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JFK Furious Over Pan Am Concorde Order In Declassified Phone Calls (Audio)
In 1963 Pan Am's legendary Juan Trippe did something that made John F Kennedy really, really mad (airchive.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
It's interesting to note in listening to this audio of the conversation between JFK and Dillion, his Treasury Secty, that Dillion says he didn't know Juan Tripp was buying Concordes. He continues this responses to JFK. But then JFK says the AP wire reports Tripp is buying. Then all of a sudden the Treasury Secty tells Kennedy Tripp isn't buying the Concordes, but rather options. JFK then says, "that's not what the AP wire report says...as JFK reads". Doug Dillion then replies that the AP wire is incorrect.......that he read the contract last week. Tripp merely placed options to buy. Wait a minute........earlier in the audio he said he didn't know about Tripp and Pan Am annoucing an option to buy 6 Concordes. Bottomline, the Secty did have knowledge. he lied. I see nothing has changed in Washington from 1963 to today. Bureaucrats can't tell the truth if their life depended on it.
One of the chief jobs of any subordinate is to keep the boss from being blindsided. Dillon failed miserably. Kennedy was probably more upset at reading it in the paper first. What is not on the recording is that he probably came to the same conclusion you did about Dillon, in that he was lying.
Correct preacher1. I believe they also call it "plausble deniability".
ROGO Plausible Deni ability means Unelected Officials Making Decisions that are not theirs to make. Inevitably they are always are controversial enough to keep from the men they serve, and from the people they effect. The punishment for this crap of "slapping of the hand" doesn't prevent it from repeatedly occurring either... is also an insult. At some Point..when a Leader, regardless of who he is or the Office he holds, has this Occur multiple times..it speaks poorly for their leadership style, and points to corruption within their ranks for their subordinates to act thinking this is what their leader REALLY wants. These ideas come from somewhere, and when it happens so many times it becomes a JOKE, people need to take a serious look at the agenda that is being pushed whether it is being Ordered from top down or nay...either way it is usually getting done either way.
Hear, hear!
I find it a little distressing so many of the postings on this aviation based forum seem to be as naive about the airline business, as Kennedy was showing himself to be. Any posting about Viet Nam is a red herring, at the time of this call, it was already a historical inevitability due to errors in foreign policy ever since WWII, JFK was only one player. This sequence of events (before after and during, yet all related to the development and demise of the Boeing 2707 program) had some significant Washington contributors, but was at it's core, a continuation of the dual to the death mentality between Juan Tripp, Howard Hughes, C.R.Smith, and Eddie Rickenbacker (Sorry guys I know picking on war heros is taboo. If it is any comfort I went to Viet Nam wearing crew wings). Those four men, set in stone a style and domain for airline competition, that has done grave damage to the airline industry, the aircraft manufacturing industry, and the public safety. Washington and the defense industry were all too eager to help, but the four horsemen of the airlines did it to themselves. Kennedy can rant all he wants, Juan was not paying attention. His focus at that time was on beating back C.R.Smith, finishing off Howard Hughes, and keeping Eddie in retirement. He firmly believed owning the fastest scheduled airliners in existence was the formula.