The Sky's the Limit

One place where the Kennedy Administration has not held back airplanes, the nation learned, is over the University of Alabama campus at Tuscaloosa. Prodded by a Montgomery Advertiser story exposing the operation, the Air Force admitted last week that for three days in late December low-flying RF-101 Voodoo jets took aerial reconnaissance photographs of Tuscaloosa at the request of Robert Kennedy's Justice Department.

Justice Department spokesmen had a ready explanation. Last fall three Negroes applied for admission to all-white Alabama, but so far they have been blocked by state authorities. Fearing a future integration showdown similar to the violent mob efforts to keep James Meredith out of the University of Mississippi, Justice asked for aerial photographs to help federal marshals prepare their strategy and tactics in advance. Said a Justice official: "There was sort of a critique on the University of Mississippi--a re-examination of everything we did there in case that kind of thing ever happened again. The marshals thought they needed a photograph, and I guess the Air Force treated it like a military operation. The Attorney General didn't know anything about it. It was not intended to be provocative. It was just one of the things we figured we needed, like gas masks."

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