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Category: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Original essays treating the assassination of John F. Kennedy, its historical and political context and aftermath, and the investigations conducted.

  • Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

    Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

    Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

    By John Washburn

    This article focuses on Curtis LaVerne “Larry” Crafard. Crafard had worked for Jack Ruby from mid-October 1963 at the Carousel and Vegas clubs. Ruby purportedly recruited him from a fairground.

     

    Crafard said he left Dallas late on the morning of November 23, 1963. This would be Saturday, the day after the assassination. He said he did not take his wages owed. He stated that he hitchhiked 1,175 miles to Clare, Michigan. Crafard’s departure was before Ruby had shot Oswald on Sunday, and hence before Ruby was in the spotlight.

    In my prior articles for K&K I postulated that Crafard had a role in the assassination of Kennedy, not as an assassin but impersonating Oswald as part of a frame. An element of that being to act out a fake getaway for Oswald, by getting a downtown bus to Oak Cliff. With Oswald himself having been duped into going to the Texas Theater in a station wagon where he was to be eliminated.

    With that, I assumed things went wrong when Tippit, who was supposed to intercept and protect Crafard’s movement once in Oak Cliff, got cold feet and had to be eliminated. Crafard then had to be taken off the bus and then act out an impromptu part at the Tippit murder scene to make it appear Oswald had done it. It was the mishaps around that which meant Oswald was not killed at the Theater.

    To examine whether that supposition is supportable, Crafard’s movements need to be addressed over an extended period of time, with particular attention to November 22, 1963 itself.

    LEAD I

    Crafard was mistaken for Oswald

     

    A Commission memorandum from Counsels Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin on March 6, 1964, preparing for interviews in Dallas in April 1964, speculated that Curtis Laverne “Larry” Crafard, an employee of Jack Ruby, was used as a look-alike imposter to set up Oswald as a ‘patsy’. What evidence had accumulated for them to think that impersonation might be an issue?

    There had been several reported sightings of Oswald at the Carousel Club in October/November 1963. Hence, indicating a pre-assassination link to the club’s owner, Jack Ruby.

    But any mystery about such sightings should have gone away after a memorandum from Naval Intelligence, not released until September 2017, which dealt with what Robert “Bob” Kermit Patterson, 23, ex US Navy, told the Resident Agent “RA” of Naval Intelligence, Dallas at 13:30 hours on November 26, 1963 (Tuesday).

    Patterson co-owned Contract Electronics, 2533 Elm St, Dallas, and was taken to the FBI that same day, CE2830. Patterson said that he had seen Ruby with Oswald in his shop about two weeks prior to the 26th.

    He said the person had a tattoo on his right forearm, was wearing tight-fitting blue jeans and no jacket, 5’8”-9” tall, 150 lb. He said his colleagues Donald Stuart and Charles Arndt were of the same view. He said Ruby had discussed matters concerning his club and its sound systems. Patterson was shown photographs of six different men and picked out Oswald. Patterson described a 4 by 5-inch notebook and said the names of Stuart and Patterson were added into it by the person on the instruction of Jack Ruby so that Ruby could issue them with passes for the club.

    From getting that lead at lunchtime on November 26, the FBI made several visits to the Carousel Club. It took just six hours for the FBI to establish that Crafard was being mistaken for Oswald, and to issue a request that Crafard be traced, interviewed and photographed.

    That request appears in an FBI teletype message of November 27, 1963. (The term “DASH VICTIM” in the teletype is code for the killing of Oswald.). A short account of that also appears in “the Taylor Memorandum” of November 27, 1963 (Wednesday), where Rear Admiral Taylor, Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote to Admiral McDonald about the Patterson lead.

    A memorandum from CIA officer (later Director) Richard Helms of February 24, 1964 to Hubert and Griffin also said that “Crafard fled Dallas area Saturday. November 23, located in rural parts of Michigan November 28”. (Unpublished WC, Andrew Armstrong file, page 331). ‘Fled’ is not a word to describe someone leaving in normal circumstances.

    The FBI traced Crafard to Michigan via his cousin, Gale Cascadden. She lived in rural northern Michigan (her mother was the sister of Crafard’s father). She said to the FBI on December 16, 1963, that he seemed uninterested in the fact that Ruby had shot Oswald. She also said she and her parents did not understand why Crafard had left Dallas. When she asked him why he’d left, she said he changed the subject. (CE 2429).

    However, none of that information from Naval Intelligence, nor the teletype, appears in Commission files.

    Absent that information from Naval Intelligence, the only route from published Warren Commission records to deduce that Kermit Patterson was the prime lead is to note the similarity between Patterson’s account of November 26, 1963 (Tuesday) in CE2830, and Crafard’s FBI statement of November 28, 1963 (Thursday), taken at Bellaire, Michigan CE5226. The photographs taken of Crafard appear as CE 451, 453 to 456.

    In that statement, Crafard gave examples of what he did for Ruby, he said:

    …on a few occasions during the daytime, he would accompany RUBY around the Dallas area.” “On another occasion, approximately three weeks ago, he went with RUBY when RUBY checked about some sound equipment for the club. This was at an electronics company in about the 2200 or 2300 block of Elm Street.  They were there ten or fifteen minutes and did not purchase anything. this occasion he, CRAFARD, was wearing a suit and he feels they were there at about 3:00 PM or 4:00 PM.”

    Patterson in Dallas on November 26, 1963 (Tuesday) had therefore described a situation which aligned with Crafard’s FBI statement of November 28, 1963 (Thursday) in Michigan, and vice versa.

    Donald Stuart was interviewed by the FBI on November 27, 1963, and confirmed a similar situation. But he was less certain that the person was Oswald. An FBI record of some of Ruby’s personal effects has passes duly recorded for Donald Stuart, pass number #170, and Robert Patterson #171. Thus, by Tuesday, November 26, 1963, the investigating authorities had information to attach to the mystery of some of the Oswald sightings – including at the Carousel Club.

    Mistaken identity, as opposed to false identity, is not uncommon. But what is inexplicable, unless there was something to cover up about Crafard looking like Oswald, is that all other people who came forward afterwards with similar leads were ruthlessly discredited by the Dallas Police and the FBI.

    The sightings reported by Litchfield, Kittrell, Crowe, Lawrence, Friedman and Jarnagin

    Griffin and Hubert noted in their Memorandum to Rankin of March 6, 1964, that Wilburn Litchfield told the FBI on December 2, 1964 – CE3149 – that in early November 1963, at Ruby’s Carousel Club, he’d seen a man who said he was from California in a V-necked sweater, ‘sloppily dressed’, 5’7”-5’9” who looked like Oswald.

    Litchfield had been playing poker on November 24, 1963 (Sunday). He said that he and his associates saw Ruby shoot Oswald on TV, which triggered his memory of seeing Oswald at the Carousel.

    Litchfield didn’t say it was Oswald; indeed, he said the person had acne scar pockmarks on the right side of his chin. That doesn’t fit Oswald. But that does match Crafard, who had also been brought up in California. Hubert and Griffin even recognised, in their joint memo of March 6, 1964, that although the DPD tried to discredit Litchfield, the facts stacked up.

    “It is also known that an employee of Ruby, Larry Crafard, closely resembles Oswald. Litchfield’s story checks out, moreover in other significant details including the description of a man resembling Alex Gruber of Los Angeles, California who is known to have visited Ruby at the Carousel during the period to which Litchfield refers.”

    Litchfield did have a criminal record. Associates of his (CE2889) confirmed what Litchfield said, but the FBI report said that one associate had said Litchfield was a “con man”. But so what, given that his story checked out?

    The ‘sloppy’ dress also matches Laura Kittrell’s evidence (see part 3 of my K&K Death of Tippit article). She said that Oswald himself on October 4, 1962 “looked very military as neat as a pin” and was “trim, energetic, compact and well-knitted” but the second person she saw on October 22, 1963 presenting himself as Oswald behaved badly and said he was “a trifling, shirtless, good-for-nothing lout who sprawled oafishly over his chair”. Thus, in her case, that was an active impersonation of someone purporting to be Oswald.

    William Crowe was a ventriloquist who did a memory man act with the stage name of ‘Bill DeMar’.

    He said he told a newsman he had been at the Carousel Club and saw a man who looked like Oswald, who worked for Ruby at the club. His story broke that day – November 22, 1963 – with the Associated Press agency. He was then interviewed by the FBI in Dallas that same day (page 5 of the Commission file for Crowe).

    He said he had performed at the Carousel Club in early November 1963 and asked 20 members of the audience to call the name of an object, so he could then relay them back by memory.

    He said that after seeing Ruby shoot Oswald on TV, he went to the Carousel Club within the hour, as he was concerned about his equipment stored there. He said he saw a newsman and a television man also trying to gain access, given the shooting of Oswald.

    Thereafter he said he’d been misquoted, and only said the person looked like Oswald. He also said he’d been on stage with lights shining in his eyes. In testifying to the Commission on 2 June 1964, before Hubert, Crowe was shown photographs of Oswald and Crafard. He stated it was a possibility that the man he saw was Crafard.

    Crowe was being discredited as late as June 1964 for being an attention seeker wanting to promote his memory act – CE2995.

    Even CBS reporter Dan Rather (later to be CBS evening news anchor) got dragged into it. KRLD Dallas on November 24, (Sunday) reported that Rather had seen Oswald at the Carousel Club. The Crowe file, held by the Warren Commission, on page 42 has a note of June 11, 1964, setting out how Dan Rather was interviewed by agents after the KRLD report.

    Dan Rather stated that he went to the Carousel Club after Ruby had shot Oswald. He came across Crowe trying to get into the Carousel Club to get his personal effects. Crowe told Rather that he’d seen Oswald there.

    Page 50 has the FBI testimony of Pauline Churchill, manager of the Shady Oaks Motel, Dallas, dated June 12, 1964. She confirmed Crowe was staying at the motel and rushed into her office within 15 minutes of Ruby shooting Oswald to tell her it had happened. Dan Rather and Churchill thus vouched for the spontaneity of Crowe. But Rather said (CE3101) that he thought Crowe was making it up.

    Waitress Mary Lawrence told the FBI on December 6, 1963, that she had served Oswald and Ruby together at the Lucas B&B café, Downtown Dallas, at around 2:15 am on the morning of the assassination. A few days after, she received an anonymous telephone call “telling her to get out of town or she would die”.

    When shown a photograph of Oswald, she said the person she saw had a small scar near his mouth on the right or left-hand side. The FBI Bellaire report states that Crafard had a small scar on his lip. So, Litchfield and Mary Lawrence, rather than trying to make up a story to fit with it being Oswald, did the opposite by describing scarring that Oswald didn’t have.

    An internal DPD memorandum and a more comprehensive record described her as a compulsive liar. The police memo was used to discredit her on the basis that Jack Ruby was banned from there and hence could not have been seen there.

    But Gloria Fillmon told the FBI on December 17, 1963, CE2379, that she had worked for three weeks in November 1963 as a champagne girl at the Carousel Club. She left because Ruby wanted her to be a stripper. She said a day or two before the assassination, at 3 am, Jack Ruby, Crafard, and she had eaten at Lucas B&B, Ruby and she picking up Crafard on the way. Hence, Ruby likely was not banned. Making that even more probable is that Lucas B&B was at the junction of Oak Lawn and Bowser. It was next to the Vegas Club, Ruby’s other outfit. The neon tower sign is still there.

    Crafard’s November 28, 1963, FBI interview (CE5226) states that he worked on the evening of November 21, at the Vegas Club, and went with Jack Ruby to Lucas B&B at 2:30 am on November 22, just as Mary Lawrence said.

    If that weren’t enough corroboration. He also said he went there with Ruby and a woman called “Gloria” at around 3:45 am on November 21, just as Gloria Fillmon said. Hence, DPD and the FBI were calling people liars for saying things for which the DPD and the FBI had had parallel evidence to corroborate and had known the cause of since Patterson’s lead of November 26, 1963.

    Bob Barrett and James Bookhout of the FBI, on December 26, 1963, followed a lead (CE2991) from the incarcerated Jack Ruby, who said Edward Rocco of Cabaret Magazine, who had been a visitor to the club, could be mistaken for Oswald. Ruby obviously knew Oswald’s appearance, given that he’d shot him from close range in the abdomen.

    Rocco was a photographer who had stayed a week in Dallas to take photographs of the Club. Rocco led the FBI to Terry Friedman. Friedman was interviewed by the FBI on July 1, 1964 (CE2991) when he said Rocco had shown him a photograph of the Carousel Club, and Friedman said he thought a person in the front row was Oswald. Out of all of that blossomed numerous photographs of the Carousel Club, included in CE5303.

    The Commission did not publish the photographs in another exhibit ‘Exhibit 5212’, but the Mary Ferrell Foundation now has. The reason they were not published was given as their “questionable taste and negligible relevance”. Questionable taste by ’60s standards is correct. Negligible relevance is not. What Exhibit 5212 contains are several photographs showing Larry Crafard, wearing a suit, seated in the front row at the Carousel Club.

    Therefore, Ruby’s false lead regarding Rocco being the Oswald look-alike still led to an outcome, the photographer was traced, and the photographs were obtained. Ultimately, Ruby revealed for posterity the photographic proof that it was Crafard who could be mistaken for Oswald. Was Ruby dropping clues deliberately?

    LEAD II

    An attorney saw ‘Oswald’/Crafard at the Carousel Club on 4 October 1963 discussing a plot to kill Governor Connally.

     

    Carroll Jarnagin was a criminal law attorney; CE2821 is his FBI report of December 6, 1963, the day after he had written a letter to Hoover. He asked to be kept anonymous. That report merely calls him “Witness”.

    The report said that on October 4, 1963 (Friday), he’d been using the phone booth at the back of the Carousel Club and overheard Jack Ruby talking to Oswald. The matter being discussed was a contract to kill the Governor of Texas, John Connally. He said he then ended his call to eavesdrop on what else was being said.

    Jarnagin had contacted Hoover directly in his letter of December 5, 1963, as he wanted to avoid local press publicity. A good reason for that was that he was an attorney in the criminal justice system and was dating a stripper, Shirley Maudin.

    The DPD put him through a polygraph test on March 2, 1964, which he failed, having been taken by Officer Paul Bentley (who had also been at Oswald’s arrest). Bentley was the chief polygraph examiner for the DPD and concluded Jarnagin had made the story up and had been intoxicated at the club. The DPD and Hoover concluded he was an attention seeker.

    But that just begs more questions. Why would someone seeking attention end his letter to Hoover asking not to be identified? Why not simply test whether he was yet another person who had actually seen Crafard? Why would someone seeking to raise attention regarding the assassination of the President talk about a plot to kill Connally instead?

    People who are intoxicated tend not to remember very much from that time. A tribute piece in a newspaper on his death does say he dedicated his last 14 years to working with Alcoholics Anonymous. Whether he was an alcoholic in 1963 is not known. But alcoholics tend to have a high tolerance of alcohol and don’t necessarily display symptoms of drunkenness.

    The FBI file, which has information to discredit him, states that Shirley Maudin, on December 9, 1963, said that he wasn’t drunk. Jarnagin appears to have been treated in the same way that Kittrell, Crowe, Litchfield and Lawrence were.

    DA Henry Wade knew Jarnagin personally, and in his Warren Commission testimony of June 8, 1964 (WC Vol V), Wade went out of his way not to discredit him too much and avoided using his name.

    Mr. Wade. I didn’t use him as a witness [in the Ruby trial] and after giving him the polygraph I was satisfied that he was imagining it. I think he was sincere, I don’t think he was trying–I don’t think he was trying to be a hero or anything. I think he really thought about it so much I think he thought that it happened, but the polygraph indicated otherwise.

    Had Jarnagin attended Ruby’s trial, his evidence would have been discussed in open court. He may also have encountered Crafard himself, who gave evidence in person at that trial as a character witness for Ruby.

    In his letter of December 5, 1963, Jarnagin also claimed the man he thought was Oswald was called H. L. Lee. But Oswald was alleged to use the alias of Alek Hiddell, and the alleged room booking at 1026 N Beckley was O. H. Lee.

    As my article on that subject for K&K, “Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit wallet”, sets out, there was a Herbert Leon Lee staying at 1026 N Beckley. The FBI, tracking of telephone calls from the telephone box opposite 1026 N Beckley, was in an FBI report (page 23) dated December 9, 1963.

    Therefore, rather than embellishing facts gained as an ordinary member of the public after the event, Jarnagin was coming up with accurate information that was not widely known.

    Two questions emerge from that. How could Jarnagin, in raising ‘H.L. Lee’ on December 5, 1963, have picked at random the name of someone who was at the very place Oswald had stayed at – 1026 N Beckley? How could Jack Ruby have known on October 4, 1963, that an HL Lee would be associated with 1026 N Beckley? A place that Oswald only moved into on October 14, but whose housekeeper was the sister of Ruby associate Bertha Cheek.

    This, from a Dallas Police report, set out more of what Jarnagin said.

    “The man who asked to see Jack Ruby is dressed in a tan jacket, has brown hair, needs a haircut, is wearing a sport shirt, and is about 5’ 9” or 10” in height, his general, appearance is somewhat unkempt, and he does not appear to be dressed for night clubbing.”

    A tan jacket has come up before. This, from my “Death of Tippit” series of articles, is from Dallas Morning News reporter Jim Ewell. He had arrived at the Tippit murder scene and wrote.

    “There was another police car there as they were examining a jacket next to the curb which had apparently been located by one of the policemen after Oswald had thrown it down as he ran toward Jefferson. I had a jacket just like it. I remember it as being a light tan windbreaker. I was with Westbrook as we all went over to examine the jacket because it was the only tangible thing we had at the moment that belonged to the killer. In fact, I held the jacket in my hands. I remember that they were talking about a water mark on it that was obviously made by a dry cleaning shop”.

    A post from Education Forum member Gil Jesus shows that the discarded jacket described and presented in monochrome photographs as CE162 as gray, was in fact tan. My Death of Tippit article for K&K also sets out how the evidence submission document, had a strip strategically placed so as to obscure that it was Captain Westbrook who found it. That document also described that tan jacket as gray. Thus, Jarnagin’s detail of a “tan jacket,” matches a jacket found that Captain Westbrook incorrectly reported as gray.

    The jacket is by Maurice Holman of California, and Litchfield had said the person he saw was raised in California. The jacket Crafard was wearing when photographed in Michigan also appears similar. Jarnagin also said that the person said he had been hitchhiking. Oswald’s history has no evidence of hitchhiking. Crafard’s story did.

    The possibility that Crafard was talking to Ruby about killing Governor Connally appears to have been a step in a very inconvenient direction.

    Lead III

    Crafard ‘s tall tales about when he arrived in Dallas, and his work after he left the military.

     

    Crafard portrayed himself as an easy come, easy go, itinerant hitchhiker acting as a barker for “How Hollywood Makes Movies” (HHMM), a side show at the October Texas State Fair, Dallas, which ran until it flopped. He then went to work for Jack Ruby at the Carousel Club before leaving on November 23, 1963.

    Crafard, in his November 28, FBI interview, said Bob Craven ran HHMM and employed him, and HHMM accounted for him being in Dallas on October 15, living in a tent, and that he stayed with its replacement, a rock and roll show, until approximately October 30, still living in a tent. He said he then moved to work with Ruby on November 1, having first met Ruby on or about October 21. However, Crafard’s story sits alongside conflicting accounts of others regarding the dates involved.

    Robert Craven, a co-producer of HHMM, confirmed to the FBI on November 27, 1963 (Wednesday) that the show ran from October 5 to October 15, with the troupe arriving on September 29, presumably for stage set up and rehearsals. CE1534.

    The Craven interview makes no mention of Crafard, but the interview was before Crafard was found from the Patterson lead. (Unfortunately, the FBI record is truncated at the end.)

    October 4 would be too early for Jarnagin, or anyone, to have seen Crafard as an employee of Ruby at the Club. But Jarnagin didn’t describe an employee, but an unkempt visitor wearing a tan jacket.

    HSCA Vol 9-3G page 1093 has a timeline for Jack Ruby. That states the State Fair opened on October 5, and Ruby visited the side show 3-5 times that day. It states HHMM closed on October 15, 1963, and on October 20, the State Fair closed. It also states Crafard was building a cloakroom at the Carousel Club using lumber from the failed HHMM side show that day.

    Andrew Armstrong, the barman at the Carousel Club, testified he met Crafard when the HHMM show closed and borrowed equipment was returned to the club by Armstrong and Crafard, Crafard showered at the club and moved in.

    An FBI document CE2348 has information regarding Marvin Gardner’s, the show’s electrical technician, interview on November 29, 1963 (Friday).

    Gardner said HHMM ran from October 5, 1963, to closure on October 15, 1963. He said the performers and producers left town on the 16th. He said Crafard was a barker working outside the tent, and when the show folded, Crafard worked outside the tent where a rock and roll show took its place.

    Crafard’s true timeline

    Crafard, in his first FBI statement on November 28, put his working for HHMM as October 15 rather than October 5. He said he worked for Ruby from November 1, but there is evidence he was actually working at the Carousel from October 16.

    With the true timeline, it is possible that what Jarnagin saw on October 4, 1963, was Crafard meeting Ruby, as the fair and show were already in town, both commencing the next day.

    Crafard was also deceptive about his activities from when he left the military in November 1959. Crafard testified on 8, 9 and 10 April 1964 in Washington, before Hubert and Griffin. This is from April 8, when he describes his short time in the military.

    Mr. CRAFARD. I was in Fort Ord for 2 months and then I went to Presidio, San Francisco, where I was stationed at an air defense school for a period of 2 months and then I was assigned to D Battery, 2d Missile Battalion, San Francisco Defense Organization. From there I went to Germany in April of 1959. I was transferred to Germany to Deisley Kersne, and I was stationed with the D Battery, 2d Missile Battalion there. I stayed there until November of 1959 then I was transferred back to the United States where I was discharged November 10, 1959.
    Mr. HUBERT. How long did you serve altogether?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Thirteen months

    Crafard then described staying with his sister in Michigan for 7 months (which takes things up to July 1960) working casually in pulp wood cutting. He then went to his father’s in Dallas, Oregon, for fruit picking for a month, then a cannery for six months and then, worked with carnivals.

    For 1961, he described various fairground jobs, and he extended his account up to 1962, with casual work in California and Dallas, Oregon (as opposed to Dallas, Texas).

    But this remarkable question was then posed, which blew that apart.

    HUBERT. Now, we have some information that you worked for Federal Aviation Agency through July and October of 1960 in Los Angeles?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes; in Los Angeles–I believe they were out of Los Angeles, where I worked for them that was over in Nevada.
    Mr. HUBERT. What kind of work did you do?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Surveyor’s assistant. I had forgotten I had worked for them.

    Nevada isn’t Oregon. A surveyor’s assistant for the FAA isn’t fruit picking.

    Hubert then sprung this on him.

    Mr. HUBERT. Do you remember working for the Teer Plating Co., Dallas, Tex.

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes. Let’s see, I believe it was, I am not certain of that.

    Mr. HUBERT. That was between April and June of 1961, was it not?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I believe so. The way I have traveled around, I had a lot of jobs I even forgot about almost.

    Teer Plating was based on Wyche Boulevard in Dallas, between Love Field Airport and Parkland Hospital. The places in Dallas where Kennedy had arrived and then departed from life. Making it all the more strange that Crafard hadn’t remembered that, given the significance of those places on November 22, 1963.

    Capping all of that, it wasn’t until Hubert then brought up that Crafard had also been in Dallas, Texas in 1961 working for Ablon Poultry that Crafard revealed that he was married, and had met his wife in Amarillo, Texas, in 1961.

    Mr. HUBERT. Did you ever work for Ablon Poultry Co.?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes, sir; that was after I was married.

    Mr. HUBERT. That was where?

    Mr. CRAFARD. In Dallas, Tex. At that time I was residing at the Letot Trailer Park with my wife and family.

    Mr. CRAFARD. I was married June of 1962.

    Mr. HUBERT. So your wife lived with you for some time in Dallas, Oreg.?

    Mr. CRAFARD. For about 6 months we was living in Dallas, Oreg., from June 10 until I believe in December.

    Mr. HUBERT. Where were you married?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I was married in Dallas, Oreg.

    Mr. HUBERT. Where was your wife from?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Originally from Texas.

    Mr. HUBERT. Where did you meet her?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I met her in Amarillo, Tex.

    Mr. HUBERT. When? How long before you married?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I believe it was in 1961.

    Mr. HUBERT. What part of 1961?

    Mr. CRAFARD. In the spring, I believe, it would have been in March of 1961.

    Crafard’s approach on each occasion he was caught out is interesting. Rather than doubling down, he gives in. He seems to be confident in knowing he can get away with it.

    The HSCA timeline also sets out that Crafard was in Dallas from March 10, 1963, and from March 21 was at Ablon Poultry and Eggs.

    Meyer Ablon was interviewed by the FBI on December 20, 1963, and that interview appears as CE1275. Ablon was an associate of Ruby and had also owned the Chateau Nightclub, Dallas. Ablon Poultry and Eggs was on Canton Street at the Farmers Market, 7/10th mile from the Carousel Club.

    The story that Crafard was mainly in Oregon after leaving the military was not an accurate one.

    LEAD IV

    Crafard didn’t hitch to Dallas or arrive with the State Fair. He was driven from Memphis by a staff sergeant of an airbase.

     

    How Crafard got to Dallas in October 1963 also has irregularities

    Mr. CRAFARD. I traveled to Dallas, Tex.

    Mr. HUBERT. How did you travel?

    Mr. CRAFARD. With a friend of mine, Mickey Spillane.

    Mr. HUBERT. Mickey who?

    Mr. CRARARD. Mickey Corday.

    Mr. HUBERT. How do you spell the last name?

    Mr. CRAFARD. C-o-r-d-a-y.

    Mr. HUBERT. How did you travel?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Traveled down in his car.

    Mr. HUBERT. Where is he from, do you know?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t know where his home is.

    Mr. HUBERT. Did you know him prior to this time?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I had seen him prior to this time and heard of him prior to this time.

    Mr. HUBERT. I mean it wasn’t a hitchhike?

    Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir; I met him at the fairgrounds in Dallas, Tex., or in Memphis.

    Crafard appears to be playing Griffin with the ‘Mickey Spillane’ (a character from detective fiction). Hubert was astute in breaking the hitchhiker narrative. But also, how can Crafard have met the man who took him on a 9-hour drive to Dallas fairgrounds, at the Dallas fairgrounds?

    The fair that came to Dallas in late September 1963, opening on October 5, had come from Midway, Texas. But if Crafard was driven from Memphis, TN. Midway is not on the route.

    Greg Parker and Mark Groubert writing in an article have identified that a Michael Cordray was a staff sergeant at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth (which is 30 miles from Dallas) and specialized in B-52s and radar systems. The US Air Force had used B-52s in sonic boom tests conducted in Nevada.

    Despite his efforts to camouflage his jobs and locations, Crafard’s job history mirrors Oswald’s—low-level positions mixed with roles involving military connections that might require clearance.

    Click here to read part 2.

  • The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 2

    The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 2

    The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 2

    By Paul Abbott

    With Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry’s gross incompetence; his lack of regard for due diligence and caution when it came to the handling of Lee Oswald’s security, we must still ask – how legitimate were the ‘committee’ threats against Oswald? The ‘committee’, on whose behalf they were being made, has never been identified. To speculate: which organization would feel so strongly about avenging President Kennedy’s murder? Presumably, they would either have had the membership or resources and motivation in Dallas at the time to mobilize there come Saturday night / Sunday morning.

    Of course, we must bear in mind that Dallas at the time, on account of its heavy, often extreme right-wing climate, was perceived as being the most worrisome of cities that President Kennedy’s tour included that weekend. And with the Democrat Kennedy’s reputation there for being bad for business and soft on communism considered, to the point of being accused of ‘Treason’, are we to suppose that there was an equally extreme organization, to quote Vernon Glossup, that was neither left or right leaning, who felt so strongly about Kennedy’s murder to the point of threatening the life of his accused assassin? It is doubtful.

    One final, but simple point on the ‘committee’ front is that, from the moment of Oswald’s arrest to the morning of his transfer, there was never any record or reports of a large, angry group gathered along the streets of Dallas. No trace of an angry-mob type ‘committee’ anywhere in Dallas that weekend, let alone on November 24, which seems to indicate we can pretty much call the ‘threats’ from a ‘committee’ dubious.

    With the ‘committee’ aspect discounted, what about the caller at least? There is sufficient evidence to substantiate that at least two calls were made that morning. However, the caller/s did not identify themselves nor the organization they were representing, so it literally could have been anyone. The wording attributed to the threat makers by Glossup and Newsom at the FBI, and McCoy at the Sheriff’s Department is interesting and almost verbatim in some parts to each other, particularly with reference to the reason the caller said he was warning of the threat…to ensure no one in the Sheriff or Police departments got injured. Of course, this could be attributed to Glossup’s notes made during the call and the resulting memo passed on to Newsom when calling the Sheriff’s Department and alerting the DPD about it. But neither item ever surfaced, so we can only take Glossup and Newsom’s word for it. Nonetheless, the DPD was not contacted by the threat makers directly, so just how sincere was the caller/s regard for their safety as well?

    Let’s not forget another interesting detail present in both Glossup and the second of McCoy’s calls from the threat makers… that when both first took the call, the caller sounded like they handed the receiver to another man who then warned of harm to Oswald. It’s an odd detail that lends an almost absurdly stage-managed/manufactured slant on it all.

    Could one or both of the callers have been Jack Ruby? If so, was he making such a call to sabotage an order or assignment that he did not want, or was he getting cold feet? It’s an interesting and viable theory that many researchers subscribe to.

    One person largely overlooked, but was central to the whole threat episode, of course, was FBI Special Agent Milton Newsom. He was not present when the clerk, Vernon Glossup, received the first call from the threat makers. This seems odd: for the ranking agent on duty not to be present at that particular moment. Where was Newsom at 2 am? It’s not like it was during the daytime, and therefore there was a greater likelihood of his being in a meeting or out in the field. Wherever he was, he wasn’t far as he seemed to get word of the threat from Glossup and act on it quickly by contacting both the Sheriff and Police departments.

    Perhaps most curious about Newsom was the fact that it was he, and only he, who took the only statement of Deputy McCoy, and the first of Captains Frazier and Talbert for the FBI regarding the whole threat episode. Talk about tying a neat bow on the recording of an event that he was involved in from the start!

    We also have reason to question Newsom on this front because William Frazier, during his testimony to the Warren Commission, disputed literally most of his statement attributed to him by Newsom. For example:

    • Newsom’s statement had Frazier saying that it was Vernon Glossup who rang him to advise of the threat received by him on Oswald’s life.
      • Yet Frazier said it was Newsom who called the DPD and spoke to him.
    • Newsom’s statement also quoted Frazier as saying that plans to transfer Oswald to the County Jail may be changed in view of the threat.
      • Frazier told the Warren Commission that he would not have said this because he did not know what the plans were to transfer Oswald, therefore, he did not know how they might be changed.
    • Newsom’s statement also quoted Frazier as saying Oswald’s planned transfer had been publicized primarily as a form of cooperation with the press and news agencies.
      • Frazier also denied making this statement to Newsom.

    Bear in mind, Frazier’s statement, like McCoy’s and Talbert’s, was barely one page long and consisted of a few paragraphs each. With the above considered, the only portion of his statement that Frazier could confirm as correct was how he (Frazier) mentioned that the DPD had not received any threats and that he was advised that the Sheriff’s office had received a similar threat call.

    Compared to the three-page statement he submitted to Sheriff Bill Decker, C.C. McCoy’s statement attributed to him by Newsom barely lines up. It too attributed McCoy as saying that plans to transfer Oswald to the County Jail at 10:00 am had been made public through news releases. Unfortunately, McCoy did not testify on the matter, so we do not have any record of him denying or confirming Newsom’s accuracy in his statement.

    What we do know is that both Glossup and Milton Newsom continued to work for the FBI in Dallas until at least the late 1970s. The only other part that Newsom played in the assassination investigation was the handling of the Bronson film of President Kennedy’s shooting. In fact, the death notice of Newsom in 2012 stated that he was a 30-year veteran of the Bureau. Vernon Glossup had even worked his way up to Special Agent status and by all reports is still alive. It is a loss to history that both were not subjected to more scrutiny about the threat matter. Unless Mr. Glossop would be willing and able to provide any further details after all these years, we are only left to speculate on him, Newsom and their conduct, in light of Oswald’s fate.

    Threading the Threat Needle

    If the phone call threats on Lee Oswald’s life were not legitimate from either a committee or an (unidentified) individual vengeful against him but merciful for the FBI, Sheriff and Police departments, all we are left with are pieces to speculate on their origin and purpose.

    Let me propose something that might seem outlandish at first glance: the threat phone calls were staged by either Milton Newsom or someone doing so on his orders. Why? He did so to apply pressure on the DPD and, after the fact, manipulate witness statements to further discredit the police.

    Context:

    In his Saturday morning statement, Curry inadvertently accused the FBI of either not knowing of someone like Lee Harvey Oswald and therefore not warning them of his presence in Dallas ahead of President Kennedy’s visit, or knowing of him but not warning them. With its association with Oswald confirmed, to what length did the FBI know of or use Oswald? And how concerned were they that weekend of being implicated by association for the president’s assassination? While Oswald was still alive, they were rendered officially helpless as killing the president was not a federal crime at that time. They would have had more of a stake investigating Oswald if he had shot a postman.

    What we must also consider is that the longer the weekend went with Oswald in police custody at City Hall, the more outrage and controversy were being stirred. For the most part, the scenes filmed and reported on by the media were chaos. Oswald, despite looking unkempt, calmly pronouncing his innocence, asking for legal assistance, and protesting the lineups he was in, provided a clear perception that the Dallas authorities barely had a handle on the situation. And an assortment of officials, including District Attorney Henry Wade, Chief Curry and Captain Fritz, providing updates on the investigation into Oswald did not help either. Doing so attracted the ire of people like J. Edgar Hoover and President Johnson, who were, fairly, worried that Oswald’s defense could argue for a mistrial on the grounds that he could never have received a fair trial thanks to the early opining of police and legal officials.

    Motivation:

    If the Dallas Police Department was out of its depth, with little help and steady guidance from Chief Curry, perhaps the FBI saw an opportunity to exploit this by creating a situation that would really highlight the point – something that would only add to the pressure already heaped on the DPD: a serious threat to Lee Oswald’s life. Such a scheme could be hatched locally with literally nothing to lose and everything to gain for the FBI. It would be the ultimate acid test to see what Chief Curry and his DPD would do. Perhaps the intent was to scare the DPD into actually getting with the program and ensuring Oswald’s security by transferring him sooner rather than later. That’s the best-case scenario because, given his Saturday afternoon statement to the press of when Oswald’s transfer would take place and his reputation for maintaining a closeknit relationship with them, it was more than a safe bet that Curry would remain to his word … even in response to a ‘credible’ threat and not budge on moving Oswald. Recall that Curry is on record as telling his beloved press mid-morning on Sunday that Oswald could have been transferred overnight in light of threats received on his life. But it did not happen because, Curry said, he didn’t want ‘to cross you people.’

    What was the desired outcome? Aside from assuring Oswald’s safety by being transferred early, regardless of how the DPD responded, I think the underlying intent was to completely undermine Curry and the DPD so as to both minimize any more backlash on the FBI from his comments on Saturday morning and to position itself as the ideal body to step in at the right time to competently investigate President Kennedy’s assassination. With control and oversight of the overall investigation, the FBI would be in a position to cover its own tracks in terms of their association with Lee Oswald and protect itself against the likely catastrophic fallout it would attract. Like the fact that Oswald was an informant for the FBI. Which would have been a disaster for J. Edgar Hoover.

    How:

    I think it was as simple as at least two threatening phone calls being made on behalf of a conveniently nameless, purposeless organization that was neither right nor left leaning by a person who also remained nameless. And despite saying they were warning of the threat out of concern for the welfare of FBI, Sheriff and DPD personnel, the threat makers did not bother calling the police to warn them. It was all too easy to make up and do so in such a way that could not be traced back to the FBI. Perhaps the DPD were not called for fear of the call somehow being traced or the voice being recognised. If Newsom was behind it, why risk it when all he had to do was either make or have a call phoned into the FBI (if one was made at all)? From there, Vernon Glossup would have wittingly or unwittingly cooperated in the charade by providing a memorandum to Newsom to make the whole episode official. At that point, Newsom could have made or had someone make two ‘threat warning’ calls to the Sheriff’s Department whilst he, in an official capacity, would call the Sheriff and DPD. That is all it could have taken to whip up the storm that followed that morning.

    Wrapping everything up neatly, as it were, Newsom could have easily positioned himself on behalf of the FBI to take the statements of the two other people pivotal to the threat response – McCoy and Frazier – to cement the narrative. And in doing so, sink a final boot into the Dallas Police Department by misquoting both men to implant a damning reference of Oswald’s transfer being publicized.

    Evidently, the FBI’s stake increased once Oswald was killed because his murder effectively ended the Dallas Police investigation into him. What soon followed was the infamous Belmont memo on November 24th, which mandated that the country be convinced of Oswald’s guilt in killing President Kennedy alone through a report submitted by the FBI. Essentially, with Oswald dead and the DPD out of the picture, with no other suspect to investigate any further, the ball was handed firmly to the FBI to control the narrative. Because the FBI very quickly, yet momentarily, came to sit at the center of the investigation on the back of Oswald’s murder.

    Johnson and Warren Wrap it all Up.

    President Lyndon B. Johnson would establish the Warren Commission on November 29th, which was essentially a high-level PR piece that would ‘review and evaluate’ the findings of the FBI’s investigation into President Kennedy’s assassination and Lee Oswald’s sole guilt. This was because Johnson was concerned that a single report from the FBI would not be enough to prevent a ‘rash of investigations’ that would amount to a ‘three-ring circus’ that would steer away the public from the desired Oswald-lone nut narrative.

    Chief Justice Earl Warren was approached directly by Johnson to head up the commission. Warren originally said no, but when Johnson countered him by putting forth information he had received from Director Hoover about a ‘little incident in Mexico City’, Warren tearfully agreed.

    Just what exactly Johnson used to pressure Warren with has been speculated about ever since. Some have interpreted this reference to be some kind of sordid or salacious piece of blackmail that Hoover had procured on Warren and paid it forward to Johnson. I disagree – I think it was more like the information that FBI-contact/asset Washington Star reporter, Jerry O’Leary, happened upon when in Dallas covering the aftermath of the assassination. I have laid this episode out in another article, but essentially, Jerry O’Leary (who was later named as an asset within the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird) met with a CIA contact of his in Dallas who was an ‘unimpeachable’ source who told him that Oswald returned from Mexico with five thousand dollars in cash. Instead of publishing a story on this stunning revelation, O’Leary promptly reported it to the FBI, who took it straight up to the State Department and the White House. The implication was that either the Soviets or Cubans were behind the president’s murder and that such information could be the catalyst for all-out war with the Soviets. The Warren Commission was formed with sitting senators and representatives such as Hale Boggs, Gerald Ford and Richard Russell, as well as Washington powerhouses in John McCloy and Allen Dulles. Surely enough the Commission would submit its findings that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely guilty of killing President Kennedy and police officer J.D. Tippit on November 22nd and anything contrary to these conclusions was either ignored or manipulated. War against the Soviet Union and Cuba was averted, but the truth behind President Kennedy’s murder, his accused assassin’s intelligence links and Oswald’s own suspicious murder have remained enduring mysteries. We can now add to this mosaic the momentary influence the FBI had when it came to ‘investigating’ the Kennedy assassination and ponder what it did to cover its own tracks when it came to its proven association with Lee Oswald.

    Click here to read part 1.

  • The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 1

    The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 1

    The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 1

    By Paul Abbott

    The incarceration of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged killer of President John F. Kennedy and Police Officer J.D. Tippit, and his mistreatment at the hands of the Dallas Police across the weekend of November 22nd has been well established. But the matter of the alleged threats made against his life over the course of the night before his murder at the hands of Jack Ruby has largely been glossed over in the broader scheme of things. But just how they unfolded and were responded to has largely withstood any in-depth scrutiny ever since.

    The Curry Storm

    At approximately 11.30 am on Saturday, November 23rd, Jesse Curry, the Dallas Police Chief, was in his office on the southwest corner of the Third Floor of Dallas City Hall. Seated opposite him were a group of reporters, including the Associated Press’ Peggy Simpson and NBC’s Tom Pettit. It was one of the many occasions that weekend where he would hold court with the members of the press – to the point where he would be directed to stop doing so by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson across that weekend. Curry’s regard and synergy with the press were legendary and certainly a theme throughout his tenure as chief. In fact, in early 1958, he issued a memorandum to all Dallas police personnel essentially instructing them to provide the media with as much access and assistance as possible. Basically, he regarded them as a PR arm for the department and at that time, with the reputation that Dallas had for crime and corruption, it was clearly a mitigation strategy on his part.

    During Curry’s mini press conference with Simpson, Pettit and others, an interesting exchange took place:

    Curry: (to persons unknown) … They say he.. he said he was a communist…

    Pettit: Hey Chief, did the FBI or your department have him (Oswald) under surveillance prior to yesterday?

    Curry: No, sir, we didn’t have knowledge that he was in the city.

    Pettit: Did the FBI?

    Curry: I understand that they did know he was here and that they interviewed him … oh … a week or two ago.

    Pettit: Did they warn you of his presence in the city?

    Curry: No, they had not.. at the time .. until yesterday.

    Pettit: Do you think they should have?

    Curry: Well, they usually do. They keep us informed. If we don’t have knowledge of it, they usually liaise with us… usually let us know when these communist sympathizers or subversives come into the city. And why they hadn’t got round to informing us of this man, I don’t know.

    This frank exchange would be widely reported and circulated, sparking the wrath of the FBI hierarchy up to and including Director Hoover. The implication of course being that Chief Curry was deflecting all blame on the FBI for failing to detect and stop the communist Oswald and prevent the November 22nd killings. In fact, what Curry was saying to Pettit was completely reasonable. And evidently correct, as the FBI was monitoring Oswald at the time, and they did not alert the DPD to him prior to President Kennedy’s arrival. What followed was an effort by the FBI to mitigate any fallout from Curry’s statement by having Special Agent in Charge in Dallas, Gordon Shanklin, contact Curry and have him retract what he said to Tom Pettit. A summary memo from the FBI’s Cartha De Loach shows that Shanklin was successful in doing this and that Curry even apologized and said that he did not ‘mean to place any blame on the FBI’. The damage control continued with the FBI using their proven media contact on the ground, the Washington Star’s Jerry O’Leary, who was in Dallas to cover events that weekend, to also get in touch with Chief Curry and ‘make him go on record regarding the falsity of his allegations’.

    All of this resulted in Curry speaking to another group of reporters (including Tom Pettit) out in the hall on the Third Floor of City Hall just after 1 pm that same day. He led with the following statement:

    There has been some information that has gone out. I want to correct anything that might have been misinterpreted or misunderstood. And that is regarding information that the FBI might have had about this man (Oswald). I do not know… if and when the FBI has interviewed this man. The FBI is under no obligation to come to us with any information concerning anyone. They have cooperated with us in the past one hundred percent. Any time there’s any information that they feel that might be helpful to us, they have always come to us. Uh.. last night someone told me.. I don’t even know who it was, that the FBI did know this man was in the city and had interviewed him. I wish to say this. Of my knowledge, I do not know this to be a fact and I don’t want anybody to get the wrong impression that I am accusing the FBI of not cooperating or withholding information because they are under no obligation to us but have always cooperated with us one hundred percent. And I do not know if and when they have ever interviewed this man.

    While this episode started and ended within a couple of hours, I think it has been totally overlooked and underestimated in the scheme of things. Think about it…with all of the world focusing on him, his police department and their handling of the man suspected of killing President Kennedy, the Dallas Chief of Police publicly acknowledged that his department was usually alerted by the FBI about people like Lee Oswald (‘communist sympathizer / subversive’) but they were not in Oswald’s instance. It remains a shocking admission.

    No wonder the FBI was quick to act in response to Curry’s initial statement. The implications were doubly negative for them. If they did not know about a ‘communist sympathizer or subversive’ in Oswald, it was a massive oversight on their part that would rightly bring their competence into question. On the other hand, if they did know about Oswald, why did they not alert the DPD to his presence in Dallas? The implication would transcend just incompetence. Thankfully for us, the subsequent years have proven that the FBI was well and truly aware of Oswald, and was monitoring him, so this question, I think, lies at the center of a lot of the intrigue around Lee Oswald, his framing for the November 22nd killings and his own murder.

    What is clear in the Curry matter is that the FBI instantly threw all of its efforts into mitigating any blame it would receive for Oswald and the events of November 22nd, as well as asserting itself as being in control. This is a crucial point to keep in mind for the rest of this article.

    Come the latter hours of that Saturday, the media that had engulfed Dallas City Hall to cover Oswald’s incarceration were starting to dissipate. This was because it had been purported that Oswald had been charged with Kennedy’s murder, so their assumption was that there would be fewer and fewer opportunities to see and ask him any questions. The broader implication being that he would soon be moved to maximum security at the County Jail.

    The matter of transferring Lee Oswald from the City Hall to the County Jail was something that was still only notionally being discussed across the DPD hierarchy that afternoon. In ordinary circumstances, the transfer of a prisoner from City Hall, or any police station, to the County Jail, where they would await sentencing, was the responsibility of the local sheriff. The principle being that the sheriff would present at the police premises the necessary paperwork to take custody of the prisoner from that moment on. Only in extraordinary circumstances, which the weekend of November 22nd clearly presented, would this protocol ever be deviated from. However, in a subsequent statement that he gave, Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker testified to not being notified by the DPD of any plans or intent they had for them (the DPD) or the Sheriff’s Department to facilitate Oswald’s transfer to the County Jail. In fact, he only found out his information on this front through members of the media.

    And examining the statements of Chief Curry and his captain for the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, J.W. Fritz, who had Oswald in custody, shows that the transfer had not been discussed between them at any great length.

    From Curry’s perspective, he was being asked the question by the media about the transfer, so he in turn asked Fritz if he thought he’d be done with his questioning of Oswald that (Saturday) afternoon, so he could be transferred. Fritz said that he still needed more time, which was his right, as it was much easier to interrogate a suspect at City Hall than at the County Jail. Between the two, it was generally agreed that Oswald would stay another night at City Hall for further questioning and be transferred the next morning. On this, Curry duly told the press that Oswald would be transferred the next day at 10 am:

    Over the years, this point has been muddled as Curry telling reporters that if they were at City Hall by 10 am on the Sunday, they won’t have missed the transfer. But using articles) published that weekend, it was clearly reported that Curry stated the transfer would begin at 10 am. (Abbott, Death to Justice, p.363

    As Saturday evening turned into night, Dallas City Hall quietened down to a near state of normalcy, with there only being a handful of reporters staying around in case Oswald was instead transferred that night. We are now able to examine the alleged threats to Lee Oswald’s life in the early hours of Sunday, November 24th, on behalf of a ‘committee’.

    Below is a list of the people who had firsthand, evidential dealings with receiving and acting upon the threats:

    • Police Chief Jesse Curry – DPD
    • Sheriff Bill Decker – Sheriff’s Dept.
    • Captain William B. Frazier – DPD
    • Captain J.W. Fritz – DPD
    • Vernon R. Glossup (civilian clerk) – FBI
    • Deputy C.C. McCoy – Sheriff’s Dept.
    • Special Agent Milton L. Newsom – FBI
    • Captain Cecil E. Talbert – DPD

    Using statements and quoting specific points that each of these people provided to either the FBI or the Warren Commission, we can piece together a chronology when it comes to the receiving and handling of these threats.

    Threat Timeline:

    • At the County Jail, Deputy Sheriff C.C. McCoy was working the night shift which consisted of taking phone calls from all manner of citizens, near and far, who were calling to do anything from express their condolences to warning of a group of ‘fourteen thousand negroes’ who were coming to town to get ‘this bunch’ straightened out. Also on duty were fellow personnel by the names Kennedy, Watkins and ‘Virgil’.
    • At approximately 2:00 am, McCoy even received a call from Sheriff Bill Decker. During this call, he and Decker discussed when Oswald’s transfer would take place and that it should be while it was still dark. They even speculated when it became light (6:30 am or 6:45 am) and agreed that McCoy would call Decker back at 6 am to see about getting Oswald transferred before first light.
    • At 2:15 am, McCoy received another call. This time it was from a man who, according to a statement he later provided, ‘talked like a w/m (white male) and he stated that he was a member of a group of one hundred and that he wanted the Sheriff’s office to know that they had voted one hundred per cent to kill Oswald while he was in the process of being transferred to the County Jail. And that he wanted this department to have the information so that none of the deputies would get hurt.’ McCoy said ‘The voice was deep and coarse and sounded very sincere and talked with ease. The person did not seem excited like some of the calls that had received running down this department, the police department and the State of Texas.’ McCoy said that he had his colleague, ‘Virgil’, listen to part of the call.
    • At 2:30 am, civilian clerk for the Dallas FBI office, Vernon R. Glossup, received a call from an unknown male who also spoke in a calm voice and asked to talk to the man in charge. According to his own statement, Glossup said he ‘told the caller that the SAC (Special Agent in Charge) was not present at that time and asked if someone else could help him. The caller then said, “Wait a minute,” and apparently turned the phone over to another man. I am not certain there were two different voices; however, the tone of the unknown caller’s voice changed somewhat at this point. The voice at this point was calm and mature in sound, and this person stated as follows: “I represent a committee that is neither right nor left wing, and tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, we are going to kill the man that killed the president. There will be no excitement, and we will kill him. We wanted to be sure and tell the FBI, Police Department, and Sheriff’s Office, and we will be there and will kill him.” With that, the caller hung up. Glossup transcribed the call in a memorandum for Special Agent Milton L. Newsom, who contacted the Sheriff’s Department at 3:00 am to see if they too had received any such calls. Newsom then called the Police Department at 3:30 am to ask the same and advise of the threat that Glossup had received.
    • Sheriff Deputy McCoy concurred that he received a call from Newsom and that he merely asked if ‘we’ (the Sheriff’s Department) had received any calls threatening Oswald’s life. McCoy said that he had, so Newsom instructed him to contact Dallas Police ‘and give the same information to them.’ According to his statement, McCoy did call the Dallas Police Department but could only recall that he ‘talked to someone in Captain Fritz’s office.’ McCoy stated that he was told by a member of the DPD that they (Dallas Police) hadn’t received any threatening phone calls.
    • Still with McCoy and his statement, he ‘received one other call regarding the transfer of Oswald, and when I answered the telephone, a male voice asked if this is the Sheriff’s office, and I said that it was. He said, “Just a minute,” and then another male voice stated that Oswald would never make the trip to the County Jail. McCoy said he could not determine whether or not this was the same voice that called earlier on behalf of a ‘committee’.
    • At City Hall, Captain William B. Frazier was the ranking officer on duty there that night. He testified to the Warren Commission of being contacted by FBI Agent Milton Newsom between 3:00 am and 3:45 am. He quoted Newsom as telling him that he (Newsom) ‘received a threat from some man to the effect that a group of men of 100 or 200’, Frazier said he couldn’t recall exactly, ‘were going to attempt to kill Oswald that day sometime. That he (the caller) didn’t want the FBI, Dallas Police Department or the sheriff’s office injured in any way. That was the reason for the call.’
    • To somewhat corroborate McCoy’s account, in the same testimony for the Warren Commission, Frazier said he spoke to someone with the surname of, or similar to, ‘Cox’ or Coy’ from the Sheriff’s Department. Frazier testified that he wasn’t clear on the time of the call, but he and McCoy discussed Oswald’s transfer and that McCoy told him that Sheriff Decker recommended that it be brought forward. And if so, there could be two supervisors from the Sheriff Department on hand at the County Jail to receive Oswald.
    • Frazier said that he next called Captain Fritz at his home to tell him of the threats against Oswald and that he would need to be transferred. Fritz told him it was Chief Curry’s decision to make, as he wanted Oswald transferred in the morning. However, when Frazier tried to also reach Curry by phone at home, the line was out of order.
    • At around 6:00 am, McCoy called Bill Decker as agreed and told him who was on duty and how they could carry out Oswald’s transfer if required – including hiding Oswald down in the footwell of the car. He was told by Decker to hold off on any plans until he spoke with Captain Fritz.
    • At 6:15 am, Frazier was at the end of his shift and about to be relieved by Captain Cecil E. Talbert. In the handover, Frazier said that he advised Talbert of the threat situation with Oswald and that both Sheriff Decker and Agent Newsom were anxious to transfer him.
    • According to Talbert’s statement for the Warren Commission, he must have been advised of the issue to reach Curry, as he said that he got the telephone company to put a buzzer on his phone line to determine if the line was faulty. It was, so he sent a squad car to Curry’s house to brief him on the situation and have him call City Hall… if he could.
    • Despite the issues with his phone, Curry soon called Talbert back at City Hall and was briefed on the threats. All Curry did was instruct Talbert to tell Newsom and Decker that he would contact them when he was in his office between 8:00 am and 9:00 am later that morning.

    With all of the above told, no more was done to address the threats to Lee Oswald.

    As the morning rolled on, the transfer at least had some planning put toward it. Once Curry and Decker decided between them that the DPD would facilitate the transfer, it was decided that Oswald would be taken in an armored truck for the twelve-block journey to the County Jail. Acting on orders from Curry, Deputy Chief Batchelor contacted a local armored car company, and they sent two people carrying armored trucks to City Hall’s Commerce Street ramp exit.

    At the last minute, at approximately 11:15 am, Fritz recommended that Oswald instead be placed in the back of an unmarked squad car and that it follow behind the armored car, which in turn would be empty and a decoy. His justification for this was that if there was an attack launched on Oswald during the transfer, a vehicle such as an armored car would be too awkward to maneuver and evade. With that, the transfer finally got underway with a group of detectives and Fritz leaving the Third Floor with Oswald – and the rest is tragic history. Jack Ruby was able to access the basement and be in a position to shoot, and ultimately kill, Oswald when he and his escort emerged into the basement and were walking to the car.

    While there are clear gaps in some of the timings and accounts around the threats response (for example, McCoy’s statement does not include any mention of speaking to Decker after he had both received and received word of the threat calls), it is clear that there was some effort by he and the DPD’s Frazier to bring about Oswald’s transfer early to pre-empt any threat against his life. The roadblocks were Captain Fritz and Chief Curry.

    When first told of the threats by Frazier, Fritz basically put his hands up and said, ‘Not me, not my call.’ What any competent leader within a hierarchy ought to have done, in this instance, was say, ‘It is the Chief’s call… so try and reach him to find out. If you can’t reach him, call me back because we’d best still get the transfer underway.’

    However, if Jesse Curry’s phone line was not a factor and he was reached by Frazier, it would not have made a difference. We can be sure of this because he scuttled any chance to respond accordingly when he instructed that Newsom and Decker be told that he would arrive at City Hall in a couple of hours’ time. That was it. That was how he responded to the word of the threats. There was no action to effect an earlier transfer there and then. If he did decide to do something about it, Curry wouldn’t have had to do much other than give the approval. Between his personnel, and perhaps a quick phone call by him to Sheriff Decker, Oswald’s early and safe transfer would have been incredibly easy to carry out.

    The burning question is why Curry didn’t want to have Oswald transferred at that point in time? At 10:20 am later that morning, when speaking to reporters, Curry not only mentioned the threat made to Oswald overnight, he also said that he could’ve been transferred early as a result but he (Curry) chose not to because he didn’t want to go back on the original time he told the press (Abbott, Death to Justice, p.112). Apparently, it was as simple as that. On top of it all, Curry actually laid out to the reporters that Oswald would be transported to the County Jail in an armored car. Talk about infuriating!

    Having uncovered just how the verifiable threat episode involving the FBI, Sheriff and DPD took place, in Part Two, we will analyze this episode in the context of the furor that Chief Curry started with his candidness on the morning of Saturday when speaking with the press and how the FBI ultimately took the early lead in investigating President Kennedy’s assassination.

    Click here to read part 2.

  • The Washington Post’s Bomb on George Joannides

    The Washington Post’s Bomb on George Joannides

    The Washington Post’s Bomb on George Joannides

    Has the tide turned in mainstream media?

    By: Paul Bleau

    Jefferson Morley spoke with me two days before the story broke. He gave me a scoop. The Washington Post was about to publish an article about a subject he had been working on for years, namely, a story about a mysterious CIA officer named George Joannides. The Post was about to unmask him as an officer who oversaw a Cuban exile group that had direct contact with the alleged lone-nut assassin of JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald. This group, the DRE, had multiple interactions with Lee Harvey Oswald during the all-important summer that preceded the murder in 1963. Joannides would have had to have been informed about these suspicious incidents. This propaganda expert instructed DRE operatives to communicate Oswald’s pro-Castro bona fides to the FBI and media after the assassination. He would later be inserted by the CIA as their liaison for part of the HSCA 1976 investigation. He and the CIA had lied about his profile, and Joannides used his role to obstruct the efforts of HSCA investigators.

    Jeff asked for advice and my help in creating a buzz around this. So, I gladly did, not because Jeff and I are close collaborators, nor because I do not have concerns about the Washington Post and mainstream media as a whole when it comes to talking about their bête noire, nor that I do not have some misgivings about the current focus of the Luna task force on declassification. I helped because the Joannides story is newsworthy and helps tilt the playing field even more in favor of those fighting for the truth. I was convinced that the upcoming article would be a milestone because of the position that a world-leading mainstream media outlet would stake.

    Very simply, we gave a heads-up to key contacts about a scoop on what was about to break. The reactions were immediate: Jeff received many calls, and I was invited by local media for two interviews about the story. Feedback from researcher contacts varied between expressions of mistrust, interest, and offers to spread the news.

    Now that I have seen the article, gone through my interviews, and had a number of exchanges about the pros and cons of the coverage, it seems an opportune moment to discuss the article and the Luna task force’s work.

    The importance of the article

    This article is quite important, despite what anybody may say to attack it. No matter how much one feels disdain towards mainstream media complacency over sixty years, the fact that one of the U.S.’s most important media outlets on political affairs wrote what they did is nothing short of monumental. It is the suspicious mutism of sixty years on this tragedy by the fourth estate that renders what was written by the Washington Post so very compelling.

    Let’s be honest. Mainstream media should have denormalized the Warren Commission narrative of a lone nut assassin scenario still peddled by disinformation artists, history books, and many in the media decades ago. Some instance, in 1975 when the Zapruder film was shown to the world on Good Night America; or a few years later when the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded there was a probable conspiracy; or when declassified documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board the mid-nineties showed that there were a combined total of over 40 witnesses to wounds proving a frontal shot, at both Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where JFK was first treated after being hit, and at Bethesda Medical Center, where the autopsy was conducted; or later when the declassified Lopez Report confirmed that Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City shortly before the assassination and that CIA officials lied and obfuscated about this; and even just recently during the Luna task force congressional hearings where we heard important witnesses and Anna Luna herself decimate the Warren Commission findings with blistering statements…. Mainstream media has largely steered clear of these inconvenient truths.

    Researchers know all about Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program for manipulating the press and gaslighting the public, which likely lost some of its clout with the entry of the new Trump team. Currently, the media must be conflicted by the prospect of exposing their own weak performance on this issue over six decades. With the levy breaking and the traditional malarkey about JFK becoming a growing source of ridicule, the recently declassified Joannides document may have provided an opening to jump ship… Ha! This was not known until now, and it proves the (now defanged) CIA lied and hid stuff… Ergo, it is not our fault, and Luna and Tulsi will not turn on us for saying what is quickly becoming an official government narrative through Miss Luna herself! May as well be the first to spill the beans!

    Is this what is happening? Is the Washington Post showing courage or simply reading the writing on the wall? I don’t know! And I don’t care. A Rubicon of truth has been crossed and will be archived forever. The tables have turned. Now, the real whack jobs are the late Vince Bugliosi and his Keystone Cop disciples who are trying to spin this. They are flailing away. Front page news on the U.S.’s third-largest print media, with 130,000 subscribers to their paper edition and 2.5 million digital subscribers, is nothing to scoff at. Jeff Morley and Congresswoman Luna deserve kudos for bringing us to where we now are. The lone-nut apologists are marginalized, if not a laughingstock, and serious researchers who were a target of derision are vindicated.

    Unprecedented information quality from a news giant

    While the importance of the bearer of news cannot be understated, it is the impact of what was written that will echo far and wide, and hopefully for a long time.

    Some are telling me that while WaPo may have been the ones to break the Watergate story, they are also the ones who shielded the CIA from negative fallout by underplaying the significance of just who the burglars were and their ties to intelligence. My answer to them is that no matter what they may have done or omitted to do in the past, this clearly cannot be interpreted as a redux with what we have seen so far. We will ascertain whether this story has legs and where it may or may not go later. But I see no problem with the all-important first impressions.

    Consider: The title, subtitle and first paragraph are explosive!

    “The CIA reveals more of its connections to Lee Harvey Oswald

    New documents show an officer known only as Howard managed a Cuban group that interacted with Oswald in the months before the JFK assassination.

    For more than 60 years, the CIA claimed it had little or no knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. That wasn’t true, new documents unearthed by a House task force prove.”

    The reader now knows for certain that Oswald was no lone nut and that he was on the CIA radar, and the CIA lied about this. The article goes on to explain the Joannides, aka Howard, affair described above. The quotes come from a variety of important sources, and they are damaging.

    Jefferson Morley, a longtime JFK researcher and former Washington Post reporter, who first sued the CIA for their assassination files in 2003: “The burden of proof has shifted. There’s a story here that’s been hidden and avoided, and now it needs to be explored. It’s up to the government to explain.” And, “At least 35 CIA employees handled reports on Oswald between 1959 and 1963, including a half dozen officers who reported personally to [counterintelligence chief James] Angleton or deputy director Richard Helms.”

    “Joannides began to change the way file access was handled,” committee staff member Dan Hardway testified before Luna’s task force in May. “The obstruction of our efforts by Joannides escalated over the summer [of 1978]. … It was clear that CIA had begun to carefully review files before delivering them to us for review.”

    Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA counterintelligence officer who has delved deeply into the case, said, “This looks a hell of a lot like a CIA operation.” He said a plausible theory was rogue CIA officers created the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, unknown to the agency, and that “the CIA covered it up not because they were involved, but because they were trying to hide the secrets of that period.”

    “We are getting closer to the truth about Oswald and the CIA, but I do think there is more to come,” said Senior U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim of Minneapolis, who chaired the assassinations review board in the 1990s. “The Joannides disclosures are most important, I think.”

    And how about Congresswoman Luna for a grand finale: “There was a rogue element that operated within the CIA, outside the purview of Congress and the federal government, that knowingly engaged in a cover-up of the JFK assassination. I believe this rogue element intentionally turned a blind eye to the individuals that orchestrated it, to which they had direct connections. I think this rogue element within the CIA looked at JFK as a radical. They did not like his foreign policy, and that’s why they justified turning a blind eye to his assassination and those involved.”

    Of note: not one single voice still peddling the lone nut fairy tale is heard from in this article. Perhaps the Post did question some and found them to be lacking in credibility, or could not find a credible dissenting voice to come forward, or simply has come to the conclusion that there is no added value for their readers to hear from empty cans that make a lot of noise.

    If one has worked many years arguing that there was a conspiracy with slow progress being made, what more can one ask for? I ask the skeptics among us: Do you think punches were pulled so far on this particular story to spare the CIA? Has there ever been an article from mainstream media that has gone this far in discrediting the official narrative and their snake oil sales reps? Do you not prefer this coverage over the lopsided coverage lone scenario peddlers used to get? Who looks like foolish tale spinners now? Chalk this up as a win.

    Concluding remarks

    For all the reasons mentioned above and my personal experience with media questioning me about the significance of the Post article, I am convinced that this represents a real victory for our side. It reverses the tables on the disorganized opponents of the truth, and it puts pressure on the whole media industry to state their positions and dig deeper.

    I do have some concerns about where all this goes.

    The article says there is more to come and highlights what Joannides’ field reports on Oswald, the DRE, and the Fair Play for Cuba may reveal. When will we get these?

    Congresswoman Anna Luna is being attacked by the very same forces that many researchers believe are being backed by the CIA. We know the CIA devised a game plan to counter Warren Commission critics, and there are many signs that they still rear their ugly heads. Luna and those advising her need to take advantage of this singular moment in time to unravel these dirty tricks and hopefully reveal and critique the disinformation network. This will defend Luna’s reputation and agenda and pre-empt the sneaky character assassination attempts before they take hold.

    The current information release effort is impressive. Other voices need to be heard, including specialists respected for their knowledge and professionalism, and excluding loose-cannon know-it-alls as well as lone-nut water carriers. There is a legitimate fear, I believe, by some that the Luna task force endeavors are too centric on CIA misdirection and a couple of individuals rather than focused on the mechanics of the conspiracy. My analysis of files, including many recent ones, points in directions worthy of more exploration. They say a lot about the who, what, when and why of it all. Anna Luna needs guidance, and the gatekeepers, yes, this includes you Jeff, need to know what lanes to occupy and who should be brought in. It seems to me that people like Jim DiEugenio and Malcolm Blunt could be credible advisors who could enrich Luna’s sources of information.

    It would be an error to try to find a limited hangout to protect the image of the CIA. This will only prolong the pain. On the other hand, the marketer in me understands that perception is reality and reputational risk is high. However, there are more than enough examples of rebranding and new imaging efforts that have successfully saved products and organizations that were in a tailspin. Many have gone on to see these thrive. Old Spice did it, George Bush Junior was born again, and CIA 1963 no longer exists, just like those who created the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In this volatile world, CIA 2025 is needed more than ever.

    Finally, this murder is not solved. Investigations have been continuously sabotaged. Obstruction of justice in this case has been around for more than sixty years. There are still many stones that have been left unturned. A new investigation is in order, a genuine one. The Department of Justice right now has serious credibility issues due to the Epstein debacle. To lead one, I nominate Congresswoman Luna. Jefferson Morley needs to be complemented by a synergetic mind who excels in areas where Jeff is less at ease. Here, I would suggest Jim DiEugenio, who, through his research network, knows who the specialists are on the Secret Service, the Tippit assassination, Jack Ruby, the JFK Act, etc. What a formidable team this would be!

    (Tom Jackman’s Washington Post article may be viewed here, but you may have to create a free account to view)

  • Jeff Meek’s Interview of Joan Mellen

    Jeff Meek’s Interview of Joan Mellen

    The Other Official JFK Assassination Investigation

    by Jeff Meek

    (Originally published as The JFK Files – #40 – December 2023)

    In this column I’ve written about the Warren Commission and their 1964 conclusion that there was no conspiracy in the death of President Kennedy and also about the House Select Committee on Assassination’s 1979 conclusion that there was a conspiracy to kill the president. Here in this edition of “The JFK Files” I’m writing about the only other official investigation into Nov. 22, 1963, that being New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s probe into the murder.

    It began just as a rumor that Garrison was making inquiries about the murder, but the cat was out of the bag on March 1, 1967, when Garrison announced that he had arrested New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw for conspiring to kill Kennedy. It was a bold move and attracted a lot of attention, including from the CIA. Two years later the 3-week trial began, and the case went to the jury on Feb. 28, 1969. Hours later on March 1, Shaw was acquitted.

    In 1991, Oliver Stone’s blockbuster movie “JFK” captured the attention of millions. I remember after watching it I was disappointed that Stone had focused on such a discredited investigation, but I was happy that the movie brought attention to the case which in short order resulted in the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act and in 1994 the Assassination Records Review Board that successfully forced agencies and departments to release millions of pages of documents.

    For this column I sought out Joan Mellen, a recognized expert on the Garrison – Shaw case. What she shared with me about certain aspects and people involved in the case were a real eye opener. Mellen is a former professor of English at Temple University and author of 2 dozen books. In the JFK research community, she is seen as one of a very few who have dug deep into the Garrison – Shaw case.

    She first met Garrison shortly after the trial. Her husband had previously sent him clippings from Italian newspapers about an entity called Permindex which was based in Switzerland, founded by the CIA, and had Clay Shaw on its board of directors. None of this information could be used at the trial because it was considered hearsay. In gratitude, Garrison invited Mellen and her husband to come to New Orleans, which they did and sat down together for dinner one evening.

    I asked Mellen what she saw as the biggest surprise of the Garrison – Shaw trial. “The fact that Shaw lied many times. And Garrison was right about everything. He saw Oswald’s movements as those of a CIA operative. Everyone that Oswald saw was CIA.”

    It is now well documented that Shaw was a CIA “active contact” for the CIA’s Domestic Contact Service. Shaw’s CIA contact in New Orleans was case officer Hunter Leake, who reported to Bill Weiss. Another CIA document shows that the CIA was worried about being connected to Shaw. From a CIA document: “We are somewhat more concerned about how we should respond to any direct questions concerning the Agency’s relationship with Clay Shaw.” Still another document refers to Shaw as being highly paid by the CIA. Thus, when Garrison began digging into all this the CIA began sabotaging the case. Mellen believes that Shaw was an Oswald caretaker in New Orleans.

    One example of how Garrison’s case against Shaw was sabotaged relates to a man by the name of Thomas Bethell who came to New Orleans to volunteer in Garrison’s office. Bethell was Oxford University educated and was brought on to Garrison’s staff. But Bethell turned out to be anything but helpful because he turned over a list of trial witnesses, which was not required, to Shaw’s lawyer Salvatore Panzeca. Garrison filed charges against Bethell, but nothing came of it and there was no punishment.

    Mellen also mentioned James Kirkwood who wrote a book, “American Grotesque.” Mellen said Kirkwood was a CIA plant. His job was to write favorably about Shaw. “The book was the idea of CIA,” Mellen told me. Later, Kirkwood’s editor said that had he known of the Kirkwood – Shaw relationship, he would never have signed on to do the book.

    There were many other plants as well. House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Deputy Legal Counsel Robert Tannenbaum was shown a document that listed CIA plants inside Garrison’s office. Nine names were on that list. Ask yourself this question. If there was no Shaw – CIA connection, why plant people in Garrison’s office? Answering that Mellen said, “because Shaw was their guy.” Tannenbaum also found a memo from CIA Deputy Director Richard Helms that revealed how the CIA followed, harassed, and attempted to intimidate Garrison’s witnesses.

    Space doesn’t allow me to give more examples of CIA infiltration into the matter, but I want to share one very interesting aspect of the case that was unknown to the Warren Commission and well researched by Mellen. I’m talking about an Oswald sighting in Clinton, Louisiana in the summer of 1963. In the late 1970’s the HSCA investigated this lead and found 6 witnesses “credible, significant and truthful.” Clinton is about 130 miles from New Orleans, is the county seat for East Feliciana Parish and was being targeted by the Congress of Racial Equality for a voting rights campaign.

    Oswald first showed up in nearby Jackson, Louisiana, seeking employment at East Louisiana State Mental Hospital. Oswald was told a job there would require him to be a register voter, so he went to Clinton for that purpose. The Clinton witnesses gave physical descriptions that matched Oswald, along with other observations, like Oswald showing his Marine Corps discharge papers as a form of identification. Some witnesses added that Oswald was with 2 older men who were identified as Shaw and David Ferrie.

    The front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Feb. 7, 1969, (see caption) shows that a trial witness, Corri C. Collins, testified that he saw a black Cadillac pull up with 3 men in it. He identified Oswald as the man who stepped from the rear seat, pointed to Shaw as the driver and identified Ferrie as the man sitting next to Shaw in the car.

    Mellen learned that the HSCA refused to authorize investigation of Oswald’s appearance at the hospital. HSCA Investigator Robert Buras was permitted to talk only to Clinton witnesses already identified. Buras was also barred from going to Clinton or Jackson. Mellen points out that this is disturbing seeing as others had more information to share. From Mellen: “An example is Ronald Johnston, the Baton Rouge private investigator who telephoned the committee saying he knew 2 witnesses who had seen Oswald and Shaw together at the Clinton courthouse, as well as at the hospital.”

    Mellen got to know Dr. Frank Silva, the medical director at the hospital. Silva told Mellen that Oswald was ranting about being a Marine and killing Castro.

    So why was Oswald asking about jobs at the mental hospital, I asked Mellen. “He wasn’t interested. He was under orders. He went there with 2 CIA guys (Shaw and Ferrie). Oswald asked what jobs were there.” She explained that Garrison thought that if Oswald was working at this mental asylum and later shows up in Dallas, after the killing, Oswald would be looked at as being crazy.

    Getting back to Ferrie, he was a suspect within days of the assassination, but nothing came of it. I have in my possession the audio recording of a November 1963 Secret Service interrogation of Oswald’s wife Marina and near the end of the recording an agent asked Marina if she knew the name Ferrie. She said she did not. The point is that in 1963, investigators were aware of a possible involvement by Ferrie and a link to Oswald. In 1993 a photo tuned up that showed Ferrie and Oswald together at a Civil Air Patrol function, thus there’s photographic proof the 2 men knew each other.

    Ferrie, well known in some circles as a pilot, used a New Orleans attorney named G. Wray Gill in 1963 in litigation concerning his (Ferrie) dismissal by Eastern Airlines. Another client of Gill’s was Carlos Marcello, head of organized crime in Louisiana. Ferrie is alleged to be a pilot used in anti-Castro operations and was associated with former FBI agent Guy Banister, who is also linked to Oswald.

    In the summer of 1963 Oswald was seen and filmed handing out pro-Castro leaflets. On those leaflets was stamped the address of 544 Camp Street, which was the location of Banister’s office. Several witnesses stated they saw Oswald at that Camp Street address. Ferrie was a crucial witness in the Garrison case, but just as he was about to be brought in for questioning, he was found dead in his apartment on Feb. 22, 1967. Apparent cause of death – a brain hemorrhage.

    In summary the point is that Garrison was on to something, found Oswald – Shaw – CIA links and had the CIA very worried about where his investigation might lead. But in many respects his case was sabotaged and, in the end, made to look foolish. Within just a few hours, Shaw was acquitted of all charges.

    One has to wonder how history would have changed had D.A. Jim Garrison been allowed to investigate without interference. It would be another 10 years before the case came to light again when, in 1976 the HSCA began their 2-year JFK assassination probe which also suffered from CIA lies and interference, just like in the Garrison case.

    This article barely scratches the surface of Mellen’s research. For more, pick up a copy of her 2013 edition of “A Farewell to Justice.” You can find it on eBay and Amazon.

  • “Echoes of a Lost America” by Monika Wiesak – A Review

    “Echoes of a Lost America” by Monika Wiesak – A Review

    Echoes of a Lost America

    By Monika Wiesak

    Three years ago, in 2022, Monika Wiesak published America’s Last President. This remains one of the best, if not the best, of all contemporary books on the presidency of John F. Kennedy. If you have not read it, I strongly urge you to do so. (Click here for my review https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/last-president) Wiesak has now published a book about the assassination of President Kennedy, entitled Echoes of a Lost America.

    I

    She begins her new book by looking at the crime in a macroscopic manner. She describes some of the things that Kennedy was doing as president that likely disturbed people in the higher circles. She labels his foreign policy as anti-imperialist and mentions his attempt to forge a rapprochement with Fidel Castro in 1963. She uses a telling quote on Vietnam by Gen. Maxwell Taylor: “I don’t recall anyone who was strongly against sending combat troops, except one man, and that was the president.” (Wiesak, p. 10; all references to paperback version) She then discusses how, after Kennedy’s murder, LBJ Americanized the Vietnam War and provoked the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. (Wiesak, p. 6) She continues in this vein by mentioning reversals by Johnson of Kennedy policies in the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, and the Congo.

    Unlike almost all other authors in the field, Wiesak brings in Kennedy’s clashes with Israeli/Zionist interests as part of her overview. For one example, she mentions Kennedy’s backing of UN emissary Joseph Johnson’s Palestinian refugee plan. Kennedy supported this concept until the end of his presidency. It allowed three methods of repatriation for the Palestinians. Either they could stay where they were and be compensated for their loss during the Nakba; they could move elsewhere and the UN would pay for it; or they could return to where they were originally. Secretly, President David Ben Gurion violently opposed the Johnson Plan. (p. 16)

    She also brings in a rather ignored piece of information. Namely, the highly enriched uranium that was used by the Israelis at the Dimona nuclear reactor was very likely stolen from the United States. (p. 21). This data is examined in minute detail by author Roger Mattson in his book Stealing the Atom Bomb. (Click here for a review https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/11/how-israel-stole-the-bomb/) She adds that this heist was likely known to James Angleton. She concludes that Kennedy’s Middle East policy was overhauled in almost every aspect by President Johnson. And she adds this telling fact:

    The 92 million in military assistance provided in fiscal year 1966 was greater than the total of all official military aid provided to Israel cumulatively in all the years going back to the foundation of that nation in 1948. (Wiesak, p. 23)

    From here, she goes to Kennedy’s economic policies by beginning with an appropriate Kennedy quotation:

    The president must serve as the defender of the public good and the public interest against all the narrow private interests which operate in our society. (p. 26)

    Like many observers on this topic, she points out the importance of the appointment of James Saxon as Comptroller of the Currency. (p. 27). She wisely quotes from the famous interview that Saxon gave to US News and World Report just before Kennedy was killed. Saxon was trying to loosen bank regulations and also encouraging the opening of more state banks. He and Kennedy wanted an easier flow of credit and loans to small businessmen and farmers. This put Saxon at odds with the Federal Reserve Board. As the magazine summed up his policy:

    The Comptroller approved scores of new national banks, and branches, spurred key mergers, revised outmoded rules. Result: keener competition for deposits and customers. (p. 28)

    During this interview, Saxon said something rather bold. In reply to a question about if the Federal Reserve System should be updated or overhauled, his response was–in no uncertain terms–yes. He went as far as to say bank membership in the system should be voluntary. He clearly depicted himself as in opposition to the Fed, but he said he had Kennedy’s backing on this. He added that it was not surprising to him that the big banks in New York, like Chase Manhattan, did not like him. Because he wanted more open competition for deposits. At that time, Chase Manhattan was a Rockefeller controlled bank. This is an important point, and one that few writers have addressed, save perhaps Donald Gibson.

    II

    Amplifying on Kennedy’s economic reforms, she concentrates on Kennedy building a production-based economy—as opposed to a service economy. One way he was trying to do this was through the investment tax credit. In other words, he was giving companies tax credits if they would modernize their plant and equipment, which would result in higher production rates. This would lead to American products being more competitive in foreign markets. (p.29)

    He also tried to help those in need with welfare benefits by doubling the number of people eligible for surplus food, and also signing a bill extending unemployment benefits from 26-39 weeks. He raised the minimum wage and signed off on increased Social Security benefits. (p.29)

    She becomes the first writer to accent the showdown between Kennedy and the steel industry since Gibson. She rightly pictures the conflict as a battle. One between Kennedy trying to control inflation, the steel companies initially agreeing, but then reneging on the deal and confronting the president with an accomplished fact: they were raising their prices.

    As Gibson introduced the episode through John Blair:

    The April 1962 face-off between President Kennedy and US Steel had been described as the most dramatic confrontation in history between a president and a corporate management. (John Blair, Economic Concentration, p. 635)

    Kennedy felt he needed the steel company/labor union agreement to keep inflationary forces from spiraling throughout the economy. He figured his increase in minimum wages would be eaten up by what he called “the cruel tax of inflation.” (Wiesak, p 29) Kennedy thought he had an agreement that the workers would not demand higher wages and the company would not raise prices. But four days after the labor contract had been signed, on April 10th, Roger Blough, Chairman of US Steel, visited Washington. He then handed the president a PR release: the company would announce a 3.5 % price increase at midnight. (Gibson, Battling Wall Street, p.10) Kennedy reportedly said, “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.” (Wiesak, p. 30).

    After five other companies joined US Steel to break the agreement, Kennedy decided that, if his economic policy was going to have any impact or credibility, he would have to begin a counter-attack. Which he did. This was through Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The former stated that no company that broke the agreement would be given any more Pentagon contracts. The latter began investigating charges of collusion and price fixing by issuing subpoenas, some at 3 AM. (Ibid). Kennedy also used the bully pulpit to hit back. On April 11th, he said that he thought the American people would find it difficult to accept,

    A situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interest of 185,000,000 Americans. (Gibson, p. 13)

    Within 48 hours of handing over the announcement, big steel had taken back the price rise. Her synopsis of the crisis is fine, I just wish she had done a bit more with the part of Gibson’s book that deals with Kennedy’s struggle against the CFR globalists.

    From here, she goes on to describe Kennedy’s advocacy of Rachel Carson’s work against the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Although Carson was attacked for Silent Spring, Kennedy formed a committee that vindicated the book in May of 1963. (Wiesak, p. 31) Kennedy also backed the work of Dr. Frances Kelsey against the drug thalidomide, and this then led to the FDA having approval over when a drug could be marketed. (ibid., p 32)

    With the banks, steel companies and big pharma, Kennedy was not looked upon as a friend of big business.

    III

    After adroitly laying out this backdrop, Wiesak now shifts over to the assassination itself. She begins with an examination of the alleged assassin, Lee Oswald. Was Oswald really a self-declared Marxist? There is a lot of evidence to indicate the contrary: namely that he was really an agent provocateur. And she wastes little time in mounting a case showing that he was. She includes the puzzle about Oswald’s 201 file, or the lack of the CIA opening one for the first 13 months after he defected to the Soviet Union. (p. 45). She adds that James Angleton’s successor, George Kalaris, gave a possible answer as to why it was finally opened: Oswald had made queries “concerning possible reentry into the United States.” (p. 45) This would suggest that Oswald understood he had failed to gull the KGB and wanted to return for reassignment.

    So once Oswald returned to Texas, he kept up this image by subscribing to communist and socialist newspapers. (p. 48). But at the same time, he is ingratiating himself with the White Russian community in Dallas, who all loathe communism and want a return to a monarchy. In the face of this returned Soviet defector and his strange behavior, inexplicably, the FBI closed their file on Oswald in October of 1962. Then they reopened it in March of 1963, allegedly based on communist periodical subscriptions that the Bureau already knew he had.

    Wiesak discusses the enigmatic figure of George DeMohrenschildt, nicknamed the Baron. Since he figured right into the midst of this whole contradictory White Russian/Oswald milieu. And she notes that the majority of the Baron’s contact with Oswald was during that six-month period when the FBI closed down their Oswald file. She also discusses the Baron’s acquaintance with Jean de Menil, president of the Schlumberger Corporation, which had close ties to the CIA; and through the Agency to the OAS, which was trying to overthrow French president Charles de Gaulle. DeMohrenschildt and his father also met and worked with Allen Dulles. (p. 49) In early 1963, DeMohrenschildt left for a reputed CIA assignment in Haiti. And now Ruth and Michael Paine have become the best friends of Lee and his wife Marina. And she examines their rather interesting connections to the higher circles. (p. 51)

    She concludes that Oswald appears “to be some sort of intelligence asset, either witting or unwitting, who James Angleton closely monitored.” (ibid)

    From here, the book segues into what she calls the “Lead Up to the Crime”. Jim Garrison thought the early announcement that Kennedy would be coming to Dallas, which was in the Dallas Times Herald in late April, marked the beginning of the maneuvering of Oswald away from the White Russians. (p. 53). In a bit over two weeks, Oswald would be looking for a job at Reilly Coffee Company in the Crescent City. She makes note that New Orleans DA Jim Garrison found out how some of Oswald’s cohorts moved on to the NASA base at Michoud. She then adds that Oswald thought he was going there also. (p. 54). Importantly, she also relates the heist by Oswald’s friend David Ferrie of arms from Schlumberger, which was operated by DeMohrenschildt’s friend Jean de Menil. These arms were then rerouted through Guy Banister’s office at 544 Camp Street, an office at which several witnesses saw Oswald. It was also the address that Oswald placed on some of the pro-Castro literature he was handing out that summer.

    She turns to Clay Shaw and notes the fact that he was reliably identified by the local sheriff as being seen with Ferrie and Oswald in the Clinton/Jackson area in the late summer of 1963. (p. 57) Through the work of Whitney Webb and Michelle Metta, she then links Shaw with DeMenil and Canadian lawyer Louis Mortimer Bloomfield through Permindex. About Permindex, she advances the case that it was a hydra-headed creation: CIA, Italian intelligence and the Mossad. She fingers Bloomfield as a key figure in Permindex because he had access to the majority of the shares in that enigmatic company. (p. 59) She also states that those associated with Permindex were globalists in their views of a world economy, e.g., Bloomfield, Edmond de Rothschild and Shaw. She points out, briefly, that this was opposed to Kennedy’s nationalist views.

    She then offers both views of Oswald in Mexico City: that he may have been there, and he might not have been. But when he returned to Dallas, the FBI’s Marvin Gheesling took the FLASH warning on him off the Watch List. (p. 65). If he had not done that, Oswald likely would not have been on the motorcade route. Also, if Ruth Paine had told Oswald about a job offer that came in from Robert Adams of the Texas Employment Commission, he also would likely not have been on the route.

    IV

    About the assassination itself, in Chapter 4, she does a nice synoptic job of gathering the evidence that Kennedy was undoubtedly killed by a conspiracy. She does this in a microscopic way, but says we should always keep our eye on the Big Picture. (p. 83)

    She then turns to Jack Ruby, the slayer of Oswald. We know that Ruby was the original Man for All Seasons. A guy who had connections in many different directions. She connects him to Meyer Lansky, and uses Seth Kantor’s biography to do so. (p. 110) She also notes that Lansky had worked with the ONI and OSS to help create Operation Underworld, where the Mob helped the war effort during World War II. Lansky had large investments in Cuba before the revolution, and she notes he was also involved with the Haganah, a kind of umbrella paramilitary group devoted to the establishment of Israel. (p. 110). Ruby was also known to Mayor Earle Cabell, who ended up being exposed as a CIA asset.

    Wiesak notes the connection between PR man Sam Bloom and Ruby. Ruby had Sam Bloom’s contact information scribbled down on a card in his apartment. Bloom was also the PR man for Judge Joe Brown at Ruby’s trial. Ruby’s lawyer Melvin Belli commented that “Bloom was making legal history—the first public-relations counselor to a judge in the history of jurisprudence.” (p. 115)

    With Oswald dead and the world seeing Ruby as his killer on TV, the media and the Power Elite were able to fashion and snap on a cover-up almost instantly. To say that it was effective and all-consuming does not do it justice. Wiesak discusses the phone calls from Eugene Rostow and Joseph Alsop to the White House urging Johnson to appoint a blue ribbon commission, because no one was believing what was coming out of Dallas. She also writes that Earle Cabell labeled the assassination “the irrational act of a single man.” (p. 122) And, most pungently, how the New York Times labeled Oswald as the assassin of Kennedy after Ruby killed him. This about a man who always insisted on his innocence and never had a lawyer. Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach then cooperated with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to close the case in about 48 hours. (p. 125)

    What made that so problematic is that, from the beginning, the case against Oswald was full of question marks. And any serious journalist or investigator could have found them. Mark Lane did so in his article published in The Guardian on December 19, 1963. (Lane, Plausible Denial, pp. 335-60). When Lane asked to represent Oswald before the Warren Commission, he was turned down by J. Lee Rankin, the Chief Counsel. (Lane, p. 22) As Wiesak shows throughout Chapter 6, that was purely a decision made upon expediency, not on proper procedure or in the interests of justice. For the Commission’s case, as she demonstrates, was hapless. It would never have withstood the challenge of a properly prepared defense counsel.

    V

    She closes the book with chapters on the murder of Robert Kennedy, attempts to reopen the JFK case and a brief chapter on John F. Kennedy Jr.

    Her chapter on the facts of the RFK case is sharp and compelling. But I wish she had used more of David Talbot’s book on that issue. To give her credit, she does say at the beginning that critics usually consider the two cases as separate matters; but if one thinks that powerful forces killed JFK, then those same forces should be suspects in the removal of Robert. (p. 140) And she repeats this motif at the end of the chapter. (p. 192). If it had been me, I would have spent some more time on this issue, for example, showing that Bobby knew his brother had been killed by a large domestic conspiracy and that Dallas was the perfect place to execute such an action. Also, that he sent such a message to Moscow pertaining to this. (Talbot, Brothers, pp. 29-34)

    But I should mention something that I think was quite striking and relevant in this chapter. Quoting from the trial, Sirhan was asked what he thought about John Kennedy:

    I loved him, sir. More than any American could have….He was working sir, with the leaders of the Arab governments, the Arab countries, to bring a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. And he promised these Arab leaders that he would do his utmost and his best to force or to put some pressure on Israel to comply with the 1948 United Nations Resolution sir, to either repatriate those Arab refugees or give them back, give them the right to return to their homes. And when he was killed that never happened. (p. 186)

    As we have seen previously, Sirhan was correct on this.

    In her review of attempts to reopen the JFK case, she treats Jim Garrison and his case against Clay Shaw with respect. She then describes the figurative earthquake that took place when ABC showed the Zapruder film in 1975 and how that caused the creation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). She has notable disdain for the HSCA. Commenting that their version of the Magic Bullet is as bad or worse than the Warren Commission’s. (p. 205) She is one of the very few writers to note the almost thunderous irony of the alleged plot against Jimmy Carter in May of 1979. Which just happened to involve two men: one named Raymond Lee Harvey and the other Osvaldo Espinoza-Ortiz.

    Her chapter on JFK Jr. hits the important points in relation to the topic at hand. She mentions Meg Azzoni, a former girlfriend, who said, “His heartfelt quest was to expose and bring to trial who killed his father and who covered it up.” (p. 213) She also adds that George magazine was really a presidential platform for him. Interestingly, she describes how he was very interested in the Yitzhak Rabin assassination and published an article on that case, which he himself edited, containing lengthy interviews with shooter Yigal Amir’s mother. She believed that Amir had been manipulated by the Shin Bet.

    The capper to all this? JFK Jr. was going to run for governor in 2002. (p. 217)

    She concludes that what Americans have been handed on the JFK case by the MSM and the political establishment is a counterfeit history. One that its citizens should resist. She also says that she has little doubt that America would be a different place if JFK had lived. And she ends in reference to Kennedy more or less what Kennedy said about Dag Hammarskjold before the United Nations, “Let us not allow his efforts to have been in vain.”

  • “That Day in Dallas: …” by Robert K. Tanenbaum – A Review

    “That Day in Dallas: …” by Robert K. Tanenbaum – A Review

    That Day in Dallas

    by Robert Tanenbaum

     

    Back in 1996, attorney Robert Tanenbaum did an interview for Probe magazine discussing his role overseeing the JFK case as Deputy Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Many readers were impressed by the revelations in that interview. (Click here for it https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/robert-tanenbaum-interviewed-by-probe) One who contacted Tanenbaum was first-generation researcher Ray Marcus. Ray encouraged Bob to write a book on his experience in Washington with the case. Tanenbaum said he would think about it.

    Well, it appears that he thought about it for almost three decades. Because he has now released a rather slim volume entitled That Day in Dallas. In advance, I must say that I have known Tanenbaum for over thirty years and have visited him at his home in Beverly Hills on several occasions. He is a likeable man of many accomplishments, among them being the former mayor of Beverly Hills. He has maintained a strong interest in the John Kennedy assassination over the intervening years. So it is with reluctance that I have to say that his book, That Day in Dallas, is a disappointment. Made more so by his prominence as a leading attorney in the JFK field.

    I

    The author is from New York City. His father was a lawyer/businessman, and his mother was a teacher. (Tanenbaum, p. 36, all references to e-book version) He excelled at playing basketball in high school. At a summer camp, he met NBA all-star Bob Cousy, and Cousy recommended him to coach Pete Newell at Cal Berkeley. (p. 50) After a year at a prep school in Washington, DC, Tanenbaum decided to take up Newell on his offer. At Cal, he played basketball and attended their storied Boalt Hall School of Law. He then interviewed for a position under Frank Hogan, the DA of New York City. Hogan had a long and illustrious career of 32 years in the DA’s office. Tanenbaum felt fortunate to be selected for service in that office, and he devotes several pages to how that hiring process played out. (pp. 58-64)

    Tanenbaum rose to supervise the homicide department, oversaw the court schedule, and ran legal training in Hogan’s office. He never lost a felony case that he tried to verdict, and he was one of the most — if not the most — active court lawyers in the office. He has stated that if Hogan had not passed on, he likely would have stayed there. But after Hogan died, Tanenbaum thought the office lost its stature. Therefore, when Philadelphia prosecutor Richard Sprague called him to come to Washington to work with him on the HSCA, Tanenbaum accepted.

    The deceased Sprague was a first assistant in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office who had an excellent record. And most people believe that, given both his ability and work ethic, Sprague would have helmed the first full-court prosecution of the JFK case. The author clearly sees what happened with the HSCA as a legal proceeding sunk on the sandbar of politics. This is why he tries to fill in the background of his book with vignettes on how he was brought up and was instilled with a certain moral code. And it was not just by his family, but also certain professional mentors: like all-time great basketball coach Lou Carnesecca, and his colleague in the DA’s office Mel Glass. The former taught him the value of preparation. (pp. 42-43) The latter was a paragon of honesty about evidence. (p. 64) Tanenbaum notes this because he wants to get across the message that what he was faced with at the HSCA was something that was simply anathema to his upbringing.

    II

    The book has a circular structure to it. The author fills in the opening with the fact that the Warren Commission was a rigged game from the start since they largely relied on the FBI for their investigation. And J. Edgar Hoover had made up his mind on the case within about 48 hours of Kennedy’s death. (p. 8) So, in reality the Commission was a sham inquiry which ignored the importance of key witnesses. He identifies the Parkland doctors as an example of crucial testimony that was discounted. (p. 11). Tanenbaum also mentions the famous memo from Hoover to James Rowley of the Secret Service. That memo stated that FBI agents had listened to a tape supplied by the CIA of Oswald in Mexico City, and the voice on the tape did not match the Oswald the Bureau was questioning in Dallas. The memo also states that the picture produced by the Agency of Oswald in Mexico City does not look like Oswald. (Memo from Hoover to Rowley of 11/23/63)

    Tanenbaum read the memo and was very interested, especially since the Warren Commission had done little or nothing about Mexico City. He decided to ask CIA officer David Phillips about this tape, since he was stationed in Mexico City at this time. Phillips said it was CIA policy to recycle tapes every 6 or 7 days, so the tape did not exist after the second week of October. Tanenbaum handed Phillips the Hoover memorandum, which undermined his sworn testimony. Phillips folded the memo, placed it in his jacket pocket and left the room. (p. 14). Sprague had already questioned Phillips about the matter, but he did not have the Hoover memo.

    At this point in the HSCA inquiry, Tanenbaum told Sprague they needed to call Phillips back with his lawyer. The whole issue of perjury and contempt needed to be spelled out to him. But the committee balked at this.

    At this point in the volume, Tanenbaum now flashes back to his acceptance of the position in the first place. (p. 23) He and Sprague were under the impression that there would be no compromise in their search for the facts. He was now realizing that they had been gulled. Congress was not the right place for a high-profile murder investigation. He now describes how he was hit with a cold towel by this fact in one of his meetings with the chair of the HSCA, Congressman Louis Stokes.

    At this meeting, Tanenbaum told Stokes that he had strong suspicions about the Agency. This was not just based on his encounter with Phillips. It was also based on his meeting with Senator Richard Schweiker of the Church Committee. The senator told him the following:

    Beware, the CIA will stonewall your investigation, refuse to hand over key documents, and intentionally mislead to further advance its cover-up—all of which it has done monumentally already. You see, during my participation in the Senate investigation regarding possible intel Agency abuse, I came to realize that the godawful truth was that the CIA participated actively in the assassination of our president. (p. 24)

    Schweiker then handed him his Church Committee investigative file. Tanenbaum was trying to use that file, plus his own work, to convince Stokes to sign subpoenas. In what is probably the best scene in the book, Stokes declined. The reason he gave was that the HSCA would not go along with it because of the fear of Agency retaliation. This meant that neither Tanenbaum nor Sprague had the support of the committee any longer. When Stokes asked what the Deputy Counsel would now do, Tanenbaum said he would resign. When Sprague was informed of this impediment, he said he had no choice but to also resign.

    The problem with this being the best episode in the book is simple: we are only on page 26.

    III

    When I first heard that Tanenbaum would be writing a book on his experience with the JFK case, I thought he would be writing a memoir. That is, something like Jim Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins. But that is not what That Day in Dallas is. There is much that is left out of the book that the author has related to me or at conferences. For instance, after Senator Schweiker gave him the file, he and his investigator, Cliff Fenton, went back to his apartment. They stayed up all night reading it. When they were done, Fenton turned to his boss and said, “Bob, this is not a New York City felony case. We are in over our heads.”

    This would have been a telling follow-up scene. Well, Fenton is not even in the book. And Tanenbaum himself curtailed what happened in his meeting with Schweiker. Because before the senator took the file out of his desk, he asked that Fenton leave the room. This is the gravity with which Schweiker regarded what he was about to say to the HSCA attorney: He wanted no witnesses there. And, in fact, when I visited Schweiker in his Washington office many years later, he denied he ever said that about CIA complicity in the JFK case. I told Tanenbaum about this interview, and he called it out as BS. He said Fenton would back him up on this since he told him about it. But my point is this would have all made for a gripping material in a memoir about his experience on the JFK case. For whatever reason, that is not what the author decided to pen.

    From that scene with Scheiker, the book goes into his upbringing in New York, his basketball and academic career, and his hiring by Hogan– which I have already outlined. In other words, it breaks the actual JFK narrative. And this goes on for about thirty pages. As I said, this does have a thematic purpose. But does it merit almost one quarter of the book? What makes this even more puzzling is that Tanenbaum knows how to write this kind of finely hewn, intricately referenced book. Because he has done it before. Three times to be exact: in Echoes of My Soul, Badge of the Assassin, and Coal Country Killing. These were all about celebrated homicide cases, so it’s not like he does not know how to do such a book.

    It is not until he arrives at his meeting with Richard Sprague that he completes the circle and gets back to the JFK case. And he now presents some of the evidence for why he believes the Kennedy murder was a conspiracy. He gives us things like the exposure of the junk science around the Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis test that falsely linked the bullets to each other in the case. (p. 78) He then goes on to the dispute about the fingerprint evidence between Lt. Day of the Dallas Police and Sebastian La Tona of the FBI. (p. 80)

    He describes how the eyewitness testimony in Dealey Plaza links to that at Parkland Hospital. (pp. 88-98) He also tries to show that, through x ray analysis, one can demonstrate the direction of the fatal head shot at Z frame 313, although this needed some finer elucidation. (p. 104)

    Towards the end, the author does make a new revelation. He writes that he had evidence that intelligence agents literally rewrote testimony of key witnesses to make the single shooter scenario stick. Again, this is something I wish he would have expanded on. (p. 120)

    But there is something wrong with his presentation. And that is his backing of the McCone/Rowley document. (p. 124) This is a memo that CIA Director John McCone allegedly wrote in 1964 to Secret Service chief James Rowley, In it, McCone writes that Oswald was a CIA operative and some of their agents were involved in what he termed the Dallas Action. There are so many problems with this exhibit that I really do not know why the author included it, except he was not aware of the controversy surrounding it. In addition to there being no paper trail for it at NARA, there are also internal problems with it. I discussed them in a previous review. (Click here for that https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/groden-robert-absolute-proof)

    What makes the book even more disappointing is that I know the author did have new things to reveal. Because, for instance, he told me that Fenton had a back channel to the CIA giving him information about David Phillips using the name of Maurice Bishop. I also know that he saw documents showing that the CIA had surveillance on Garrison’s witnesses for harassment purposes, and the paper came out of Deputy Director Richard Helms’ office. I also know that his apartment in Washington was burglarized for certain documents he had there.

    All this and more could have made for a compelling, revelatory volume about one man’s journey into the abyss of the JFK case. In my opinion, Bob Tanenbaum missed a great opportunity.

  • Video Talk of JFK Relevancy Today

    Video Talk of JFK Relevancy Today

    View the video here.

  • Critical ARRB Final Determinations Buried and Ignored – Part 2

    Critical ARRB Final Determinations Buried and Ignored – Part 2

    CRITICAL ARRB FINAL DETERMINATIONS BURIED AND IGNORED.
    SERIAL NEGLIGENCE…OR THE MECHANICS OF SUPPRESSION?

    By: Andrew A. Iler
    June 27, 2025

    PART II


    Recap of Part I and Overview of Part Two

    In Part One of this two-part series, we examined the legal framework established by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, 1992 (“JFK Records Act” or the “Act”), looking particularly at the Assassination Records Review Board’s (“ARRB”) mandate to issue agency final orders, known as “Final Determination Notifications”, for each and every assassination record that it reviewed during its four-year existence. Part One also looked at how the ARRB and the Executive Office of the President actually implemented the statutory process unanimously passed by Congress in the Act.

    There is a provision in the Act that is absolutely critical to the enforceability of the ARRB’s declassification decisions. Section 9(d)(1) of the JFK Records Act mandated that after the ARRB issued a Final Determination Notification, the President only had 30 days in which he was legally authorized to issue a written certification overriding an ARRB Final Determination. After that 30-day period expired, if the President did not issue a written certification overriding an ARRB decision, the ARRB Final Determination became the final, binding and enforceable legal order governing the disposition of the associated assassination record.

    President Clinton appointed the ARRB in April 1994, and it ceased its operations in September 1998. In that 4-year period, and as confirmed by Judge John Tunheim in his testimony before Congress on May 20, 2025, the ARRB reviewed and voted on the disposition of over 27,000 assassination records and issued Final Determination Notifications for each record it reviewed and voted on. President Clinton did not issue one single written certification overriding any ARRB Final Determination.

    Records show that the ARRB issued tens of thousands of Final Determinations that:

    1. Released records in full;
    2. Postponed release of records in part to be reviewed or released on future specified dates;
    3. Postponed release records in full to be reviewed or released on future specified dates; and/or
    4. Ordered periodic review of assassination records on specified dates or occurrences.

    Again, once the ARRB issued a Final Determination order that was not overruled by the President, as provided in the Act, there was no further discretion or authority by any government office or agency on declassification. All that was left were ministerial duties of the Archivist and NARA to archive, publish and release assassination records as ordered by the ARRB. Part Two of this series will explore the key legal concept of ministerial duties and how the ARRB Final Determinations were required to be published and subsequently handled by the Archivist of the United States once they were issued, and finally, what happened to tens of thousands of these “binding and enforceable” legal orders once the Archivist of the United States and the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) assumed full legal responsibility under the JFK Records Act for the custody of the Assassination Records Collection and for the management and implementation of the ARRB Final Determinations.

    Ministerial Duties… Ignore them at Your Own Peril

    We won’t spend long delving into the deep foundations of legal history, however, a basic understanding of the importance of ministerial duties is fundamental to knowing how the JFK Records Act was meant to operate. This has never been fully understood by the general public or even by experienced JFK assassination researchers. However, it will become clear that if the Archivist had complied with the mandatory, non-discretionary ministerial duties in the JFK Records Act, many of the assassination records ordered released by the ARRB and President Clinton in the 1990’s would have been disclosed to the public BEFORE Presidents Trump or Biden had to take any action starting in 2017.

    Like most other former British colonies, the United States shares a rich history of legal concepts and doctrines that have their origins in ancient English law. The area of law generally called “administrative law” especially shares connections with its English common law cousins. Concepts such as mandamus, ministerial duties, and to a later extent, judicial review, all originated in England and were transported to and uniquely evolved in jurisdictions around the world. The vestiges of old English law still resonate throughout modern American law. A case in point is the concept of ministerial duties. Senior government officials in the United States are not called “ministers”, like they are in the United Kingdom, yet officials who run agencies and departments have administrative and decision-making powers and duties that are specified by statute. Many statutory powers and duties grant officials broad discretion in the implementation of policies and decision-making, while other of their duties are completely prescriptive and do not allow for any discretion to be exercised. These latter kinds of duties must be executed precisely in accordance with the legislation that grants the specific official with the power and duty to act. Those duties are termed “ministerial”.

    In practice, a ministerial duty is a very specific statutorily imposed duty or legal responsibility that is mandated on a specific official or specified agency, who must execute the duty or responsibility exactly as the law requires. Such duties are described as “mandatory”, “precise”, “non-discretionary”, “discrete”, and as “leaving no wiggle-room” for the official in the performance of the duty. Ministerial duties are an essential element in ensuring that the rule of law governs official actions and that the application of the law by officials is not arbitrary or capricious. Official actions can be challenged in court for non-compliance with ministerial duties for (a) incorrectly executing the ministerial duty; (b) for entirely failing to act; or (c) for delaying action with respect to a ministerial duty. In short, an agency charged with a ministerial duty has essentially no discretion and must follow the requirements of the very law that empowers that agency.

    Successfully pleading a complaint against an official who is not compliant with a ministerial duty requires a very particularized and detailed structure. Plaintiffs must set out the necessary elements, or risk their lawsuit being dismissed by the court. Above and beyond the typical requirements imposed on all lawsuits to properly plead issues such as jurisdiction, standing, and injury-in-fact, the critical elements of a claim for non-compliance with a ministerial duty must clearly state (a) the specific statutory provision (including the precise text of the statutory provision or provisions) that impose the ministerial duty; (b) the specific official or agency to which the statute mandated the duty; and (c) evidence to show exactly how the official failed to act; failed to comply with the mandatory and precise ministerial duty; or delayed performing the mandated action. Courts never like to tread on the authority of the executive or legislative branches of the government and will refuse to do so unless all of the necessary elements of a claim are properly pleaded.

    The importance of ministerial duties to successfully enforcing the most critical provisions of the JFK Records Act cannot be understated. What we have learned in Part I of this article and what is still to come in this Part II, should make it crystal clear that pursuant to section 9(c)(3)(B) of the Act, the ARRB itself had a mandatory and non-discretionary duty to transmit each of its Final Determination Notifications to the Archivist of the United States, and pursuant to section 5(g)(1) of the Act, the Archivist had a mandatory and non-discretionary duty to implement the ARRB Final Determinations, each of which was a binding and enforceable legal agency final order.

    The Hunt for Copies of ALL ARRB Final Determinations Begins!!!

    In drafting the JFK Records Act, Congress made clear that the overriding purpose of the statute was the complete and timely disclosure of all assassination records so that the American people could for themselves understand the true facts and history of the Kennedy assassination. The ARRB Final Determination Notifications were the pointy end of the legal spear created by Congress to ensure that the records would be released in a timely manner. As we will see below, Congress included provisions in the JFK Records Act that set in place mandated public disclosure of the ARRB’s decisions through the Federal Register and through several other forms of required reporting.

    Given the obvious legal importance of each and every ARRB Final Determination, a reasonable person could very easily be led to believe that Congress would not simply allow for these records to disappear and fall by the wayside…. but hold on….. these are JFK assassination records. Don’t get your hopes up! It will not be as easy as just requesting copies of the Final Determinations from the National Archives (which was the obvious and first step taken in a many months long effort to secure copies of these elusive agency final orders).

    Publication of ARRB Final Decisions

    In order to ensure that the JFK Records Act’s purpose and mandate to create a transparent, accountable and enforceable process for the review and ultimate disclosure of all assassination records was fulfilled, Congress legislated numerous provisions (sic ministerial duties) in the JFK Records Act that mandate precisely how the ARRB was to publish its agency final orders. What effectively amounts to notice provisions in the Act ensured that the Archivist, the originating agencies, the President, Congress, the National Archives, and the public were all to be given effective notice of every ARRB determination.

    In several sections in his Analysis of the JFK Records Act, ARRB Legal Counsel, Jeremy Gunn, correctly parsed out all of the reporting obligations of the ARRB [pp 5-6 and p. 16].

    The JFK Records Act mandated four specific methods through which the ARRB was required to report their decisions:

    1. Publishing notifications of Formal Determinations in the Federal Register;
    2. Issuing notices of Formal Determinations to originating agencies and other officials;
    3. Issuing full written detailed Final Determination orders showing the ARRB’s reasons for their final decisions under the standards of the Act where agencies sought postponement; and
    4. Annual Reporting.

    NOTE the correct distinction made by Dr. Gunn with respect to the separation of Executive Branch records and Legislative Branch records, which will be explained in further detail later in this article.

    1. Federal Registry Notices

    Section 9(c)(4)(A) of the JFK Records Act [below] required the ARRB to publish copies of each of their determinations in the Federal Register within 14 days of issuing the determination. A sample of a Federal Registry notification of Formal Determinations is attached here. As you can see, these are very streamlined and simple notices that only display the name or the agency that originated the record, RIF#s, number of postponements, and the date on which either Periodic Review or Release of the record was ordered by the ARRB. As explained in Part One, Formal Determinations are not Final Determinations, as they lack the detailed reasons for declassification decisions and the precise orders for periodic review or the release of records.

    During its four years of operations, the ARRB dutifully and regularly published notifications of its decisions in this summary format in the Federal Register after each of the Board’s meetings. The public can continue to easily search for these notices at https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies/assassination-records-review-board.

    2. Notice of Formal Determinations

    Section 9(c)(4)(B) [below] required the ARRB to give the President notice of determinations regarding decisions for executive branch records and notice to the respective oversight committee for non-executive (congressional) branch records originating from the House or the Senate. These reports became the ARRB Formal Determination notices.

    A copy of the June 20, 1995, letter to President Clinton giving notice of the very first ARRB Formal Determinations can be seen here, and a letter and notice to the CIA of some of the last ARRB Formal Determinations are attached here. By all accounts, the ARRB was compliant with the requirement to notify the President and Congress of its decisions in this summary fashion, thus providing all government offices and agencies with notice and due process for any appeals of ARRB declassification decisions as provided in the JFK Records Act.

    3. Final Determinations

    In his Analysis, [p. 16, excerpted below] Chief ARRB Legal Counsel Jeremy Gunn also recognized that while the JFK Records Act specified that certain information was to be contained in each of the different reports, for the sake of efficiency, the ARRB would provide the originating agencies and the National Archivist with a more detailed and comprehensive report which became the ARRB Final Determination Notification. This is crucial because only Final Determination Notifications provided the precise reasons under the standards of section 6 of the JFK Records Act for continued classification of a record or redaction, as requested by originating agencies and agreed to by the ARRB, and a final ordered date for periodic review or RELEASE of the record.

    As was discussed in Part One of this article, section 9(c)(3) of the JFK Records Act mandated that the ARRB “shall create and transmit to the Archivist” a detailed “Report” for each record that it postponed the release of a record or information within a record. Only the ARRB Final Determinations contain the detailed written reasons for the postponements, the actions of the Review Board, the originating agencies or government offices, and more importantly the explicit future dates or occurrences that should have triggered the Archivist to conduct the mandatory and non-discretionary periodic review or release of each record according to and consistent with the ARRB’s orders. In a nutshell, the issuance of these Final Determination Notifications established the legal framework for an accountable and enforceable periodic review process under the JFK Act.

    Also in Part One, we learned that it was a large project for the ARRB staff to physically print paper copies of all Final Determinations and attach those copies to each associated assassination record, before the assassination records were transmitted to the National Archives to be catalogued and included in the Collection. We know that this happened and that copies of the ARRB Final Determinations were transmitted with their associated assassination records to the National Archives. Later in this article, I will explain the very concerning current status of the ARRB Final Determinations at the National Archives.

    4. ARRB Annual Reporting

    In addition to the more timely reporting identified above pursuant to the subsections of 9(c), the ARRB was also required to report on its activities annually pursuant to section 9(f) of the Act [below]. Section 9(f) [below] provides that the ARRB shall issue an “Annual” Report regarding all of its activities every 12 months no later than by October 26 (the anniversary of the passage of the JFK Records Act) for each year of its operation.

    Section 9(f)(3)(G) [below] specifically required the ARRB to include in each Annual Report an appendix containing copies of all of the Final Determinations issued during the calendar year of the Report. This is important because the Annual Reports were intended to show the actual work of the ARRB annually on postponement requests made by government offices and agencies. These Reports were to be made fully available to the public.

    Section 9(f) contains a lot of mandatory and non-discretionary language, namely three (3) separate usages of the mandatory word “shall”. The first shall in section 9(f)(1) requires the ARRB to issue a Report regarding all of its activities and says exactly who is to receive a copy of the Report. The second shall in section 9(f)(2) specifies precisely when and how often the Report is to be issued by the ARRB. The third and final shall states exactly what information is required to be included in each Report. The repeated use of the word “shall” and the very precise command to perform discrete actions being placed specifically on the ARRB indicates that the ARRB was being ordered to perform ministerial duties, and that these were not merely suggestions on the part of Congress.

    On page 9 of its Final Report, the ARRB acknowledged its duty to issue an Annual Report, by stating, “Finally, the Act required the Review Board to submit, to the President and Congress, annual reports regarding its work.”

    IMPORTANT NOTE: The “reports” required to be sent to the Archivist under 9(c)(3) (as mentioned in section 9(f)(3)(G)) were the only notifications wherein the ARRB was required to include all of the detailed written reasons for each postponement, the activities of the ARRB and the ordered date or occurrence for the triggering of periodic review or release of the record. 9(c)(3) “Reports” are the ARRB Final Determinations and the ARRB had a mandatory and non-discretionary duty to issue a Report every year during its operations that included an Appendix containing copies of all Final Determinations that it had issued during the year of the Report. Copies of the Reports were to be sent to the leadership of the Congress, the Committee on Government Operations of the House of Representatives, the Committee on Governmental Affairs of the Senate, the President, the Archivist, and the head of any Government office whose records have been the subject of Review Board activity.

    As sections 9(c)(3) and 9(f) of the JFK Records Act clearly show, Congress made certain that copies of all of the ARRB Final Determinations would be sent to the Archivist and the National Archives to be included in the Records Collection and that copies of all ARRB Final Determinations would also be published annually in a separate appendix in the ARRB Annual Reports from 1995 to 1998. Also, as was noted in Part One, the ARRB’s Jeremy Gunn confirmed, the ARRB specifically created the Final Determinations to be public facing and to not contain any classified information, even for records that were ordered postponed from public disclosure. All of the 27,000+ Final Determination Notifications should therefore be available for review by the public, and the Archivist should have been using the ARRB’s software system to diarize the mandated periodic review and release of the records consistent with ARRB’s Final Determinations, right? ………. RIGHT??

    So What Happened?

    Given that section 9(c)(3) clearly imposed a non-discretionary mandatory ministerial duty on the ARRB to create and transmit to the Archivist each ARRB Final Determination for which the associated record was postponed from public disclosure, the first place to look for copies of the Final Determinations would obviously be at the National Archives and Records Administration. This is made all the more sensible because section 7(o)(3) [below] required that all ARRB records be transferred to NARA to be included in the Collection and that no ARRB record shall be destroyed and we know that on its final day of operations, on September 30, 1998, Chet Rhodes was responsible for packaging up and transferring all of the essential computer hardware, harddrives, servers, backup discs, and the Lotus Notes software needed to maintain the entire ARRB Review Track and Final Determination system.

    Internal ARRB records, including email between senior ARRB staff, show that the transmittal of the assassination records to the National Archives could only occur once the ARRB Final Determination Notifications had been physically attached to each assassination record and that this process was an extremely high priority for the ARRB.

    An October 31, 1997 email between ARRB staff members Eileen Sullivan, Joseph Freeman, Kevin Tiernan, Bob Skwirot, and Tom Samoluk shows that the National Archives was not simply a passive recipient of assassination records and ARRB Final Determinations, but was actively monitoring the transfer of records from the ARRB to ensure that each assassination record had an associated ARRB Final Determination Notification physically attached to it when records were transferred to NARA. Martha Murphy was a senior Archives employee, who for many years was deeply involved with the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection.

    Date: 10/31/1997

    From: Eileen Sullivan

    To: Joseph Freeman

    Cc: Kevin Tiernan; Bob Skwirot; Tom Samoluk

    Subject: 2 final determination forms

    Because we received a request after we issued an advisory, 2 HSCA documents were transferred to the Archives ahead of the pack. They are the HSCA deposition transcripts of Rowley and Kelley (180-10115-10111 and 180-10115-10112, respectively.). They were sent to NARA without final determination forms and Martha Murphy called to remind us to send them along. If someone can do this, I will make sure Martha gets them.Thanks!

    An interesting aside… neither RIF#s 180-10115-10111 nor 180-10115-10112 can presently be found on either the National Archives database or on the Mary Ferrell website, although both records were apparently “Released in Full” by the ARRB in July 1997.

    NARA and the Archivist have no excuse not to be fully aware of the ARRB Final Determination Notifications, because the Archivist himself had a non-discretionary mandatory ministerial duty pursuant to section 5(g)(1) of the JFK Records Act to conduct Periodic Review of the postponed assassination records “consistent with” the ARRB’s Final Determinations and pursuant to section 5(g)(2) had a further ministerial duty to publicly disclose such records that were ordered released by the ARRB. The concept of the periodic review process was a very key and prominent part of the JFK Records Act legislation, and the internal ARRB communications clearly show that both ARRB staffers and senior Archives employees knew exactly what they needed to do in order to comply with the periodic review and public disclosure requirements of the Act.

    The quest for the ARRB Final Determination Notifications commenced in early 2021, with basic searches on the internet through the webpages of the Black Vault, Mary Ferrell Foundation and the National Archives. While these resources produced a very small handful of random records, no wider collection of Final Determinations could be found. This led to direct communications with the National Archives in the fall of 2024 and an eventual visit to the Archives campus in College Park Maryland in mid-November 2024, along with fellow researchers Paul Bleau of Quebec City and Jeff Crudele of Florida.

    Andrew Iler, Jeff Crudele and Paul Bleau at the National Archives

    College Park, Maryland – November 20, 2024

    In the lead up to the three-day research trip to NARA in the third week of November 2024, numerous email communications were exchanged with Archives staff to ensure that it was clearly understood that it was the ARRB Final Determinations that were being sought. The Archives’ initial response was to deny the entire request, claiming that the timelines for making an “Advance Pull Request” had not been met. This was incorrect and the Archives staff person eventually capitulated and agreed to pull some (but not all) of the requested records. There was a total refusal to consider pulling any of the Final Determination Notifications for records that remained in the segregated/withheld part of the Collection. This was particularly concerning because ARRB Legal Counsel Jeremy Gunn had expressly advised that all ARRB Final Determinations should be publicly accessible regardless of the status of release of the assassination records themselves. The refusal of the Archives to consider releasing the Final Determinations for records that were postponed from release is also contrary to the entire purposes of the JFK Records Act, that mandate a transparent, accountable and enforceable process for the release of all assassination records.

    Upon arrival at the Archives in College Park, and after signing in and having credentials approved, an elevator took us to the second floor Textual Research Room where a heavy cart containing approximately sixteen grey boxes was wheeled out for me to be taken to a research table, where my high speed scanner and computer were set up. I immediately commenced digging through the contents of the grey boxes, starting from the first box on the top left of the cart and working my way through 6-7 boxes on the top shelf of the cart. As I sifted through the files, I became more and more concerned, as no sign of any ARRB Final Determination Notifications emerged from the musty boxes. By the time I had finished searching the entire second row of boxes, I had become fully disillusioned and more than concerned that I had wasted my time and money travelling to the National Archives.

    What was contained in most of the boxes on the top two shelves of the cart were the summary ARRB Formal Determination notices and Federal Register publications, not the ARRB FINAL Determinations.

    One of many NARA boxes of ARRB FORMAL Determinations.

    Fortunately, there were three boxes left to search on the bottom shelf of the cart and with only two boxes remaining, I quietly, but triumphantly declared “JACKPOT!!” to Paul and Jeff. A box full of ARRB Final Determinations opened like the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

    The only contents inside a grey box confusingly labelled “PRESS AND PUBLIC CONTACTS”, were 450 ARRB Final Determination Notifications, all of them issued by the ARRB in 1996. I immediately started scanning and saving all of the notifications. Mind you, there were supposed to be over 27,000 Final Determination Notifications available for our inspection.

    NARA Box Containing ARRB Final Determinations labelled “PRESS AND PUBLIC CONTACTS”

    Hope of the last boxes containing any of the remaining 26,500+ ARRB Final Determination Notifications turned to despair, as the final box on the cart only contained a dozen or so loose and disorganized Final Determination Notification forms.

    A senior JFK Archivist was questioned about the whereabouts of the rest of the collection of ARRB Final Determinations and about the confusing nature of the box label. He agreed that the label made no sense given the contents of the box. He was unable to provide any explanation or assistance in locating further physical copies of the records or the location of the rest of the ARRB Final Determinations. The Archivist was also questioned about the likelihood of there being an electronic collection of the Final Determinations, but this too led to no productive response. Requests made to other Archives staff also did not produce any additional records or leads.

    After requesting additional boxes of records, which seemed to have the potential to contain Final Determinations and making every effort to ask multiple Archives staff the “right questions in the correct manner”, it was clear that there was no interest on the part of the National Archives to assist in finding either physical or digital copies of the Final Determinations during our visit.

    The grand sum of three days spent at the National Archives was 450 ARRB Final Determinations. This amounts to 1.6667% of the total estimated number of Final Determinations known to be issued by the ARRB as required by JFK Records Act, and required to be properly archived and accessible at NARA. We will circle back to these 450 documents later in this article, as they provide a glimpse into the problems that will become unavoidably clear. The importance of the Final Determinations cannot be emphasized enough, as they reveal the most important work of the ARRB with respect to each assassination record that agencies fiercely sought to postpone the public disclosure through delay, obfuscation, suppression, and other methods.

    With the in-person visit to the National Archives only successful in obtaining 1.6667% of the 27,000 ARRB Final Determinations that are known to exist SOMEWHERE at NARA, and the Archive’s apparent refusal to facilitate access to these critical records, it was obvious that an alternative plan was needed to locate and access these records that by law were required to be made public as part of the JFK Records Act mandate to create a transparent, accountable and enforceable law to ultimately release all Kennedy assassination records.

    “PLAN B” – The Search for ARRB Annual Reports

    As discussed above in detail, under section 9(f) of the JFK Records Act, the ARRB was legally required to issue an Annual Report of its activities each year during its operations between 1994 and 1998. Strictly applied, this would suggest that there should be five ARRB Annual Reports, including reports for both years 1994 and 1998. Section 9(f)(3)(G) of the JFK Records Act added a further legal requirement that each Annual Report include an appendix that contained copies of all section 9(c)(3) “reports” (i.e. ARRB Final Determination Notifications) issued each year. Issuing an Annual Report containing all Final Determination Notifications was a mandatory, non-discretionary ministerial duty imposed on the ARRB by Congress in the JFK Records Act.

    Section 9(f) explicitly ordered the ARRB to send each of its Annual Reports to “the leadership of the Congress, the Committee on Government Operations of the House of Representatives, the Committee on Governmental Affairs of the Senate, the President, the Archivist, and the head of any Government office whose records have been the subject of Review Board activity”. With so many mandated recipients of the ARRB Annual Reports, it should not be a tremendously difficult task to find and obtain copies of all five of the Reports, including complete copies of the mandated appendices containing all of the ARRB Final Determinations. Guess again!!

    Complete copies of the final ARRB Annual Reports (including the full appendices) are extremely elusive documents. There are many draft versions of only the 1995 and 1996 ARRB Reports (without the required appendices) floating around the common repositories of assassination records.

    The first “port of call” to locate copies of the Annual Reports was obviously to the National Archives. Numerous email communications were exchanged with several different Archives staff, specifically requesting copies of the ARRB Annual Reports. While the Archives staff responded to the messages, no responsive Reports or appendices emerged from NARA.

    In an email dated Tuesday, February 18, 2025, an Archives staff person wrote,

    “I could not locate what looked like a complete set of the annual reports in my searches. Unfortunately, the agency did not provide a central index for these electronic records. The files are arranged in folders as created by the agency, and the names of the folders/files can sometimes be helpful for determining the contents of the files. You will likely need to download the files and unzip them in order to search them for records of interest.”

    No copies of Reports for 1994, 1997 or 1998 could be found anywhere. Extensive research for any draft or final Reports for these years turned up nothing. Email communications with the Archives also suggested that there was no evidence of any sign of ARRB Reports from 1994, 1997 or 1998. As a last-ditch effort to determine whether the ARRB issued reports for those three years, contact was made with ARRB Chair Judge John Tunheim and Jeremy Gunn, who both could not recollect whether reports were issued for those years.

    With strong indications that no ARRB Reports were issued for 1994, 1997, or 1998, focus was directed towards only the 1995 and 1996 Reports. The second “port of call” was the Library of Congress in an attempt to locate copies of the Reports mandated to be sent to the House and Senate committees. Searches through the Library’s database and lengthy phone calls with Library staff produced no results and no sign of the Reports existing in the Congressional Library system.

    After several weeks of searching, a tip arrived from Records Guru Joe Backes, and a faint trail eventually led to the Federal Depository Library system and the Law Library at the Pantalena Law Library at Quinnipiac University in New Haven Connecticut. Thanks to the efforts of an amazingly helpful reference librarian, it was determined that the law library had digital copies of the full final published versions of the ARRB Annual Reports for the years 1995 and 1996… including all appendices! The fact that copies of the ARRB Annual Reports for 1995 and 1996, along with their appendices were not made available during the November 2024 visit to NARA is of further concern.

    The 1995 ARRB Annual Report contained in Appendix 1, a full set of 301 ARRB Final Determinations and all Formal Determinations in a second separate appendix. A copy of the List of Appendices taken directly from the 1995 ARRB Report is shown below.

    As mentioned in Part One, the ARRB only commenced reviewing and voting on the release or postponement of assassination records in late June 1995. It appears from an analysis of the 301 Final Determination Notifications from the 1995 Report that the very large majority of the Determinations were regarding postponements or redactions of HSCA Staff Payroll information, which included Social Security Numbers, the disclosure of which would amount to an invasion of personal privacy. This information would also not provide any probative value to the assassination itself, so it appears that many, if not most of the postponements in 1995 were simply an exercise in establishing a policy on accepting the redaction of SSNs and making bulk postponements based on that policy.

    In regard to the ARRB Annual Report for Year 1996, all available draft versions of the 1996 Report include in the List of Appendices separate appendices for both 1. Final Determinations and 2. Formal Determinations, as shown in the example below.

    Strangely however, the final published ARRB Report for the year 1996 does not contain an appendix with all copies of the ARRB Final Determinations. This can be seen in a direct copy of the List of Appendices from the Final 1996 Report below.

    Subsequent to the efforts outlined above, in the late spring of 2025, a formal FOIA/JFK Records Act request specifically requesting all ARRB Final Determination Notifications issued by the Board during its operations between 1994 to 1998 was served on the National Archives and Records Administration. NARA has acknowledged receipt of the request, but has failed to provide an update or a substantive response to the request and has definitely not provided copies of the requested ARRB Final Determinations. Options are being weighed in respect to bringing a lawsuit to seek the court’s intervention to compel the National Archives to comply with the law and to release records that were made public almost thirty years ago, and by law were to be the basis of the Archivist of the United States’ ministerial duties to conduct periodic review of the ARRB Final Determinations and to release postponed assassination records in accordance with the final agency orders of the ARRB (which, again, were not overruled by President Clinton or any of his successors).

    In a recent email communication received from the National Archives dated June 13, 2025, an Archives staff person denied that the Archives had a set of copies of ARRB Final Determinations. This would appear to contradict the massive weight of documentary evidence that shows that the ARRB transferred both paper copies of all 27,000+ Final Determination Notifications to NARA when the records were transmitted to NARA and access to digital copies of the ARRB Final Determinations made available by the ARRB Press Officers and by the ARRB Computer Specialist Chet Rhodes, who confirmed that all ARRB data and records, and the entire ARRB computer system and harddrives (containing all ARRB Final Determination Notifications) were transferred to NARA when the ARRB wound up its operations on September 30, 1998.

    The trail of the ARRB Final Determinations ran completely cold with the locating and obtaining of the additional 301 Final Determinations from the 1995 ARRB Annual Report. This brought the total number of obtained copies of the Final Determinations to approximately 751, or 2.7815% of the 27,000 notifications issued by the ARRB.

    That leaves approximately 26,250 ARRB Final Determinations unaccounted for, and the National Archives is ignoring this serious problem without rational or legal justification.

    Back to the Big Picture

    At this stage, it might be worth taking a few steps back to put the big picture into some perspective. Even those with a mid-level knowledge of the assassination have known for a long time that the ARRB existed in the 1990s and reviewed and released thousands of assassination records. Most of this group of researchers also understand that the JFK Records Act required most, if not all of the assassination records to be publicly released by October 2017. Perhaps a slightly smaller number of researchers have heard of the periodic review process that was mandated by the JFK Records Act to ensure some kind of steady release after the ARRB wound up in 1998. What is surprising however, is how very few serious or expert researchers fully comprehended the legal framework created by the JFK Records Act that governed precisely how the mandated periodic review and release of records processes were actually legally required to happen between the cessation of the ARRB’s operations in September 1998 and the ultimate records release deadline on October 26, 2017. Do not feel (too) badly if you are in this later group of researchers. Without having access to, or being aware of the existence of the ARRB Final Determination Notifications or the legal basis for these absolutely critical agency final orders, there is nothing but a fuzzy notion that releases that were supposed to happen mysteriously just did not.

    When Congress enacted the JFK Records Act, it did not simply leave the periodic review and release of records to chance. Congress very clearly mandated that the ARRB would have the legal authority to issue binding and enforceable agency final orders. The Act also imposed a mandatory, non-discretionary ministerial duty on the Archivist of the United States to strictly comply with the ARRB’s agency final orders and to strictly implement the ordered periodic review and release of the assassination records “consistent with” the ARRB’s Final Determinations. As explained below from our findings in small samples of random Final Determinations that have been obtained, these duties were not complied with, resulting in mass confusion and years of delays without any legal justification.

    As of today’s date, the National Archives have produced only one box of 450 ARRB Final Determination Notifications (potentially by mistake). This box was labelled “PRESS AND PUBLIC CONTACTS” which rendered its contents virtually unsearchable in the Archives’ Catalog. The Archives have failed to respond to a legally served FOIA/JFK Records Act request for copies of the ARRB Final Determinations, and as late as Friday, June 13, 2025, the National Archives has claimed to have been unable to locate any set of ARRB Final Determinations. How is this all possible? Only the Archivist under oath can answer this question.

    What We Found In the Sample of 750 ARRB Final Determinations

    In the weeks following the in-person visit to the National Archives in November 2024, with researcher and author Paul Bleau, an interactive and shareable database was created, containing embedded copies of all of the obtained ARRB Final Determinations, along with the latest available copies of the associated assassination records and data from these records. Especially given the celebration in the media over various “releases” by Presidents Trump and Biden starting in 2018, we felt it particularly important to be able to view and compare the specific periodic review and release dates ordered in the ARRB Final Determinations directly side-by-side with the latest releases of the associated assassination records. This side-by-side analysis would easily show whether the ARRB’s orders had been implemented by the Archivist of the United States, who had a mandatory non-discretionary ministerial duty pursuant to section 5(g)(1) of the JFK Records Act to comply with each the 27,000+ ARRB agency final orders that have been hidden away for almost thirty (30) years at the National Archives.

    A detailed review of the 450 ARRB Final Determinations obtained at the National Archives in November 2024 shows that the ARRB issued a large number of Final Determinations in 1996, ordering records RELEASED IN FULL by January 2006. The associated assassination records clearly show that despite being ordered RELEASED IN FULL in January 2006, the records remained withheld from public disclosure beyond 2017, with a small number of records continuing to be withheld from public disclosure into 2025. The term “Release in Full” means exactly what it states in plain English – fully released to the public with no redactions.

    An unambiguous example of such unlawful withholding of the release of an assassination record is demonstrated by assassination record RIF# 104-10016-10021. This CIA SECRET record, dated December 1963 from Melbourne and addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, was ordered to be fully released by January 2006 in the ARRB Final Determination dated April 18, 1996. Copies of the ARRB Final Determination and the assassination record are reproduced below, but can be seen in finer detail by clicking the hyperlinks above. This assassination record was only just released in March 2025, a delay of almost 19 years.

    ARRB Final Determination Notification RIF# 104-10016-10021

    ————————————————————————-

    Assassination Record RIF# 104-10016-10021

    A majority of the 450 ARRB Final Determination Notifications that ordered records to be released January 2006, appear to have been withheld 15-19 years beyond their mandated January 2006 release date, with no sign of periodic review having been conducted, with no record of written reasons justifying the delay of the releases, with no record of Presidential certification authorizing further postponement, and with no public notice of any actions taken to further postpone the releases, all of which are requirements under the JFK Records Act. The Archivist should be immediately questioned under oath by Congressional oversight committees on this inexplicable delay and disregard of the ARRB’s final orders for full release in 2006, which were not overruled by Presidential Certification by President Clinton, who was the only President with the time limited authority to override ARRB Final Determinations. In doing so, the same oversight committees could properly question the Archivist on the 26,500+ ARRB Final Determinations that exist but cannot be located at the National Archives by even the most diligent of researchers.

    CONCLUSION

    Serial Negligence… Or the Mechanics of Suppression?

    Part I of this article set out to detail the long ignored legal framework governing the handling of assassination records under the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, 1992, including the mandate of the Assassination Records Review Board, which was the independent federal agency granted the authority to collect, review, and postpone the release or release assassination records under the strict standards of the Act.

    Readers were introduced to the surprisingly obscure, but critically important document called an “Assassination Records Review Board Final Determination Notification”, which by any and all standards meets the definition of a legal agency final order.

    We now fully understand for the first time that President Clinton approved a Memorandum of Understanding with the Assassination Records Review Board, that clearly agrees that the President would only issue written certifications to override ARRB Final Determinations, and that if no override certification was issued by the President within the 30-day time limit imposed by the Act, that each ARRB Final Determination would become the final, binding and enforceable legal order governing the disposition of the associated assassination record. The ARRB Final Report confirms that President Clinton did not issue any certifications overriding any ARRB Final Determination.

    There is conclusive evidence from internal ARRB memos, email, interviews, and other communications that tens of thousands of Final Determinations were created and issued by the ARRB between June 20, 1995 and September 30, 1998. And we know from the same sources that each ARRB Final Determination was physically attached in paper form to each assassination record before both both records were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration facility in College Park Maryland, where the Archivist had the legal duty to catalog and index each record into the Assassination Records Collection.

    ARRB Chief Legal Counsel and Executive Director of the ARRB confirmed in writing that every ARRB Final Determination was created to be publicly released, regardless of whether the associated assassination record was postponed from release or not, and that all ARRB Final Determinations should be maintained by the National Archives and accessible to the public.

    We also now know through ARRB Computer Specialist, Chet Rhodes, that the entire ARRB computer system, harddrives, databases, and Lotus Notes software, along with written instructions on how to operate and maintain the system and data (including ARRB Final Determination Notifications) were carefully packaged up and delivered to the National Archives at the completion of the ARRB’s mandated period of operations on September 30, 1998.

    In this Part II, we have further expanded the understanding of the legal concept of ministerial duties and how they were applied throughout the JFK Records Act to ensure that the mandated transparency, accountability and enforceability processes were in place to guarantee the full and complete release of all assassination records.

    Part II also provides significant details regarding the crucial importance that Congress placed on the ARRB giving notice of each of its decisions to the President, Congress, originating agencies, and to the public. This included publishing copies of each ARRB Final Determination in a specific appendix to each Annual Report that the ARRB was mandated by law to issue each year of its operations. The notification process also extended to the ARRB’s mandatory, non-discretionary ministerial duty to provide the National Archivist with copies of all ARRB Final Determinations and to transfer to the National Archives all ARRB records (including Final Determinations) on the completion of the ARRB’s mandate on September 30, 1998.

    So much of the story of the assassination and the available public record from the multiple investigations revolves around inexplicable and unconvincing series of errors, omissions, mistakes and oversights. This is particularly true when it comes to the specific area of the assassination records and their full and timely disclosure, as mandated by the clear language of the JFK Records Act and the additional mandates contained in more than 27,000 ARRB Final Determinations.

    The fact that almost 98% of the approximately 27,000 Final Determination Notifications issued by the ARRB are still buried at the National Archives and have not seen the sunlight for almost thirty (30) years is a massive problem. The very apparent refusal by the National Archives to provide public access to these records or to even acknowledge their full existence is an affront to the public and should demand serious scrutiny by those committees of Congress that were mandated the authority to conduct oversight of the JFK Records Act and the review and release of all of the assassination records.

    The full scope of non-compliance with the ARRB Final Determinations, and the JFK Records Act in general, will not be unassessable so long as over 26,000 of the agency final orders remain withheld from the public. The fact is that the bulk of the ARRB Final Determinations were issued in 1997 and 1998, and to date, not one Final Determination from either of these years has been made publicly accessible.

    The JFK Records Act was unanimously passed by Congress as a result of the large-scale public outcry regarding the secrecy surrounding the assassination records and the withholding of millions of pages of records for decades after the event. Releasing the assassination records was a priority in the early 1990s, and with the passage of another 30 years, the excuses in 2025 are even more tenuous and unjustifiable in both law and in the spirit of democracy.

    How can the U.S. Government certify that full and timely disclosure has been met when the most important work of the ARRB has been buried and ignored at the National Archives? The diligent work by the ARRB, an independent agency, deals with the very records that the agencies have fought so hard to postpone. How have the agencies been permitted to continue holding back disclosure when Congress acted emphatically with the JFK Records Act in 1992, when the ARRB issued final orders on declassification, when the agencies have had due process and an opportunity to appeal ARRB agency final orders, and when the President has not issued ANY certification overruling the ARRB on any of its decisions?

    What remains unclear is whether either President Trump or President Biden were made aware that over 27,000 agency final orders on postponements were issued by the ARRB in the 1990s. Section 9(d)(1) of the JFK Records Act only permitted a 30-day period for the President to override ARRB Final Determinations. Once that 30-day period ended, the appeal period expired and the ARRB agency final orders became binding and enforceable. It would seem to be arbitrary and capricious for a president, thirty years later, to come along and apply lesser standards (or no standards at all) to override decisions that were made final decades ago. As Jeremy Gunn stated, the period has “long tolled”. Add to this that no adequate written reasons under the JFK Records Act were provided for any of President Trump or Biden’s postponements, that would allow for any appeal or judicial review.

    It would create a legal absurdity to interpret any section of the JFK Records Act to suggest that Congress could somehow impose lesser or no standards for postponement over sixty years after the assassination, when there were such high standards for postponement imposed in the 1990s. Congressional task forces and oversight committees should act now and investigate the status of the ARRB Final Determinations at the National Archives. There are living witnesses who can provide the facts and complete the record.

    The fact that the entire ARRB computer platform was transferred to the National Archives in September 1998, along with instructions on how to maintain the Review Track/Lotus Notes software and database of records, which included calendar notifications and the ARRB Final Determinations, but the National Archives apparently took no steps to maintain it, is very seriously problematic…. perhaps bordering on gross negligence.

    Since the ARRB Final Determination orders have not been publicly released or transparently catalogued by the National Archives, it has been virtually impossible for anyone to seek enforcement of the ARRB’s orders through judicial review, as the JFK Records Act expressly permits.

    Leading up to the statutory deadline of October 26, 2017, both the Archivist of the United States and the Office of Legal Counsel advised President Trump on aspects of the JFK Records Act and the status of the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. It appears that none of the correspondence or memoranda furnished to President Trump identified the tens of thousands of detailed ARRB Final Determinations ordering the review and release of records that were issued 20 years earlier. Instead, it has become apparent that the ARRB Orders have been suppressed and by all appearances (until now) overlooked and ignored at the Archives.

    When President Biden took office in 2021, he inherited the omnibus postponement of records certified by President Trump. It appears that President Biden too was not advised that the ARRB had previously issued tens of thousands of detailed Final Determinations for each assassination record, that even President Clinton did not overrule, including specific detailed “plans” for the release or review of each record. Even worse, when President Biden issued his “final memoranda” regarding the JFK records in 2023, he put the control over the records back in the hands of the originating executive branch agencies, which is completely contrary to the intent and provisions of the JFK Records Act.

    The entire purpose of the JFK Records Act was to take the power to withhold the assassination records completely out of the hands of the originating agencies. Those agencies had due process and opportunities for appeal under the JFK Act. The only thing left to do is locate the ARRB’s Final Determinations and ensure that the Archivist follows those final agency orders. The agencies should have no role in that process whatsoever – not in 2025, and not under any provisions of the JFK Act or other applicable law when it comes to assassination records.

    The good news is that the Archivist can be held accountable today and to provide an explanation under oath for what happened to the ARRB Final Determinations and to account for the National Archives actions or inaction to implement the ARRB’s lawful and binding orders for the review and/or release of assassination records. Congress, which has oversight of the JFK Records Act, has the authority to command the compliance of the National Archivist regarding the JFK assassination records. With the assistance of Congresswoman Luna’s Task Force and support from President Trump himself, the mandate of the JFK Records Act can still be achieved.

    For almost 30 years, scholars, researchers, journalists, and politicians knew that there was a serious breakdown in the periodic review process and release of the postponed assassination records, but it was not understood precisely where this breakdown occurred. The discovery and analysis of the ARRB Final Determination Notifications provide a clear view of what happened to delay the release of assassination records, and ultimately, where responsibility lies.

    The extreme and unjustified delay in the public disclosure of these assassination records, already approved for release by the ARRB and the office of the President over the last 30 years, has prevented timely investigation of relevant leads in the case and has prevented the public from understanding the full nature of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Under the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, 1992, Congress has statutorily mandated duties of oversight with respect to the Act and the release of the records. Congress has not conducted any meaningful oversight of the Archivist’s duties under the JFK Records Act, despite the very high level of continuing public interest in the case and particularly in the handling of the still secret trove of assassination files. This should be an obvious priority going forward for any congressional investigation.

    Click here to read part 1.

  • Unheard: The Silence of the MSM on the Luna Hearings

    Unheard: The Silence of the MSM on the Luna Hearings

    Unheard: The Silence of the MSM on the Luna Hearings

    By Matt Douthit

     

    We’ve come to the point where 62 years after the crime of the century—finally, its most important testimony has been given to the highest inquest chamber in the land—only for two news outlets to pick it up. Ultimately, the New York Post and NewsNation are just reporting the news and have turned the page. But this JFK assassination hearing before the House Oversight Committee could be colossal in getting us to the final turn in the maze…a new honest investigation.

    Testifying via ZOOM, 90-year-old Abraham Bolden—the first black Secret Service agent, handpicked by JFK himself—gave his knowledge of a prior Chicago assassination attempt. Skeptics might say Bolden is “the only source” for this—but it’s supported by six other plots that failed. Skeptics have also gone ad hoc: “Now, of course, memories fade over time…Might Bolden have been conflating the Vallee story with [a 1963] rumor?” When basically all you have left is the old shibboleth, “memories are unreliable” excuse—then you have no case. Bolden was railroaded for trying to tell the truth, was imprisoned, the key witness against him later admitted they lied to get the conviction, and Bolden was subsequently pardoned by President Biden. And Jim Douglass corroborated the Chicago Plot story in his fine book, JFK and the Unspeakable.

    Also testifying was 88-year-old Dr. Don Curtis, one of the physicians who tried to save JFK’s life. He had the courage—to stand up—and say in public—under oath—in front of the world—what all the other Parkland doctors did not do: “The wounds I saw were not consistent with the government’s conclusion Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.” Dr. Charles Crenshaw came close with his 1992 book, Conspiracy of Silence, but Dr. Curtis finally did it. Curtis also revealed that neurosurgeon Dr. Kemp Clark told him he saw an entry wound in the temple. Skeptics might point out this detail is absent from the autopsy report—but it’s supported by 17 other eyewitnesses who saw it. In fact, as the late Don Thomas graphically pointed out via magnified photos one of the autopsy photos—the infamous “Stare of Death”–does indeed indicate this. A frontal shot, of course, disproves the official story.

    Another witness was Doug Horne, former Assassination Records Review Board staff member, who rang the bell on missing autopsy materials, from bullet fragments to photos and X-rays. Skeptics, of course, will be skeptical—but it’s supported by sworn witnesses, the authorized book The Day Kennedy Was Shot and the official inventory itself. The inventory tells us the National Archives once held 29 X-rays, 73 B&W photos, 55 color photos, blocks of tissue sections, 119 slides, and the brain. All that’s there now are 52 photos and 14 X-rays!

    Horne left us with these powerful, thought-provoking words: “You don’t change the autopsy conclusions four different times within 2 weeks after the President’s death if a lone nut killed the President.”

    Next to Horne sat Judge John Tunheim, former head of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). He, along with Dan Hardway, former staff member on the House Select Committee on Assassinations(HSCA), laid out what they described as actions by the CIA to obstruct their investigations. In regards to the now infamous George Joannides file, skeptics have avowed: “But the ARRB looked at it and found nothing of relevance to the JFK assassination.” However, Judge Tunheim addressed this very point: “The CIA misled us…What we got was something very small…The staff was told that was all they had on Joannides, which is clearly incorrect.”

    Perhaps the biggest question garnered from the hearing is this: If the Joannides file “does not contain any material relevant to the JFK assassination,” as skeptics claim, then why is it suddenly missing and can’t be found?

    Another voice heard that day was presidential historian Alexis Coe, who made a dissenting declaration: “As far as the files—no hidden truths, no real disclosures, no shocking revelations.” This is a vastly different conclusion from what JFK historian Jefferson Morley had announced 2 months before: “There’s a bombshell in here. The National Archives released the declassified testimony of James Angleton—the counterintelligence chief—from 1975. And this document indicates that Angleton recruited Oswald as a CIA source or contact, that he monitored Oswald’s movements, political contacts and personal life for 4 years, that he had a 180-page file on Oswald on his desk when the President left for Dallas. So, this is a big breakthrough, there’s definitely a bombshell.” (Piers Morgan Uncensored, YouTube, 3/20/25)

    Ms. Coe did raise an important point: “There is so much concern about coverups with the CIA when it comes to Kennedy, and I don’t see that same concern being translated to Martin Luther King and to his records. It feels like Hoover 2.0.” But it was at this important moment that she was cut off. Will the King case be explored by the Luna Committee? Two good witnesses would be Judge Joe Brown and author John Avery Emison.

    Judge Tunheim left us with these words: “I’d like to see a time when everything has been released, unredacted. It’s 60-something years since the assassination. The assassination was closer to World War I than we are to the assassination. Let’s release the materials, and that’s my plea here, is just get everything out, let people decide what they want.”

    The truth hasn’t spoken its final word—another hearing is not optional; it’s essential.

    (The second hearing may be viewed here)