WALT CAKEBREAD SAID:
>>> "What an outrageous misrepresentation of the Secret Service man's body language. .... His body language isn't merely a dismissive "shrug"; it clearly is an incredulous and urgent questioning of Emory Roberts' order. His body language clearly reads "What the Hell's going on???" " <<<
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
A person who has studied this matter in pretty good depth--Gary Mack (at least I'm fairly sure it was Gary who said this; if it wasn't Gary, I apologize to him)--has stated that it's his belief that the shoulder-shrugging Secret Service agent who was left at Love Field was merely kidding around in a playful manner with the other SS agents in the Queen Mary follow-up car.
Anyone who has a copy of the inimitable 1964 United Artists documentary film "FOUR DAYS IN NOVEMBER" can watch (in good-quality form) the entire uncut "arm-shrugging" WFAA-TV sequence. [Go to the 7:30 mark of the video below to see the footage in question.]
"Four Days In November" includes a goodly amount of WFAA's videotaped footage of JFK's Love Field arrival. There are some edits and splices of that airport footage made by United Artists for the "Four Days" movie, but the sequence showing the shrugging Secret Service agent has not been edited down or spliced in any way. (Which seems kind of strange to me if UA and/or David Wolper or any of the "Four Days" moviemakers had been on some "cover-up" or "LN propaganda" mission, as some CTers seem to actually believe was true.)
And on a big-screen TV, it does look as though the Secret Service man has a bit of a smile on his face as he's shrugging and looking toward the other agents in the Queen Mary vehicle.
Now, it's possible that the SS agent was both confused AND "playful" (in a sense) when we he see him shrugging his shoulders and waving his arms at Love Field as JFK's limo leaves the airport.
But one thing's a certainty: Nobody on this Earth can PROVE that the incident with the shoulder-shrugging agent at Love Field was part of some sort of "Secret Service Standdown" or was part of some plot to kill the President by the SS or any other authorities in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
The only thing that CTers can do with this event is what they also do with pretty much everything connected with this whole case -- SPECULATE.
And the CTer speculations and guesswork always add up to some kind of covert plot of some ilk. Naturally. Because a CTer refuses to believe that ANY incident (or evidence) connected with 11/22/63 could be innocent in nature. Everything MUST lead to the endzone marked "Conspiracy".
To a conspiracy theorist, the actions of the SS man at Love Field couldn't possibly be looked upon as anything BUT conspiratorial in some fashion (not on the part of the shrugging agent himself, of course, but "conspiratorial" on the part of Emory Roberts or any other people who might be looked at sideways by CTers regarding this airport incident).
It does seem kind of odd to me, though, if a plot/standdown was afoot on November 22nd, that the Secret Service waited until the last minute to coordinate parts of the supposed "standdown" by "waving off" one of its agents at the 11th hour at Love Field after the cars had already begun to roll.
But, apparently that last minute kind of angle doesn't seem odd or unusual to CTers at all. Nor do CTers evidently think it was strange to have a critical part of the so-called "standdown" (per the CT POV) taking place at a time when the Secret Service should have known they were probably being CAPTURED ON LIVE TELEVISION in the act of performing a key part of the so-called "standdown".
I guess Emory Roberts, et al, just didn't care about part of the "plot" being potentially CAUGHT ON TAPE/FILM by WFAA-TV (or by anybody else who might have had a camera pointed at the President's car at approximately 11:50 AM on November 22 at Love Field).
But when we dive back into the "Reality Pool" (i.e., the pool where Occam and his Razor usually rule, and where the ORDINARY trumps and defeats the EXTRAORDINARY in most instances), Emory Roberts' actions and the actions of the shrugging agent aren't so covert or difficult to figure out at all.
And it's not hard to figure out WHY Roberts and the rest of the Secret Service didn't care about being seen on live TV during the so-called "wave off". The reason they DIDN'T CARE about the rolling television cameras (and other potential cameras that might have been filming them) is, of course, because the Secret Service WASN'T DOING ANYTHING WRONG OR COVERT at Love Field on November 22.
And innocent people (i.e., people who aren't engaging in plots to kill the very President they are all sworn to protect with their own lives) don't have anything to hide.
Therefore nothing was hidden from the TV cameras at Love Field....because every single thing that was going on regarding the Secret Service that day at the airport was totally innocent and non-conspiratorial in nature.
And no conspiracist alive can possibly prove otherwise.
Plus:
There's the fact that the shrugging agent's absence during the motorcade drive through Dallas did not result in Queen Mary being one agent short. As can easily be seen in the James Altgens photo, the maximum number of agents (8) are riding in the Queen Mary follow-up car in Dealey Plaza, with the full complement of four agents on the two running boards:
Plus:
Via other films and photos taken during pre-November 22nd JFK motorcades, it becomes very obvious that the security arrangements made by the SS on 11/22/63 in Dallas were not substantially different from other motorcades that Kennedy participated in prior to November 22.
I.E.:
There was not ALWAYS a Secret Service agent riding on the rear bumper of JFK's limousine. Sometimes there were agents on the running boards, but on many other occasions there were not (as illustrated in the three photos shown below).
So how can conspiracy theorists possibly claim that the motorcade security in Dallas was lax or different or not up to previous standards or whatever the CTers say to try and prop up the ridiculous notion that the United States Secret Service was actually involved in some kind of plot to murder the President they'd been protecting with their own lives for almost three years (and/or: the SS just stood by watching while deliberately doing nothing to aid JFK after the shooting began in Dealey Plaza)?
That's just silly beyond all possible belief.
David Von Pein
February 2008
February 2012
LINK TO ORIGINAL POST (FEBRUARY 28, 2008)
