Mendocino County Today: Monday, Sept. 11, 2023

Patchy Clouds | Noyo Fog | Haschak Report | Chowder Cook-Off | Panther Football | Sergeant Tuso | Bragg Group | Bunyan Days | Braxton/Billy | Tip Top | Pension Return | Southside Store | Edna Wallach | Yesterday's Catch | Power Pay | Hopland Tap | Niners Win | SF Skyline | Harvard Lottery | LP Notice | Missouri v Biden | Noyo Harbor | Stood Still | Mendo Republicans | Trump Eternity | High Noon | 9/12 Reflections | Early Marmon | Found Bullet | Naked Ladies | Soviet Fear | My Hero

MOSTLY DRY WEATHER is expected to prevail all week. Patchy coastal drizzle will be possible today through this evening as a weak front pushes onshore. Temperatures are forecast to remain near normal today through Tuesday, followed by a warm up Wednesday through Friday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Clear skies & 48F this Monday morning on the coast. The forecast has changed since yesterday from a bit windy & clear to less wind & the usual morning fog then clearing routine. Hectic. Otherwise there is nothing of note in the 10 day forecast currently.

SUPERVISOR HASCHAK:

Congratulations to our State Senator Mike McGuire. Senator McGuire was voted to be the next Senate President Pro Tem. This powerful position leading the Senate will help Mendocino County, the North Coast, and the State of California. Senator McGuire has been a tireless advocate for Mendocino County. He has increased funding and resources for CalFire, housing, and Career and Technical Education programs at Mendocino College, ensured that US Cellular provides appropriate service in Covelo, and provided funding for Type 6 fire engines for the smaller fire departments in northern Mendocino and Southern Humboldt counties. He has always been helpful when needed.

Richard Wilson of Covelo passed away in August. Richard was a real asset to the community, County, and State. As Director of the California Department of Forestry for a decade, he was able to harness his connections with Governor Reagan to stop the damming of Round Valley. Richard was instrumental in stopping bad ideas and making life better in the Covelo area. He tirelessly worked to protect the environment, foster good relations between tribal and non-tribal people, and envision a positive future for the County. Richard Wilson will certainly be missed and it will take the efforts of many to continue his legacy.

County staff have decided to postpone a strike as negotiations continue. The State Controller Malia Cohen is performing an audit of the County’s finances. The Board and SEIU 1021 requested this of her office due to frustration at not being able to get timely and accurate financial reports.

The Office of Emergency Services is holding a series of resilience meetings. Community input will be used to determine which resilience projects to pursue for grant funding. In the north County, meetings will be held in Willits 9/6, Covelo 9/16, and Leggett 9/18.

Talk with the Supervisor is the 2nd Thursday of the month at 10:00 at the Brickhouse Coffee in Willits. I am available by email haschakj@mendocinocounty.org or phone 707-972-4214.

ANDERSON VALLEY SPORTS: The football game vs. Laytonville will not be rescheduled for this evening. Our next contest will be this coming THURSDAY against the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. Then we will be HOME at the APPLE BOWL for Fair!!

BRUCE BRODERICK: I think it would be interesting to start a group that was dedicated to the history and actions of Braxton Bragg. Maybe the Braxton Bragg Preservation Society. It's functions could be to have parade floats with Bragg waving to the crowds and maybe a gallows at the back of the float. Possibly a public drive to change the name of Main St to Braxton Bragg Blvd. And of course to honor all of the businesses that have Ft. Bragg Forever signs and possibly start a monthly Braxton Bragg Award ceremony that is given out at the Public input portion of City council meetings for the official or citizen that most reflects the views and ideals of Braxton Bragg. Outside news organizations could be called upon to report on the activities surrounding the Braxton Bragg Preservation Society. There are many other activities that could be initiated. Point is, it could bring the attitudes out of the dog whistle arena and bring to public view the attitudes that seem to go far beyond generational.

BIG TREES, NAME-CHANGE FOES, STIR UP PAUL BUNYAN DAYS IN FORT BRAGG

Once was the day when the Mendocino 4th of July Parade was controversial, and the Labor Day Paul Bunyan Days parade was staid and old-fashioned. But this year the Mendocino parade became a G-rated event for kids, and history stirred debate at the Fort Bragg parade, especially afterwards on social media. …

mendovoice.com/2023/09/big-trees-name-change-foes-stir-up-paul-bunyan-days-in-fort-bragg/

FROM BRAXTON TO BILLY

To the Editor,

I know that it's really none of my business, living as I do way out here in Colorado, but here's an idea that might merit some consideration in the interests of cost-saving, face-saving, and general harmony. 

Maybe the Fort Bragg City Council can be persuaded to pass a resolution renaming the city Fort Bragg in honor of pop singer Billy Bragg. Those folks who have lived in the town for a long time and have become used to the name and like it won't have to have their equilibrium disrupted. The city wouldn't need to go to unnecessary expense to change signs, stationary, etc. And best of all, Fort Bragg won't be named for Braxton Bragg anymore.

Michael DeLang 

Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado

BUDDY BLANKENSHIP: A story and a question. 

Last time that we were here was several years ago. Tip Top Tavern, Fort Bragg, sitting at the bar around 10 AM. Having a great time, and noticed everyone there with us seemed old and had long gray hair. Then we realized that we were old and had long gray hair! Always a great time!

I can't figure out the status of this place. Closed for good? If anyone knows please chime in. Thanks!

MENDOCINO COUNTY PENSION FUND POSTS 8.3% RETURN

by Palash Ghosh

Mendocino County Employees Retirement Association, Ukiah, returned a net 8.3% for the fiscal year ended June 30.

The yearly performance was slightly above the benchmark return of 8.2%, according to a quarterly investment report issued in conjunction with board meeting on Aug. 16.

For the three-, five-, seven- and 10-year periods ended June 30, the $664 million MCERA returned a net 8.8%, 6.7%, 8.3% and 7.6% respectively, compared with benchmark returns of 8.1%, 7.1%, 8.1% and 7.8%.

In fiscal 2022, MCERA returned a net -9.7%, compared with benchmark return of -8.2%.

By asset class, in the most recent fiscal year the top performer was domestic equity, which returned a net 17.6%, followed by international equity, at net 14.2%, infrastructure at a net 9.7%, and domestic fixed income, which edged up a net 0.4%. Domestic real estate was the worst performer, dropping a net 12.7%.

As of June 30, MCERA's actual asset allocation was 36.4% domestic equities, 23.9% international equities, 19.5% domestic fixed income, 12.2% real estate, 7.8% infrastructure and the remainder in cash.

(Pensions & Investments)

THE PLANE SPOTTING LADY OF 1942

by Donna Pardini

At 7.30 on the morning of January 21, 1942, Mrs. Edna Wallach of Bell Valley pulled on a coat and, raising an umbrella over her head, stepped outside to check the damage the two day storm was doing to her garden. It was still raining hard and the wind was so strong it blew the umbrella wrong side out. Mrs. Wallach, turning back to the house, had just stepped onto the porch when she heard something above the roar of the wind. She looked up and passing very low over the house was a huge airplane, so low in fact, that Mrs. Wallach could see the position of the various colored lights and even the lights glowing inside the plane.

Edna Wallach was a certified plane spotter, having taken on the job December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. She continued on the job until the war was over and, though she logged over 30 pages of plane spottings in her official book, the plane that barely topped the hill behind the house on that moming was the most dramatic if tragic moment of her long and dilligent career.

Mrs. Wallach’s first thought on seeing the huge plane overhead, which tumed out to be a Navy Clipper, once a Pan American civilian passenger plane called the Phillipine Clipper, was that as low as it was it couldn't possibly clear the mountain between Boonville and Ukiah. The phone lines were down due to the storm so Mrs. Wallach wrote down all the information she had — size and description of the plane, direction it was heading, etc. — and managed to get it to Piggy Hogan, a member of the highway crew who in tum turned it over to James Busch, District Attomey of Mendocino County.

For some reason, whether the informetion was not reported immediately or the goverment sources were unsure of its validity, it was several days before planes were sent over the area to search for the wreckage.

The Clipper en route from Honolulu to San Francisco was fogged out of the bay and told to either head for San Diego or Clear Lake in Lake County. There were reports of a plane over the lake and that was the first area searched. Planes flew over Bell Valley and the surrounding hills for one day without spotting anything. But Mrs. Wallach said they were too high to see anything. She begged people to walk back in and search the area as she had had a dream in which she saw the wreckage of a plane and knew in her mind just where it was. One pilot decided to make another search and just as the sun was setting, it was he who spotted the sun’s rays reflecting off a piece of aluminum.

Edna and Pearl Hutsell were watching the search plane and saw it tip its wings three times. “They found it,” Edna said. And they had. Just where she said it would be. The wreckage was lying almost exactly as she had seen it in her dream in the area of Big Basin near the old hunting camp.

Now came the armed forces by the droves. Because the plane was carrying nine service members in addition to its civilian crew of ten, and because some of the victims had been carrying top secret data, the Ukiah-Boonville road was cordoned off and only authorized personnel were allowed in the area. When the bodies were finally removed from the wreckage, local help was enlisted and pack horses belonging to Cat Tarwater, Kent Wallach, Max, Vernon and Fred Rawles and even a pony that belonged to young Frank Wallach, Edna's son, were used to bring them out to the main road.

Among the victims was one woman, a Lieutonant Adna O. Morrow, a nurse, who was being sent heme trom Hawaii because of illness. Also aboard was Rear Admiral Robert H. English, Commander of the entire submarine force of the United States Pacific fleet. Admiral English was on his way to meet with President Roosevelt and his briefcase contained much of the secret information that was aboard the plane.

Later when Miss Blanche Brown and a group of her students were exploring the site, one of the boys found a black box containing micro-film. Miss Brown tumed it over to the Navy at Mare Island and, though it was never verified, it was believed to have contained top secret information also. This discovery led to another search of the area by government officials who never disclosed whether or not anything else was found.

Mrs. Wallach suffered for days with the thought that someone might have survived the wreck and was lying out there while the authorities made up their minds whether or not her report was authentic. Watches on two of the victims however, both stopped at 7:30 am., the time of impact, provided proof that all of the victims were killed instantly. A purse belonging to Nurse Morrow was found and contained her watch which was still in working order.

Later, Jack June found a 1927 class ring with an inscription on it and he was able to retum it to the victim's wife who lived in Virginia. Eventually, the government had the wreckage site dynamited and Alex Willis was a member of the crew that did the job.

Mrs. Wallach received phone calls from as far away as New York and has in her possession many letters commending her for her fine work, including one from the President's office requesting her attendance at a hearing in San Francisco. 

Mrs Wallach was asked at the time never to divulge anything that took place at the hearing and she hasn't done so to this day, although she says she has made several people angry by her refusal to do so.

District Attomey Busch spoke of Edna Wallach as “the most devoted and faithful of observers” in a time when people all over the United States were at their observation posts in the same service of their country. Most thankfully, without the same dramatic results.

In 1970, 28 years after that fateful moming, Mrs. Wallach had a visitor at her home. It was a lady and her 28 year old son who had been born at the time of the plane crash preventing his mother from coming up here or attending her husband’s funeral. Needless to say, the young man never saw his father.

Almost every year on the 21st of January, someone visits Edna at her Bell Valley home in search of memories of someone who lost their life in that last tragic flight of the Philippine Clipper that lost its way in a storm and crashed against a hillside in Mendocino County.

(From Donna Pardini’s ‘An Anderson Valley Love Story,’ 1980)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, September 10, 2023

ALEGANDRO CIBRIAN-ROMERO, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, resisting, probation revocation.

MONICA LEACH, Ukiah. DUI while on probation, probation revocation.

ZACHARY LIGON, Ukiah. Suspended license for DUI.

SERGIO PALACIO-HERNANDEZ, Spanaway, Washington/Ukiah. DUI.

ALESHIA TUTTLE, Ukiah. Criminal threats, resisting.

ALEJANDRO YANEZ, Fort Bragg. DUI.

ELENA YANEZ-GONZALEZ, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, resisting.

KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON

If you are behind, here's some Help with your energy bill: September 2, 2023 - SAN FRANCISCO – The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), in ongoing affordability efforts, has directed Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Gas Company to introduce a 24-month payment plan option for residential customers who are 60 days behind on their bills and not currently enrolled in a payment plan.

The CPUC’s latest initiative aligns with its ongoing efforts to address disconnection rates across California’s electric and natural gas investor-owned utilities, while simultaneously enhancing the reconnection process. Under the new 24-month payment plan, customers will have the flexibility to manage their bills, allowing for up to two missed payments before disconnection. Moreover, utilities are now mandated to provide customers with notice of a missed payment via text message or email prior to disconnection.

“This decision addresses the need for essential natural gas and electric services at a time when ratepayers are still rebounding from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Commissioner Darcie L. Houck, who is assigned to the proceeding. “With the COVID payment plans coming to an end soon, the 24-month payment plan provides ratepayers the opportunity to continue paying off their past due balances and maintain their utility services. This also helps to further the goal of lowering disconnection rates and avoiding the costs of reconnections.”

“The arrearages payment plans approved by the CPUC today will help customers avoid disconnections while allowing them to catch up on what they owe,” said Commissioner Genevieve Shiroma. “It’s important that we continue these essential programs that are helping utility customers maintain their service while staying current on their bills. I appreciate these updates to the program.”

The decision also extends the Arrearage Management Payment Plan program, originally introduced in June 2020, until October 1, 2026. To optimize program implementation, utilities are required to engage in collaborative discussions with involved parties to identify best practices.

Further demonstrating its commitment to consumers, the CPUC has granted utilities the authority to conduct a comprehensive Medical Baseline study. This study will inform proposals for new enrollment goals over the next five years and medical discounts on non-tiered rates. The decision also outlines guidelines for updating the Medical Baseline study regularly

49ERS CRUSH STEELERS 30-7 to open new NFL season on a dominating note

by Eric Branch

Pittsburgh — The early evidence strongly suggests the San Francisco 49ers won’t be starting slowly in 2023.

The team that has stumbled out of the gate the previous two seasons offered every indication they intend to maraud their way through the first half of this season and beyond. The 49ers opened the curtain on a year stuffed with Super Bowl expectations Sunday by romping past the Steelers in a 30-7 win.

The 49ers began 3-5 in 2021, 3-4 in 2022. And their slow starts cost them home-field advantage in seasons that ended with road losses in the NFC Championship Game. On Sunday, however, their performance only reinforced the belief that this season will end with them ending that 29-year title drought.

Consider: They led 20-0 and were outgaining the Steelers 233-1 with 1:43 left in the second quarter.

Yes, Week 1 can produce wild overreactions. But the star-studded 49ers resembled a complete team in a complete dismantling of Pittsburgh, which was a 2½-point underdog after winning six of their final seven games in 2022.

The 49ers gained 393 yards, averaged 6.1 yards per play and scored on five of their six full drives. And their defense dimmed the Steelers’ optimism after their first-string offense scored on all five preseason possessions and second-year QB Kenny Pickett posted a perfect passer rating. On Sunday, Pittsburgh was limited to 12 first downs and 181 yards in the first 54 minutes, and the 49ers had two interceptions and five sacks.

The 49ers did so without a significant contribution form All-Pro pass rusher Nick Bosa (two tackles, one QB hit), who played four days after he ended a 43-day contract holdout that ended with a five-year, $170 million deal.

Quarterback Brock Purdy, playing six months to the day that he had elbow surgery, quieted any talk that his rookie year was some fluky fairy tale. The last pick in last year’s draft outclassed his counterpart, Pickett, the first QB selected in 2022. Purdy completed 18 of 29 passes for 220 yards with two touchdowns (111.3 passer rating) and made NFL history: He became the first QB to win his first six regular-season starts while throwing multiple touchdowns in each game. 

Purdy’s supporting cast wasn’t shabby. All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey had 151 yards on 22 carries and helped end any remaining suspense with a 65-yard touchdown run that gave the 49ers a 27-7 lead less than a minute into the third quarter. Meanwhile, wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk (8 catches, 129 yards, 2 touchdowns) made cornerback Patrick Peterson pay for predicting before the game that he’d pick Purdy because the 49ers offense had certain “tells.”

First, Aiyuk was all alone for an 8-yard scoring catch that gave the 49ers a 7-0 lead after he caused Peterson to stumble with a spin move. Next: Aiyuk made a toe-tapping circus catch in the corner of the end zone despite blanket coverage from Peterson that provided a 17-0 cushion in the second quarter.

Purdy had said “we’ll see” when told of Peterson’s prediction Thursday. And another 49ers wideout saw to it that Peterson’s nightmare didn’t end in the first half. On McCaffrey’s 65-yard scamper down the left sideline, Ray-Ray McCloud blocked Peterson for the final 20 yards, nearly driving him into the end zone.

The 49ers couldn’t have scripted a better start.

The Steelers’ game-opening, three-and-out drive ended with a sack by pass rusher Drake Jackson, one of his three sacks to match his rookie-season total. And the 49ers responded with a seven-play, 54-yard march that finished forcefully: The 49ers had gains of 11, 9 and 17 yards before the possession was capped by Purdy’s first scoring pass to Aiyuk.

Three plays after that score: Pickett heaved a deep sideline pass that cornerback Charvarius Ward intercepted. The takeaway set up a 25-yard drive that ended with a 41-yard field goal by Jake Moody, giving the 49ers a 10-0 lead just over 10 minutes into the game.

It was a strong sign that after the 49ers finished the 2022 season without a healthy QB in their 24-point NFC Championship Game loss in Philadelphia, they would start the new campaign in the same state with a completely different vibe.

* * *

49ers Stomp The Steelers To Start Their ‘Strut For Six’ Toward Super Bowl

by Michael Silver

Pittsburgh — Last January, the San Francisco 49ers left Pennsylvania in a stunned and battered state. Their Super Bowl dreams and their quarterback’s ulnar collateral ligament had both been ripped to shreds, setting them up for a long, loud, angst-ridden offseason.

On Sunday, the Niners reappeared in the Keystone State, barging into the stadium formerly known as Heinz Field with the subtlety of a sumo wrestler crushing an overly ripe tomato. They took out their frustrations on the Pittsburgh Steelers, bludgeoning them by a 30-7 margin, and made a statement that resonated from coast to coast — even in Philadelphia, home of the reigning NFC champion Eagles, who created this crisis in the first place.

Call it the Strut for Six.

The crisis is officially over. Brock Purdy’s arm looks great, especially when targeting wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, who looks like a burgeoning star. The post-DeMeco Ryans defense is as punishing and relentless as usual. Head coach Kyle Shanahan, as a game-planner and play-caller, is as locked in as ever. Defensive end Nick Bosa is back to wreak havoc, and second-year edge rusher Drake Jackson — not a misprint — had two sacks in the game’s first 17 minutes, and three overall.

And get this: Maligned rookie kicker Jake Moody — at least on this day — was money.

Granted, it’s only one game. It’s possible the Steelers, who won six of their last seven last season to finish 9-8 and trigger some enhanced expectations, aren’t all that great.

Yet for a team that has gotten off to slow starts in each of the previous two regular seasons and generated a lot of noise the past few months — from Purdy’s uncertain recovery from elbow surgery to quarterback Trey Lance’s banishment to Dallas to Moody’s preseason struggles to Bosa’s protracted holdout — this was a hell of a contrast.

“For the team, it’s unbelievable,” Bosa said afterward as we stood near the 49ers’ locker-room entrance. “We’ve had rough starts lately, and it’s good to get after it from the get-go. Hopefully, that roll that we got on toward the end of last year, we can get on right away.”

This was also a message to the rest of the football world: That 12-game winning streak that brought the 49ers to the brink of a Super Bowl appearance last season was no fluke. Nor is Purdy, who can still dice apart a defense and whose 19-yard pass to Aiyuk with 13:30 left in the second quarter (their second scoring hookup of the day) was simply a work of art.

A lot can happen over the course of a season, including injuries and ill-timed bounces and officiating inequities, but man, what a beginning. As currently constituted, these Niners don’t appear to have any weaknesses.

Aiyuk (eight catches, 129 yards, two TDs) has now entered the Pro Bowl-caliber weapon chat, joining fellow receiver Deebo Samuel, running back Christian McCaffrey, fullback Kyle Juszczyk and tight end George Kittle.

Defensively, middle linebacker Fred Warner is already in midseason monster mode. Jackson, a disappointment as a rookie second-round selection a year ago, has suddenly become a playmaker.

Cornerback Charvarius (Mooney) Ward picked off a Kenny Pickett pass seven minutes into the game, setting an assertive tone in the secondary. Later, Talanoa Hufanga — in the old stomping grounds of his mentor, Hall of Famer Troy Polamalu — intercepted a Pickett pass (tipped by Warner), raced down the left sideline and audaciously pitched the ball in stride to fellow safety Tashaun Gipson, though it was ruled to have been a forward lateral.

And what of the Niners’ controversial third-round pick in 2023? Moody, in a notoriously tough stadium for kickers, shook off a rough August and delivered, going 3-for-3 on field goals and making all three of his extra points.

How brutal was this beatdown? With 1:33 left in the first half, San Francisco led 20-0 and had outgained its hosts by a total of 233 yards to 1 — roughly the ratio of bars to vegan restaurants in Pittsburgh.

At that point, it was all over but the obligatory blaring of Styx’s “Renegade” during a selected second-half timeout. Alas, the stadium PA operator chose not to play it at all.

“We didn’t get f------ ‘Renegade! ’” Juszczyk complained afterward. “I’ve been telling guys about it all week. It’s the best thing in the NFL. Major letdown.”

Upon further review, “Pieces of Eight” would have been a more appropriate choice — in reference to Pickett’s jersey number, and the manner in which the Steve Wilks-coordinated Niners defense had torn him up.

As for the 49ers’ second-year quarterback? Well, he looks Purdy, Purdy good, surgically reattached elbow ligament and all. For those who were understandably worried about his swift and seamless recovery, or uncertain that the seventh-round selection could replicate last year’s fairy-tale run — well, he seems just as good as he was leading up to last year’s NFC Championship Game in Philly, if not better.

He’s got plenty of swag, too, as evidenced by the flashy first-down signal he gave following an 18-yard scramble midway through the fourth quarter.

Purdy (19-for-29, 220 yards, two TDs, no interceptions) had his reasons. Last Thursday, Steelers cornerback Patrick Peterson predicted on the “All Things Covered” podcast that he would intercept a pass from the young quarterback, insisting that the 49ers had pre-snap giveaways.

“We’ll see,” Purdy responded, who as a kid in suburban Phoenix had grown up watching Peterson star for the Arizona Cardinals.

On Sunday, here’s what we saw: Peterson got punked.

It began 5½ minutes into the game, on 1st-and-goal from the Pittsburgh 8-yard line. Purdy calmly sat in the pocket and grooved a touchdown pass to Aiyuk, who had juked Peterson so badly that the veteran cornerback slipped to the grass.

Two drives later, on 2nd-and-12 from the Steelers’ 19, Purdy lofted a perfectly placed spiral down the right sideline to Aiyuk, who was blanketed by Peterson. It didn’t matter: Aiyuk reached up and outmuscled him to secure the football, giving the Niners a 17-0 lead and pilfering the game’s remaining suspense.

“That was a dope play,” Purdy told me afterward.

The Niners weren’t done with Peterson: On their second play from scrimmage in the second half, McCaffrey took a handoff from Purdy, drifted left, hit a hole, spun, bounced outside to the left sideline and raced 65 yards for a touchdown and a 27-7 lead. During the run’s latter stages Peterson, the lone defender with a shot at McCaffrey, got turned around and absolutely manhandled by receiver Ray-Ray McCloud, who was blocking downfield.

Not since Anthony Smith guaranteed a victory over Tom Brady and the Patriots 16 years ago has a Steelers defensive back been so conspicuously smacked down. And yes, I just tangentially compared Brock Purdy to the pride of Serra High. It was that kind of Sunday.

Purdy said he and Peterson had a friendly conversation after the game, but really, what was there to say? In the locker room, a few of Purdy’s teammates had some fun with the Interception That Wasn’t. “He thought (he’d get an interception),” Ward said of Peterson, laughing. Added Juszczyk: “I feel like he makes a lot of promises.”

Disclaimer: Not every Niners game will be this breezy. To reach their desired destination and hoist a sixth Lombardi Trophy, they’ll have to gut out wins and show their collective grit and fight through a ton of adversity.

That said, their Strut for Six has begun in earnest. Judging from the early returns, it’s real and spectacular.

(SF Chronicle)

NOT FAIR

Editor,

Randall Kennedy, writing recently about affirmative action points out that the practice was used only at elite institutions such as Harvard, where there are many more applicants than there are places. In the UK, too, most universities can admit the majority of applicants who meet the minimal entrance requirements, but Oxford and Cambridge in particular have many more applicants than they have places to offer.

How should this problem be addressed?

I would argue that the solution lies in random selection. An institution like Harvard should set minimal entrance requirements. There would of course be many more applicants than available places. The lucky candidates would then be selected by some random process. The great advantage of this method is that it is completely blind to differences in class, gender or ethnic origin. It is also less likely to breed resentment among unsuccessful candidates than other methods, which inevitably arouse suspicions of unfair discrimination of one kind or another. The use of random selection for entrance to elite institutions may strike some as unrealistic, but it has in fact been used very successfully for medical school admissions in the Netherlands for more than thirty years.

Donald Gillies

London

IN MISSOURI V. BIDEN INTERNET CENSORSHIP CASE, A WIN AND A LOSS

A key part of a court order in a major Internet censorship case is reinstated, but other parts, perhaps more important, are vacated.

by Matt Taibbi

Back on August 10, in New Orleans, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals met to hear oral arguments in Missouri v. Biden, the landmark Internet censorship case that at the time appeared on a certain collision course with the Supreme Court. From what I saw in court, the hearing seemed to play out disastrously for the federal government, with appellate judges comparing the Biden White House to the mafia. 

The issue was Judge Terry Doughty’s sweeping July 4th injunction barring social media censorship. Doughty saw an emergency, what he called “arguably… the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” and took a big advance bite out of the power of government agencies and partnerships to meddle with Internet platforms. The appeals court was charged with deciding exactly how many of Doughty’s teeth to leave in the defendants’ hind parts. 

On Friday, almost exactly a month later, the appellate judges handed down their decision. On the surface it’s a huge win for the plaintiffs, especially on the broad-brush question of whether or not the First Amendment is being violated on a mass scale by the executive branch. But further down in the ruling, there were disurbing passages for the plaintiffs.

One of the money passages early on:

“We find that the White House, acting in concert with the Surgeon General’s office, likely (1) coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences, and (2) significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”

This passage is important because it validates the core theory of the case brought by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana: that the executive branch is coercing tech platforms into censorship decisions using the implied threat of regulatory consequences. 

The judges were not subtle on this point. In describing White House conduct they brought up a notorious First Amendment case, Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, in which the Rhode Island Commission to Encourage Morality sent “a letter to a book distributor with a list of verboten books and requested that they be taken off the shelves.” As in that case, judges said, Biden White House calls to firms like Facebook demanding action “ASAP” on certain accounts were “phrased virtually as orders.” 

Moreover appellate judges were sufficiently concerned that they upheld the standard required to declare an injunction pending resolution of the case. Not only does that mean they believe plaintiffs are “likely to succeed on the merits,” but that they’ve “demonstrated ongoing harm from past social-media censorship and a likelihood of future censorship.” 

That four federal judges have essentially assessed the evidence in the same way is an ominous sign for defendants, above whom sits a Supreme Court probably leaning in a similar direction. One such defendant is the FBI, also slapped hard, with judges saying the Bureau was guilty of the same violations as the White House, writing, “the FBI… urged the platforms to take down content” and “we find that those requests were coercive.”

This decision dances on the government’s prior argument that the Doughty ruling caused the government and its partner defendants “irreparable harm” by preventing them from “speaking on matters of public concern” and “working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.” Judges didn’t buy the idea that White House emails saying things like “keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same… genre” and instructing a platform to “remove [an] account immediately” constituted “working with social media.” They called it coercion and saw irreparable harm traveling the other way.

For all that, there are elements of this decision that were unnerving. I warned a month ago that “one never knows how judges will rule, even when they appear to show emotion and inclination in court.” True to form, this decision had a lot that was unnerving in the fine print. 

As one of a handful of people who’s read communications between tech companies and government in bulk (including many that haven’t been made public), I thought the scariest behaviors revealed so far involved, in no particular order, the FBI, the White House, the Department of Homeland Security (and its sub-unit, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA), and the State Department, via the Global Engagement Center. A crucial part of the case seemed to involve the Election Integrity Partnership, set up by Stanford University in connection with CISA in 2020, rerun in 2022 and reportedly set to run again in 2024 (more on that soon). 

Not only did judges rule that CISA’s content-flagging, which we saw in volume in the Twitter Files, was conduct that fell on the permitted “attempts to convince” spectrum as opposed to “attempts to coerce,” they removed EIP-type projects from the injunction. This is important because the EIP is likely to be a central vehicle for monitoring of 2024 election speech:

“The fifth prohibition—which bars the officials from “collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project… Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group…” may implicate private, third-party actors that are not parties in this case and that may be entitled to their own First Amendment protections… This provision cannot stand at this juncture.”

Judges in the end removed all but one of Doughty’s “teeth”:

“We therefore VACATE prohibitions one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, and ten of the injunction.”

That leaves provision six, which bars the officials from “threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech.” 

Even more ominously, the appellate court noted that although its “standard practice” would be to send the injunction back to Doughty and have him “tailor” provision six more narrowly, judges said “this is far from a standard case” and did it themselves. I read this (and one lawyer I spoke with this weekend agreed) as a not-so-subtle suggestion that judges after the “overbroad” July 4th injunction didn’t trust Doughty to clean up his own mess. 

After the last hearing, it appeared that almost no matter how this appeals court ruled, this litigation was likely headed for the Supreme Court soon. Now, it’s unclear. It’s is a fascinating legal case, with both sides suddenly faced with what seem like complex strategic questions. 

I JUST STOOD STILL

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

People ask how a once open-minded, tolerant, caring liberal Democrat such as I could possibly become a rigid, ignorant hate-filled conservative. 

Tell Us O Tell Us how it came to pass that the same man who went to anti-war protests in Chicago, grooved out at Woodstock, voted for McGovern, helped elect Dan Hamburg, smoked marijuana, wore a pukka shell necklace and emitted the rich aroma of patchouli oil as he waited in line for food stamps could possibly turn into a stupid, brain-dead conservative. How? How?!? 

Answer: I just stood still.

In 50 years I’ve not much changed my basic views. I still believe most traditional Democrat party principles, but during that time span Democrats turned into Progressives and can hardly wait to be Socialists.

I watched the party I grew up with drift off in waves of noise and anger. I’m the old fuddy-duddy who believes in hard work, good schools, racial integration and respect for our country’s history. Democrats believe none of the four and think Whose Life Matters is based purely on skin color. 

Other new causes, new thinking, new principles:

1) Democrat ideology today embraces the fundamental right of six year old girls to share public bathrooms with grown men, an absurdity that would have been laughed at in 1968 or 2008. 

2) Demos sneer at our nation’s greatest writers and philosophers as “dead white males” and strip their names from college buildings, their works from campus libraries. Many hate our ancestors, believe human frailties are sins and crimes, and remain silent when statues (Abe Lincoln, Jesus Christ, Thomas Jefferson, Mother Mary) are vandalized and toppled.

(NOTE: The same standards do not apply to Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Meade, Joe Hill, Eleanor Roosevelt or Oprah.)

3) Democrats hate Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, but love Big Government and can’t wait for Big (Free) Medical, with all the usual joys and efficiencies for which state-controlled services are famous. It’ll be like going to DMV but with waiting rooms full of dying people, not just defeated ones.

4) Democrats think college professors are smarter than car mechanics and social workers are more highly evolved than plumbers. They think a yard sign boasting a fashionable viewpoint makes you the nicest person on the block.

5) They once believed in astrology, tarot and the healing power of crystals, and now think cow flatulence is destroying the planet, gender is a fluid concept, and Joe Biden is smart, sharp and capable.

5) Los Demos think tolerance is a bludgeon to be wielded only by liberals, but are themselves intolerant of cigarette smokers or guys wearing red MAGA caps.

6) You know you live in a city run by Democrats if they give out free syringes but ban plastic straws.

7) It isn’t ignorant right-wingers encouraging children who are too young to get a tattoo, buy beer or know when it’s bed time to decide to permanently maim their sex organs via surgery and drugs. Are you OK with 12-year olds deciding to change gender? Were you also in favor 40 years ago?

8) Democrats censor opinions different from their own, whether on college campuses where conservative professors and guest speakers are forbidden, or in major media outlets like the New York Times, CNN, etc.

9) Many Democrats don’t think Big Media is biased because they never see stories on CNN or in the New York Times about bias in the media.

10) Our Democrat friends think Americans are hopelessly and forever doomed to be racist, sexist, homophobic and stupid. To combat a toxic society they invented micro-aggressions, safe spaces, wokeism, trigger warnings and soy milk. 

11) Democrats want us to think that with lots more tax money they’ll “heal the planet” but can’t balance the budget, fix their homeless mess, halt robo-calls or get the Cleveland Browns to the Super Bowl.

All these new ideologies would be alien to Democrats from long ago, like way, way back in the 1990s. Who thinks JFK, RFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern or Bill Clinton would be welcome in today’s Democratic Party?

So I stood and watched as my party abandoned its principles. It left me a lonely, housebroken liberal, but I soon staggered into the warm embrace of familiar ideology among conservatives.

It’s a comfortable fit except among Ukiah friends who are Democrats, which is all Ukiah friends. They accuse me of apostasy and once assembled an email mob to cancel the TWK column from the Daily Journal. (There’s never pressure from rightwing crazies to push EJ Dionne, Crispin Hollinshead or John Arteaga from the opinion pages. Nor should there be.) 

I’m back among people I’m happy with: Gracious, smart, polite, well-educated, well-humored, and proud of America’s history despite the warts and missteps. Our ancestors were merely human, working and striving to build a more perfect union. Sometimes they made mistakes. Just like you and me.

America is the great Melting Pot (Dems once agreed) and the most diverse, tolerant nation on earth. We’ve consistently lifted our poorest immigrants to share the wealth our society has created. There are no immigrant caravans lining up to get into Venezuela.

And this: Fifty years ago dull, dumb Republicans wanted a strong military, lower taxes and smaller government. In 2023 they want to cut spending, reduce the size of government, and a strong military. 

HE WON'T GO AWAY

Editor: 

Kari Lake, the election denier from Arizona who no longer holds elected office, opined recently that Donald Trump will be president again because the American people want him to be president. The truth is the American people don’t want him to be president; some Republicans do. The American people ousted Trump back in 2020, with a little thing we call an election. The problem is he won’t go away, and some Republicans keep trying to force him down the American people’s throats.

Back in 2020 Trump could have accepted his loss, and in early 2021 he could have participated in a peaceful transfer of power, like all our previous presidents had. Instead, he called his followers to Washington, where he encouraged them to disrupt Congress, and then sent them home with loving words of comfort.

Had he acted as a mature leader, he would be free to run for reelection today without having any so-called interference from the Justice Department. He wouldn’t be under indictment for trying to overturn an election.

Ironically, Republicans are saying the American people should decide in 2024 if he should be our president. Didn’t we do that in 2020?

D.C. Galloway

Sebastopol

WHO SAW IT COMING?

by Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair (Sep. 12, 2001)

Tuesday’s onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor and the comparison is just. From the point of view of the assailants the attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon the targets.

The Pearl Harbor base containing America’s naval might was thought to be invulnerable, yet in half an hour 2000 were dead, and the cream of the fleet destroyed. This week, within an hour on the morning of September 11, security at three different airports was successfully breached, the crews of four large passenger jets efficiently overpowered, the cockpits commandeered, navigation coordinates reset.

In three of the four missions the assailants attained successes probably far beyond the expectations of the planners. As a feat of suicidal aviation the Pentagon kamikaze assault was particularly audacious, with eyewitness accounts describing the Boeing 767 skimming the Potomac before driving right through the low lying Pentagon perimeter, in a sector housing Planning and Logistics.

The two Trade Center Buildings were struck at what structural engineers say were the points of maximum vulnerability. The strength of the buildings derived entirely from the steel perimeter frame, designed — so its lead architect said only last week — to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. These buildings were struck full force last Tuesday morning by Boeing 737s, with fuel tanks fully loaded for the long flights to the West Coast. Within an hour of the impacts both buildings collapsed. By evening, a third 46-story Trade Center building had also crumbled.

Not in terms of destructive extent, but in terms of symbolic obliteration the attack is virtually without historic parallel, a trauma at least as great as the San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire.

There may be another similarity to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December of 1941 was known to US Naval Intelligence and to President Roosevelt. Last Tuesday, derision at the failure of US intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, “We don’t know anything here. We’re watching CNN too.” Are we to believe that the $30 billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world, produced nothing in the way of a warning? In fact Osama bin Laden, now prime suspect, said in an interview three weeks ago with Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Araby newspaper, that he planned “very, very big attacks against American interests.”

Here is bin-Laden, probably the most notorious Islamic foe of America on the planet, originally trained by the CIA, planner of other successful attacks on US installations such as the embassies in East Africa, carrying a $5 million FBI bounty on his head proclaiming the imminence of another assault, and US intelligence was impotent, even though the attacks must have taken months, if not years to plan, and even though CNN has reported that bin-Laden and his coordinating group al-Qa’ida had been using an airstrip in Afghanistan to train pilots to fly 767s.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when hijacking was a preoccupation, the possibility of air assaults on buildings such as the Trade Center were a major concern of US security and intelligence agencies. But since the 1980s and particularly during the Clinton-Gore years the focus shifted to more modish fears, such as bio-chemical assault and nuclear weapons launched by so-called rogue states. This latter threat had the allure of justifying the $60 billion investment in Missile Defense aka Star Wars. One of the biggest proponents of that approach was Al Gore’s security advisor, Leon Fuerth, who wailed plaintively amid Tuesday’s rubble that “In effect the country’s at war but we don’t have the coordinates of the enemy.”

But the lust for retaliation traditionally outstrips precision in identifying the actual assailant. By early evening on Tuesday America’s national security establishment were calling for a removal of all impediments on the assassination of foreign leaders. Led by President Bush, they were endorsing the prospect of attacks not just on the perpetrators but on those who might have harbored them. From the nuclear priesthood is coming the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a preemptive basis against the enemies of America.

The targets abroad will be all the usual suspects: rogue states, (most of which, like the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, started off as creatures of US intelligence). The target at home will of course be the Bill of Rights. Less than a week ago the FBI raided Infocom, the Texas-based web host for Muslim groups such as the Council on Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the Holy Land Foundation. Palestinians have been denied visas, and those in this country can, under the terms of the CounterTerrorism Act of the Clinton years, be held and expelled without due process. The explosions of Tuesday were not an hour old before terror pundits like Anthony Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were saying that these attacks had been possible “because America is a democracy,” adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be abandoned? What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies; ethnic profiling; another drive for a national ID card system.

Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America’s leaders. For most of the day the only Bush who looked composed and control in Washington was Laura, who happened to waiting to testify on Capitol Hill. Her husband gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Florida, then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing in at a base in Barksdale, Louisiana, where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of bring on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for an American president at time of national emergency is the Oval Office.

Other members of the cabinet were equally elusive. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has managed to avoid almost every site of crisis or debate, was once again absent from the scene, in Latin America. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remained invisible most of the day, even though it would have taken him only a few short steps to get to the Pentagon press room and make some encouraging remarks. When he did finally appear the substance of his remarks and his demeanor were even more banal and unprepossessing than those of his commander in chief. At no point did Vice President Cheney appear in public. The presidential contenders did expose themselves. John McCain curdled the air with threats against America’s foes, as did John Kerry, who immediately blamed bin-Laden and who stuck the knife firmly into CIA director George Tenet, citing Tenet as having told him not long ago that the CIA had neutralized an impending attack by bin-Laden.

Absent national political leadership, the burden of rallying the nation fell as usual upon the tv anchors, all of whom seem to have resolved early on to lower the emotional temper, though Tom Brokaw did lisp a declaration of War against Terror. 

Tuesday’s eyewitness reports of the collapse of the two Trade Center buildings were not inspired, at least for those who have heard the famous eyewitness radio reportage of the crash of the Hindenberg zeppelin in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937 with the anguished cry of the reporter, “Oh the humanity, the humanity.” Radio and tv reporters these days seem incapable of narrating an ongoing event with any sense of vivid language or dramatic emotive power.

The commentators were similarly incapable of explaining with any depth the likely context of the attacks; that these attacks might be the consequence of the recent Israeli rampages in the Occupied Territories that have included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians with the use of American aircraft; that these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against Iraq that have seen upward of a million children die; that these attacks might in part be a response to US cruise missile attacks on the Sudanese factories that had been loosely fingered by US intelligence as connected to bin-Laden.

In fact September 11 was the anniversary of George W. Bush’s speech to Congress in 1990, heralding war against Iraq. It was also the anniversary of the Camp David accords, which signaled the US buy-out of Egypt as any countervailing force for Palestinian rights in the Middle East. One certain beneficiary of the attacks is Israel. Polls had been showing popular dislike here for Israel’s recent tactics, which may have been the motivation for Colin Powell’s few bleats of reproof to Israel. We will be hearing no such bleats in the weeks to come, as Israel’s leaders advise America on how exactly to deal with Muslims. The attackers probably bet on that too, as a way of making the US’s support for Israeli intransigence even more explicit, finishing off Arafat in the process.

“Freedom,” said George Bush in Sarasota in the first sentence of his first reaction, “was attacked this morning by a faceless coward.” That properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all Tuesday’s mainstream political commentary. By contrast, the commentary on economic consequences was informative and sophisticated. Worst hit: the insurance industry. Likely outfall in the short-term: hiked energy prices, a further drop in global stock markets. George Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security Trust Funds to give more money to the Defense Department. That about sums it up. Three planes are successfully steered into three of America’s most conspicuous buildings and America’s response will be to put more money in missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy. 

J.F.K. ASSASSINATION WITNESS Breaks His Silence and Raises New Questions

by Peter Baker

He still remembers the first gunshot. For an instant, standing on the running board of the motorcade car, he entertained the vain hope that maybe it was just a firecracker or a blown tire. But he knew guns and he knew better. Then came another shot. And another. And the president slumped down.

For so many nights afterward, he relived that grisly moment in his dreams. Now, 60 years later, Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents just feet away from President John F. Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas, is telling his story in full for the first time. And in at least one key respect, his account differs from the official version in a way that may change the understanding of what happened in Dealey Plaza.

Mr. Landis has spent most of the intervening years fleeing history, trying to forget that unforgettable moment etched in the consciousness of a grieving nation. The memory of the explosion of violence and the desperate race to the hospital and the devastating flight home and the wrenching funeral with John Jr. saluting his fallen father — it was all too much, too torturous, so much so that Mr. Landis left the service and Washington behind.

Until finally, after the nightmares had passed at last, he could think about it again. And he could read about it. And he realized that what he read was not quite right, not as he remembered it. As it turns out, if his recollections are correct, the much-discussed “magic bullet” may not have been so magic after all.

His memory challenges the theory advanced by the Warren Commission that has been the subject of so much speculation and debate over the years — that one of the bullets fired at the president’s limousine hit not only Kennedy but Gov. John B. Connally Jr. of Texas, who was riding with him, in multiple places.

Mr. Landis’s account, included in a forthcoming memoir, would rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way. It may not mean any more than that. But it could also encourage those who have long suspected that there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, adding new grist to one of the nation’s enduring mysteries.

As with all things related to the assassination, of course, his account raises questions of its own. Mr. Landis remained silent for 60 years, which has fueled doubts even for his former Secret Service partner, and memories are tricky even for those sincerely certain of their recollections. A couple elements of his account contradict the official statements he filed with authorities immediately after the shooting, and some of the implications of his version cannot be easily reconciled to the existing record.

But he was there, a firsthand witness, and it is rare for new testimony to emerge six decades after the fact. He has never subscribed to the conspiracy theories and stresses that he is not promoting one now. At age 88, he said, all he wants is to tell what he saw and what he did. He will leave it to everyone else to draw conclusions.

“There’s no goal at this point,” he said in an interview last month in Cleveland, the first time he has talked about this with a reporter in advance of his book, “The Final Witness,” which will be published by Chicago Review Press on Oct. 10. “I just think it had been long enough that I needed to tell my story.”

What it comes down to is a copper-jacketed 6.5-millimeter projectile. The Warren Commission decided that one of the bullets fired that day struck the president from behind, exited from the front of his throat and continued on to hit Mr. Connally, somehow managing to injure his back, chest, wrist and thigh. It seemed incredible that a single bullet could do all that, so skeptics called it the magic bullet theory.

Investigators came to that conclusion partly because the bullet was found on a stretcher believed to have held Mr. Connally at Parkland Memorial Hospital, so they assumed it had exited his body during efforts to save his life. But Mr. Landis, who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, said that is not what happened.

In fact, he said, he was the one who found the bullet — and he found it not in the hospital near Mr. Connally but in the presidential limousine lodged in the back of the seat behind where Kennedy was sitting.

When he spotted the bullet after the motorcade arrived at the hospital, he said he grabbed it to thwart souvenir hunters. Then, for reasons that still seem fuzzy even to him, he said he entered the hospital and placed it next to Kennedy on the president’s stretcher, assuming it could somehow help doctors figure out what happened. At some point, he now guesses, the stretchers must have been pushed together and the bullet was shaken from one to another.

“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” Mr. Landis said. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.” A crowd was gathering. “This was all going on so quickly. And I was just afraid that — it was a piece of evidence, that I realized right away. Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear or get lost. So it was, ‘Paul, you’ve got to make a decision,’ and I grabbed it.’”

Mr. Landis theorizes that the bullet struck Kennedy in the back but for some reason was undercharged and did not penetrate deeply, therefore popping back out before the president’s body was removed from the limousine.

Mr. Landis has been reluctant to speculate on the larger implications. He always believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.

But now? “At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself,” he said. “Now I begin to wonder.” That is as far as he is willing to go.

A native of Ohio and son of a college sports coach, Mr. Landis does not come across as a swaggering security agent. He had to stretch to meet the 5-foot-8 height requirement when he joined the service, and could no longer do so. “I’m too little now,” he said, to make it in today’s agency. He is quiet and unassuming, dressed in a coat and tie for an interview, his gray hair neatly trimmed. He has a little trouble hearing and speaks softly, but his mind is clear and his recollections steady.

In recent years, he confided his story with several key figures, including Lewis C. Merletti, a former director of the Secret Service. James Robenalt, a Cleveland lawyer and author of several books of history, has deeply researched the assassination and helped Mr. Landis process his memories.

“If what he says is true, which I tend to believe, it is likely to reopen the question of a second shooter, if not even more,” Mr. Robenalt said. “If the bullet we know as the magic or pristine bullet stopped in President Kennedy’s back, it means that the central thesis of the Warren Report, the single-bullet theory, is wrong.” And if Mr. Connally was hit by a separate bullet, he added, then it seemed possible it was not from Oswald, who he argued could not have reloaded that fast.

Mr. Merletti, who has been friendly with Mr. Landis for a decade, was not sure what to think about his account. “I don’t know if that story’s true or not, but I do know that the agents that were there that day, they were tormented for years by what happened,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Merletti referred Mr. Landis to Ken Gormley, the president of Duquesne University and a prominent presidential historian, who helped him find an agent for his book. In an interview, Mr. Gormley said he was not surprised that a traumatized agent would come forward all these years later, comparing it to a dying declaration in legal cases.

“It’s very common as people get to the end of their lives,” Mr. Gormley said. “They want to make peace with things. They want to get on the table things they’ve been holding back, especially if it’s a piece of history and they want the record corrected. This does not look like a play by someone trying to get attention for himself or money. I don’t read it that way at all. I think he firmly believes this. Whether it fits together, I don’t know. But people can eventually figure that out.”

Mr. Landis’s account varies in a couple of respects from two written statements he filed in the week after the shooting. Aside from not mentioning finding the bullet, he reported hearing only two shots. “I do not recall hearing a third shot,” he wrote. Likewise, he did not mention going into the trauma room where Kennedy was taken, writing that he “remained outside by the door” when the first lady went in.

Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” a 1993 book that concluded that Oswald indeed killed Kennedy on his own, said he was dubious. While he did not question Mr. Landis’s sincerity, Mr. Posner said the story did not add up.

“People’s memories generally do not improve over time, and it is a flashing warning sign to me, about skepticism I have over his story, that on some very important details of the assassination, including the number of shots, his memory has gotten better instead of worse,” he said.

“Even assuming that he is accurately describing what happened with the bullet,” Mr. Posner added, “it might mean nothing more than we now know that the bullet that came out of Governor Connally did so in the limousine, not on a stretcher in Parkland where it was found.”

Mr. Landis said the reports he filed after the assassination included mistakes; he was in shock and had barely slept for five days as he focused on helping the first lady through the ordeal, he said, and not paying enough attention to what he submitted. He did not think to mention the bullet, he said.

It was not until 2014 that he realized that the official account of the bullet differed from his memory, he said, but he did not come forward then out of a feeling that he had made a mistake in putting it on the stretcher without telling anyone in that pre-C.S.I., secure-the-crime-scene era.

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Landis said. “I was afraid. I started to think, did I do something wrong? There was a fear that I might have done something wrong and I shouldn’t talk about it.”

Indeed, his partner, Clint Hill, the legendary Secret Service agent who clambered onto the back of the speeding limousine in a futile effort to save Kennedy, discouraged Mr. Landis from speaking out. “Many ramifications,” Mr. Hill warned in a 2014 email that Mr. Landis saved and shared last month.

Mr. Hill, who has set out his own account of what happened in multiple books and interviews, cast doubt on Mr. Landis’s version on Friday. “I believe it raises concerns when the story he is telling now, 60 years after the fact, is different than the statements he wrote in the days following the tragedy” and told in subsequent years, Mr. Hill said in an email. “In my mind, there are serious inconsistencies in his various statements/stories.”

Mr. Landis’s rendezvous with history began in the small town of Worthington, Ohio, north of Columbus. After college and a stint in the Ohio Air National Guard, he was working in a clothing store when a family friend described his job in the Secret Service. Intrigued, Mr. Landis joined in 1959 in the Cincinnati office, where he chased thieves who swiped Social Security checks out of mailboxes.

A year later, he was sent to Washington where he joined the protective detail for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s grandchildren. After Kennedy was elected, Mr. Landis, code named Debut because of his youth, was assigned to guard the new president’s children and later the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, alongside Mr. Hill. Because the first lady accompanied her husband to Dallas that fall day in 1963, Mr. Landis, then 28, was part of the motorcade, riding the rear of the right running board on the black Cadillac convertible, code named Halfback, just feet behind the presidential limousine.

At the first shot, Mr. Landis turned to look over his right shoulder in the direction of the sound but spotted nothing. Then he turned to the limousine and saw Kennedy raising his arms, evidently hit. Suddenly, Mr. Landis noticed that Mr. Hill had leapt off their follow-up car and was sprinting toward the limousine. Mr. Landis thought about doing the same but did not have an angle.

He said he heard a second shot that sounded louder and finally the fatal third shot that hit Kennedy in the head. Mr. Landis had to duck to avoid being splattered by flesh and brain matter. He knew instantly that the president was dead. Mr. Hill, now on the back of the limousine, turned back and confirmed it with a thumbs down.

Once they reached the hospital, Mr. Hill and Mr. Landis coaxed the distraught first lady to let go of her husband so he could be taken inside. After they exited the car, Mr. Landis noticed two bullet fragments in a pool of bright red blood. He fingered one of them but put it back.

That’s when he said he noticed the intact bullet in the seam of the tufted dark leather cushioning. He said he slipped it into his coat pocket and headed into the hospital, where he planned to give it to a supervisor, but in the confusion instinctively put it on Kennedy’s stretcher instead.

The hospital’s senior engineer later found it when he was moving Mr. Connally’s stretcher, by then empty, and bumped it against another stretcher in the hall, resulting in the bullet falling out.

The Warren Commission report said that it “eliminated President Kennedy’s stretcher as a source of the bullet” because the president remained on his stretcher while doctors tried to save his life and was not removed until his body was placed in a coffin.

Investigators determined that the bullet, designated Commission Exhibit 399, was fired by the same C2766 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. They concluded that the bullet passed through Kennedy, then entered Mr. Connally’s right shoulder, struck his rib, exited under his right nipple, continued through his right wrist and into his left thigh.

Doctors concurred that the single bullet could have caused all the damage. But the bullet was described as nearly pristine and had lost only one or two grains of its original 160 or 161 grains in weight, causing skeptics to doubt that it could have done all that the commission said it had. Still, ballistic experts using modern forensic techniques concluded at the 50th anniversary of the assassination that the single-bullet theory was perfectly plausible.

Mr. Landis said he was surprised that the Warren Commission never interviewed him, but assumed that his supervisors were protecting the agents, who had been out late the night before socializing (Mr. Landis until 5 a.m., although he insisted they were not drunk). “Nobody really asked me,” he said.

Many pictures of those days of mourning show Mr. Landis at Jacqueline Kennedy’s side as she endured the rituals of a presidential farewell. Night after night, those seconds of violence in Dallas kept replaying in his head, his own personal Zapruder film on an endless loop. “The president’s head exploding — I could not shake that vision,” he said. “Whatever I was doing, that’s all I was thinking about.”

With Mr. Landis and Mr. Hill still protecting her, the former first lady was in constant motion in the months afterward. “She’d be in the back seat sobbing and you’d want to say something but it wasn’t really our place to say anything,” Mr. Landis recalled.

After six months, he could not take it anymore and left the Secret Service. Haunted, he moved to Cape Cod in Massachusetts, then New York, then Ohio near Cleveland. For decades, he made a living in real estate and machine products and house painting, anything as long as it had nothing to do with protecting presidents.

He was generally aware of the conspiracy theories, yet never read a book about them, or the Warren Commission report for that matter. “I just paid no attention to that,” he said. “I just removed myself. I just felt I had been there. I had seen it, and I knew what I saw and what I did. And that’s all.”

He did a few interviews in 2010 and thereafter, but never mentioned finding the bullet. Then, in 2014, a local police chief he knew gave him a copy of “Six Seconds in Dallas,” a 1967 book by Josiah Thompson arguing that there were multiple shooters. Mr. Landis read it and believed the official account of the bullet was wrong.

That led to conversations with Mr. Merletti and Mr. Gormley and eventually, after many years, to his book.

It was not easy. As he finished the manuscript, he stared at the computer screen, broke down and cried uncontrollably. “I didn’t realize that I had so many suppressed emotions and feelings,” he said. “I just couldn’t stop. And that was just a huge emotional relief.”

(NY Times)

WHY THE RUSSIA/ASSASSINATION COVERUP?

Editor,

In her recent article, Deborah Friedell wonders why the fervently anti-communist J. Edgar Hoover didn’t publicly blame the Russians for being behind the Kennedy assassination, especially given Lee Hatvey Oswald’s clear connections with the Soviet regime. 

The answer is straightforward: fear of a nuclear confrontation. If Russia had been involved, it could have been taken as a declaration of war; public opinion would have demanded the strongest possible action and the US would have been compelled to make a military response. President Johnson “guided” the Warren Commission report into the assassination to avoid blaming the Russians: a lone-gunman assassin was much the safer option.

Sean McGlynn, University of Plymouth at Strode College Street

Somerset, England