Even if we had not seen what we have seen of his conjectures and claimed expertise there is no point in wasting time on what he imagines. Much of which he imagines is not original with him in any event, despite his pretenses.

He begins to get into the case he makes up against Hickey on page 71. There he quotes Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett, who was sitting on the back seat of the Secret Service follow-up car next to Hickey, as saying he heard what he referred to as the first shot and then, when he heard the, to him, second shot, which was like a "firecracker" noise, he saw that shot hit the President "four inches down from the right shoulder." Donahue interprets this as meaning that the first shot missed. He imagines his "ricochet" came from that.

He does not interpret this, however, as confirming that Boswell body chart, as it does and which Donahue says was wrong because it showed exactly what Bennet said he saw. And although it cannot be learned from Donahue, it was not Bennett alone who confirmed what needed no confirming with the actual official proofs we have seen, in reporting where they saw the President's shoulder hit.

Then Donahue tells us of his great labors and the strain on his going to the Archives to look at those twenty-six Commission volumes — which he could have bought when they were issued by the government for a mere $75 and that in hardback and which are in the Baltimore libraries, too.

He goes into his version1 of the testimony of Mrs. Donald Baker (neé Virgie Rachley) — of which he could have read and which he could have read in Whitewash II, which he did read and found "excellent." She reported seeing a missed shot hit the street. But, as Donahue does not say and Whitewash II documents, Commission Counsel Wesley Liebeler saw to it that the record would not identify the point on the street, she says she saw the that bullet impact.

In the course of trying to add a few details to this Donahue actually refers to the Marrs book (Crossfire), which can be trusted on nothing without ample support, as "a comprehensive book on assassination conspiracy theories."2 Theories, whether or not dependable, thus becomes proof to Donahue.

Donahue continues his speculations, hallucinations and baseless conclusions in his Chapter titled ""Murphy's Law."3

He has already used witnesses who could not and did not pinpoint where a bullet that could have launched a ricochet that could have hit. The people would have had to have eyes in the back of their heads to see what he describes. Then he describes pictures to support his theory. The first one of those pictures was taken by Phil Willis and the second by Hugh Betzner. Both photographer's pictures are well known and he fails to report seeing in them what was not well reported earlier. But he does point out the two Secret Service sitting on the back seat of the follow-up car.4 It had not been a secret. It was normal, well known, and reported that one of them was sitting on the back of the seat. It was not new or exceptional. They are, as Donahue never mentions in trying to make a phony case, for looking out in many directions, instructed to look in all directions to anticipate any danger that might come upon them.

Without any false modesty Donahue next claims that he "dug up the famous picture taken by veteran AP photographer James Altgens."5 That was a real "digging" job. Where Donahue had to "dig" was in either Whitewash or Whitewash II, both of which he references. I spent a year or more getting AP to locate the original negative of that particular Altgens picture and bought the rights to use it uncut in Whitewash II, which was published in December, 1966. Of course after that anyone who did not want to use it from those books had only to buy a print from AP. So we see from his own account what it really means when Donahue says he "dug" something up. His digging up means he took the work of someone else as his own or he refers to something he made up. He "dug" no real evidence up.

Donahue then adds to his fiction about why which agents were looking in what directions, making it all up, having not a single source. He even imagines that Hickey, who he here does not yet name, turned to look at the book depository building. Donahue says also that Hickey was looking at that sixth floor window. If so he, too, had to have had eyes in the top of his head! He was not looking up.

Then, basing it on, among other things, like his dowel-imagined trajectories, he says that the shot to the President's head had to have been fired by Hickey: "The agent must have fired the shot. How else could the trajectory be explained?"6

This from the "firearms engineer" who is also, or at least so he says, a "firearms examiner," who equates a straight dowel with the flight path of a bullet that strikes what might reasonablely be expected to deflect a bullet. In addition, of course, he neglects to consider the possibility of a shot coming from the front.

Contemplating a possible shot from the front would mean no book. So, of course, there was none — there could not have been any shot from the front despite the unrefuted evidence that there was.

Even Zapruder testified that a shot from the front passed over him.

We have seen some of this unrefuted official evidence and Donahue's deliberate misrepresentations of it.

With this reminder of his making deliberate misrepresentations, there is no cause for ruling out repetition of that practice out at this point.

There were nine other men in and on that follow-up car. They would have been those closest to the sound of the rifle being fired. Two of them were among those personally closest to the President. But not one of them heard that "Hickey" shot. Nor did anybody else report it.

However, for Donahue none of this is any problem. He merely makes up explanations that satisfy him and that is it.

Personal stuff follows, ending with an account of how Donahue got his gun business started.7

Harkening back to the Garrison case in which the Justice Department disclosed the report of the panel of which Fisher was part, Donahue again puts proof of his subject-matter ignorance and of his making things up on paper. Not that this is new. He regularly makes up what he wants to be rather than what is. He says that the release of that report "did exactly what Ramsey Clark intended it to do, Garrison's subpoena for the autopsy pictures was squelched."8

What Garrison sought was not limited to the autopsy pictures and rather than his "subpoena" being "squelched" he actually won and the judge ordered that all he asked for, which included other evidence, like the rifle, be shown to the jury in the Shaw case.

As I stated earlier, I was there, and why. What was most incredible was that Garrison actually issued a press statement in which he claimed that his own lawsuit was part of a CIA plot to ruin him and he abandoned it as he won it!

It is not easy to believe how crazy that was but I was a part of it, I was there. I heard the judge read his decision and I followed the Justice Department lawyers as they filed the appeal they had come prepared with.

When I got to my car, which was in the parking lot closest to the courthouse, and got into it, the hourly news was coming on and the very first item was that Garrison irrationality, dropping the case he had won as a CIA conspiracy against him!

Item after item in Donahue's pages that follow I marked as "false" because they are that, whether or not he has sources for them. At one point,, he has six citations to the Marrs mishmash in succession and that they are not uniquely in the Marrs book is not so. Some were earlier in more dependable sources, which Donahue had, but preferred to use Marrs.9

Donahue discloses his qualifications as scholar as investigator and as sterling patriot in this admission: "To Donahue, the possibility that a conspiracy did exist was becoming increasingly irrelevant as the 1960's drew to a close. He adds that even if there had been a conspiracy "It changed nothing about his emerging understanding [sic] of what may [sic] have happened in Dealey Plaza."10

With a conspiracy meaning there had been a coup d'etat to overthrown the government, that there could have been such a subversion meant nothing at all to Donahue, according to Donahue, according to Donahue himself.

The modest man is a true patriot!

More personal stuff follows in which in which he brags about a slight professional experience in one criminal case. Modest to his usual fault, Donahue concludes this chapter saying of the case in which he had been, "these skills [sic] had already served him well in his investigation of the Kennedy assassination; they would prove invaluable in the years ahead."11

To this point he has not brought to light a single fact about the Kennedy assassination investigation. Not to keep the reader on tenterhooks, it gets no better as he never does come up with a single new fact.

All big talk and nothing better.

He has only his Hickey suspicion that he treats as what it is not, as fact.

We do get an idea of what he regards as "investigation" when other than this great discovery of his, that Hickey killed the President, he has, at best, only the most tired, distorted, and most selective rehashing of what is and has long been very well known.

His Chapter 9 is excitingly titled, "The Discovery."12 After several pages of meaningless chatter he does get to what he treats like a major discovery, which it is not.13

The manner in which Menninger writes this makes it possible to date this supposedly major "discovery." We know from the writing that it was after Donahue and his gun shop going and after the testing of that CBS TV special. Donahue says that a wealthy friend, Warner Minetree, picked up what was by then no longer a new book and gave it to Donahue. It was Manchester's The Death of a President.14

Donahue being Donahue, he is mildly critical of Manchester because Manchester agreed with the Warren Report — which with a single exception Donahue also does, a fact seemingly lost on him and on Menninger. Donahue also does no like some of Manchester's writing. But, in fairness to the obvious, Donahue believes that what he refers to as his "discovery" is of great importance. We quote a little more than some may be necessary for this alleged "discovery" to be clear enough:

Donahue had long figured the book for what it was — a glorified, albeit well-done rendering of the Warren Report — and consequently, he'd never bothered to buy it. But he thanked Minetree, picked up the heavy tome and began flipping through the pages. Not finding any pictures, Donahue turned by chance to the opening page of chapter three. The chapter, titled "Market," described the chaotic scene in Dealey Plaza immediately after the shooting.

He froze. The hairs flew up on his neck. Right in the middle of the page, right in front of his eyes, was what he'd been looking for so many years: "From the rear of the follow-up car Agent Hickey raises the barrel of the AR-15 and points it about aimlessly."

The gun.

The Colt AR-15 is the civilian version of the M-16, the semi-automatic rifle that was used as the primary American infantry weapon in Vietnam. The gun is well known for the extremely lethal, explosive nature of the bullets it fires. Due to its high velocity and the bullet's relatively light weight, the slug disintegrates on impact.

Donahue quickly turned to the index. Henderson. Hendrix, Henry, Henslee . . . Hickey. There was one other reference to the agent in the book, on page 134. Donahue turned to it. Manchester was describing the vehicles in the motorcade and the passengers they contained. . . .

Halfback, the follow-up convertible, District license number GG 678. Agent Sam Kinney, at the wheel, kept his eyes back of the President's head. Emory Roberts, Halfback's commander, was next to Kinney. Clint Hill stood on the left front running board. Agent Bill McIntyre was behind him. John Ready was on the right front running board, Agent Landis behind him. Dave Powers was in the right jump seat, Ken O'Donnell in the left. Agent George Hickey sat in the left rear, Agent Glen Bennett in the right rear, and on the seat between them lay an AR-15 .223 automatic rifle, with a muzzle velocity so powerful that should a bullet strike a man's chest it would blow his head off.

God, Donahue thought. The left-rear seat! Here was the missing piece . . .15

He fails to recognize that the AR-15 was under the seat.

Having been given the original printing, the hardback, Donahue's citation is to page 134 in it. At that point Manchester is giving an account of the vehicles in the motorcade. At the risk of an accusation from Donahue that his great discovery is being diluted we complete the picture a little with Manchester's paragraph before the one Donahue quotes:

SS.100 X, the Presidential car, District of Columbia license number GG 300. Its six passengers were in their usual places: Kellerman beside Greer; the Connallys in the jump seats, John to the right of Nellie; the Kennedys in the rear, with the roses between them. Four motorcycles, two on each side, flanked the rear of GC 300.16

Perhaps Donahue and Menninger had a reason for not quoting the paragraph after the one they do quote but I suggest that it and a couple more short paragraphs omitted following it can be useful in reaching a full appreciation of the major nature of Donahue's unique "discovery." And it is really unique. It is so unique of all the billions of people in the world he alone made that "discovery."

Certainly not Manchester, who did this writing.

Not any of the perhaps millions who read his book.

Or the hundreds looking at the motorcade at the point of such great importance to Donahue. Or a single person in the motorcade:

The Vice Presidential convertible. Two-and-a-half car lengths separated it from Halfback, to indicate that the appearance of the Vice President was a separate event, Ralph Yarborough, who loved parades, was under the impression that Lyndon Johnson wasn't enjoying the distinction. The Senator, in the left rear, was waving jubilantly. Johnson stared glumly ahead.

Varsity. the follow-up hardtop, was driven by a Texas state policeman. Cliff Carter was in the middle of the front seat. Agent Jerry Kivett was on his right. Agent Lem Johns was in the right rear, Agent Taylor in the left rear.

The pool car was on loan from the telephone company, and the driver came with it. Kilduff and Merriman Smith of United Press International were in front, Kilduff on the right. As the senior White House correspondent Smith always rode in the middle. Thus he was the newspaperman closest to the radiophone on the transmission hump under the dashboard. Jack Bell of the Associated Press, Baskin of the Dallas News, and Bob Clark of the American Broadcasting Company were in the back. In a crisis they could report nothing from this car unless Smith surrendered the phone, and Smith, with his hard, pocked face, was one of the most competitive men in journalism.

The photographer's convertibles came next. The bulk of the motorcade trailed them.17

Those in the cars immediately behind the Presidential follow-up car were among the best and most careful observers in the country. And where they were, this close to the President, was for the purpose of observing.

But of these professional observers, of the various federal agents in the motorcade at that point, of the state and local police who were nearby, of the political figures, including several close to the President personally and devoted to him as few humans are fortunate enough to have, and of all the people watching the motorcade, including those looking down on it from the nearby buildings, not a single person saw what caused, and here we use Donahue's words again: he is speaking of him.

He froze. The hairs flew up on his neck.

Not one person, official or otherwise, police or federal agent or not, close and intimate friend of the President or not - nobody saw or heard the shot Donahue says Hickey fired. Not one person did!

It has not been pleasant to refer, as I have so often, to Donahue as a liar. I have done that not only as a record for history but in defense of the innocent Hickey and his family who were so maligned by this egomaniacal Donahue who made all of this up out of nothing.

To call him merely a liar it is to praise him for what he can properly be considered with what follows. And part of what follows is what Donahue regards and presents as his "proof."

The first of Donahue's two source notes on page 101 is to page 159 of Manchester's book, as Donahue's source note on page 342 states. His second source note is this quotation from Manchester relating to Hickey. It is to page 134, as his source note on page 343 states.

From page 159 Donahue quotes but a single sentence and he quotes it accurately. He also quotes it with dishonesty impossible to castigate too severely, with dishonesty that cannot be exaggerated. He does this by omitting the paragraph that precedes it. So, we rectify that most deliberate of dishonesties by quoting in full what Donahue omitted. This is the paragraph that precedes the single sentence that Donahue quotes to give it meaning that it does not have, the meaning that Manchester did not give it.

The meaning, really, that Donahue made up out of nothing other than whatever his desire for benefit from it may have been:

The plaza resembles nothing so much as a field which has just been swept by a mighty wind. Charles Brend has thrown, his son to the ground and is shielding him with his body. From his station behind the right fender of SS 100 X Officer Clyde Haygood rams the north curb with his motorcycle, overturns, leaves the wheels spinning, and scrambles up the grassy side of the overpass embankment, pistol in hand. A man, thinking to save a woman, tackles her from behind. Bob Jackson, a photographer for the Dallas Times Herald, has just seen the rifle barrel being withdrawn. He gapes, unbelieving, at the open window. Motorcyclist Marrion Baker, riding right beside the Lincoln, staring up at the pigeons. A policeman near Roy Truly mutters hoarsely "Goddamn." Abe Zapruder screeches over and over, "They killed him! They killed him! They killed him! They killed him!"18.

With all of this — and Manchester has it in italics — coming before the single sentence Donahue quotes. It could not be any clearer that before Hickey raised the barrel of the AR-15 it was all over. All the shooting was over before Hickey lifted that rifle! And Donahue knew it. Manchester could not have been any more unequivocal about it! (And Manchester was far from alone in saying this.)

Manchester begins by saying that "The plaza resembles . . . a field that has just been swept by a wind." He had Brend throwing his son to the ground to protect him from any more shooting. Officer Haygood has already left the motorcycle and rushed up the grassy knoll. Motorcycle policeman Marrion Baker has come to a stop and "is staring up at the pigeons" who are leaving the roof of the depository building. And Abraham Zapruder, who saw it all through his movie camera, has already exclaimed over and over again, "They killed him" before Hickey reached for his rifle!

This Manchester account which, in the Donahue version made him freeze and had the hairs on his neck fly up, was with unquestionable clarity prior to Hickey's getting that rifle.

Or, on the basis of Donahue's claimed first and most important source, it was all over before Hickey got his rifle and Donahue knew it in saying the opposite!

Not only is there no question about what Manchester says and was deliberately omitted by Donahue. If one checks the Manchester book, as I did after being outraged by Donahue's monstrous indecency; by his deliberate attempt to rewrite our history to ruin poor Hickey in perpetuity and reflect on his family forever; if one checks Manchester's book as I did — and as St. Martin's should have (and as no reviewer did, either) — it is even more certain that Donahue did this terrible thing he did knowing full well what he was doing and what it would mean.

Manchester's account of the assassination precedes the page on which Donahue picked to begin his quotation of Manchester!

The Manchester account of the assassination is the last part of the chapter before the beginning of the chapter Donahue quotes! The Manchester account of the shooting begins on 155. Donahue quotes from Manchester's page 159, as though that is the beginning. It is not!

The shooting is over before the part that Donahue quotes out of context, with deliberate dishonesty.

In the Manchester account, which is based on, among other things, all the people involved talking to him, he says, after that one sentence Donahue quotes, "In the jump seat Ken O'Donnell and Dave Powers have heard the sickening impact of the fatal bullet, and Dave has seen it."

Those two men so close to Kennedy, who loved him so, were sitting in the jump seats immediately in front of Hickey. Can anybody believe that if Hickey had fired that weapon in their ears they could possibly have heard that "sickening impact of the fatal bullet" on the President's head? With their ears ringing from the shot in them? Or have heard that and not heard the firing of that AR-15 right in their ears?

Of course, that would have been impossible, as any real or imagined "firearms engineer" and "firearms examiner" had to know.

Donahue had to know what he was doing when he did it from the moment he first saw the possibilities in this deliberate misrepresentation of what Manchester reported.

I want to be as explicit, and as unequivocal as it is possible to be.

Donahue says that what we have quoted from Manchester is his beginning, the basis of his case against Hickey. I say that Manchester alone made it absolutely certain that Hickey could not have fired the shot that killed the President because all the shooting was over before Hickey picked that AR-15 rifle up.

The Zapruder quotation alone, and it is far from alone, leaves this without question.

Before Hickey gets that rifle, "Abe Zapruder screeches over and over, 'They have killed him!'" Four times, "They have killed him!"

All of this could not have been any clearer or more without any question at all.

On the next page Donahue makes it clear that he had gotten this notion earlier. This is what he has there:

Donahue's thoughts flashed back to the letter he'd written the Secret Service in 1968. The Service would confirm only that there were .38 revolvers present in the follow-up car. Now here was mention of an AR-15 in a national best-seller. Why had they withheld this information?19.

(It is visible in many pictures and was not new.)

This refers back to Donahue's notion that the President was killed by his "bodyguards." That came from his doweling. The index gives us the only earlier mention of the Secret Service on page 60. References to bodyguarding was before that. References to the letter Donahue says he wrote the Secret Service is on page 59. The content of Donahue's version of the letter he wrote at that point is enough to make the Secret Service leery.

Donahue admits he did get a response but he complains that the head of the Secret Service told him what on the face is not unreasonable — unless you are a Donahue, with a Donahue self-concept. As a matter of policy the Secret Service does not disclose the types of weapons it uses, other than the .38 caliber revolvers issued to all agents."20

Returning to what Donahue has been saying on page 102, he continues with his deliberate misinterpretation of Manchester to make the nonexisting case he started to make with his imagination and with his dowels. Once again, and we are not trying to slip up on anyone's blind side, the misrepresentation is total:

In the days that followed, Donahue poured himself back into his assassination probe with an intensity Katie hadn't seen in some time. After he'd closed the gun store and had dinner, Howard would once again retreat to his La-Z-Boy in the basement and work deep into the night. On days that he could, Donahue headed south to the National Archives in Washington. Sure enough, before long he'd discovered numerous confirmations of Manchester's account. The overriding question was: How had he missed the gun for so many years? He felt like a fool. There had been more than one sighting of the AR-15 that day, but in all his digging Donahue had never noticed any of them.

First, he found the Commission testimony of Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell, describing the immediate aftermath of the shooting:

INVESTIGATOR:	You didn't in fact know who had been hit, I take it?

CABELL:	No; we couldn't tell. We could tell, of course, there was confusion in the presidential car — activity. The Secret Service men ran to that car. From out of nowhere appeared one Secret Service man with a submachine gun. His attention seemed to be focused up toward the building.10

Before proceeding with the content of this excerpt it should be understood that for what Donahue did to be described as an "assassination probe" one would have to liken sleep to deep sea diving.

His reference to "Manchester's account" is a deliberate misrepresentation because, as we saw, that "Manchester account" is proof that this juvenile fabrication of Donahue's is without foundation of any kind because before Hickey raised his rifle all the shooting was over. This cannot be emphasized too much in addressing this Donahue invention, he had to be an idiot not to understand was a total impossibility.

Returning to the quotation, Donahue's source note here is to Volume VII of the Commission's testimony.21

On that page there is no questioning by anyone identified as "investigator." Not on that page, not on any page — nowhere in those twenty-six volumes. And this is, supposedly, a verbatim quotation. Why Donahue omitted the name that is given as that of the questioner, "Mr. Hubert," I don't know. Unless Donahue does not have any of these volumes he cites and lacked Hubert's first name, Leon. Leon Hubert, a former United States attorney, was an assistant counsel for the Commission. He was not, and he was not referred to as an "investigator." The Commission had not a single investigator on its staff, as is well known by those who know anything at all about the Commission.

Donahue cut the quotation off a bit short. He omitted what Cabell said at the end of that paragraph, that he had heard only the three shots of the official story. Cabell also testified that he is an experienced hunter and that all the three shots sounded like they came from one high-powered rifle (6H478).

Cabell's brother was a general. The Mayor testified, "I have done a great deal of hunting and also used military shoulder guns as well as hunting rifles." He not only had no question about the direction from which he insisted he heard all three shots, the depository building. He also testified that he was in the car directly behind the Vice President's and that they had just turned onto Elm when he heard the first shot. Mr. Hickey was in front of him and he was firm in his testimony that not a single shot came from in front of him.

Which, naturally, explains why Donahue misrepresents his testimony.

The part that Donahue uses is confused and confusing. Cabell is testifying about their arrival at the hospital. What is quoted follows his testifying that they did what they were told, "We went to the hospital." This is mixed in with the reference to the "Secret Service man with a submachine gun" who appeared "out of nowhere."

Whatever Cabell might have been referring to, one thing is beyond question: he could not have been referring to Hickey, who did not leave the car in which he was, until they were at the hospital.

Cabell also knew the difference between a rifle and "a submachine gun."

Continuing farther with Donahue's quotations from page 102, next is what makes no sense at all unless Donahue regards the fact that people smelled gun-powder as of the greatest importance. They in fact smelled it where Hickey was not as well as where he had been so it means nothing. Anyway, this what Donahue quotes from Senator Ralph Yarborough, who was in the car behind immediately behind the car in which Hickey was sitting on the back of the back seat. I add the emphasis Donahue, of course, did not add to Yarborough's testimony:

"After the shooting, one of the Secret Service man sitting down in the car in front pulled out an automatic rifle or weapon . . .22

Yarborough was looking at Hickey when after the shooting, Hickey got that AR-15.

Donahue's knowledge, as what we quoted from Manchester what he omitted leaves without question, is that this is a second proof that Donahue knew that it was after the shooting that Hickey got that weapon.

There are additional proofs of which he knew — and to which we come.

Still pretending that he is "digging" all this out when he could have read it all in various books except what he made up, Menninger writes that Donahue "discovered a statement made by S. M. Holland," He "discovered" this in a book no self-respecting scholar would cite, a work of the most devious and dishonest intent, one that specialized in misrepresentation and in altered quotations, The Scavengers and Critics of The Warren Report. All those about whom Lawrence Schiller and his hired pen, Richard Lewis wrote about were critics and they addressed as scavengers, which they, Schiller in particular, has always been, and that profitably. He used this title to avoid any critics suing him for being called a scavenger.

Schiller began as a photographer, As soon as Jack Ruby was arrested he sold himself to Ruby's family as a skilled money raiser. Ruby's defense got little from him but Schiller did get much attention from it. Among the other dubious means of making money for which he earned some fame was selling Marilyn Monroe's nakedness, a kit including pictures of it. When the book Donahue quotes appeared, in early 1967, I had agreed to confront Schiller on a Washington radio talk show. I flew back from Chicago, where I was, through a blizzard, to be there and face him but he refused to go on the air other than without confrontation and, rather than have all that dead air the station apologized to me and indulged this man who was so brave, so certain of what his name was on, even though it is confrontation that sells books.

Donahue knows how to pick them!

But here again, what seems to be becoming a Donahue specialty, the testimony is altered and instead of the name of the Commission lawyer who questioned S. M. Holland the word "interviewer" appears.

Sam Stern is the Commission assistant counsel — not investigator or "interviewer" — who deposed Holland. That testimony appears in Volume VI of the Commission's testimony and in many other books.

Why Donahue uses as his source eminently undependable Scavengers I do not know because the Holland "testimony" he uses from it appears in a volume of Commission testimony he uses. He not only uses that very Volume, he uses it to cite the testimony that appears in it immediately before Holland's. Holland's testimony begins on page 239 (6H239). On page 107, Donahue cites the testimony of Royce Skelton; Skelton's testimony ends on the page on which Holland's begins! And from only a few pages earlier, beginning of page 223, (6H223), Donahue cites the testimony of Austin Miller. This seems to make no sense at all but maybe we can make a little sense of it.

However, there just have to be questions when in this chapter alone Donahue has seven citations to the Commission's published testimony and then retreats to quotes from the skunk squad of assassination indecencies and other dishonesties, Schiller and Lewis.

Donahue's quotation from this skunk squad rather than from the official volumes is:

INTERVIEWER:	After the second time he was hit, what did the Secret Service men do?

HOLLAND:	Well, I noticed that this Secret Service man stood up in the car, in the President's car.

INTERVIEWER:	When did he stand up in the car?

HOLLAND:	Just about the same time the President was shot the second time. He jumped up in the seat and was standing up in the, on the seat. Now I actually thought he was shot, too, because he fell backwards just like he was shot, but it jerked him down when they started off.

INTERVIEWER:	What did he do when he stood up?

HOLLAND:	He pointed this machine gun right towards that grassy knoll behind that picket fence.

Donahue was transfixed. Holland had put the gun in the agent's hands at the moment the last shot was fired and said the agent then fell over.23

First it should be understood that there is no reason to believe that Holland was other than an honorable, honest and decent man. Then, although in reading Donahue this is not stated, eyewitnesses are often the least dependable source of information, and that is natural, not because there is anything wrong with them. This is usually driven home in law school.

So, Donahue says that after reading the skunk-squad's production, he was "transfixed."

Soon he is correcting Holland, who said that "he saw the agent [with the machine gun] in the President's car." Donahue admits that is not possible.

Donahue says nothing about Holland indicating that instead of the rifle pointing straight ahead of Hickey, which is where the President was, he had it pointed away from the President "towards that grassy knoll behind the picket fence." Or Donahue's supposed star witness destroys Donahue's invention, that Hickey fired at the President when his rifle was pointed at right angles, away from the President.

One of the reasons Donahue found it convenient not to use the official testimony when he had it in hand is what else is wrong with what is attributed to Holland. Of these, one is his insistence there had been four shots.24 A fourth shot ends the Donahue fabrication. Another is that he saw Connally hit with a separate shot.25 He saw Connally who was sitting, "knocked . . . completely down on the floor".26

As we get to the bottom of this page, and there is no need to go farther, Holland speaks of another shot that he connects with "trees."

The day of the assassination he was one of those who gave affidavits to the sheriff. Holland's, introduced during his testimony as Holland Exhibit D, is published in facsimile by the Commission.27 In it he says the President "slumped over" with the first shot. He did not. There is more that ranges from dubious to impossible in all of this but we restrict ourselves to what is so exceptionally important to Donahue: "After the first shot the secret service man raised up in the seat with a machine gun and then "dropped back down in the seat." Holland was looking and as the cars "sped off." He did not see that Secret Service man get up and fire a shot, which is what Donahue alleges.

Hickey could have gotten up when Holland could have see him, when he was in the underpass, but Holland was looking and he did not see Hickey fire any shot. He also says that Hickey got up with the first shot.

In the skunk-squad version that was after the second shot. And in that same version Holland has him not waving the rifle around aimlessly or pointing it toward the President but Holland says, "He pointed that machine gun right towards that grassy knoll," or away from the President.

It is not his lack of any concept of scholarship that kept Donahue from referring to the Holland affidavit, which is actually included in his testimony with which Holland is familiar because Stern read it to him, word for word. This is on page 245.28

My file on Holland also includes the report that he said he saw a dog between the president and his wife. They had no dog with them.

Whenever Donahue quotes what had been used exhaustively before he got any interest or was bitten by the assassination bug, he "dug it up." Thus when he gets back into the swing of it — and we skip Secret Service agent Lawson who was far ahead in the lead car with the sheriff:

Next he dug up agent Glen Bennett's statement. Bennett had sat beside Hickey in the back seat. He was among the witnesses who believed Oswald's first missed. On the subject of the gun, Bennett had said, "A second shot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the President's head. I immediately hollered 'he's hit' and reached for the AR-15 located on the floor of the rear seat. Special Agent Hickey had already picked up the AR-15."29

Donahue's source note on this, put his way, not the usual way, is to 18H760. That is a facsimile reproduction of an unsworn statement by Bennett on a secret Service letterhead. He said much more than Donahue quotes. In fact much more than Donahue can bear to have known and still stick to his made-up impossibility of a "solution."

What Bennett, to whom Donahue refers as a strong witness for his case, actually said is that it was not until after he saw the President hit in the head that he reached down for the rifle. The rifle, as Donahue avoids saying, was on the floor, with those jump seats and Bennett's and Hickey's feet behind them to delay bringing it fast. Bennett said he reached down for to the floor for the rifle but that Hickey had beaten him to it. Hickey had taken hold of the rifle that, from Bennett's account was still on or near the floor.

What is beyond question is that with Bennett as a witness who was looking and saw it happen , the President got the fatal wound in the head before Hickey had the rifle up!

Also on this page, 105, Donahue quotes the agent in charge of that detail, Emory Roberts. He turned after the shooting and saw Hickey with the rifle. No report of seeing or hearing it discharge. Next, nothing omitted in quoting:

Likewise, agent William McIntyre had reported that immediately after the shots were fired, "agent Hickey was handling the AR-15." McIntyre rode the left-rear running board of the follow-up car, directly beside Hickey.30

Again, with no AR-15 shooting. Omitting source notes on these agents is deceptive, as we see with Bennett and keep seeing. That Roberts saw Hickey with the rifle only after the shooting is in Volume 18 of the Commission's hearings on page 735:

I turned around several times just after the shooting and saw some of the Special Agents had their guns drawn. I know I drew mine, and saw SA Hickey in the rear seat with the AR-15, and asked him to be careful with it. 31

Another witness to Hickey not using that rifle, not firing a shot, heard from.

An excerpt from the McIntyre statement is much more informative than this tiny paraphrase to which Donahue restricts himself. That statement is also in Volume 18, and this quotation is from page 747:

After the second shot I looked at the President and witnessed his being struck in the head by the third and last shot. By that time, Mr. Roberts had used the radio in our car to direct the vehicles to the hospital. Most, if not all the agents in the follow-up car had drawn their weapons, and agent Hickey was handling the AR-15. None of us could determine the origin of the shots, and no shots were fired by any agent.32

It is from this paragraph that Donahue quotes and we can see what he omitted from this paragraph alone: that McIntyre was looking when the President received his fatal shot and that neither Hickey nor any other agent fired a single shot. If he had had the intention of being honest, Donahue could have included what is most important and he omitted on purpose with a single line: no agent fired a shot.

Then Donahue gets to what he refers to as Hickey's "testimony," which it is not:

Finally, Donahue found the testimony of Hickey himself. It was among the written statements of other agents in the Warren Commission Report, Volume 18, pages 761-765. According to Hickey: "At the end of the last report I reached to the bottom of the car and I picked up the AR-15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear."33

Donahue did not "dig" Hickey out. He "found" Hickey in what the Commission published and it is libraries, public and private, all over the world. And he said what all others said, that he got that AR-15 after the last shot.

In this chapter he had four citations to Volume 18. There are two Hickey statements in it; not one.34 In his longer statement dated November 30, addressed to the agent in charge of that detail, Hickey says he stood first when he heard a shot and on seeing nothing, only then reached for that rifle:

After a very short distance I heard a loud report which sounded like a firecracker. It appeared to come from the right and rear and seemed to me to be at ground level. I stood up and looked to my right and rear in an attempt to identify it. Nothing caught my attention except people shouting and cheering. A disturbance in 679X caused me to look forward toward the President's car. Perhaps 2 or 3 seconds elapsed from the time I looked to the rear and then looked at the President. He was slumped forward and to his left, and was straightening up to an almost erect sitting position as I turned and I looked. At the moment he was almost sitting erect I heard two reports which I thought were shots and that appeared to me completely different in sound than the first report and were in such rapid succession that there seemed to be practically no time element between them. It looked to me as if the President was struck in the right upper rear of his head. The first shot of the second two seemed as if it missed because the hair on the right side of his head flew forward and there didn't seem to be any impact against his head. The last shot seemed to hit his head and cause a noise at the point of impact which made him fall forward and to his left again. GWH

Hickey initialed each page. He Xed out all of the first line and a word or two of the second line of the third page of the report. We quote it and the paragraph that follows it:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx. Possibly four or five seconds elapsed from the time of the first report and the last.

At the end of the last report I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it and turned to the rear. At this point the cars were passing under the over-pass and as a result we had left the scene of the shooting. I kept the AR 15 rifle ready as we proceeded at a high rate of speed to the hospital.35

Still again — and again as Donahue knew — it was not until after that last shot that Hickey reached for the rifle.

Whether Hickey's recollection, that he stood first and then reached for the rifle, is correct we do not know. Nobody else reported that. He does say he was looking at the President's head when it was hit and he describes what he saw.

Just prior to the shooting I was seated in the rear of SS-679-X on the left aide. As 100-X made the turn and proceeded a short distance I heard what seemed to me that a firecracker exploded to the right and rear. I stood partially up and turned to the rear to see if I could observe anything. Nothing was observed and I turned around and looked at the President's car. The President was slumped to the left in the car and I observed him come up. I heard what appeared to be two shots and it seemed as if the right side of his head was hit and his hair flew forward. I then reached down, picked up the AR 15, cocked and loaded it and stood part way up in the car and looked about. By this time, 100-X and 679-X had passed under the overpass and was proceeding at a high rate of speed towards the hospital.36

This is the statement he prepared the night of the day of the assassination . It must have been late, after a tiring and terrible day.

Of this, to make it appear that Hickey was reacting to what Oswald allegedly fired, Donahue made up that when he looked backward Hickey also looked up. Here he gives the lie to Donahue. He did not look up. He looked only back. In fact, again as Donahue knew very well, Hickey said that sound "seemed to me to be at ground level."

Oswald was supposed to have been on the sixth floor.

Also, rather than waving his rifle around aimlessly when the President was shot Hickey, was looking directly at him and provided an accurate account of what he saw happen, including, in particular, that fatal shot.

Here is what Donahue has on the Hickey statements:

Donahue scanned the testimony. Hickey had made no mention of falling over backward as S. M. Holland had remembered. And his statement about picking up the gun after the last shot was contradicted by Holland, who had seen him with the gun at the time of the last shot. Agent Bennett, meanwhile, said he had seen the shot strike Kennedy in the head and that he had then reached for the AR-15, only to find Hickey had already picked the gun up.

Hickey's comment about cocking and loading the gun after the shots were fired was also seemingly at odds with the testimony of Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman. When asked by the Warren Commission about the weapons available in the follow-up car, Kellerman had said that the AR-15 in the back seat was always "ready to go." Donahue took this to mean that the gun was stored cocked and loaded, with the safety on.37

What Donahue overlooks to be able to make Holland seem dependable is that Hickey was sitting not in the back seat but on the back of that back seat so he could turn and look in any direction. It was an open car. Now if he had fallen over backwards, as Holland said and is essential in this Donahue's hokum, with that open car would he not have fallen out of the car and would he not, in all likelihood, have been run over by the car that followed?

Especially with the record Donahue is building about himself, his interpretation of what the Secret Service might mean by a weapon being "ready to go" cannot be accepted as what the Secret Service meant by it. It is obvious that a rifle ready to be loaded and cocked can be considered as "ready to go." So also can it be if it is not loaded and cocked. Whether that is done in populated areas is a question the Commission should have had answered.

What Donahue does not say Kellerman did, and not he alone, and it is what makes a liar still again of Donahue. Kellerman volunteered before "ready to go" that the AR-15, which is standard in that car, was "lying on the floor." Donahue said it was on the seat between Hickey and Bennett.38

Big, Big difference!

This reminds me of one of the things I told Donahue when he was here that he did not like. I told him that within three seconds that rifle had to come up under those jump seats and from under the tangle of feet and then be fired. I told him that it would take more than those three seconds just to get the rifle off that floor.

We get a measure of Donahue with how he concludes this page. More so, when we consider what he had on the page — and what we know that he knew and did not use on it.

Donahue reorganized his data. He ruminated, speculated. What did he have? Nine witnesses — including Hickey himself — had put the gun in Hickey's hands the instant the shot was fired. And one had seen the agent stand up and fall over about the time the shot hit home.39

Donahue claims there are nine witnesses who put the rifle in Hickey's hand "just after the shot," which means he could not use the rifle until then, but what in the Donahue convolutions is "most important" in his view, that being his urgent need, is for two witnesses to "put the gun in Hickey's hands the instant the shot was fired."

Note that Donahue does not say how it is "more important" for so many fewer to suggest the possibility of a shot being fired than it is for so many more to say that it was not possible.

Donahue does not explain this.

The reason is that there is — there can be — no rational explanation of it.

It is not true.

There still is not a single person who saw Hickey fire a shot or heard it or even heard a rumor that he had. It is not easy, except in dishonest scheming, to find that those two. However Donahue chooses to magnify or corrupt what they said, they are more important that four times that many who say otherwise.

Unless, of course, you are Donahue and have his yen to need to publish a fraudulent book.