People who predicted Kennedy's assassination

[Jon Banks]

The Georgian Who Knew a Sniper Would Kill JFK

Who was Joseph Milteer?

Joseph Milteer (1902‐1974), of Quitman, GA, was a racist right‐wing extremist activist who hated
President Kennedy insanely and spent his life combating the Civil Rights movement. On Nov. 9, 1963, 13
days before the Kennedy assassination, Milteer had a lengthy conversation in a Miami, FL apartment
with a childhood friend, Willie Somersett, in the course of which Milteer told Somersett about a plot
that was afoot to assassinate JFK. Unknown to Milteer, Somersett, a secret informant for local Miami
police, was surreptitiously tape‐recording the conversation.

In that conversation Milteer confided that the killing of Kennedy “was in the working;” that the
president could be killed “[f]rom an office building with a high‐powered rifle;” that the rifle could be
“disassemble[d]” to get it into the building; and that “[t]hey will pick up somebody within hours
afterward, if anything like that would happen, just to throw the public off.” (Excerpts from the transcript
of the conversation are set forth below at the end of this article.)

FBI Investigation

Miami police promptly notified the Secret Service and the FBI of Milteer’s remarks, giving them
transcripts of the recorded conversation. The Secret Service and the FBI both quickly opened files on the
matter, hastily investigated Milteer and within a few days—and prior to the assassination—closed those files.

Five full days after the JFK assassination, on Nov. 27, 1963, the FBI interviewed Milteer. The FBI’s official
report of that interview is one and one‐half pages long, consisting of six terse paragraphs, only one of
which relates to the assassination. Shockingly, during the interview Milteer was not interrogated about
his previously recorded statements to Somersett regarding plans to murder the president. Milteer was
not even asked the vital question of what he knew of or had heard about any plots against President
Kennedy. Unlike many other witnesses, Milteer was not asked where he was on Nov. 22, 1963.

There is no mention of Joseph Milteer in the Warren Report or the 26 volumes of exhibits published by
the Warren Commission, and for years both the Secret Service and the FBI kept secret as much as they
could about Milteer.

The public did not find out about Milteer’s recorded conversation with Somersett until three years after
the assassination, when Miami police gave a transcript of that conversation to Bill Barry, a local
newspaper reporter. It is said that Miami police decided to release the transcript because they realized
the striking similarities between what Milteer said would happen and the Warren Report version of
what did happen.

On Feb. 2, 1967, Barry published an article in The Miami News newspaper which discussed Milteer
(without revealing his name) and quoted from the transcript of that conversation. In 1971 the entire
transcript was published in Harold Weisberg’s book Frame‐Up, and, for the first time, Milteer’s name
was publicly revealed. Soon assassination scholars were suggesting that Milteer could be seen in a
photograph taken in Dealey Plaza shortly before the president was murdered. Milteer, it was claimed,
was the sixtyish, unsmiling man standing on the sidewalk with other spectators watching the
presidential limousine as it drove past them a minute before the assassination. The spectator alleged to
be Milteer is easy to spot: immediately to his right is a taller man wearing a dark hat, coat, and necktie.