what does "scrambled line"mean? There are certain situations in which the fitting of grooves can begin at once. That is the job of intelligence, and it would have been possible if the assassination had occurred in the White House, with its magnificently equipped Situation Room. In Dallas, however, there was no Situation Room, only the situation itself. Even after Ted Clifton had discovered that Johnson had driven to Love Field he couldn't tell Washington, because Bales, under these extraordinary circumstances, couldn't provide him with a scrambled line. Lacking security, technicians literally did not dare talk. At 1:35 P.M. the stateroom of 26000 was somewhat like Bastogne in the third week of December 1944, when the 101st Airborne became the last division in Belgium to learn that the town had been invested by enemy troops.