Reply #42: What's wrong with it? It's the truth: Milteer talked about killing JFK 13 days before Dallas.

[Octafish]

Don't take my word for it. Here's what University of Georgia law professor Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., had to say about Joseph A. Milteer:

DID HE KNOW JFK TO DIE?

Published in The Athens Observer, p. 2A (February 12,1987).
Author: Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law.

EXCERPT...

On the morning of Nov. 9, 1963, two weeks before the Kennedy assassination, Milteer engaged in a conversation in a Miami hotel room with a man named Willie Somersett. Apparently unknown to Milteer, Somersett (who died in 1970), was an informer for the police who surreptitiously tape-recorded the conversation. The tape was promptly turned over to local Miami police, who then forwarded it to federal authorities. The taped conversation was revealed for the first time publicly in the Miami News in February 1967, although Milteer's named was not mentioned. The Miami News article was quoted at length (again without mentioning Milteer's name) in Harold Weisberg's Oswald in New Orleans, also published in 1967. In 1971 in Frame-Up Weisberg published a transcript of the taped conversation, together with various FBI documents relating to Milteer. This time Milteer's name was given. In 1979 the House Assassinations Committee included information on Milteer in several of its published volumes, and quoted verbatim an excerpt from the transcript of his Nov. 9, 1963 conversation with Somersett.

According to the House Committee transcript, Milteer told Somersett that the killing of Kennedy "was in the working," that the president could be killed "rom an office building with a high-powered rifle," that the rifle could be "disassembled" to get it into the building, and that "hey will pick up somebody within hours afterward, if anything like that would happen just to throw the public off." He also mentioned "the Cubans."

When Miami police turned the tape-recorded conversation over to the Secret Service and FBI, there was a flurry of activity and extra security precautions were taken to protect the president on his trip to Miami, which took place on Nov. 18, the Monday before the Friday assassination. However, information about the Milteer remarks apparently was not passed on to Secret Service officials responsible for the trip to Dallas.

Here, then, is a second possible Georgia connection to the JFK assassination: less than two weeks before the president's death, a Georgia political extremist on the far right was recorded saying things that indicate--at least in retrospect--that he knew not only of a plot to kill the president but also some of the details of the plot. Milteer's statements, as noted, were taken seriously by federal authorities; and the Secret Service's Miami office filed on Milteer was entitled "Alleged Possible Threat Against the President."

However, the recorded conversation of Nov. 9, 1963 is not the only evidence of the possibility of a Georgia connection through Joseph Milteer to the JFK killing. According to FBI documents published by Harold Weisberg, Milteer told an informer (presumably Somersett) in an unrecorded conversation in Jacksonville, Fla., on the afternoon of the assassination: "Everything ran true to form. I guess you thought I was kidding you when I said he (Kennedy) would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle."

CONTINUED...

http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/...

Professor Wilkes also wrote about the Altgens photo, which apparently captured Milteer in Dealey Plaza:

WAS MILTEER IN DALLAS?

Published in The Athens Observer, p. 2A (February 19, 1987).
Author: Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law.

Was Joseph A. Milteer present in or near Dealey Plaza when President Kennedy was shot? If so, this would transform suspicions that he knew in advance of plans to kill the president into suspicions that he might have been a party to the plot. Milteer's proven presence would be a fact of the gravest concern and the most sinister implication.

What evidence is there that Milteer might have been present at the assassination? First, an informer--presumably Somersett--reported that Milteer had called a friend from Dallas on the morning of the assassination. Henry Hurt tells us that in that morning telephone conversation Milteer assured his friend that Kennedy wouldn't be visiting Miami any more. The Assassinations Committee in its Final Report in 1979 said it "could find no evidence that Milteer was in Dallas on the day of the assassination." On the other hand, as Hurt observes, the Committee "also failed to show that he was elsewhere."

Second, Milteer apparently told an informer in Jacksonville, Fla., a few days after the assassination that he had been in Dallas, Ft. Worth, and Houston. While Milteer did not say when the visits had occurred, it is worth noting that these three cities were on President Kennedy's itinerary on his fatal journey to Texas.

Third, it is possible that Milteer was an individual photographed among the motorcade spectators on Houston Street immediately before the president's car turned on to Elm Street and the shooting began. The 35 mm film photograph was taken by James Altgens. The photograph depicts "an unidentified motorcade spectator who bears a strong resemblance to Joseph Adams Milteer"--to quote the words of a panel of experts retained by the Assassinations Committee. The spectator, a bespectacled while male around 60 years old, is standing with his arms folded across his front at a point just beyond and to the right of the approaching presidential limousine, in the photograph. He is among an array of spectators lining the sidewalk on the west side of Houston Street. "Immediately to his right is a taller man wearing a dark hat, coat, and necktie," to again quote the panel of experts.

SNIP...

One other matter remains to be discussed. Once the tape recording had been turned over by local police, what investigation of Milteer did federal agents undertake, both before and after the assassination? According to Secret Service documents published by Harold Weisberg in 1971, the Miami office of the Secret Service closed its file on Milteer on Nov. 12, 1963--three days after Milteer had talked to the informant and nine days before the assassination! Apparently the Secret Service's pre-assassination investigation was transferred to other offices, but there is apparently no published evidence of what investigation these other offices undertook.

CONTINUED...

http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/...

That's the truth. Sorry if you don't want me to write about it.