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The Colosio Assassination: Chronology of Events Surrounding the Assassination of Luis Colosio, 23 March 1994
From the January-February 2000 issue (Vol. 7 No. 2) of Probe

Business had brought me to Mexico City on the day Luis Colosio was assassinated in Tijuana. The TV coverage of the event was every bit as obscure as the reporting of the JFK murder and worse than the coverage of the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life. The news video of the assassination didn’t play once; instead heads talked and voxes popped…

What follows is a chronology of events relating to, or concurrent with, the assassination of Colosio, Presidential candidate of the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Internacional) in Mexico on March 23, 1993.

It is culled from printed sources, including the Mexico City News, Mexico City Times, La Jornada, Proceso, Los Angeles Times, AP Reports, John Ross’s reports in Mexico Barbaro and The Anderson Valley Advertiser, the invaluable Weekly News Update on the Americas, and the book Ya Vamos Llegando a Mexico… by Ciro Gomez Leyva and the staff of Reforma (Editorial Diana, Mexico, 1995. ISBN 968-13-2837-X).

It is perhaps interesting to assassination researchers since it seems to have certain traits in common with the JFK assassination: specifically, the murder of a (presumptive) head of state on the campaign trail, competing theories of a lone assassin and multiple gunmen, photographic evidence suggesting that the accused was elsewhere, and was impersonated by a “double”, the failure of a government-run “recreation” of the crime, more than a dozen attendant murders or “suicides”, corruption or gross ineptitude on the part of the magnicida‘s bodyguards, and the inevitable presence of at least one “former” agent of the CIA…

Organizations mentioned in the text:
- PRI: Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional)
- PAN: National Action Party (Partido de Accion Nacional)
- PRD: Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Democratico)
- CISEN: Center for Investigations and National Security
- SEDENA: National Defence Secretariat
- PGR: Attorney General of the Republic
- EZLN: National Zapatista Liberation Army (“Zapatistas”)
- EPR: Popular Revolutionary Army
1988

Members of a Colombian drug cartel allegedly funnel $200,000 into the campaign of CARLOS SALINAS DE GORTARI, Presidential candidate of the PRI. The money is given to his brother RAUL SALINAS to protect drugs shipped through Mexico. Thereafter RAUL receives $300,000 for each cocaine shipment he protects. (From a Colombian drug dealer’s deposition to the Swiss enquiry into the $132 million RAUL deposited in Swiss banks – El Universal, Agence France-Presse, 31 August 1998)

2 July

FRANCISCO XAVIER OVANDO and ROMAN GIL HERALDEZ, political aides to the PRD’s Presidential candidate CUAUHTEMOC CARDENAS, are murdered in the Transito district of Mexico City, less than 72 hours before the Mexican presidential elections.

6 July

The elections occur. By his own count, CARDENAS defeats the PRI’s SALINAS by a 39-37% margin.

14 July

Interior Secretary MANUEL BARTLETT insists that the Federal Electoral Commission’s computers have crashed, and SALINAS is awarded 50.2% of the vote. Tens of thousands of partially burned ballots marked for CARDENAS are found floating in rivers or smouldering in garbage dumps.

1990

January

LIONEL GODOY, a PRD special prosecutor, announces the arrest of RICARDO FRANCO VILLA, a former attorney general of Michoacan, as the mastermind of the XAVIER OVANDO and GIL HERALDEZ murders. FRANCO VILLA is jailed; no motive is ever advanced.

FRANCO VILLA was part of a celebrated prosecutorial team that included JAVIER COELLO TREJO, later President SALINAS’ drug czar, and GUILLERMO GONZALEZ CALDERONI, a Federal Judicial Police drug agent. According to El Universal CALDERONI said that he was asked by RAUL SALINAS to contract Gulf cartel hitmen to kill OVANDO and retrieve passwords to the electoral computers. (John Ross, Mexico Barbaro, 14-20 Aug 1998)

1992

29 January

CARLOS ENRIQUE CERVANTES DE GORTARI – cousin of President SALINAS – MAGDALENA RUIZ PELAYO, and others are arrested in Newark, NJ, on charges of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine. (Weekly News Update on the Americas #371, 9 March 1997)

November

RUIZ PELAYO, who claims to have been the personal secretary to President SALINAS’ father, RAUL SALINAS LOZANO, is convicted.

1993

24 May

Cardinal JUAN JESUS POSADAS OCAMPO and six others are assassinated at Guadalajara International Airport, by members of the ARELLANO FELIX drug clan. AeroMexico flight 112 is delayed 12 minutes on the runway so that eight men carrying large canvas bags stuffed with weapons can board the aircraft via an airport bus. On board, one of the ARELLANO brothers, JAVIER (aka “EL TIGRILLO”), is repeatedly admonished by a flight attendant for spitting on the floor.

At Tijuana they are escorted off the plane, thru the departure lounge where their weapons set off metal detectors, to three vechicles with outlawed tinted windows parked illegally outside. Allegedly they also carry a black leather briefcase stolen from the Cardinal’s white Grand Marquis.

The Attorney General, JORGE CARPIZO, says it is all a case of mistaken identity: in fact the bandits had mistaken Cardinal POSADAS for their rival, “EL CHAPO” GUZMAN. The Cardinal was in full regalia, sporting a prominent crucifix, in a limousine. He was shot 45 times. A right wing, anti-Liberation Theologian, POSADAS was reputed to have received drug money prior to his elevation to Cardinal in 1990. (Anderson Valley Advertiser, 22 Dec 1993)

November

CARLOS SALINAS nominates LUIS DONALDO COLOSIO MURRIETA as the next Presidential candidate of the PRI. This nomination, known as the dedazo or fingering, means that COLOSIO will almost certainly be Mexico’s next President: the PRI have not lost an election for President in 65 years.

1994

1 January

NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement – becomes operative. The Zapatista rebellion breaks out in Chiapas. NAFTA is bitterly opposed by the EZLN, who believe it will benefit only 24 billionaires and further impoverish the poor.

10 January

President SALINAS makes former Mexico City mayor MANUEL CAMACHO SOLIS head of his peace commission in Chiapas – a move seen by the media as sidelining COLOSIO.

27 February

MANUEL SALVADOR GONZALEZ, 37 and ANTONIO TREJO, 35, are murdered on I-5 near Gorman, California. The two men are believed to have been working security for the COLOSIO campaign, probably as bodyguards. SALVADOR is said by police to be a PRI and Mexican Government official, carrying documents indicating he was “in charge of special investigations for the Government of Mexico.” Also found on the bodies is a letter of introduction from JOSE MARIA CORDOBA MONTOYA, President SALINAS’s Chief of Staff.

TREJO was driving their Cadillac at 75 mph south on the Golden State Freeway when another vehicle pulled up alongside and fired five shots from a 9-mm weapon. Because all five shots were to the neck and head, authorities suspect professional assassins. (Los Angeles Times, 13 May 1994)

3 March

Six Anti-Narcotics police arrest JAVIER ARELLANO. Judicial Police officers, working as bodyguards for the ARELLANO FELIX brothers, intervene and kill them. “EL TIGRILLO” is freed.

22 March

Chiapas peace negotiator MANUEL CAMACHO SOLIS – after 18 days spent promoting himself as a PRIista alternative to COLOSIO – withdraws his rival candidacy for the nomination.

23 March

COLOSIO is assassinated in Lomas Taurinas, a poor community near the Tijuana Airport. Tijuana is the capital of the state of Baja California Norte, and a stronghold of the rival PAN party. On national TV a PRI millitant accuses Baja Governor ERNESTO RUFFO APPEL; the broadcast is cut.

Arrested for the crime is MARIO ABURTO MARTINEZ, 23, previously a factory worker in San Pedro, California, now working at the Cameros Magneticos factory in nearby Otay Mesa. Press photos show a bloodstained young man being dragged along by several bystanders. According to news reports, he claims to be a pacifist and cries out, “I saved Mexico!” Also detained are JORGE ANTONIO SANCHEZ ORTEGA and VICENTE MAYORAL VALENZUELA, former head of the homicide division of Baja California State Judicial Police in Tijuana. Police say they are being detained as witnesses. (Mexico City News, 24 March 1994)

SANCHEZ ORTEGA tests positive for powder burns and has bloodstained clothing. SANCHEZ is an active member of CISEN (Center for Investigations and National Security), the successor organization to the DI – Direccion de Inteligencia – and to the notoriously corrupt DFS. DFS members trafficked in drugs and stolen cars and assassinated journalists including MANUEL BUENDIA, author of “The CIA in Mexico.” The DFS was disbanded in 1985. (Andrew Reding, The Nation, 27 July 1995)

MARCO ANTONIO JACOME, an agent of the Baja California Judicial Police, was instructed by his chief, RAUL LOZA PARRA, to videoptape the Lomas Taurinas meeting. The tape appears to show the involvement of another man, OTHON CORTEZ VASQUEZ. (Ya Vamos Llegando a Mexico, p 224)

General DOMIRO GARCIA REYES, deputy chief of the Presidential military staff and head of COLOSIO’s military security team, finds his path blocked by TRANQUILINO SANCHEZ, 58, a policeman from Sinaloa. SANCHEZ (no relation to SANCHEZ ORTEGA) is arrested five days later on suspicion of complicity in the crime. (Ya Vamos… pp 192, 235)

After the shooting, ABURTO is knocked to the ground by the head of COLOSIO’s civil security, FERNANDO DE LA SOTA, and by ALEJANDRO GARCIA HINOJOSO, 25 years old. DE LA SOTA is the head of a secret governmental organization, “Grupo Omega,” supposedly set up to provide additional security for COLOSIO. GARCIA JINOJOSO is also a member of the security detail and of the group. Others seize VICENTE MAYORAL VALENZUELA. Allegedly ABURTO has pointed MAYORAL out to them, saying “Fue el ruco, fue el ruco [It was that guy].” (Ya Vamos… pp 193, 221)

TRANQUILINO SANCHEZ, VICENTE MAYORAL, and his son RODOLFO, 24 (who allegedly obstructed the path of Colonel ANTONIO REYNALDOS DEL POZO during the shooting) were all hired as security guards by PRIista JOSE RODOLFO RIVAPALACIO TINAJERO, a member of a secret society of Tijuana cops called “Grupo Tucan.” (Ya Vamos… p 223)

Meanwhile an Army Lieutenant, REYNALDO MERIN SANDOVAL, who like Gen. GARCIA REYES has become separated from COLOSIO prior to the shooting, disarms a man with a gun standing over COLOSIO’s body. The man is not identified: however, another Grupo Omega member, RAFAEL LOPEZ MERINO, “loses” his .38 simultaneously. (Ya Vamos… pp 181-3, 225, 227-8)

Gen. GARCIA REYES is “photographed leaving the scene with an alleged second gunman.” GARCIA REYES answers directly to President SALINAS and to his Chief of Staff JOSE MARIA CORDOBA MONTOYA. (LA Times, 19 June 1995)

Hours after the assassination, JOSE MARIA CORDOBA resigns from the Office of the Presidency (“en que cogobierno con Salinas [i.e. in which he co-governed with Salinas]”). He moves to Washington DC, where he heads the Mexican delegation at the Interamerican Development Bank and later works as an adviser to the World Bank. “Tenia gran ascendencia sobre ERNESTO ZEDILLO [He had great influence over ERNESTO ZEDILLO].” (Ya Vamos… p 217, “JC vs JC”, Reforma, 16 June 1996)

Following the announcement of COLOSIO’s death, President SALINAS calls twice to comiserate with his widow, DIANA LAURA RIOJAS. She refuses to take his call. (Ya Vamos… pp 196-7)

24 March

MARIO ABURTO is transferred from Tijuana to Mexico City’s Almoloya prison. According to the PGR (Procuraduria General de la Republica – the Attorney General’s office), ABURTO has confessed, and has no visible signs of being beaten. Various commentators note a physical dissimilarity between the ABURTO photographed under arrest in Tijuana and the ABURTO now on display to the press at Almoloya.

“One of the theories surrounding ABURTO was that a double fired the fatal shots. ABURTO’s mother [MARIA LUISA MARTINEZ] has lent evidence to that claim. She reportedly said that in a Judicial Police jail cell in Tijuana she had been about to embrace a man she thought was her son – but who was not.” (Mexico City Times, 21 Aug 1996)

The US ATF states that the murder weapon, a Brazilian-made .38 Taurus revolver, was purchased in 1977 at a store in Northern California. ABURTO allegedly acquired it only a few weeks ago. (Mexico City News, 25 March 1994)

GRACIELA GONZALEZ DIAZ, 27, declares herself to be MARIO ABURTO’s girlfriend. She claims that he was a member of a secret political group in which he was known as Caballero Aguila. Three days later she withdraws the accusation and denies they were romantically involved.

JORGE ANTONIO SANCHEZ ORTEGA is released after being held for 24 hours.

4 April

Special Prosecutor MIGUEL MONTES GARCIA announces that at least seven people appear to have been involved in the assassination, based on analysis of videotapes that showed the men blocking COLOSIO’s path and clearing a way for ABURTO. At least five people had been arrested and jailed in connection with the hit, he said. (AP, 4 June 1994)

One of the accused is HECTOR JAVIER HERNANDEZ THOMASSINY, 20 years old at the time of the assassination: he too is a member of Grupo Omega. Others are VICENTE and RODOLFO MAYORAL. (Ya Vamos… pp 94)

24 April

An attempt by 60 agents of the PGR to reconstruct the assassination in Lomas Taurinas fails. The agent playing the part of COLOSIO is unable to recreate the 180-degree spin which COLOSIO is supposed to have made in between the first and second shots. COLOSIO was shot in the right temple and the left side of his body.

“They didn’t ask us to participate, nor ask us anything; I saw General DOMIRO [GARCIA REYES] pulling COLOSIO along by his belt loop,” said the PRI lideresa of Lomas Taurinas, YOLANDA LAZARO. (La Jornada, 24 April 1994)

Baja Governor ERNESTO RUFFO APPEL calls for more investigation into the background of ABURTO and of the ex-policemen involved in COLOSIO’s bodyguard – particularly those arrested after the assassination.

28 April

FEDERICO BENITEZ LOPEZ, Chief of Public Security in Tijuana, who has been investigating the COLOSIO murder, is assassinated by narcotraffickers. The alleged hit-men are ISMAEL HIGUERA, a principal in the ARELLANO FELIX gang, and Judicial Police agents RODOLFO GARCIA GAXIOLA and MARCO ANTONIO JACOME (who videotaped the COLOSIO Assassination). (Ya Vamos… pp 159-161, 221)

April / May

One of the Attorney General’s top advisers, EDUARDO VALLE ESPINOZA, quits, asking in his letter of resignation, “When are we going to have the courage and political maturity to tell the Mexian people that we suffer from a sort of narco-democracy?” His boss, DIEGO VALADES, SALINAS’ fourth Attorney General, quits a few days later.

EDUARDO VALLE, known as “EL BUHO”, testifies to Mexican investigators in Washington that Communications and Transport Minister EMILIO GAMBOA PATRON is a point man for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Traffickers use GAMBOA’s fiefdom of airports and highways to move drugs, VALLE claims: he also asserts that COLOSIO was murdered by drug cartel forces after he refused to meet with a brother of JUAN GARCIA ABREGO, head of the Gulf Cartel. “I cared a great deal for COLOSIO” said VALLE. “It cannot be permitted that they announce that a lone assassin killed him and that they leave it at that. I believe COLOSIO was killed because he did not [negotiate] with the drug traffickers or the ‘narco-politicians’.”

VALLE expresses suspicion about two COLOSIO security chiefs – former federal police officers with alleged criminal pasts – and about RAUL ZORRILLA, campaign coordinator of special events and a former transportation sub-secretary under GAMBOA. He claims ZORRILLA had “immense responsibility” in the protection of traffickers while working in the Transportation Ministry. (Los Angeles Times, 1 Oct 1994)

18 May

At his first news conference since replacing POSADAS OCAMPO as Cardinal of Guadalajara, JUAN SANDOVAL INIGUEZ says that the “accidental assassination” theory is not believable, and calls for credible answers as to why the Cardinal was slain and how his killers were able to escape. (LA Times, 24 May 1994)

22 May

MARIA LUISA MARTINEZ (MARIO ABURTO’s mother) and six relatives illegally enter the United States.

24 May

Six relatives of MARIO ABURTO, including his mother, brother, 19-year old wife, 1-year old son, and two sisters – apply for political asylum in San Diego. Their lawyer, PETER SCHEY, says “The facts surrounding the case are extremely murky… I think their fear is of violence by armed individuals and groups seemingly outside of the control of the government. They have no confidence that the Mexican government is in a position to protect them.” ABURTO’s father and brothers, who live in San Pedro, say they have been harrassed and shot at since the COLOSIO hit. (LA Times, 24 May 1994)

26 May

SCHEY announces that RUBEN ABURTO, father of the accused, is willing to give testimony to MIGUEL MONTES GARCIA if his safety is guaranteed. MIGUEL ANGEL SANCHEZ DE ARMAS, the Special Prosecutor’s spokesman, says that investigators are “even willing to go to Los Angeles” to interview RUBEN ABURTO, who has said publicly that in the weeks before the shooting, his son met as many as four members of COLOSIO’s security entourage. (Los Angeles is a three-hour flight from Mexico City. The return fare is around $200) (LA Times, 27 May 1994)

2 June

Reversing himself, Special Prosecutor MIGUEL MONTES announces that there is little evidence of a conspiracy in the COLOSIO murder. “It strengthens the hypothesis that the murder was commited by a single man: MARIO ABURTO MARTINEZ.” The suspicious behavior of six men, on further analysis, “could be interpreted as normal.” Prosecutors still have some evidence to support the theory three guards were involved, and they will remain in prison. But the cases against at least three others have fallen apart. (AP, 4 June 1994)

9 June

Passed over once again as Presidential candidate by CARLOS SALINAS, MANUEL CAMACHO resigns as the Government’s Chiapas peace commissioner.

21 August

Presidential Election. ERNESTO ZEDILLO PONCE DE LEON, President SALINAS’s second handpicked successor, wins.

28 September

JOSE FRANCISCO RUIZ MASSIEU, Secretary-General of the PRI, former Governor of Guerrero, and former brother-in-law of CARLOS and RAUL SALINAS, is shot dead with a single bullet in the neck outside a Mexico City hotel. The gunman, DANIEL AGUILAR TREVINO, is arrested.

31 October

MARIO ABURTO MARTINEZ is sentenced to 45 years in jail for the murder of COLOSIO. Primary witnesses against him were two security officers: VICENTE MAYORAL, who claims to have tackled ABURTO seconds after the shooting, and FERNANDO DE LA SOTA, former leader of the secret Grupo Omega, now disbanded. When their depositions were taken hours after the murder, both men testified under oath that they had not seen who shot COLOSIO. At the trial, MAYORAL and DE LA SOTA swear they saw ABURTO shoot COLOSIO twice.

18 November

DIANA LAURA RIOJAS, the widow of COLOSIO, dies in Mexico City, of cancer. A few days previously, President SALINAS – accompanied by the press – attempted to visit her at the hospital. She refused to see him. (Ya Vamos… pp 142-3)

24 November

MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU – brother of the assassinated JOSE FRANCISCO RUIZ MASSIEU – resigns as Deputy Attorney General, alleging a government coverup in the COLOSIO case, which he blames on anti-reform elements within the PRI.

November

SERGIO MORENO PEREZ, Federal Prosecutor for Baja California, tells reporters that the ARELLANO FELIX gang “is an invention of Mexico City; here, I haven’t known anything about the ARELLANO brothers and it is not my responsibility to go around investigating them.”

‘MORENO PEREZ… worked for the Special Prosecutor probing the July 1988 murders of FRANCISCO JAVIER OVANDO and ROMAN GIL HERALDEZ.’ (Mexico City News, 20 May 1996)

1 December

ERNESTO ZEDILLO takes office as President.

December

Two brokerage houses, one run by ROBERTO GONZALEZ BARRERA, a Monterrey billionaire and close friend of the SALINAS family, trigger massive capital flight when they suddenly begin buying up huge amounts of short-term, dollar-based tesobonos. Proceso magazine alleges that certain high-echelon PRI insiders were given privileged information about the impending Peso devaluation. (Anderson Valley Advertiser, 5 April 1995)

21 December

The Peso is devalued by almost 50%. Cashing in their tesobonos, the brokerage houses make a killing and bankrupt the Mexican economy.

1995

January

SERGIO MORENO PEREZ is replaced by LUIS ANTONIO IBA—EZ CORNEJO as Federal Prosecutor for Baja California.

30 January

U.S. President CLINTON guarantees a 50-billion dollar loan to Mexico to bail out the collapsing stock market. The Mexican market gambles of American companies like GOLDMAN-SACHS, a huge New York investment banking firm and one of CLINTON’s principal financial donors, are thereby secured.

24 February

The PGR announces that a second gunman in the COLOSIO assassination, OTHON CORTEZ VASQUEZ, has been arrested. CORTEZ has several links to PRI circles in Baja California.

28 February

RAUL SALINAS, brother of the ex-President, is arrested in Mexico City, charged with ordering and financing the murder of JOSE FRANCISCO RUIZ MASSIEU. A PRI congressman, MANUEL MU—OZ ROCHA, has been accused of organizing the plot, but he has vanished and investigators say he may have been killed. (San Francisco Chronicle, 1 March 1995)

The arrest comes at the instigation of PABLO CHAPA BEZANILLA, whom President ZEDILLO has appointed as Special Investigator in the COLOSIO, RUIZ MASSIEU and POSADAS murder cases. (Ya Vamos… p 218)

2 March

MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU leaves Mexico for the US after testiflying to federal police officials who believe him to be responsible for a series of irregularities in the inquiry into his elder brother’s death. Also interviewed is his aide, JORGE STERGIOS, an inspector general in the PGR.

3 March

In Monterrey, CARLOS SALINAS vows to go on a hunger strike until his reputation is cleared. He calls off the strike a few hours later.

That night, MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU is detained by customs agents at Newark International Airport as he attempts to board a plane for Madrid. He is carrying almost $50,000 in cash, despite claiming to have only $18,000. Mexican officials say they will charge RUIZ MASSIEU with obstructing his own investigation and with covering up the involvement of RAUL SALINAS. (NY Times, 5 March 1995)

7 March

Mexican officials say that nearly $7 million has been found in two accounts in the name of MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU at the Texas Commerce Bank in Houston. The deposits were made by JORGE STERGIOS. (NY Times, 8 March 1995)

11 March

Two weeks after he alleged that OTHON CORTEZ was an associate of Gen. DOMIRO GARCIA REYES and a driver for the President’s office, AARON JUAREZ JIMENEZ dies in a car accident on the dangerous road between Tijuana and Mexicali, La Rumorosa.

The same day CARLOS SALINAS flees Mexico, supposedly to exile in Massachusetts, Canada, or Cuba, in a Falcon executive jet supplied by PRIista industrialist ROBERTO GONZALEZ BARRERA.

20 March

DANIEL AGUILAR TREVINO and three co-conspirators are convicted of the murder JOSE FRANCISCO RUIZ MASSIEU and sentenced to 50 years in prison. Four others are convicted on lesser charges.

14 April

TRANQUILINO SANCHEZ is released from high security prison; his sentence for partipation in the COLOSIO homicide having been reversed. (Ya Vamos… p 235)

3 August

The New York Times reports that FERNANDO DE LA SOTA, the head of Grupo Omega and director of COLOSIO’s private security force, was a paid informer of the CIA from 1990 to 1992.

“Mexican officials say they were unaware of DE LA SOTA’s CIA connection, and that they do not believe it was relevant to their investigation.” He was fined $7,000 for making false statements to investigators. DE LA SOTA, 45, is a former DFS agent with a criminal record (he apparently accepted a payoff from the leading drug trafficker – and DFS Zone Commander – in Ciudad Juarez, RAFAEL AGUILAR GUAJARDO). (El Financiero, 7-13 Aug 1995)

December

The Pentagon releases a partially-censored report by US Military Intelligence regarding the terrorist threat in Mexico. Three paragraphs are devoted to the “probable scenario” for the deployment of US troops in Mexico. Two paragraphs indicate that “due to the history of Mexico-US relations it is highly improbable that the Mexicans could look with favor on the presence of US forces in their territory.” But “it is conceivable that an eventual deployment of US troops in Mexico might be received favorably if Mexico’s government confronted the threat of being overthrown as a result of widespread economic and social chaos.” (FOIA request by Jeremy Bigwood; La Jornada, 31 Sept 1996)

1996

7 February

VICENTE and RODOLFO MAYORAL apply for political asylum at the San Ysidro port of entry to California. Having spent more than a year in prison before a federal judge cleared them of aiding MARIO ABURTO, they say they fear they are once again suspects as a result of new witnesses implicating them in court hearings in Mexico City the previous day.

23 February

Gunmen in Mexico City shoot to death SERGIO ARMANDO SILVA MORENO, operations chief for the Federal Judicial Police in Baja California until January. He had worked under SERGIO MORENO PEREZ.

February

DR JORGE MANCILLAS, a professor at UCLA and supporter of the ABURTO family, claims that new photographic evidence (taken by American photographer ROBERT GAUTHIER of the LA Times, and analyzed by DORA ELENA CORTES and MANUEL CORDERO, investigative reporters for El Universal) shows MARIO ABURTO about 12 to 18 feet away from COLOSIO, standing right beside VICENTE MAYORAL.

“We took the photographs of the assassin and compared them to a man who was killed four hours after COLOSIO and there is a direct resemblance. His name is ERNESTO RUBIO and he was also 23 years old.” According to El Universal, RUBIO worked for the Federal Judicial Police and for Grupo Omega chief / CIA informant FERNANDO DE LA SOTA.

The RUBIO murder was being investigated by FEDERICO BENITEZ, head of the Municipal Police in Tijuana – himself assassinated on 28 April 1994. (AVA, 14 Feb 1996)

El Universal also employs a French criminologist and expert in facial reconstruction, DR JOSIANNE PUJOL, to compare photographs of the man arrested at Lomas Taurinas and the man in custody at Almoloya jail. Her conclusion is that the two “ABURTOS” are completely different persons.

“The criminologist’s report reinforces the popular version that the man arrested in Lomas Taurinas was killed the same night of 23 March, in a mechanic’s shop in Tijuana.” (Reporter, San Pedro, March 1996)

March

Despite requests by the Mexican Government and Special Investigator PABLO CHAPA BEZANILLA, the United States refuses to extradite MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU to Mexico. Instead he is released on $9 milllion bail and remains, under police guard, in New Jersey.

21 March

COLOSIO’s father, LUIS COLOSIO FERNANDEZ, announces in an interview with a Hermosillo newspaper, that former Presidential Chief of Staff and World Bank official JOSE CORDOBA MONTOYA, “tuvo mucho que ver [had a lot to do with]” the murder of his son. “I hope the President won’t hide when the investigation focuses on CORDOBA MONTOYA.” (El Imparcial, 21 March 1996)

17 April

ARTURO OCHOA PALACIOS, Baja California’s former Federal Prosecutor, is shot four times at close range at a Tijuana jogging track. Police say the killing appears to be a “professional” hit.

OCHOA was appointed Baja California’s top law enforcement authority in June 1993. He was removed from the job in May 1994, just weeks after he began investigating the COLOSIO murder.

“OCHOA had been involved in the early stages of the COLOSIO investigation, in which investigators believe a cover-up took place to hide a conspiracy to kill the politician.” (Mexico City News, 20 May 1996)

OCHOA was also under investigation for corruption within the PGR. “Specificallly, investigators and documents reviewed by the Times have linked OCHOA to millions of dollars in suspected payoffs to Mexico’s former second-ranking law enforcement official, MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU. OCHOA and RUIZ MASSIEU… were friends and colleagues, Mexican investigators said.” (LA Times, 18 April 1996)

24 April

The PGR reports that it has captured the presumed killers of Cardinal POSADAS. MANUEL ALBERTO RODRIGUEZ RIVA and JOSE GUADALUPE ARMENTA VALDEZ were arrested by Federal Police.

MANUEL CAMACHO SOLIS calls for an opposition coalition against the PRI. “The former PRI leader also denounced former Chief of Staff JOSE CORDOBA MONTOYA for listening in on telephone conversations between him and… LUIS DONALDO COLOSIO. Claiming that CORDOBA could offer information on COLOSIO’s thoughts at the moment of his death, he repeated the call for CORDOBA to testify before the Federal Attorney General’s Office…” (Mexico City News, 25 April 1996)

An El Centro immigration judge turns down the MAYORALS’ request for asylum.

3 May

DANIEL AGUIRRE LUNA, representative of Special Investigator PABLO CHAPA BEZANILLA, asks the judge to condem alleged second gunman OTHON CORTEZ to 50 years’ imprisonment.

6 May

CARLOS SALINAS meets political journalist JORGE G. CASTANEDA in Dublin, Ireland, where the ex-President now claims to reside. Rumours immediately circulate that SALINAS has discussed the possibility of ZEDILLO’s resignation.

“CASTANEDA believes JOSE MARIA CORDOBA MONTOYA has returned to Mexico with a view to once again reassume his role, as it was during the SALINAS administration, as the power behind the presidential throne…” (Mexico City News, 22 June 1996)

15 May

SERGIO MORENO PEREZ, the former BC Federal Prosecutor, and his son OSMANI are kidnapped in Mexico City by heavily armed men.

18 May

The bodies of MORENO PEREZ and his son are found in a car in Naucalpan, a western suburb of Mexico City. They have been tortured.

22 May

The PGR announces the arrest of “EL NAHUAL” aka ALVARO OSORIO OSUNA, another of Cardinal POSADAS’ presumed killers, in Sinaloa. “OSORIO OSUNA is a member of the ‘Frog Gun Gang’ that protects the ARELLANO FELIX brothers,” the PGR say.

“EL NAHUAL” confirms the PGR’s theory of “mistaken identity” in the POSADAS assassination, two days before the third anniversary of the murder. “There was a lot of confusion and his car was mistaken for GUZMAN’s… We were told that “EL CHAPO” would be inside a white Marquis car… then we realised it was the Cardinal.”

JOSE FRANCISCO RUIZ MASSIEU’s personal security head, MIGUEL VILLAREAL AYALA, testifies to RAUL SALINAS’ defense team that there was bad blood between the two men. VILLAREAL says tensions ran especially high on the day of RAUL SALINAS’ marriage to PAULINA CASTANON. (RUIZ MASSIEU was married to SALINAS’ sister ADRIANA, whom he later divorced.) (Mexico City News, 23 May 1996)

24 May

Guadalajara Cardinal JUAN SANDOVAL, in a television statement, urges that former President CARLOS SALINAS be investigated for links to POSADAS’ murder. SANDOVAL says POSADAS had a heated argument with SALINAS just a week before he was gunned down, and that then-Social Development Sectetary COLOSIO and Mexico City Mayor CAMACHO SOLIS were also at the meeting.

SANDOVAL further alleges that baggage handlers at Guadalajara Airport have been threatened by police officers to keep quiet about the murder. He says of the PGR accidental death theory, “I am sure that Cardinal POSADAS was not killed in the midst of confusion or a shootout. These theories are infantile and do not convince anyone.” (Mexico City News, 25 May 1996)

23 June

CBS’ Sixty Minutes reports that RAUL SALINAS has been linked to 70 bank accounts in 70 countries that could contain more than $300 million. His personal banker at Citibank, AMY G. ELLIOT, tells US, Swiss and Mexican investigators that SALINAS said $100 million came from a recent sale of a construction company. (Mexico City Times/Reuters, 23 June 1996)

23 June

The PRI’s Federal District branch lodges its monthly protest with Attorney General (and member of the PAN) ANTONIO LOZANO GRACIA, 27 months after the COLOSIO hit. The PRI also questions the re-assignment of the COLOSIO case special prosecutor, PABLO CHAPA BEZANILLA. “Why has the special prosecutor been assigned to duties that are specifically distinct from the (COLOSIO) investigation?” (Mexico City News, 24 June 1996)

28 June

A new masked, armed group appears – the Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR – at a memorial for peasants massacred by police in Guerrero.

2 July

Seven of MARIO ABURTO’s family members are granted political asylum in the US by immigration judge NATHAN GORDON, who says, “It appears to me that this family fled… because the sins of a son, if true, have been inflicted on them.” ABURTO’s mother, MARIA LUISA MARTINEZ, 45, her four other children, RUBEN, 24, JOSE LUIS, 22, ELIZABETH, 16, and KARINA, 10, and JOSE LUIS’ wife ADELA ALVARADO 20, and their 3-yr old son, LUIS JOVANI will be allowed to apply for perminent resident status. (This is a different group from that which allegedly crossed the border on 22 May 1994. It does not include ABURTO’s wife and son.) (Mexico City News, 3 July 1996)

1 August

Gen. DOMIRO GARCIA REYES is given command of military zone number 32, based in Valladolid, Yucatan, according to TV Azteca. Out of active service since the assassination, he takes over the Yucatan post from Colonel ELIHU VIDAL NAVARRO. (Mexico City Times, 22 Aug 1996)

7 August

OTHON CORTEZ, 20, accused of being the second gunman in the COLOSIO hit, is acquitted and freed by Second District Court Judge MARIO PARDO ROBELLEDO. The half-page verdict follows a trial of 18 months with more than 112 witnesses and 130 documents. It is described in both the SF Chronicle and the LA Times as a huge blow to the credibility of Attorney General ANTONIO LOZANO GRACIA.

The judge also acquits FERNANDO DE LA SOTA and ALEJANDRO GARCIA HINOJOSA of perjury: both had been charged with lying to investigators by claiming they saw MARIO ABURTO fire two shots at COLOSIO.

HECTOR SERGIO PEREZ, CORTEZ’ lawyer, said that the evidence showed his client, “who is right-handed, had his right hand on the shoulder of COLOSIO’s chief of security, an army general who has also been investigated in the slaying” (LA Times). The Times does not name GARCIA REYES or mention DE LA SOTA’s CIA connection. The Chronicle piece concludes, “doubts have also been raised about whether the ABURTO arrested at the scene of the killing is really the same person now in prison for the crime.” (both articles 8 August 1996)

16 August

Attorney General ANTONIO LOZANO GRACIA fires 737 commanders and beat cops of the Federal Judicial Police (PJF) – out of a total 4,400 members – on grounds such as unlawful possesion of arms and illicit enrichment.

17 August

Gunmen in Tijuana murder JESUS MARIA MAGANO, 48 – one of the first Federal Prosecutors to question MARIO ABURTO after the COLOSIO hit. He is the fifth senior official from the PGR’s office in Baja California to be killed this year. (Mexico City News, 20 Aug 1996)

20 August

A taped telephone conversation between MARIO ABURTO MARTINEZ and his father is broadcast on Radio Red : “I was forced to write the confession in Tijuana… They took me to an office and dictated it to me. The director of the Federal Judicial Police, ADRIAN CARRERA FUENTES, was there and he… is witness to the fact that I was forced to write it.”

ABURTO says it was not “mere coincidence” that COLOSIO and RUIZ MASSIEU were killed within six months of each other. “There are people in the upper echelons of government who want the public to believe I’m the only assassin… The government doesn’t want this case to escalate, because its party [the PRI] would be the one most damaged and they could lose the elections.” The government, he claims, has three goals: “First, to convince everyone that I’m the only shooter; second, to claim that I’m crazy; and third, to assassinate me… and say I killed myself. That way everyone can forget about the COLOSIO case.” (Michelle Chi Chase, Mexico City News, 21 Aug 1996)

RUBEN ABURTO, father of MARIO, shares his son’s fears that he will fall victim to a “suicide.”

The same day an editorial in Mexico City’s Roman Catholic Archdiocise newspaper Nuevo Criterio claims that the COLOSIO hit was the result of a conspiracy within the PRI. “The resources used to carry out the crime, but especially the way it was handled afterwards, make it clear that… the mastermind was in the highest circles of power…”

Without directly accusing CARLOS SALINAS, the editorial says, “There is much evidence of the violent and vengeful way in which SALINAS DE GORTARI resolved his difficulties with other people.”

21 August

Attorney General LOZANO GRACIA insists that OTHON CORTEZ is the second gunman in the COLOSIO murder. His office is reported to have delivered 18 photographs to a court in the State of Mexico that show CORTEZ next to COLOSIO at the time of the murder.

Political analyst ALFREDO JALIFE tells the Mexico City News “Those on top are pulling the strings. OTHON CORTEZ is a pawn – he’s nothing.” One of COLOSIO’s campaign advisers and senior PRI deputy, SAMUEL PALMA, agrees: “The conspiracy theory has never hinged on CORTEZ … The theory is backed up by an investigation of impartial scientific analysis which has proved there was a second shot and a second weapon”.(David Abel, Mexico City Times, 22 Aug 1996)

22 August

HUMBERTO LOPEZ MEJIA, former independent investigator and employee of the PGR, says on public radio that he deciphered a coded message sent to the offices of the President just after the COLOSIO hit. “Mission accomplished in the campaign,” said the alleged message, sent from one operative code-named “EL PINO” to another called “EL ROBLE.” LOPEZ MEJIA claims that the message was from COLOSIO’s security chief Gen. DOMIRO GARCIA REYES to former President SALINAS.

“General REYES is no stranger to such allegations. Earlier this month he published an autobiographical aptly titled Domiro in which he set out to defend his integrity… Written for him by three prominent national journalists, the general’s book adds to prevailing public speculation that COLOSIO’s death was planned by then-government officials.

“In one particularly emotional excerpt REYES tells of an alleged conversation between himself and Federal Attorney General ANTONIO LOZANO GRACIA in which LOZANO GRACIA intimated knowledge that COLOSIO had been ‘eliminated’ because he wasn’t toeing the party line in his campaign. REYES claims the Attorney General told him following the assassination, ‘I understand that President SALINAS DE GORTARI insinuated to you that COLOSIO must be eliminated.’ LOZANO GRACIA responded to the book… calling General REYES a liar and a man without honor.” (Pav Jordan, Mexico City News, 23 August 1996)

28/29 August

In a broad, coordinated assault, the EPR attack police, military and government targets in six states – Oaxaca, Guerrero, Chiapas, Tabasco, Puebla, and Mexico. At least 16 people are killed and 23 injured.

31 August

LUIS RAUL GONZALEZ PEREZ is appointed new Special Prosecutor in the COLOSIO case.

8 September

LUIS COLOSIO FERNANDEZ, father of the murdered candidate, unveils a monument to his son in Tepic, Nayarit. “I still believe in justice and reason,” he says, “even though I know many people are skeptical of the new Special Prosecutor.” (Mexico City News, 9 Sept 1996)

10 September

Foreign Secretary JOSE ANGEL GURRIA tells the Mexican Congress that he has declined American Ambassador JAMES JONES’ offer of intelligence and military assistance against the EPR.

11 September

Reuters reports that US bank accounts belonging to RAUL SALINAS may have been used to launder drug money. According to PGR documents, one of the accounts is at the Laredo National Bank in Texas, owned in part by Mexican billionaire CARLOS HANK RHON.

PRI member and President of the Chamber of Deputies’ COLOSIO Case Commission ALFONSO MOLINA RUIBAL calls for the return and testimony of CARLOS SALINAS, JOSE CORDOBA MONTOYA, and former PGR prosecutor EDUARDO VALLE (“EL BUHO”). This is the first official, all-party concensus calling for ex-President SALINAS’ testimony. (Mexico City News, 12 Sept 1996)

12 September

Police raid the Mexico City offices of El Universal, formerly a pro-PRI newspaper which has recently criticized ZEDILLO and SALINAS. They arrest the owner JUAN FRANCISCO EALY ORTIZ for tax evasion.

Political analyst ALFREDO JALIFE calls this selective prosecution: “If the government went against El Universal why did it not go against all the others? It is a common fact that certain other papers are evading taxes; some are even involved in drug trafficking.”

JALIFE also doubts that SALINAS, CORDOBA or ZEDILLO will give evidence in the COLOSIO case: “It’s a smokescreen. Attorney General ANTONIO LOZANO GRACIA belongs to the system, and the system doesn’t want to know anything about the real perpetrators of the crime.”

On a legal level, JALIFE says there is no longer any evidence to convict the culprits of the crime: “Within the structure of the Attorney General’s office, all the evidence has been extinguished. I have counted around 20 people belonging to the case who have been murdered.” (Robert Randolph, Mexico City Times, 14 Sept 1996)

14 September

28 days after becoming BC Federal Police Commander, ERNESTO IBARRA SANTES is machine-gunned to death in a taxi in Mexico City. He was in the process of updating “most wanted” posters with recent photographs of the ARELLANO FELIX brothers. (Anne-Marie O’Connor, LA Times, 16 Sept 1996)

IBARRA was killed with three bodyguards while leaving Mexico City Airport: in his pocket were $50,000 U.S. dollars. The previous week he had led fruitless raids on abandoned ARELLANO FELIX safehouses. (Wall St Journal, 7 Oct 1996)

GERARDO CRUZ PACHECO, a Mexican lieutenant who served in the Presidential Guard of CARLOS SALINAS, later confesses to assisting the ARELLANO FELIX cartel. He says that lawyers in the Tijuana Federal Attorney General’s office told the assassins when IBARRA was arriving in Mexico City, and names a military captain who hid the killers’ assault rifles. CRUZ also claims that Mexican Army privates have unloaded Colombian cocaine shipments at remote airstrips in Oaxaca state. (Anne-Marie O’Connor, LA Times, 5 February 1997)

9 October

Investigators of Special Prosecutor PABLO CHAPA BEZANILLA, with the help of a paid psychic, FRANCISCA ZETINA, aka “LA PACA”, discover a dismembered and decomposed body at La Encantada, RAUL SALINAS’ ranch. CHAPA claims this is the corpse of vanished PRI legislator MANUEL MU—OZ ROCHA, 44.

18 October

Forensic specialists announce that the corpse cannot be positively identified.

The same day the Orange County Register reports that the United States plans to give the Mexican Army 73 UH-1H “Huey” helicopters and various C-26 aircraft “to help fight the drug war.” Tulane University Professor RODERIC CAMP and PETER SMITH, chairman of Latin American Studies at the University of California, San Diego, both comment that if the Mexican Army becomes further involved in the anti-drug effort, it will likely be corrupted by bribes.

SMITH: “No other military or law enforcement structure in Latin America has been able to resist, and it is not realistic to believe that the Mexican army would not be corrupted after having close encounters with drug rings.”

CAMP notes that, though the helicopters are supposed to be deployed along the US-Mexican border, their ultimate destinations may be Guerrero and Chiapas. (AP – Las Vegas Sun, 19 Oct 1996)

5 November

La Jornada reports that CASPAR WEINBERGER, President REAGAN’s defense secretary, has written a book predicting the possible invasion of Mexico by the USA. The Next War, containing fictionalized “scenarios” for the wars WEINBERGER considers most likely to occur over the next 12 years, describes a US invasion after the Mexican government is taken over by a “charismatic populist professor linked to the drug cartels.” His date for the invasion is 14 April 2003. MARGARET THATCHER, in her introduction, calls The Next War “an important book.” (La Jornada electronic edition 5 Nov 1996)

19 November

PABLO CHAPA orders the arrest of RAUL SALINAS’ wife, PAULINA CASTANON, on charges of giving false testimony in the RUIZ MASSIEU case; she has reportedly fled to Europe. RAUL SALINAS’ bodyguard, Lt. Col. ANTONIO CHAVEZ RAMIREZ, testifies that he disposed of a vehicle belonging to MANUEL MU—OZ ROCHA on 30 Sept 1994. His testimony contradicts that of other government witnesses, including clairvoyant “LA PACA”, and police informant RAMIRO AGUILAR LUCERO, who claims he saw RAUL SALINAS beat MU—OZ ROCHA to death with a baseball bat. (La Jornada, 24 Nov and 15 Oct, 1996)

27 November

CARLOS SALINAS is interrogated, regarding the COLOSIO murder, by Mexican federal investigators at the Mexican Embassy in Dublin. The questioning is led by LUIS GONZALEZ PEREZ, the fourth Special Prosecutor to investigate the COLOSIO hit. Official sources say that SALINAS’ testimony will remain sealed for some time. (LA Times, 28 Nov 1996)

2 December

President ZEDILLO fires Attorney General ANTONIO LOZANO GRACIA, replacing him with former Human Rights Commissioner JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR. PABLO CHAPA is also dismissed.

The decision to fire LOZANO is so sudden that it comes while a PGR spokesman is talking to reporters. The phone rings; the spokesman answers, hangs up: “We’ve resigned.” “Is this a joke?” the reporters ask. “No, we’ve resigned,” the spokesman answers, “I don’t understand President ZEDILLO; the Attorney General is the most loyal of his officials.” (La Jornada, 3 December 1996)

A recent poll of journalists, academics and analysts ranked LOZANO fourth for competence among 23 top Mexican officials; ZEDILLO came in eighth. (Washington Post, 3 December 1996)

3 December

MADRAZO signs off on ZEDILLO’s appointment of Army General JOSE DE JESUS GUTIERREZ REBOLLO – a member of the elite Presidential Guard – as “Mexico’s new drug czar.” GUTIERREZ replaces a civilian, FRANCISCO MOLINA.

5 December

Journalist YOLANDA FIGUEROA, her husband FERNANDO BALDERAS, and their three children aged 9 to 18, are bludgeoned to death at their home in Pedregal, Mexico City. FIGUEROA was the author of a recent book, “Boss of the Gulf: the Life and Capture of Juan Garcia Abrego”, which alleged that RAUL SALINAS and the COLOSIO and RUIZ MASSIEU assassinations were linked to Mexico’s drug cartels.

BALDERAS, her chief collaborator on the book, was an adviser, specializing in drug trafficking, to the Federal Prosecutor’s office until 1994. (LA Times, 7 Dec 1996)

(Family servants are later accused of the murders by police.)

1997

5 January

Tipped off by insiders in the military, AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES, head of the Juarez drug cartel, escapes a raid at his sister’s wedding at El Guachimalito, Sinaloa.

17 January

PABLO CHAPA is fined by a Mexico City court for failing to appear regarding the RAUL SALINAS case. His wife says he is “out of the country.” RAUL predicts that he himself will soon be released.

President ZEDILLO nominates two senior Army generals to take over civilian airports near Mexico City which have allegedly been frequented by drug traffickers. “These appointments – and dozens of others in which military officers have quietly assumed key federal law enforcement posts, including the unannounced naming last year of an admiral to run Cancun’s international airport – are fueling a debate here about the worrisome new civilian role of Mexico’s enigmatic armed forces.” (LA Times, 10 February 1997)

20 January

CARLOS SALINAS is again questioned by agents of the Attorney General at the Mexican Embassy in Dublin. A news release says he has been interrogated for 16 hours, this time regarding the RUIZ MASSIEU case. (LA Times, 29 January 1997)

31 January

Mexico City prosecutors arrest “LA PACA”, whom PABLO CHAPA paid $130,000 to locate a corpse on RAUL SALINAS’ property. They allege that the remains are actually those of JOAQUIN RODRIGUEZ RUIZ, the elderly father-in-law of “LA PACA”, and charge her with grave-robbing. Her son in law, various relatives, and RAUL SALINAS’ ex-girlfriend are also arrested. (LA Times, 5 February 1997)

January

Gen. JOSE GUTIERREZ REBOLLO is welcomed at the White House by US anti-drug czar General BARRY McCAFFREY, who extolls his firmness and incorruptability. He is briefed in Washington by the CIA and DEA regarding operations, tactics, personnel, and timetables related to joint US-Mexican drug interdiction plans. In Mexico he is also briefed as to the identities of US intelligence agents. (Unclassified, No 40, Spring 1997)

4 February

Mexico City prosecutors issue a warrant for the arrest of PABLO CHAPA, who has not been seen publicly in a week.

18 February

Anti-drug czar Gen. JOSE GUTIERREZ REBOLLO is charged with taking bribes to protect AMADO CARRILLO’s Juarez Cartel. The General is sent to Almoloya jail.

The former military commander of drug-riddled Sinaloa and Jalisco, Gen. GUTIERREZ pursued the cartel of HECTOR PALMA and JOAQUIN “EL CHAPO” GUZMAN, but allegedly protected both “Lord of the Skies” CARRILLO FUENTES and the ARRELLANO FELIX brothers’ gang. His troops preceeded police officers to the Cardinal POSADAS murder scene, and he played a key role in the ensuing investigation. (John Ross, Mexico Barbaro, #58, 16-23 March 1997)

26 February

The New York Times carries new information that the SALINAS family is linked to drug traffickers. According to leaked FBI documents from the MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU grand jury investigation, MAGDALENA RUIZ PELAYO claims that she was personal secetary to CARLOS SALINAS’ father, RAUL SALINAS LOZANO, from 1982 to 1988; and that during that time she repeatedly handled drug-related payoffs for SALINAS LOZANO.

Secret witnesses in the RUIZ MASSIEU indictment also charge that LUIS COLOSIO was connected to Sonora drug lords.

27 February

Swiss Federal Prosecutor CARLA DEL PONTE writes Attorney General JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR a confidential letter saying that RAUL SALINAS “received enormous sums of money for his help in connection with drug trafficking.” She has testimony from a Mexican drug trafficker, working for Gulf Cartel head JUAN GARCIA ABREGO, who delivered $20 million in 1994 to fugitive PRIista banker CARLOS CABAL PENICHE, “and personally delivered a smaller amount in cash to RAUL SALINAS.” (Miami Herald, 3 April 1997)

A certain JOHN HALL of the US Embassy in Mexico warns the National Defense Secretariat (SEDENA) that the Miami Herald is about to publish a story charging that Gen. MARIO ARTURO ACOSTA CHAPARRO ESCIPATE, a couterinsurgency expert, and Gen. FRANCISCO QUIROZ HERMOSILLO are involved in drug trafficking. (Proceso, 27 July 1997)

4 March

President CLINTON recertifies Mexico as a US ally in the drug war, citing the GUTIERREZ REBOLLO arrest as evidence that President ZEDILLO is rooting out corruption.

15 March

A federal grand jury in Houston allows the US government to confiscate most of the $9 million MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU deposited in a Texas bank. (NYT, 16 March 1997)

23 March

Proceso reports that PABLO CHAPA is hiding in Chile, where he was spirited illegally, on a private plane. His escape was organized by officials of the PAN with the help of Chile’s right wing National Renewal (RN) party – lest he give testimony damaging to ANTONIO LOZANO GRACIA and the PAN before the 6 July elections. (Proceso, 23 March 1997)

30 March

CARLA DEL PONTE and VALENTIN ROSCHACHER, head of Switzerland’s anti-narcotics police, arrive in Mexico to continue their investigation into $84 million deposited by RAUL SALINAS in Swiss bank accounts. RAUL has a total of at least $100 million in Swiss accounts, along with $30 million in France, $30 million in Germany, $30 million in the US and $5 million in Panama. The developing scandal implicates big US banks like Citibank and Chase Manhattan in money laundering. (Miami Herald, 3 April 1997, Wall St Journal, 1 April 1997)

9 April

El Universal reports that DEL PONTE has linked CARLOS SALINAS, RAUL SALINAS, MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU, and JOSE CORDOBA MONTOYA to the drug cartels. The previous week she interviewed “EL CHAPO” GUZMAN – currently in the high security prison of Puente Grande – and ex-Federal Judicial Police Commander MARCO TORRES, now in the US witness protection program. Both men swore that they witnessed millions of dollars sent to the SALINAS brothers at Los Pinos, via JOSE CORDOBA “and an ex-Attorney General of the Republic.”

TORRES also swore he saw RAUL SALINAS pay four million dollars to MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU, at his Agualeguas ranch in Nuevo Leon, for the protection of the Gulf cartel under JUAN GARCIA ABREGO. (La Opinion, AFP, 9 April 1997)

11 May

Proceso prints excerpts from declassified Pentagon documents indicating a close relation between US and Mexican military intelligence as far back as mid-1993. The DIA (US Defense Intelligence Agency) had accurate information about the clandestine insurgency in Chiapas as early as 9 June 1993. “This Mexican guerrilla group is tentatively identified as the Zapatista National Liberation Front,” a cable reports.

16 May

PABLO CHAPA BEZANILLA is arrested by Mexican and Spanish agents after leaving a restaurant in Villafranca del Pardillo, near Madrid. He is held without bail while the Mexican authorities begin extradition proceedings.

30 May

A US immigration judge denies the US State Department’s request to deport MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU to Mexico. Although a US jury has found that millions of dollars belonging to RUIZ MASSIEU was linked to drug trafficking and bribe taking, Judge ANNIE GARCY rules there is not enough evidence to warrant his deportation. This is the fifth deportation attempt which RUIZ MASSIEU has defeated.

Special Prosecutor LUIS GONZALEZ reports to legislators that narcotraffickers were involved in the COLOSIO assassination. PAN deputy ANTONIO TALLABS claims GONZALEZ is attempting to shield the PRI groups which participated in the hit.

2 July

Gen. JESUS GUTIERREZ REBOLLO writes to Amnesty International stating that the charges against him are false and that he was imprisoned “for having discovered that drug trafficking has reached even to the President’s Office… I am a political prisoner, someone persecuted by the narco-officials.” The General claims to have evidence of the ARELLANO FELIX brothers’ involvement in the COLOSIO assassination. (La Jornada, 11 July 1997)

3 July

AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES allegedly checks into the Santa Monica clinic in Polanco, Mexico City, for a massive plastic surgery and liposuction session. Supposedly he dies of a heart attack during the operation.

“Questions persist about the assertion by Chilean officials that they were shadowing the traffickers and investigating CARRILLO’s suspected presence. How could they have not spotted CARRILLO if they were indeed following the gangsters, who set up front companies and made million-dollar investments? … It is also unclear why CARRILLO went back to Mexico for plastic surgery; Argentina and Brazil have booming plastic surgery industries.” (LA Times, 20 August 1997)

4 July

CARRILLO’s body is seized by the PGR for fingerprinting and DNA tests.

6 July

Local elections deny the PRI its congressional majority for the first time ever, while the PRD’s CARDENAS is elected Mayor of Mexico City with 50% of the vote.

The DEA announce that the corpse seized by the PGR in Sinaloa is that of AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES. Speculation continues that CARRILLO has faked his own death.

16 July

Mexican federal judge RICARDO OJEDA BOHORQUEZ throws out money-laundering charges against RAUL SALINAS. OJEDA rules that the PGR has failed to present sufficient evidence. The ruling gives RAUL access to more than $100 million he deposited in European banks under various false names. The European governments say they will keep the accounts frozen while their own investigations continue.

24 July

LUIS RAUL GONZALEZ PEREZ, latest PGR Special Prosecutor in the COLOSIO murder case, announces that the government is going back to its original “lone assassin” theory. He says the finding does not rule out a conspiracy.

El Financero

carries statements by a former Mexican police agent, and current DEA agent, ENRIQUE PLASCENCIA, that he has evidence that the real assassin is ABURTO look-alike JORGE ANTONIO SANCHEZ ORTEGA, an agent for CISEN. He is now said to go by the name TOMAS JASO. (El Diario – La Prensa, 28 July 1997)

29 July

A motorcyclist assassinates law clerk IRMA LIZETTE IBARRA NAVEJAT in Guadalajara. A former Miss Jalisco, she had also received death threats after being named as a key witness in the case against Gen. GUTIERREZ.

13 August

The PGR announces it has asked criminologist JUAN PABLO DE TAVIRA Y NORIEGA to resign: the previous week DE TAVIRA had declared that CARLOS SALINAS was the intellectual author of the COLOSIO murder.

12 September

US and Mexican officials announce that the US has frozen $26 million in a New York Citibank account as part of an investigation into money-laundering by CARRILLO FUENTES. A Citibank spokesman tells the Wall Street Journal, “We believe no Citibank accounts… have been part of a money-laundering apparatus by the CARRILLO drug cartel.” (Los Angeles Times, 13 Sept 1997)

21 September

President ZEDILLO cancels a scheduled meeting with Amnesty International General Secreteary PIERRE SANE, who has flown in to warn him that Mexico is in the throes of a “human rights crisis.”

2 November

The bodies of JAIME GODOY and RICARDO REYES – plastic surgeons who operated on AMADO CARILLO – are found in cement-filled oil drums along the Mexico City-Acapulco highway. Their fingernails have been torn out and their bodies burned.

4 November

Assassination attempt against San Cristobal bishop SAMUEL RUIZ of Chiapas fails; three catechists are wounded.

1998

May

RAUL SALINAS is cleared of charges of money laundering, but remains charged with “inexplicible enrichment” and involvement in the assassination of JOSE FRANCISCO RUIZ MASSIEU.

December

CHARLES INTRIAGO, a former US federal prosecutor who edits the newsletter Money Laundering Alert, says that delays by the US government may have sabotaged a possible money laundering case against RAUL SALINAS and Citibank. According to INTRIAGO, the statute of limitations for such cases is five years, with some limited exceptions, so that “the investigators have now lost the right to present as evidence some of the first transactions.” (La Jornada, 27 December 1998)

1999

21 January

Judge RICARDO OJEDA BOHORQUEZ convicts RAUL SALINAS of masterminding the JOSE FRANCISCO RUIZ MASSIEU assassination. He gives him the maximum sentence of fifty years. OJEDA rejects the PGR’s contention that RUIZ MASSIEU was killed for interfering in SALINAS family projects: he blames RAUL’s resentment over a business deal with RUIZ MASSIEU and over the latter’s divorce from ADRIANA (RAUL and CARLOS’ sister). La Jornada reports that OJEDA has previously issued “decisions that were particularly sensitive for the national political system.” (La Jornada, 22 Jan 1999)

24 May

A commission of representatives from the Mexican federal government, the government of Jalisco, and the Catholic Church mark the sixth anniversary of the POSADAS murder by releasing a new report on the case. Jalisco state government secretary FERNANDO GUZMAN reads from the report that there was no plot to assassinate the Cardinal.

Cardinal JUAN SANDOVAL, a commission member, disagrees: he charges that “big fish” are “impeding the investigation” and that former Attorney General JORGE CARPIZO has suppressed videos connected with the case; he also charges that some of the witnesses are being protected by the US and others by the Mexican government. A Reforma poll shows that 83% of 400 Guadalajarans refuse to believe POSADAS was shot accidentally. (La Jornada, 25 May 1999)

15 June

The ZEDILLO administration announces it has been granted $23 billion in foreign loans from the IMF, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the US Eximbank, and a little-known bailout mechanism, the North American Financial Agreement (NAFA).

The bulk of the package – $16 billion – reschedules (i.e. delays) debt payments. Newspapers and opposition politicians claim that the additional debt is being acquired to delay another economic crash – so that the PRI can win the 2000 presidential election.

The Financial Times calls the new loan package “excessive … It looks like ZEDILLO is expecting something worse than what the markets predict.” (John Ross, Mexico Barbaro, 21-30 July 1999)

August

The US government announces its intention to prosecute MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU, who remains under house arrest in Palisades, New Jersey. The New York Times claims, fantastically, that the Mexican government has refused to extradite him from the USA.

15 September

MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU is found dead by his wife, MARIA EUGENIA BARRIENTOS, at their home. US Justice Department officials and RUIZ MASSIEU’s family claim he has commited suicide by taking an overdose of anti-depressants. He had been scheduled to travel to Houston on 16 Sept for his first court appearance on drugs charges. Today is Mexico’s Independence Day. (La Jornada, New York Times, 16 Sept 1999)

16 September

RUIZ MASSIEU’s US attorney, former federal prosecutor PEGGY FLEMING, and his widow make public his alleged suicide note at a press conference in New York. “I am absolutely innocent of all the charges made against me,” he wrote, saying that “my murderers” were President ZEDILLO and a series of Mexican prosecutors and Attorneys General. “To find my brother’s murderers, an investigation has to be started that begins with ZEDILLO. He and I knew that he wasn’t uninvolved in the two political crimes of 1994.” (El Diario-La Prensa, NYT, WSJ, 17 Sept 1999)

17 September

Insurgent Sub-Commandante MARCOS of the EZLN claims RUIZ MASSIEU isn’t dead at all. “We’ve already seen this movie,” he writes in a communique. “The ‘suicide’ isn’t one. It’s called a ‘Witness Protection Program,’ is a frequent practice in the US judicial system in international drug trafficking cases, and announces that surprises are coming for the one who wll be ‘ex’ after 1 Dec of the year 2000.”

ERNESTO ZEDILLO is scheduled to leave office on 1 Dec, 2000. (La Jornada, 18 Sept 1999.)

This article, in a longer form, first appeared in the British parapolitical journal Lobster. Like the rest of us, the editor of that publication, Robin Ramsey, got into these topics through an original interest in the Kennedy assassination. – Eds.
February 15, 2000
The Sins of Robert Blakey, Part 2
From the November-December 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 1) of Probe

Blakey told him, “You guys are thinking too big. You’ve got to get your conspiracy smaller.” Sprague replied, “Well, how small Bob?” The professor replied, “Five or six people.” HSCA investigator Eddie Lopez vouched for this rendition of Blakey’s view of how large a conspiracy could be.

In an interesting segment from Gaeton Fonzi’s wonderful 1993 book The Last Investigation, the author recalls his first meeting with and impressions of the man who replaced Richard Sprague as chief counsel and staff director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. At that time, the summer of 1977, Deputy Counsel Robert Tanenbaum was supervising the JFK side of the House Select Committee while awaiting a replacement. Tanenbaum had called Fonzi and told him that he wanted him to meet the incoming chief counsel, Cornell law professor G. Robert Blakey. Fonzi describes his first thoughts about Blakey thusly:

Among my first impressions of Bob Blakey was that he was very knowledgeable in the ways of the Washington bureaucracy. It was obvious that he knew how to take over an operation because the first thing he did when he arrived was nothing. That, as they tell you in the military, is exactly what a new commander should do when he is assigned a unit: Do nothing but walk around, look around, listen carefully and ask questions. Then you’ll know how to move for control quickly and firmly…. Blakey turned out to be a very cunning intellectual strategist who seemed to take quiet pride in his ability to manipulate both people and situations. (pp. 208-209)

Blakey’s Small Conspiracy

Clearly, during the brief transition period in July of 1977, Blakey had decided that the open-ended investigation that his predecessors had launched was, for his purposes, much too broad and also too reliant on the literature critical of the Warren Commission. When I talked to photoanalyst Richard E. Sprague in 1993, he related a personal conversation that he had with Blakey shortly after the professor had taken over. Blakey told him, “You guys are thinking too big. You’ve got to get your conspiracy smaller.” Sprague replied, “Well, how small Bob?” The professor replied, “Five or six people.” HSCA investigator Eddie Lopez vouched for this rendition of Blakey’s view of how large a conspiracy could be. He said that in his lecture classes on criminal conspiracy, Blakey would describe such an entity as spokes on a wheel. It was necessary to keep these human spokes small in number to minimize the possibility of one breaking i.e. talking.

To limit the conspiracy and deliberate cover-up in the John F. Kennedy case to five or six people is quite a tall order. But the cunning strategist Blakey knew where to strike first. Bob Tanenbaum had brought Michael Baden into the House Select Committee on Assassinations because he had worked with him many times in New York City where Tanenbaum worked homicide cases and Baden was Chief Medical Examiner. Tanenbaum had much admiration for Baden’s skills as a forensic pathologist, i.e. a doctor whose specialty is determining the cause of death in cases that need full autopsies. Tanenbaum told me that as long as he was there, Baden backed the basic idea that the Kennedy murder was the result of a conspiracy. In other words, the single bullet theory was not tenable. But something happened to Baden when Blakey took the helm, because shortly thereafter he switched positions. He became a vociferous backer of Oswald as the only assassin. In other words, the single bullet theory was now not only viable, it was the only way to go. And according to Jerry Policoff, people inside the committee have said Baden began to ride herd on the medical panel, actively encouraging the thesis on his cohorts

Purdy Switches Sides

Once Baden had switched his position, Andy Purdy was the next to go. As I wrote in the first part of this piece, Purdy was a friend of Representative Tom Downing’s son at the University of Virginia. Purdy had seen Robert Groden’s enhanced version of the Zapruder film and encouraged the son to have his father see it. Downing then wrote his bill authorizing congress to investigate the Kennedy case based on that viewing of the Z-film. Through his connections to Downing, Purdy secured a position on the committee. By all accounts, and like Baden, while Sprague and Tanenbaum were in command Purdy was all for finding the real conspirators in the Kennedy case. But Eddie Lopez said that one day shortly after the transition, young Purdy went into a meeting with Blakey and Baden. When he came out he announced, “We’re going with the single bullet theory.” Lopez was shocked. He began arguing with Purdy in a demonstrative way. He sat himself down in a chair to demonstrate the trajectory of the single bullet through Kennedy’s back. He then raised his arms over his head to show Purdy that it would be impossible for a bullet entering at the level shown in Kennedy’s shirt (about four inches below the collar) to exit at his throat. He raised his arms as high as they would go trying to show Purdy that no matter what he did, the bullet hole in the shirt would never rise up to neck level: “See, you can’t do it Andy!” It was to no avail. As Gaeton Fonzi later said, it was like the epiphany of St. Paul. Purdy now had gotten religion.

What happened to Baden and Purdy? No one can know for sure. It would certainly seem that the facts of the case did not change. It would be very illuminating for all of us if Purdy would divulge what was discussed behind closed doors at the meeting which caused his conversion. But whatever was discussed, the 180 degree swerves of Baden and Purdy were very helpful in resuscitating the “Oswald as lone assassin” story. Because Baden would now lead the medical panel arranged by Blakey and Purdy would end up being the chief medical investigator for that panel. As long as both maintained the figleaf of the single bullet theory, it would be possible to posit a small conspiracy.

Kennedy’s Wounds Shift Positions

The problem with Purdy and Baden’s work though is that it does not hold up under scrutiny. In fact, it is not even consistent with its own assumptions. For a startling illustration of this, one only has to look at Baden’s own testimony in Volume 1 of the House Select Committee published set. On pages 186-192 Baden discusses the wound in Kennedy’s back with an illustration provided by medical artist Ida Dox. Her renditions are based on the actual autopsy photos. Baden and his panel moved the wound in Kennedy’s back lower than the Warren Commission had placed it. But even more importantly, he discusses something called an “abrasion collar”. This is the ring made around a bullet hole in the skin that can sometimes reveal directionality i.e. the angle at which the bullet perforated the body. The Warren Commission drawing of this angle placed that bullet at a downward trajectory from the sixth floor and this HSCA volume has that drawing in it (p. 232). Yet the two drawings prepared by Dox for the HSCA do not maintain that angle. They depict, respectively, a flat trajectory of entrance and an upward trajectory. (pp. 190-191) Both Baden and his questioners danced all around this issue. Clearly it was not to be openly stated at the public hearings. Unfortunately, Cyril Wecht let the cat out of the bag right after Baden left. In discussing the horizontal and vertical trajectories of the new HSCA version of the single bullet theory he stated the following:

The panel, to the best of my recollection, was in unanimous agreement that there was a slight upward trajectory of the bullet through President John F. Kennedy, that is to say, that the bullet wound of entrance on the President’s back, lined up with the bullet wound of exit in the front of the President’s neck, drawing a straight line, showed that vertically the bullet had moved slightly upward. . . . (p. 344)

In other words, in this regard, the HSCA had actually outdone the Warren Commission. Not even the Commission could postulate that a bullet fired from above could enter Kennedy’s back at an upward angle – and then actually reverse its trajectory inside the body without hitting bone. Yet by admitting one thing that was true – that the bullet did not hit Kennedy in the neck but in the back – they had to create an even larger fiction to cover an even greater deception. For as Wecht put it so vividly:

How in the world can a bullet be fired from the sixth floor window, strike the President in the back, and yet have a slightly upward direction? There was nothing there to cause it to change its course. And then with the slightly upward direction, outside the President’s neck, that bullet then embarked upon a rollercoaster ride with a major dip, because it then proceeded; under the single bullet theory, through Gov. John Connally at a 25 degree angle of declination.. . . How does a bullet that is moving slightly upward in the President proceed then to move downward 25 degrees in John Connally? This is what I cannot understand. (Ibid)

Stated in those clear, stark terms no wonder Baden and the committee wanted to tap-dance around the issue.

Humes Does Baden’s Bidding

There was another strange piece of alchemy done with the Warren Commission autopsy evidence on September 7, 1978, the second day of the HSCA public hearings. Sandwiched between Baden and Wecht was none other than Captain James J. Humes. Humes, of course, was the titular head of the autopsy team that examined President Kennedy’s body when it was shipped into Bethesda Maryland upon its return from Dallas. If one is discussing medical questions about perhaps the most important and dubious autopsy in contemporary American history, could there be a more important witness? Imagine the breadth and depth of questioning that could and should have been done with Humes. For instance, about any phone calls he may have received from the time he knew he was doing the autopsy until the time he entered the autopsy room. Or if he asked to look at the autopsy photos or x-rays before he wrote his report. Or if the doctors reconstructed the back of Kennedy’s skull with bones from Dallas to make the present photographs possible. One fine example the panel could have asked: Was there a probe done of the back wound to see if it penetrated all the way through the body? At the very least, the examination of Humes should have been as rigorous as that of his colleague Pierre Finck in 1969 at the trial of Clay Shaw. But if one examines the transcript of that September 9th hearing, a curious phenomenon is observed. Baden, who was not in Bethesda, talks on and on for about 53 pages. When he is finished, there are many questions. Wecht, who was not in Bethesda, goes on for about 39 pages. When he is finished, there are many questions. Humes talks for nine pages. Even more startling, when he is opened up for questioning to the committee, this is what appears in the transcript:

Chairman Stokes: Thank you counsel. Are there any members of the committee that would seek recognition?

[No response.] p. 331

At this point in the radio broadcast of the hearings, medical researcher Wallace Milamstarted to cry.

So what exactly was Humes called on stage to do? Under Tanenbaum’s replacement, Deputy Counsel Gary Cornwell, Humes was basically depicted as a bungling nincompoop who could not tell the top of the head from the bottom, a person’s back from his neck, and someone so sensitive to the memory of JFK that he threw out his original autopsy notes because they “were stained with the blood of our late President”. (Ibid. p.330) In other words, he got the location of the wounds wrong and burned the first draft of his autopsy notes. I will excerpt two parts of Humes’ comments to show what his Galileo-like recantation was like: “We made certain physical observations and measurements of these wounds. I state now those measurements we recorded then were accurate to the best of our ability to discern what we had before our eyes.” (p. 327) Four pages later, this follows:

Having heard most of what Dr. Baden said, and the findings of his committee on forensic pathologists, I think the committee was very well advised to gather such a distinguished group. I wish I had had the availability of that many people and that much time to reach the conclusions that I and my associates were forced to reach in approximately 36 hours.

Humes played the good soldier and simulated the humble, bumbling dolt for the HSCA.

Humes Behind the Scenes

Unfortunately for the public, we were not allowed to see what had gone on behind the scenes leading up to this dog and pony show. At their private conference with select members of Baden’s medical panel, all three autopsy doctors – Humes, Pierre Finck, and J. Thornton Boswell – mightily resisted this new location for the head wound: four inches up from where they had originally placed Kennedy’s fatal head shot. In the newly declassified HSCA files, Finck argues that he had the body right in front of him and that should be the strongest evidence. Humes also argues that what the HSCA is now calling a bullet hole does not even look like a wound to him. Humes said about the small red dot that the HSCA called an entrance wound, “I just don’t know what it is, but it certainly was not any wound of entrance.” This argument went on until one of the HSCA pathologists interjected. “We have no business recording this,” said Dr. Loquvam. “This is for us to decide between ourselves; I don’t think this belongs on this record. . . . You guys are nuts. You guys are nuts writing this stuff. It doesn’t belong in that damn record.” (Vol. 7 p. 255) ( Loquvam ended up writing the draft report of the medical panel.) But six pages later, Humes made an even more vigorous dissent and a telling point about the difference between the black and white vs. the color autopsy photos. Humes was being grilled about why, if the wound was in the lower part of the head, the photos depicting that “wound” are not centered on that particular part of the skull; the photographer’s camera lens is centered toward the middle of the head. Humes said that they were not trying to get just a picture of the wound in that shot. He then further replied with this: ” I submit to you that, despite the fact that this upper point that has been the source of some discussion here this afternoon is excessively obvious in the color photograph, I almost defy you to find it in that magnification in the black and white.” Baden did not directly respond to what was a not too subtle rejoinder that Humes himself could argue that there were signs of alteration in the photographs. (One has to wonder if this was the unspoken deal between the HSCA and Humes: He would take the fall as long as no questions were asked. If they were, he would bring up this weird discrepancy about the photos in public.) Suffice it to say, what the HSCA presented to the public was not an accurate portrayal of the dispute between Humes and the medical panel. Humes himself dramatized this years later when after Oliver Stone’s JFK came out, he reverted back to his original position for the head wound, four inches downward on the skull, for the publication Journal of the American Medical Association.

But Baden had to do what he did.. Why? Because he decided that he had to stay true to the most recent version of the autopsy, which was not the Humes version. On the eve of the Clay Shaw trial, Attorney General Ramsey Clark had appointed a panel headed by forensic pathologist Russell Fisher of Maryland to again look at the autopsy materials in the JFK case. They had raised this rear head wound themselves. The elevation was clearly based on the presence of a large 6.5 mm. fragment apparent on the x-rays very close to the rear of the skull. As Dr. David Mantik has pointed out, this fragment was not mentioned by the three original autopsy doctors, which is hard to believe since its dimensions exactly fit the bullet size of Oswald’s alleged rifle. Mantik, not wed to the single bullet theory, went on to enact a tour-de-force demonstration of how this artifact was very likely inserted into the x-rays to cinch the case against Oswald. (See his long essay in the book Assassination Science, excerpted in Probe Vol. 5 No.. 2 .) Baden and Blakey would not touch this subject.. It could have indicated a larger conspiracy, at the very least, in the act of cover-up. So Humes did his temporary disappearing act. According to Jerry Policoff, it lasted until Humes left his microphone. As he left, he muttered, “They had their chance and they blew it.”(Gallery, July 1979)

The Misreported Findings

Did the HSCA “blow” its findings on the crucial aspect of the placement of the head wound? Or was something more sinister at work? In November of 1995, Gary Aguilar collated hundreds of pages of newly declassified documents of the HSCA by the Assassination Records Review Board. A crucial aspect of the medical evidence has always been whether or not a huge gaping hole existed in the back of Kennedy’s head after the murder. If this were so, it would give strong indication of a shot from the front since wounds of entrance generally make small puncture wounds while wounds of exit leave large, rough-edged holes. The doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas who had an opportunity to survey Kennedy’s head are almost uniform in their memories that just such an exit-type wound existed. To name just a few: Kemp Clark, Robert McClelland, Charles Carrico, Paul Peters, and Ronald C. Jones. Baden, basing his observations on the photos and x-rays, seemed to place this wound closer to the top of the head and nearer the right side, except that Baden called it a fracture caused by the entrance wound. The HSCA addressed this problem straight on in Volume 7 (pp. 37-39). The anonymous author of this section noted that Warren Commission critics had noted this discrepancy of the wound placement and had sided with the Parkland doctors believing that physicians who were accustomed to bullet wounds could hardly make such a mistake and all be so consistent in their recollections. The report then noted that, in opposition to the Parkland doctors, there were 26 people at Bethesda who watched the autopsy and they all corroborated the photos and x-rays. This statement is supported by a reference to “Staff interviews with persons present at the autopsy.” If this were so, it would be one more blow against the critics and for the HSCA’s strong belief in “scientific” evidence.

The problem, as Aguilar so ably pointed out, is that the statement is not only false, but the opposite is true. Rather than contradicting the Parkland doctors, the 26 witnesses at Bethesda corroborated them. The Bethesda witnesses not only described a wound in the right rear of Kennedy’s head, they also drew diagrams illustrating that location. Further, when Aguilar presented the witness interviews on slides so that Cyril Wecht and Baden (who were both on hand) could see them, he asked both men if the had seen these corroborating reports while on the HSCA. Both answered that they had not. And who had conducted most of the interviews and was in a position to know the truth? Andy Purdy was the HSCA’s investigator whose name was on most of the documents. When Aguilar asked Purdy who wrote that (false) part of the report, Purdy said he did not recall. Aguilar wrote Blakey and got the same answer. Needless to say, when over forty witnesses in two different places describe the same type of wound in the same location and that wound does not show up on the photos or x-rays, it strongly suggests that something is wrong with those representations. And as I mentioned in the first part of this article, the fact that this uniformity of observation was not correctly noted by the HSCA seems to be at least part of the reason that David Lifton’s book Best Evidence seems a bit dated now. (See for example p. 172 and the drawings on p. 310).

Baden and Russell Fisher

After the HSCA September hearings, at a conference in December of 1978, Dr. Wecht reflected on what he felt to be some inherent bias in the composition of the medical panel. For instance, at the long interview with Humes (quoted above), Wecht was absent, and he was not made aware of that meeting until after the fact. Another one of the doctors on the panel, Dr. Weston, was a friend of Humes, who had worked for CBS on one of its JFK assassination documentaries. Wecht further added at that conference:

It was not a surprise to me, nor do I believe it was circumstantial, that many of the pathologists who were selected [to the HSCA panel] are from the forensic pathology clique of Russell Fisher who headed the 1967 Ramsey Clark Panel and has a vested interest in having the questionable work of that panel endorsed.

A perfect example of this was the choice of Werner Spitz, Chief Medical Examiner of Wayne County, which houses the city of Detroit. Prior to taking that position, Spitz served as assistant to Russell Fisher. Spitz was also a longtime friend of Humes and when Humes retired from the Navy, it was Spitz who threw a party for him. He then reportedly helped him find a job in the Detroit area. In 1975, Spitz was selected by the Rockefeller Commission and its Executive Director, former Warren Commission counsel David Belin, to examine the Kennedy autopsy photos and x-rays. Needless to say, that investigation ended up endorsing Russell Fisher’s findings.

Vincent Guinn convicts Oswald

Another expert employed by the Committee who would seem to have a less than objective attitude would be Vincent Guinn. Guinn was contracted to do the neutron activation analysis (NAA) on the one nearly intact bullet in evidence (the infamous Commission Exhibit 399), and for several other fragments recovered from either Kennedy or Connally’s body or from parts of the presidential limousine. This test breaks down pieces of evidence in a nuclear reactor to compare their smallest parts in elemental composition. In this case, Guinn was trying to show that the trace elements in these bullets and fragments were close enough in composition as to come from the Mannlicher-Carcano bullets allegedly used by Oswald. (Where Oswald got these bullets is another story.) Before describing and discussing Guinn’s conclusions, it is important to note how Blakey introduced him at the September 8, 1978 public hearing. During his opening narration, Blakey described Guinn as a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Irvine who “had no relation to the Warren Commission” (Vol. 1 p. 490). When asked later about this himself, Guinn replied in those same terms (p. 556). Unfortunately, if the reader turns to pages 152-153 of Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment, he will see that this claim is apparently false. Lane wrote that although Guinn worked with the FBI on behalf of the Commission on the paraffin casts done for the nitrate tests about Oswald, and submitted a report on his findings, his name did not appear in the Warren Commission Report. Guinn himself admitted as much in a story in the New York World Telegram and Sun of August 28, 1964. At that time he worked for the big Pentagon contractor General Dynamics. In that story he is quoted as saying, “I cannot say what we found out about Oswald because it is secret until the publication of the Warren Report.” If Guinn was working on the paraffin casts of Oswald’s hands and cheeks in August of 1964, he had to have been in close contact with the FBI since they were the primary agent in these experiments for the Warren Commission. But yet Guinn’s direct quote on this subject was “…I never did anything for the Warren Commission, and although I know people in the FBI, I have never done any work for them.” (p. 556) This is extraordinary on two counts. First, could Blakey really not have known about this association if it was reported in Lane’s book? Could Guinn have forgotten he did work for the FBI on one of the biggest murder cases of the century? Secondly, the fact they both men appear to have been disingenuous about the subject shows another serious failing about the HSCA. Blakey and Gary Cornwell, Blakey’s closest associate, knew that one of the reasons that the Warren Report had fallen into disrepute was that many of its analysts had concluded that its findings were false because the “experts” used, especially by the FBI, were highly biased in favor of Oswald’s guilt. J. Edgar Hoover had essentially closed the investigation within about 72 hours after the crime. Since Hoover’s authority at that time was unchallenged, his subordinates did what they could to go along with that verdict. Blakey and Cornwell had to have been aware of this failing of the first investigation. It would seem to any sensible and objective observer that they were obligated to find the most independent and objective experts possible to retest some of this evidence. If necessary they would have been wholly within their mandate to go outside the country for them. But to go with someone like Guinn who not only did work for the Commission, but was then associated with General Dynamics, was inexcusable. (Larry Sturdivan, Blakey’s ballistics expert was also associated with the Warren Commission. See Vol. 1, p. 385; and his findings were just as dubious as those discussed here.)

Guinn’s Fallacies Exposed

Guinn’s findings were very important to Blakey. He leaked them to the press early in 1978 as the final nail in the HSCA’s verdict against Oswald. It was the rigorous scientific analysis that he so much admired and enthroned. And it showed that the single bullet theory was not just possible but that it actually happened. Unfortunately for Blakey, Guinn’s vaunted scientific rigor, like Baden’s, does not stand up to scrutiny. Guinn made two spectacularly erroneous general statements about the Mannlicher-Carcano bullets to the HSCA. First that, “[Y]ou simply do not find a wide variation in composition within individual WCC [Western Cartridge Company] Mannlicher-Carcano bullets. . . “(Vol. 1, p. 505). Yet Guinn’s own analysis in his report in the same volume undercuts this statement. Guinn performed tests on these WCC bullets from 1973-1975 for Dr. John Nichols of the University of Kansas, who was greatly interested in the Kennedy assassination. He took bullets from three production runs from WCC and then cut each bullet into four fragments. He then did NAA tests to find trace element compositions e.g. of antimony, silver, and copper in the bullet. Wallace Milam in his paper “The Testimony of Dr. Guinn: Some Troubling Questions” examined the results which appear in the HSCA (Vol. 1, p. 549). The four fragments from one bullet showed wildly varying amounts of antimony ranging from 358 PPM (parts per million) to 983 PPM. That is a variation of about 250% in one bullet. The four fragments from a different lot run varied to a lesser degree, but the PPM of antimony fell right within the same range of the bullet from the first lot! This means that by Guinn’s own matching standard, he could have concluded that a Carcano bullet from a completely different production run than CE 399 could have had the same amount of antimony as CE 399. And antimony was the trace element Guinn considered most important. (Guinn’s chart and this criticism of it is also exhibited on p. 43 of Stewart Galanor’s new book Cover-Up excerpted in this edition of Probe.)

Guinn also seems to have been wrong in his interpretation of the copper content linking CE 399 to some wrist fragments taken from Connally. The PPM in copper from the bullet was 58. Milam notes the PPM for the fragments was 994. Yet these fragments had to have come from the copper base of the same bullet and therefore were in close proximity to each other. In fact, going through all of Guinn’s findings in this regard, Milam concluded, “. . the stretcher bullet [CE 399] matches the wrist fragments most closely in only one of seven elements.”

Researcher Ed Tatro also examined Guinn’s work with help from John Nichols. Tatro found some very disturbing discrepancies between the samples tested by Guinn for the HSCA and those tested by the FBI in 1964. Of the samples received by Guinn from the FBI, one turned out to be only a copper jacket, one was devoid of any testable metal and was only cement particles. Further, Tatro wrote in The Continuing Inquiry, Guinn’s tested fragments in 1978 do not match the tested fragments of 1964 in either weight, size or number. And as Milam notes, Guinn testified that the FBI tests would not have destroyed or altered the samples. (Vol. 1, pp. 561-562)

As Milam further notes in his important paper delivered at the 1994 COPA Conference in Washington, in taped comments to several people after his testimony (one of whom was George Lardner of the Washington Post), Guinn made some of the following startling statements:
1. It was not until he received the evidence from the National Archives that he discovered he was testing fragments different from those previously tested by the FBI.
2. None of the specimen weights matched those of the 1964 test fragments. Some of the fragments given to Guinn actually weighed more in 1978.
3. Guinn himself admitted that it would be easy to deliberately falsify evidence to be tested: “Possibly they would take a bullet, take out a few pieces and put it in the container, and say, ‘This is what came out of Connally’s wrist.’ And, naturally, if you compare it with 399, it will look alike. . . . I have no control over such things.”
Concerning the last sinister implication, we don’t really have to seriously consider it since, as shown, above, Guinn’s tests for Mannlicher-Carcano bullets, to put it kindly, are not probative. But one more comment on Guinn’s tests is in order. As early researchers like Ray Marcus have shown, the chain of evidence for CE 399 is very questionable. It is not probable, in fact is highly doubtful, that the bullet came from Kennedy’s stretcher. In a court of law, a defense lawyer for Oswald would have argued vehemently against admitting it into evidence, and he would have probably prevailed. Blakey and Cornwell were lawyers. Were they not cognizant of this? Would they not be aware that since the chain of possession of their most important exhibit in this regard was dubious, it would legally eliminate all of Guinn’s vaunted findings? In light of this, why go through Guinn’s tests at all? In the final analysis, they prove nothing.

Canning and the Flight Path

On September 12, 1978, Thomas Canning was called to testify before the HSCA. Canning was another government employee, this time the agency was NASA. Canning had worked on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space missions during his 23 years there. Canning seemed an odd choice for the assignment he was given, namely testing the flight paths of the two bullets that hit Kennedy. In figuring out bullet trajectories, one would naturally think first of hiring a surveyor to figure out the angle in degrees from the so-called sniper’s nest to the point where the first shot hit. But, incredibly, in the nearly fifty pages of testimony given by Canning, there is never any expression of that angle in degrees! ( Volume 2, pp. 154-203) Canning took a rather unique and unexpected track in this assignment. Instead of plotting an angle from the sixth floor window through Kennedy’s body, and then Connally’s back, wrist, and left thigh, he did the reverse. He found a point on Kennedy and then plotted backwards into space to see where he would end up. One would think that this would have spelled the end of Oswald as the lone assassin since, as described before by Dr. Wecht, Baden’s forensic panel had said Kennedy’s back wound went through the body at an upward angle. But Canning found a way around that difficulty. If one looks at his schematic tracing the wound from back to front in Kennedy, that point of entry is now elevated back into the neck i.e. where the Warren Commission placed it in 1964. (Vol. 2, p. 170) And in tracing the line connecting the entry with the exit point, the reader can see that the angle is now flattened with no slope either up or down. When Canning was asked how he plotted these points he gave differing answers. Some of the time he said he relied on the HSCA’s medical panel for the entrance and exit points. But once he replied with this: “It was determined from photographs that were taken during the autopsy and by measurements and notes that were taken at that time.” (p. 170) If Canning actually saw the autopsy photos then he saw something different than Ida Dox or Baden saw as anyone can see from his placement of the non-fatal wound.

Amazingly, no one mentioned this rather glaring and serious discrepancy until near the end of Canning’s comments. Representative Floyd Fithian said, “. . . someone . . . has made the statement that when the bullet exited the President’s throat it was rising.” (p. 200) When Canning answered this question he tried to explain away one part of this problem by saying JFK’s head was tilted forward. But he then added that he based this on a photo which was timed with frame 161 of the Zapruder film. The problem with this, as we shall see, is that the HSCA placed the first hit of Kennedy at frame 189! (Vol. 6 pp. 27-28)

Further, in backing the single-bullet theory, Canning stopped his tracing of the flight path at Connally’s back. In his public testimony at least, he never got to the myriad problems with the rest of the flight path i.e. out Connally’s chest and to his wrist, and then off the wrist and over to his thigh. Also, Canning revealed in a colloquy with Fithian that if his calculations were off on points of entry and exit by as little as one inch, he would miss the originating firing point by anywhere from thirty to forty feet. (Vol. 2, p. 196) In other words by as many as four floors in the Texas School Book Depository building, where Oswald was supposed to be firing from the sixth floor. This is very important for in calculating the entrance point in Kennedy’s skull, he did use Baden’s positioning of that wound. In other words, he placed it up high in the cowlick area. But if Humes was telling the truth on this point, Canning would be off by about 160 feet! That would mean not only a sniper on a different floor, but in an entirely different building on another block.

Canning and the Sixth Floor

What is amazing about Canning’s work is that, even without plotting angles at which bullets entered or exited, or using such integrals as degrees, and even using Baden’s positioning of the head wound, when asked to pinpoint a firing point for the fatal head shot by drawing a circle on the TSBD, this is what Canning came up with:

Michael Goldsmith: Essentially that circle covers the top four floors of that building, is that correct?

Mr. Canning: Yes; it includes one, two, three, four floors and the roof of the building. It extends slightly beyond the building at the southeast corner and extends over to the edge of the photograph here. (Vol. 2, p. 169)

The photo accompanying this “pinpointing” of the firing point depicts an area about forty feet high and fifty feet wide or about 2,000 square feet. To top it off, when Canning was asked which of the two Kennedy wounds he had the best photographic evidence to assist him, he replied it was the head wound. (p. 157) Further, when Wecht described the general firing angle from the sixth floor, he described it as going from right to left. (Vol. 1, p. 344) In Canning’s skull diagram, he depicts the bullet direction inside the brain as going from left to right. (Vol. 2, p. 159)

Canning was another witness whose performance was apparently arranged, perhaps even choreographed. In recently declassified documents we learn from a contact report by HSCA staffer Mark Flanagan that there were “two schools of thought” on the location of the exit wound in Kennedy’s head – Baden’s and Canning’s. (Report of 7/24/78) Not only that, in a report by Jane Downey of May 2, 1978, she revealed that Canning disagreed with the entrance wound placement as well. What was an aerospace engineer doing arguing with a forensic pathologist about wound placement? Further revealing this back stage disagreement, Andy Purdy wrote on May 23, 1978 that Canning and Baden so disagreed that the trajectory analyst opened up a back channel to two other doctors on the forensic panel, Dr. Loquvam and Dr. Weston. This is notable because as described above, Weston had worked previously for CBS, and Loquvam wanted to keep the dispute over the placement of the rear head wound off the record.

Canning Writes Blakey

In spite of all this maneuvering, the apparently desired end result was not achieved. Important in this regard, is a letter Canning wrote to Blakey in January of 1978 revealing his unhappiness with his work:

When I was asked to participate in analysis of the physical evidence regarding the assassination of John Kennedy, I welcomed the opportunity to help set the record straight. I did not anticipate that study of the photographic record of itself would reveal major discrepancies in the Warren Commission findings. Such has turned out to be the case.

I have not set out to write this note to comment on results; my report does that. What I do wish to convey is my judgment of how the parts of the overall investigation which I could observe were conducted. The compartmentalization which you either fostered or permitted to develop in the technical investigations made it nearly impossible to do good work in reasonable time and at reasonable cost.

The staff lawyers clearly were working in the tradition of adversaries; this would be acceptable if the adversary were ignorance or deception. The adversaries I perceived were the staff lawyers themselves. Each seemed to “protect” his own assigned group at the expense of getting to the heart of the matter by encouraging – or even demanding cooperation with the other participants. The most frustrating problem for me was to get quantitative data – and even consistent descriptions – from the forensic pathologists.

Canning ended this letter to Blakey with a comment that never got into his public testimony:

Permit me to end my not altogether complimentary letter by saying that it was for me the most part an interesting and enjoyable experience. On balance, the entire effort would be justified solely by the strong indication of conspiracy at the Plaza.

Blakey and Stokes Alter the Report

Despite all of the above, Blakey was determined to go with Oswald as the lone gunman until he got tripped up by the acoustics evidence. Although Blakey and Chairman Louis Stokes (incorrectly called Carl Stokes in the first part of this article) deny this today and say they were already leaning toward conspiracy before, this is not consistent with the record. As Josiah Thompson points out in the galley proofs of Beyond Conspiracy, the draft report of the HSCA dated 12/12/78 states; “The Committee finds that the available scientific evidence is insufficient to find there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.” (Thompson et. al., p. 11) When the two sound technicians conducted experiments on a dictabelt police tape allegedly recorded during the assassination, they concluded there was a 95% chance of a second gunman from the front of JFK in the grassy knoll area. This was submitted two weeks later and the report was changed. The HSCA decided to go with this analysis by Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy. But they still tried to limit the damage as much as possible i.e. keep the conspiracy small. Since Baden had ruled that there were only two hits and both came from behind, Blakey could now say that if there was a second gunman in front, he took one shot and missed.

But this new acoustical evidence left Blakey with another problem. The shots on the tape appeared to be bunched too close together. The timing of the first two shots left only 1.6 seconds between them. The interval between the third and fourth was only .6 of a second. But that could be handled by the assassin in front. Oswald had to be firing from behind. And when the FBI had tested the rifle for the Warren Commission, they had concluded that it took 2.3 seconds to complete the firing of one round with the manual bolt action rifle. This timing problem between the 1.6 and 2.3 seconds was called inside the committee “Blakey’s Problem”. He and Cornwell wanted to preserve both Oswald as the sole killer and the single bullet theory. They both finally found a way to get around the FBI tests. On March 22, 1979 Blakey, Cornwell and four marksmen from the Washington D. C. Police Department went to a rifle range to find a way to beat the earlier times. The solution was not to use the scope on the rifle. They aimed by using only the iron sights on the barrel. No magnification of the target; no crosshairs to line it up. Recall that the alleged rifle used by Oswald did have a scope that was not easily retractable. It had to be screwed off to remove it. Also, are we now to believe that Oswald, a rather poor shot, would not even need a scope to hit a target over 200 feet away? But still, the policemen could not get their times down fast enough and still maintain accuracy. Finally, two inexperienced riflemen, namely Blakey and Cornwell, fired two consecutive shots within 1.5 and 1.2 seconds respectively. How did they do what no one else in history did before? By something called “point aiming”. I assume this means not even using the iron sights to line up the target and just pointing the barrel in its direction. The accuracy of the results were not specified. Needless to say, in no way did the HSCA try to simulate Oswald’s feat. Shades of the Warren Commission, they fired at stationary targets from 20 feet up instead of a moving one at sixty feet up. (The episode is recorded in Vol. 8, pp. 183-185)

It is especially painful to read the memorandum of this “experiment”. Early on, these two sentences appear:

From knowledge of the difficulty involved in so shooting, it may be possible indirectly to infer something about the probability, as opposed to the possibility that Oswald did so. Nevertheless even the most improbable event may have occurred.”

This is the science the HSCA was devoted to? This is proof? Two pages later, this is topped:

It is apparently difficult, but not impossible. . . to fire 3 shots, at least two of which score “kills”, with an elapsed time of 1.7 seconds or less between any two shots, even though in the limited testing conducted, no shooter achieved this degree of proficiency.

In other words, because they could not do it, does not mean Oswald couldn’t have if he would have practiced more. Unfortunately for the HSCA, no one saw Oswald firing from the 6th floor at moving targets in front of any building in preparation for the assassination.

The SBT: 1979

As the reader can see, the HSCA has descended into the hazy nonsensical netherworld previously mapped out by the Warren Commission. Their reconstruction of the single bullet theory and the shooting sequence strongly reminds one of their discredited predecessor’s. The Committee placed the first shot at around frames 157-161. This is earlier than almost anyone previous. No one had tried this because there were virtually no visible reactions to either a hit or a sound at that time. But the Committee says Oswald fired and missed here. If so, this had to be the hit on James Tague, since Oswald hit his next two shots and they allow for only four bullets. Yet, if so, Oswald missed when the car was closest to him, when he was tracking it unobstructed by any foliage, and when there was no recoil from his rifle since it was the first shot. In spite of all these advantages, he missed the whole car by 200 feet hitting somewhere near another street. Oswald fires again in the vicinity of frames 188-191. This is the shot that composes the single bullet theory, passing through Kennedy and Connally. Now, with the car further away, obscured by the foliage of an oak tree, and after the rifle has been fired and therefore is vibrating in his hands, Oswald worked the bolt faster than any FBI agent could, did not use the scope, and “point-aimed” at Kennedy scoring a clean hit through both men. At around frame 297, whoever was firing from the front, with the car coming toward him on a front plane, with an unobstructed view, at a range much closer than Oswald, this other assassin missed the entire car. Less than a second after this, Oswald scored his second hit at a range of over 200 feet, the fatal shot in the rear of Kennedy’s head. And as with the Warren Commission, this is a direct hit in the skull from behind. A medium to high speed bullet smashes Kennedy toward the shooter, lifting him up and back out of his seat. (For a different, intricate critique of this version of the single bullet theory and the firing sequence, see Ray Marcus’ monograph, The HSCA, the Zapruder Film and the Single Bullet Theory, available through the Last Hurrah Bookstore.)

The HSCA Conspiracy

Once Blakey gave in to the acoustics evidence (which has also since been brought into question), he went to work attempting to put in place the small conspiracy he had mentioned to Richard E. Sprague. In the March 29, 1979 HSCA Report, the main authors, presumably Blakey and Richard Billings, admitted they could not identify who the second sniper was. But clearly, the authors are out to attack any notion of a broad, sophisticated governmental role in either the conspiracy itself or the cover-up. Consider just one chapter heading: “The Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.” (p. 181) This report hints cautiously at some kind of kitchen conspiracy between a mobster or two and a renegade Cuban exile. Caution was tossed to the wind when Blakey and Billings left the HSCA and wrote their book, The Plot to Kill the President. There, the authors are clearly of the opinion that the Mafia killed Kennedy. The HSCA Report and Blakey’s book and appearances had a strong effect on much of the literature published in that time period and since. David Scheim and John Davis based both of their books on much of the material and findings of Blakey’s HSCA. Tony Summers’ book Conspiracy proposes a triangular conspiracy between the CIA, the Mafia and the Cuban exiles. Noel Twyman’s recent Bloody Treason also gives the Mafia role considerable attention. Twyman expresses surprise that many other researchers do not.

As Bill Davy pointed out in his important article on John Davis, one of the things that both Davis and Blakey placed a lot of weight on was the so-called BRILAB tapes, the secret tape recording the FBI had on Carlos Marcello in the late seventies that helped convict him. As Davy wrote, “Davis and others have implied that Marcello incriminates himself in these tapes and the government is covering it up.” (Probe Vol. 5 No. 1) As long as we had only leaks from Blakey, Davis, and people like Gus Russo (who also trumpeted these tapes as evidence), the imputation of some role to Marcello had some hazy, mysterious efficacy. The Assassination Records Review Board has now declassified the pertinent parts of these ballyhooed tapes. They found 13 instances of conversations in which Marcello discussed the Kennedy assassination. They transcribed all 13 instances. There is not one scintilla of evidence to incriminate Marcello in the crime. In fact, virtually every instance in which the topic is brought up is in direct relation to the accusations made against Marcello in the HSCA Report, which was leaked in advance of its publication. In other words, if Blakey and Billings had not hinted at him in their own work, there would be no mention of the Kennedy assassination at all in the BRILAB tapes. Talk about the tail wagging the dog. Which leaves us the question: Who started the phony BRILAB rumors in the first place? And why?

According to staffers, Blakey spent an enormous amount of time, money and effort trying to develop leads and evidence to connect Oswald to the Mob. The most viable area of investigation in that regard was New Orleans. The HSCA Report admits that some kind of association existed between David Ferrie and Oswald. There was so much evidence developed on this point that it could not be denied. But yet, since for them Oswald is still an anti-social Marxist, there is little shape or direction given to this relationship. In this aspect – setting up some nexus point for a Ferrie-Oswald friendship – the HSCA Report on Ferrie himself is also a curious document to read. With footnotes, it runs to 14 pages. It traces Ferrie from his birth in Cleveland, Ohio up until the assassination. Yet there is not one mention in the entire report of the Central Intelligence Agency. This is quite a feat since Ferrie was involved in Operation MONGOOSE, the preparations for the Bay of Pigs, and myriad other operations against Cuba. The report even mentions the miniature submarine Ferrie had built for a possible attack against the island. (Vol. 10, p. 109) Yet not only does this report not mention Ferrie’s own admitted association with the CIA, which the HSCA files contain in abundance, it actually states the opposite: “. . . there is no evidence. . . that Ferrie was connected in any way with the U. S. Government.” (Ibid) This is pure fiction.

Blakey in New Orleans

When Peter Vea and myself interviewed L. J. Delsa in New Orleans in 1993, he helped explain how this all came about. One of the last things Bob Tanenbaum did before leaving was to authorize a new investigation of New Orleans. Delsa lived in the area and had worked with Tanenbaum on a previous murder case. Delsa and his partner, Bob Buras, discovered a witness who knew Ferrie well and had been in Guy Banister’s offices at 544 Camp Street. Further, he connected Clay Shaw with Jack Ruby. Delsa wanted to test his veracity with a polygraph examination. It turned out that the polygraph results indicated he was telling the truth. When Blakey found out about this, he completely altered the shape and individuals involved in the New Orleans phase of the HSCA. Supervising attorney, Jonathan Blackmer was pulled off that assignment. Buras and Delsa were informally suspended. New people, who had little familiarity with the milieu were brought in. In fact, Blakey even assigned staffers from the King side of the HSCA to interview witnesses. On one of these reports, MLK staffer Joseph Thomas writes, that he “is not familiar with the JFK investigation” but he does not feel the witness he is talking to is telling the truth. (Report of 3/18/78) The revealed archival record bears out an indelible comment Delsa made to me over lunch in New Orleans. I asked him how productive Garrison’s leads were. He replied to me, “Garrison’s leads were so productive that Blakey shut down the New Orleans investigation.”

As we have seen with its report on David Ferrie, the HSCA did all it could to exonerate the CIA of any involvement in the Kennedy killing. There are many other strong indications of this throughout the report and volumes. But perhaps the best example can be indicated by looking at the item in the report entitled “Oswald in Mexico City” which is on p. 225. The actual HSCA work on this aspect of Oswald’s last few weeks on earth is dealt with at voluminous and detailed length in the report of over 300 pages by Dan Hardway and Eddie Lopez. That volume brings up the most provocative questions possible about Oswald’s alleged trip and activities in Mexico just seven weeks before the assassination. For some authors, like Mark Lane and John Newman, Oswald’s alleged activities there, and the CIA’s reaction to them, are strong indications of a scenario attempting to ensnare Oswald in a trap in advance of the murder. How does the HSCA report deal with the 300 pages of compelling and documented findings by Hardway and Lopez? In three sentences. Need I add that those 3 sentences are completely exculpatory of any Agency involvement with Oswald in Mexico.

The Blahut Affair

One of Blakey’s most controversial statements was leaked to the media and reported by Jerry Policoff, among others. When some of the staffers felt that the new Chief Counsel was being too accommodating and trusting of some of the intelligence agencies, Blakey reportedly said, “You don’t think they’d lie to me do you? I’ve been working with these people for twenty years.” Blakey’s bond to the intelligence community was never more amply demonstrated than in the Regis Blahut incident. Blahut was a CIA liaison with the Committee. In late June of 1978, one of the security officers for the Committee discovered that some of the autopsy materials stored in the safe had been taken out, looked at, and one of the color photos had been removed from its plastic sleeve. The Committee conducted an internal inquiry and found through fingerprint matches on the safe that the culprit was Blahut. Blakey conducted three separate interviews with him. The first two were taped. Blakey concluded that in both interviews, Blahut’s responses conflicted with the facts. Yet both times, according to declassified CIA documents, Blahut consulted with the Agency after the interviews. For the third interview, Blahut refused to be taped. Blahut’s story was that the photos had been left out on a window sill, he had just happened to wander in, and he browsed through them. Yet, the facts appear to be these:
1. Blahut’s prints were on the photos themselves, so he could not have just been leafing through the notebook they were bound in.
2. The access entry log showed that the notebook had not been removed prior to the time Blahut was in the room looking at the photos.
3. Blahut’s prints were inside the safe indicating he himself had removed the notebook.
4. One version of the story had Blahut fleeing the room when he heard someone approaching, not bothering to replace the notebook in the safe.
Blakey had the CIA in a tough corner. If this story, in all its suspicious detail, had been leaked to the media at the time, imagine the firestorm it could have caused. Blakey’s meeting at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia reflected the gravity with which the Agency viewed the situation. At one meeting, he and Gary Cornwell met with Stansfield Turner himself, CIA Director at the time. But when Blakey demanded Blahut’s Office of Security file, the Director of Security, Robert Gambino handed him his personnel file instead. This was a crucial distinction. As Jim Hougan has explained in Secret Agenda, one of the functions of the Office of Security (OS), is to keep tabs on potential enemies of the Agency. It tracks potential threats by surveillance and other means and does its best to neutralize them. If Blahut had an OS file, it could reveal if his function was to monitor the HSCA and ward off any destabilizing acts the Committee would take against the CIA. The fact that Gambino refused to give Blakey that file suggested the worst (as would evidence revealed later).

It went downhill from there. Blakey asked for an investigation to find out if Blahut was part of an operation against the Committee and/or if he was reporting back to control agents at CIA as part of that operation. The Agency offered four alternatives for a probe. Blakey could use the local D.C. police, the FBI, the HSCA itself, or the CIA. Blakey chose the CIA. The Agency did three polygraph examinations of Blahut. He flunked aspects of all three. Yet according to a CIA memo on this, about ten days after looking at the polygraph results, Blakey told the Agency that the matter was not a “high priority” with him. (Memo of 7/28/78) There is another notable aspect of Blakey’s dealings with the Agency about this affair. When he was offered the four alternatives for the investigation, a CIA officer on hand, Haviland Smith, actually encouraged him not to pick the CIA to investigate itself. He wanted Blakey to chose a “more objective investigating body.” (Memo of 7/17/78) Smith then predicted that if Blakey picked the CIA probe, the Agency would give itself a “clean bill of health.” Smith then asked Blakey if he was willing to accept that verdict if the Agency found no other accomplices in Blahut’s violations. Blakey said yes. Smith concluded his 7/17/78 memo with the only deduction he could make from these responses:

My interpretation of what Mr. Blakey said was that he wishes CIA to go ahead with the investigation of Blahut and that he expects us to come up with a clean bill of health for the CIA.

And they did. By August 21st, CIA was circulating an internal memorandum which read, “I believe Mr. Blakey’s original concerns have been laid to rest.”

The CIA and Blahut

The Blahut incident was not revealed to the public until nearly one year after it happened. Inside the Committee, Blakey told the Agency, only he, Louis Stokes, Cornwell and two security officers knew about it. When it was leaked to George Lardner of the Washington Post in May of 1979, Richardson Preyer, who ran the JFK side of the Committee, told the press that he was not aware of it, “Blakey and Lou Stokes were handling the CIA stuff. . . . . Talk to Lou.” (Washington Post 6/18/79) Lardner’s story provoked a flurry of media attention and a House Intelligence Committee inquiry. This body discovered that Blahut was part of a CIA program which was code-named MH/Child. ( Ibid 6/28/79) But even more interesting are the CIA documents generated by Lardner’s inquiry one year later. Blakey called the CIA after Lardner’s first calls to him, presumably after the reporter learned of it from one of the security officers. The CIA memo of this calls records the following message: “Blakey and Cornwell. . . will “no comment” all inquiries but they could not speak for Chairman Stokes.” Another memo on the same day, 5/10/79 states that, Blakey’s “observation is that Lardner has only pieces of the full story. He allowed as how the full story is known by DCI, DDCI, Chairman Stokes, Gary Cornwell. . .and himself.” In other words, Blakey had become a CIA informant helping to control the media for the Agency.

But Lardner’s story generated some other activity at CIA HQ in Langley. As did the House inquiry and other press stories. It turns out that Blahut actually left the room with at least one photo and then returned. (Washington Post 6/28/79) A CIA memo in response to these stories at the time admits that the Inspector General did not do the internal investigation of Blahut. It was done by Gambino’s Office of Security, the man who refused to give Blakey Blahut’s OS file. In previous CIA memos of 1978, Scott Breckinridge, another CIA liaison with the HSCA had said that when he encountered Blahut at the HSCA offices when his violation first surfaced, he was waiting for a call from the Office of Security. (Memo of 7/17/78)

Elegy for the HSCA

The sad results achieved by the second big federal investigation of the murder of President Kennedy is really a parable that is quite relevant to our present day. It is a morality tale about leadership and values. If one talks to Bob Tanenbaum, one of his favorite words is ‘integrity’. One of the frequent phrases he reiterates when speaking about criminal investigations is “the truth-telling process.” One of the frequent words used to describe Richard A. Sprague is ‘professionalism’. When one talks to his colleagues, they describe the man as someone who has no qualms about putting in 12-14 hour days at the job. In investigating the Kennedy case, these two men were leading by example and they set a standard of devotion without compromise for those around them. That included Andy Purdy and Michael Baden. When they left, a vacuum was created, never to be filled. The House Select Committee on Assassinations was then sucked into the same whirlpool that engulfed the Warren Commission. The only difference being, the boat they went down in was a bit more decoratively disguised. In reflecting back on those days, Gary Shaw once told me that his impression was that Blakey looked into the deep abyss of the Kennedy assassination and decided to rear his head back. He then recalled the Sprague-Tanenbaum days and said, “Tanenbaum really wanted to know the truth. He’d be in that office until ten or eleven o’clock at night. Then he’d offer anyone still around a ride home.”

How soon did Blakey rear his head from the abyss? We can only speculate. But the following letters, given to me by Ed Tatro, give us indications that it wasn’t very long. About the time that Blakey was telling Ed Lopez that their function was not to do a real investigation but to only write a report, he had already been in contact with Larry Strawderman who controlled access to files at CIA. In a letter to Blakey dated July 27, 1977, Strawderman wrote to the new Chief Counsel:

In response to your letter of inquiry dated July 24, 1977, it is the Agency’s considered opinion that the areas of inquiry relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy which were pursued by your predecessor, Richard A. Sprague . . . should be entirely disregarded based upon our contention that they are without any merit or corroboration.

Please feel free to consult the Agency at any time should you feel indecisive regarding anything that will come into your possession during your investigation. The Agency will be only too happy to correctly advise you on “substance and procedure” of your probe.

On October 10, 1978, in reply to a long series of objections to an interrogation of Richard Helms – the man who, as revealed in part one, Sprague wanted to “go at” – Blakey assured the main CIA liaison to the HSCA, Scott Breckinridge, that his fears should be allayed:

As I have assured the Agency on many occasions, you will be given an opportunity to review, prior to public disclosure, those aspects of the Committee’s report which pertain to the CIA. If, at that time, you feel that the report is based upon an improper or misleading construction of the evidence, it would then be appropriate to discuss such problems. [Emphasis added.]

Can anyone imagine Dick Sprague giving a prime suspect in a homicide case the opportunity to discuss rearranging the evidence in his prosecutor’s brief on the eve of trial?

In the wee hours of April 1, 1977, when Dick Sprague left Washington to return to Philadelphia, the sounds of corks popping from champagne bottles must have echoed throughout the halls of Langley. The celebration hasn’t stopped since.
December 15, 1999
Jesse Ventura Takes On the Establishment re JFK Case

From the November-December 1999 issue (Vol. 7 No. 1) of Probe

Word starting leaking out in Washington in early October. Well-connected Washington lawyer Dan Alcorn called Probe and told us what the town was abuzz about. The word was that Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota had made some controversial remarks in the upcoming November issue of Playboy. Alcorn told me that Ventura’s comments on organized religion and gun control would be talked about. But he added that his comments on the JFK case were really something.

I picked up a copy of that issue at the newsstand. As I read the interview I immediately could see that the governor was no blow-dried, Madison Avenue fashioned slick politician. Whatever one feels about the content of the interview, Ventura was quite candid and unguarded about his thoughts on important issues. Consider:

On gun control: “You want to know my definition of gun control? Being able to stand there at 25 meters and put two rounds in the same hole. That’s gun control.”

On the Christian Coalition: “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people’s business. I live by the golden rule: Treat others as you’d want them to treat you. The religious right wants to tell people how to live.”

On the press: “They need [to be attacked]. Nobody holds them accountable. No one holds their feet to the fire.”

On prostitution: “Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it’s run illegally by dirtbags who are criminals. If it’s legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything any other worker gets, and it would be for the better.”

On the crime issue: “That’s a local issue and I don’t believe in micromanagement. Sure I’m concerned about it, but it’s not the governor’s job to handle it. That’s for mayors, city councils. I’m not going to sit here and be a typical politician [bangs his desk] and say ‘I’m going to fight crime.’ Half these guys wouldn’t know crime if it bit them on the ass.”

On the 2nd Amendment: “Our forefathers put it in there so the general citizenry has the ability to combat an oppressive government. It’s not in there to make sure I can go hunting on weekends.”

On cynicism about political leaders: “The answer is that people are searching for the truth, for someone they can truly believe in. The truth may not be what they want to hear, but they at least know they’re getting it.”

These statements, to say the least, are not the pre-recorded stock answers that advisers beat into their bosses. Whatever one thinks of them, they show that, at least for right now, Ventura is his own man. And only that type could have made the remarks he did – to an audience of 3.4 million readers – on the murder of President Kennedy. Ventura led off with this blast at the Warren Commission:

Name me one person who can verify that the Warren Commission is factual. You’re talking to an ex-Navy Seal here. Oswald had seven seconds to get three rounds off. He’s got a bolt action weapon, and he’s going to miss the first shot and hit the next two?

He then went on to the issues of Oswald and the classification process:

If Oswald was indeed who they say he was – a disgruntled little Marine who got angry and became pro-Marxist and decided to shoot the president – please explain why everything would be locked in the archives until 2029 and put under national security? How could he affect national security?

Ventura even went on to outline who he thought was behind the murder and what the motive was. He believed the actual assassins were hired guns, maybe Cubans, maybe Europeans. He added that they were hired by agents of the military-industrial complex. He then added their motive was to prevent Kennedy’s impending withdrawal from Vietnam. Ventura then went on to explain the reason the media hasn’t told the truth about the case:

That’s because every bit of real evidence is ridiculed. The method is to dismiss it by saying: “Oh that’s just those conspiracy nuts.”

With these outspoken, bare-knuckled remarks on a political murder that will not disappear, as well as continuing remarks made since, Ventura has become the highest-level politician to launch a virulent and sustained attack on the official story. Jim Garrison was only a local District Attorney. Representative Tom Downing was a Congressman. And Senator Richard Schweiker was not this blunt in his public comments.

Of course, the interview made Ventura a lightning rod in Washington. Admirably, the governor did not shirk the battle. Shortly afterwards, Ventura appeared on This Week, the Sunday news program with Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson and George Will. Ventura talked about his role in getting Donald Trump to run for the Reform Party’s presidential nomination. He also said that he was not as enamored of Ross Perot as he had been earlier because Perot offered him no help in his race for the governorship. Roberts, Donaldson, and Will went on to question him at length on some of his previous magazine comments. Ventura did well in fending off the three-headed buzzsaw. Consider the following exchange:

Roberts: The polls in the newspaper saying that instead of your attitude being refreshing that it’s embarrassing. There’s a recall petition out there …

Ventura: Oh, come on. That guy – that’s a joke. Don’t even bring up the recall. This guy has brought four or five lawsuits against me that have been tossed out. He – he’s, you know, he’s meaningless.

Roberts: But what about the – what about the general public?

Ventura: Well, you know, the general public – remember, I like to quote my friend Jack Nicholson sometimes: “You can’t handle the truth.” And there’s points where if you do tell the truth, and it makes people personally uncomfortable, they get irritated, not being able to face the truth and have it put in front of them. You know, a lot of people don’t like that … I can only be me, and I’m not going to change who I am.

George Will, the establishment’s rightwing policeman, then zeroed in on Ventura’s previous comments on the JFK assassination. Will compared Ventura to Oliver Stone and compared their beliefs about the military-industrial complex and the notion that Oswald could have done what he was officially supposed to do. Ventura responded, “I don’t believe he could.” Will said, without naming names, that there were forensic and firearms experts who said he could. He then asked, in predictable terms, “Were they part of the conspiracy?”

Ventura: No

Will: They were just …

Ventura: They were just offering an opinion. Let me – if you want to get into that, we could do the whole hour. I can throw things at you, right back at you, that – that would do the same thing, that you couldn’t answer either. I do not have the answer of who did it. But don’t sit and tell me I have to accept the Warren Commission.

Ventura then went on to add why he and Stone were probably in agreement on the Warren Commission:

Maybe it comes with the fact, George, that Oliver Stone and I are both Vietnam veterans, and somehow maybe we feel we got deceived a little bit by our own country as to why we were sent to that war…

That zinger was in the last speech that Ventura was allowed. Sam Donaldson cut him off to go to Secretary of State Albright.

Four days before this appearance, Ventura was interviewed by self-proclaimed “gonzo journalist” Chris Matthews, but in reality closer to Darth Vader, opposed to honesty about past crimes of state. This particular show took place at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Over 800 people were turned away at the door. Illustrious former professor Alan Dershowitz had to pull strings in order to get in. When Ventura stepped onto the set, he got a standing ovation that went on for about 15 seconds. Matthews opened the show by saying he had been asked to do a Playboy interview. He asked Ventura if he should. Ventura disarmed the audience and the host by replying, “Do that before you do the foldout.”

Later, Matthews began his attack on Jesse Ventura and John F. Kennedy by asking the governor what he thought about Vietnam. Ventura responded in a very sober, thoughtful and historically accurate overview of the roots of American involvement in that war. He said that it went back to the French intervention which created a civil war within the nation. America, misguidedly, sided with the French and began providing lots of logistical support to France. Clearly and implicitly, Ventura was saying that if we would not have sided with the French, we would not have begun the tragic spiral which led to having 550,000 combat troops in country by 1967, with the military asking for more.

This sound and sensible synopsis was shunted aside by Matthews who tried to press the notion that it was Kennedy who started the build-up there. Matthews completely left out what happened between 1954 and January of 1961. By 1954, the last year of French involvement in Vietnam, not only was America doing much of the logistical support for France, but also it was funding about 80% of their war effort. That prior to the climactic defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the French wired President Eisenhower to use atomic weapons against the Vietnamese nationalists. To his everlasting shame, Eisenhower seriously entertained this idea and had discussions about it in is cabinet. The point man lobbying for it was his Vice President Richard Nixon. Second year Senator John F. Kennedy called it an act of lunacy. As both John Prados and Fletcher Prouty describe, at one time the bombs were on the runway waiting for the order to be loaded. Eisenhower finally rejected the option, which Secretary of State John F. Dulles also pushed. Upon the rejection, his brother Allen Dulles then got Eisenhower to approve a giant CIA operation headed by Air Force Colonel Edward Lansdale. It was Dulles and Lansdale who actually partitioned the country and placed the Americanized Ngo Dinh Diem in charge of the south. Lansdale then began building an ersatz army for Diem and imported over one million Catholics from the north into the south to try and westernize the south. Lansdale also provided CIA case officers for both Diem and his wife Madame Nhu and her brother, the head of the secret police. Eisenhower fiercely supported the CIA involvement in Vietnam by invoking the “domino theory,” the belief that if Vietnam fell it would set off a string of collapses in that area.

All this and more was done before Kennedy’s inauguration. In 1961, Kennedy was being pushed by his advisors, the military, and Lansdale to send in combat troops to save the day. Kennedy refused. But he did let in more advisors. When Kennedy was killed, not a single combat troop was in country. Kennedy had also arranged for his withdrawal program to commence by Christmas of 1963 and to be completed by early 1965.

Matthews, predictably, ignored all of this well-documented record and tried to pin the blame for U.S. involvement on Kennedy! In reality, that involvement was cemented years before he came to office; JFK was trying to extricate us from that quagmire; it was Johnson and Nixon who spun that involvement out of control into a huge military expedition that ended in horror and dual epic tragedy for both nations.

When Ventura commented that there were factions in our nation who advocated war for economic reasons, namely the military-industrial complex, Matthews said that it was JFK who presided over that build-up for them in 1961-1963. Ventura didn’t think fast enough to say that the military-industrial complex can only make large profits if the Pentagon is directly involved in a war. Since there were no military troops there in 1963, no profiteering could occur.

Matthews next turned to the assassination itself. He asked about Ventura’s remark in Playboy that “We killed Kennedy.” Ventura responded that he “cannot buy the fact that Oswald acted alone.” To this he got a large round of applause. Matthews, like Will, tried to ridicule Ventura over the “big conspiracy” idea by saying that if you believe in that then you have to believe that too many people and institutions were involved. To which Ventura replied that if an institution, like the Dallas Police, was involved, it was because of their negligent handling of the case, not necessarily because of their before-the-fact planning of a conspiracy.

Then a humorously incongruous exchange occurred. Ventura tried to ask Matthews a question. The host interrupted and said the he was asking the questions on the show. Ventura, to large laughs from the crowd, said “I’m a talk-show host too.” He then scored the Warren Commission again for ignoring witnesses who smelled gunpowder on the grassy knoll. Matthews then did a strange thing. He called the Warren Commission a “rush job” and later said that he agreed with Ventura’s critique of their work and added “You’re safe on that one.” This is strange because in the host’s awful book, Kennedy and Nixon, he endorses the verdict of the Commission by saying that Oswald shot Kennedy! It seems that the author wants to have it both ways, especially since the crowd was clearly on the governor’s side.

Matthews concluded with two incredible remarks. First, he said that Stone’s film portrayed Nixon as being involved in the assassination, Johnson being involved, and Hoover knocking off Bobby Kennedy. I have seen the film over 12 times, and I recall none of this in it. In fact, Nixon, except for the opening montage, is not in the film. Except for still photos, Hoover is not either. The film does depict the FBI being involved in the cover-up, a fact which is quite clear today. It also depicts Johnson as endorsing a phony Warren Report, which is a fact we have in his own words today. Even if we expand our focus to Stone’s later film on Richard Nixon, this is still a bizarre and untenable position.

Matthews gave away his role in all this late in the show. He vilified Stone for portraying Kennedy as a “peacenik” and called JFK a Cold Warrior. He then went on to say that there was no one in his administration who endorsed the view that Kennedy was trying to get out of Vietnam. These are provably false presumptions. Apparently, Matthews never talked or read works by Roger Hilsman, Army Chief Earle Wheeler, Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor, advisor Ted Sorenson, assistants Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers, or read Defense Secretary’s Bob McNamara’s book on this subject. Not a record to be proud of for a serious writer on a subject that is quite important to modern history.

In light of these fallacies and his self-proclaimed stance that Kennedy was a Cold Warrior, it is time to cast even more light on his “dual biography” Kennedy and Nixon. Newly declassified documents illuminate just who one of Matthews’ major sources for the book was. One of his main sources for Kennedy’s attitude toward covert action and Cuba was former Senator George Smathers. And whenever Matthews tried to dodge the documentary record on this subject he trotted out an interview he did with Smathers. Matthews left out the serious qualification that Smathers had changed his story for him, that he told a different one about the Castro plots by the CIA to the Church Committee. But there is even more material that causes us to question Smathers today, released through the work of the Assassination Records Review Board.

Among the new documents declassified by the Board are two of special interest about JFK’s old drinking buddy Smathers. It seems that Smathers had a CIA contact to which he agreed to convey information about the new president (CIA memo of 11/18/60). The contact said he “had established a new … channel to President Kennedy through George Smathers.” According to the memo:

Smathers’ conversations with the President Elect have led [him] now to take the position that he [Kennedy] should not go along with the Department of State and have the Dictator step down. It appears that Mr. Kennedy may take a considerably more conservative position than many people in the Department and “the fun house.”

“The fun house” is CIA jargon for the covert side of the CIA. And it appears that the man Smathers is reporting to is Bill Pawley, the wealthy anti-Communist fanatic who supported many anti-Castro exile groups. So Smathers is telling Pawley and the CIA that Kennedy’s approach to Cuba will not be as militant as the State Department’s and the CIA’s.

The second declassified document was written right about the same time, 11/2/60. The second one contains a letter requesting the CIA support one Eladio Del Valle. This letter appears to have been passed on to the CIA by Pawley. One line says, “If we can offer help for him, his sacrifices will bring better results than allowing him to work by himself.” Del Valle seems to have ideas about opening up a multi-front attack against Cuba. The letter reveals that Del Valle had discussed with both Pawley “and our mutual friend Senator Smathers” those plans. Toward the end, the letter notes that the Cuban “was ready to invade Cuba last week, but on my suggestion he postponed it.”

Of course, today we know that Del Valle was a close associate of prime Garrison suspect David Ferrie, and that he was murdered on the same day as Ferrie under quite suspicious circumstances. In a memo to Garrison, investigator Lou Ivon (2/26/67) writes that Del Valle, “was shot in the chest and it appears to be ‘gang-land style’ and his body was left in the vicinity of Bernardo Torres’ apartment.” Torres was a high-level infiltrator sent into Garrison’s camp in the late part of 1966. So we now know that Matthews’ source Smathers took advantage of his “friendship” with Kennedy and became a CIA informant in his camp. Smathers was also an ally of a Cuban exile who was a close friend of a man who remains a top suspect in the conspiracy to kill the president. None of this is revealed to the reader by Matthews.

Ventura’s candid approach and his bravery in taking of the Kennedy case are admirable. We do not agree with all he has said, but just on his honesty about the events of November of 1963 he warrants inspection as a serious man and a forthright one. In fact, Ventura may be able to put the questions of that mystery on the political map if he keeps pressing it. In fact, it may be an issue if he ever becomes his party’s candidate for the presidency.

One comment that the governor made to Matthews worries us. One of the early questions that Matthews asked Ventura was what he would do on the first day he was elected. Ventura replied, “I’d call you Chris, I’d call you in for an interview.” Ventura was responding tongue-in-cheek. But from what we know about Matthews and what he stands for, this is not a joking matter. There could be no hope for reform in this country, or truth about past crimes of state, with a man like Chris Matthews anywhere near the White House.

December 15, 1999
Edward Epstein: Warren Commission Critic?

UPDATE

In this review, The Nation exposes Edward Epstein as a trickster journalist, but Probe Magazine knew that decades ago, as the following article demonstrates.

From the November-December 1999 issue (Vol. 7 No. 1) of Probe

Edward Epstein was an early critic of the Warren Commission who has written three books on the Kennedy assassination and several articles on the same subject. Epstein went to Cornell where he majored in political science and was planning on becoming a teacher. But for his master’s thesis he hit upon the idea of writing about the internal problems of the Warren Commission on its way to their problematic conclusions about the Kennedy case. The book proposal was submitted to a publisher and six months later, in early 1966, it hit the bookstores and became a best-seller. Epstein then went on to Harvard and got his Ph. D. He taught for a short time at MIT and then later at UCLA before becoming a full-time writer. Since then he has served as a contributing editor to The New Yorker and written several books, most of them related to various aspects of intelligence work.

In the mid-sixties, while working on Inquest, Epstein got acquainted with the fledgling research community on the Kennedy case. At that time, it was quite small, consisting of perhaps 20-25 serious people who formed an internal network of meetings, phone calls, and correspondence. One of the prominent members of this network was Sylvia Meagher who lived in New York. Another was Vince Salandria who lived in Philadelphia. Epstein came into contact with both, especially Meagher. In fact, the late great critic actually helped index Inquest.

But it didn’t take long for both critics and the community itself, to become disenchanted with Epstein. It happened shortly after the publication of Inquest. For that project, Epstein had somehow obtained access to some important people involved with the Commission. As he described it in a radio interview with Larry King (2/28/79):

So I started by writing letters to the different people on the Warren Commission which included Gerald Ford … Allen Dulles, the former director of the CIA; Chief Justice Warren; senators, congressmen – and everyone, to my amazement, agreed to see me.

This is curious in itself. But on that same show Epstein expressed his intent in writing the book:

My book Inquest was really on a single problem – that the Warren Commission failed to find the truth, and there were two main reasons for that. One: they were acting under pressure … . And secondly, they had to rely on other agencies … . And these agencies had themselves things to hide. So it was not a question of the Warren Commission being dishonest: it was a question that the way the investigation was organized, it would have been impossible for it to find an exhaustive truth.

Later, Epstein was asked by King:

King: First, should we have appointed a commission like the Warren Commission?

Epstein: Well, – yes – I believe that the men who served on the Warren Commission served in good faith.

Epstein has been consistent with this attitude ever since. That the Warren Commission did an unsatisfactory job, not because of any wrongdoing of its own, but because of the time constraints placed on them and because of secrets about Oswald that were hidden from them. Yet, Epstein insists they did get it right:

King: Did Oswald kill John Kennedy

Epstein: Yes, I believe he did.

King: Acting alone …in Dealey Plaza that day?

Epstein: I think he was the only rifleman … .

What Epstein is saying is that although the Warren Commission was not an in-depth, exhaustive investigation, its ultimate conclusion – that Oswald shot JFK – was on the money. Secondly, as he stated on the King program, if there was a cover-up, it was a benign one. That is, the FBI and CIA should have known Oswald was a dangerous character from his recent activities. In reality, Epstein in Inquest was the first advocate of the thesis that the “errors” of the Warren Commission were done to cover up mistakes by the intelligence agencies in their surveillance of the dangerous Marxist Lee Oswald. This was the track taken decades later on the thirtieth anniversary of Kennedy’s death by journals like Newsweek and CIA related writers like Walter Pincus. This was done just before the Assassination Records and Review Board was about to disclose millions of pages of new documents that completely undermine this whole concept.

Best-Seller vs. Best Book

It is interesting to compare Epstein’s book with Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment. Lane’s book came out two months after Epstein’s. Although Epstein’s book sold well, Lane’s quickly and greatly surpassed it on the charts. As Epstein told King:

Well, my book, I was actually published …in April and Lane’s book was published in June, and Lane’s book became a sort of number one best-seller and Lane was on TV – and my book was a best-seller too, but it sort of faded away, and Lane’s book is remembered by everyone.

There is a likely reason for this. Lane’s book showed that the Commission could not have been working in good faith. He did this in two related ways. First, he brought into the gravest doubt every major conclusion of the Commission. Second, he showed that the Commission had in its hands evidence that contradicted their conclusions. (Sylvia Meagher did the same in her wonderful Accessories After the Fact, published in 1967.) And Meagher was quite disappointed in Epstein’s performance when it came to debating the opposition. In a letter she circulated in 1966, Meagher expressed her chagrin over a debate televised in New York between Epstein and Commission counsel Wesley Liebeler. She wrote privately that “Epstein was absolutely disastrous. I really let him have it the next morning and haven’t heard from him since. I learned later that at least three other people afterwards gave him a tongue-lashing for his extremely weak position, his capitulating and almost apologizing to Liebeler. (Letter of 8/30/66) On the other hand, when Lane debated Liebeler at UCLA on January 25, 1967, by most accounts he obliterated him.

The questions about Epstein deepened around the time of the Garrison investigation. First, Epstein’s voice appeared on a record album that accompanied the book The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report. This should not be passed over lightly, for this 1967 book was the first one to go after the critics on a personal and demeaning level, making them out to be a bunch of kooks and eccentrics who did what they did out of some psychological or other weirdness. Schiller was later exposed by declassified documents as being a chronic FBI informant on the Kennedy case. On the album, entitled The Controversy, Epstein joins in the ridicule of the critics. Around this same time period, Epstein appeared in a debate with Salandria, arguing the case against Oswald. Salandria was so outraged that after the debate, he asked if Epstein had gone over to the other side.

…

Read the full article in its original form below.

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See also:

“Focus on the Media: Edward J. Epstein”

“The Abstract Reality of Edward Epstein”

December 15, 1999
The Martin Luther King Assassination Case is in Court –– But Who’s Telling?

From the November-December issue (Vol. 7 No. 1) of Probe

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December 15, 1999
Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City

From the September-October 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 6) Probe

Copyright 1999 by John Newman.
All Rights Reserved.

I. The Rosetta Stone

The Assassination Records Review Board finished its search more than a year ago – a search for records relating to the murder of a president thirty-six years ago. Surprisingly, the passage of time has not managed to erode or cover over all of the important evidence. On the contrary, the work of the Review Board has uncovered important new leads in the case. I will leave medical and ballistic forensics to others. I will confine myself to document forensics, an area for which the work of the board had been nothing less than spectacular. More specifically, I will confine myself to the documentary record concerning Lee Harvey Oswald’s 1963 visit to Mexico City.

In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) completed its work, including a report on Oswald’s activities in Mexico written by Eddie Lopez and Dan Hardway. Our first glimpses of their report began shortly after the 1993 passage of the JFK Records Act. Not even all the redactions of those early versions could hide the seminal discoveries in that work. While Lopez couched his words in careful language, he suggested that Oswald might have been impersonated while he was in Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. Lopez was more forthright when I interviewed him about this in 1995. Armed with more CIA documents and the first Russian commentary (Nechiporenko’s book, Passport to Assassination), I went further in my own Oswald and the CIA (Carroll & Graf: 1995) in advancing the argument that Oswald was impersonated in the Mexican capitol. Specifically, someone pretending to be Oswald made a series of telephone calls between 28 September and 1 October, allegedly to and from the Cuban and Soviet consulates in Mexico City.

I concluded then, that, based on the content of the CIA Mexico City telephone transcripts alone, the speaker purporting to be Oswald was probably an impostor. I will not repeat my lengthy discussion here, other than to summarize it in this way: the speaker’s words were incongruous with the experiences we can be reasonably certain Oswald underwent. For reasons still obscure, the CIA has lied consistently for these past several decades about the tapes from which those transcripts were made. The Agency concocted the story that the tapes were routinely destroyed before the assassination. It is perhaps true that some tapes were destroyed before the assassination. But Lopez uncovered FBI documents containing detailed accounts of how two of the tapes were listened to after the assassination by FBI agents familiar with Oswald’s voice.

More evidence would come in time. Shortly after the passage of the JFK Records Act, the public gained access to a telephone transcript the day after the assassination in which FBI Director Hoover informs President Johnson that it is not Oswald’s voice on the tapes. The Review Board diligently followed these leads and settled the matter when they found CIA documents in which the Agency itself explicitly states that some of the tapes were reviewed after the assassination. The CIA’s continued silence on the matter of the tapes stands, like a giant beacon, pointing the way forward to the investigator. The impersonation of Oswald in Mexico by someone who drew attention to an Oswald connection to a KGB assassination officer may prove to be the Rosetta stone of this case.

Before going further, I once again pay tribute to Peter Dale Scott, who wrote of these matters as early as 1995, advancing his “Phase I-Phase II hypothesis” on largely deaf ears. I will not repeat his lengthy discussion here, other than to summarize it in this way: In Phase I, immediately after the assassination, previously planted evidence of a Cuban/Kremlin plot surfaced in Oswald’s files; this, in turn, precipitated Phase II, in which a lone-nut cover-up was erected to prevent a nuclear war.

In Oswald and the CIA, I deliberately steered clear of the conspiracy-anti-conspiracy vortex in order to set out some of the facts concerning Oswald’s pre-assassination files. Since then, the cumulative weight of the evidence uncovered by the Review Board has led me to the conclusion that the Oswald impersonation can best be explained in terms of a plot to murder the president. I remain open to other interpretations and fresh analyses by fellow researchers, and I understand that new evidence could corroborate or undermine this hypothesis. What follows is a first stab at explaining, in a short and simple way, how those plotting the president’s murder may have left their fingerprints in the files.

II. Puzzles and Pieces

Since Oswald would have no reason to arrange for his own impersonation, there are three possibilities concerning the purpose of this impersonation: it was only part of a legitimate intelligence operation; it was only part of a conspiratorial plot; or, the third alternative which combines both: it was part of a legitimate intelligence operation manipulated by a plotter or plotters. These are three distinct puzzles. Into which one do the pieces fit most easily?

For the purposes of this discussion I will reject the proposition that it was only part of a crude conspiratorial plot, carried out by schemers unfamiliar with the inner-workings of the U.S. intelligence community. By exposing themselves to such intense U.S. intelligence scrutiny, the conspirators would have put themselves at unacceptable risk and raised the chances that Oswald would not be in the Texas School Book Depository when the president’s motorcade drove by. Thus we are left with two puzzles: an intelligence operation or a legitimate operation manipulated by plotters. Before deciding, let us examine the characteristics of some of the more unique-looking pieces.

The weirdest, most gangly piece is the 28 September phone transcript. In addition to the Oswald impersonator, there are two more speakers on this one. The phone call is between the Cuban Consulate and the Soviet Embassy at a time when no one was in the Cuban Consulate and the Soviets were in the middle of preparing a report to KGB HQ on Oswald’s activities. The FBI confirmed that the Oswald character was played by someone else. Another speaker in this transcript, the secretary in the Cuban Consulate, Silvia Duran, had to have been impersonated if, as she and her colleagues have repeatedly claimed and testified, the Cuban consulate was closed at the time of the telephone call.

This only leaves one other person, the man allegedly in the Soviet Embassy. If he is truly in the Soviet Embassy, then one could advance the argument that this was some sort of CIA penetration operation. If the Soviet man, too, was impersonated, then there was no legitimate intelligence operation even though it was probably designed to look like one. We should bear in mind that the CIA has never publicly claimed these phone calls were part of any intelligence operation and the Russians have no recollection of such a call. In fact, at the very time this phone call was supposed to have been made to the Soviet Embassy, the three staff members with whom Oswald had visited for an hour were still in the building and in the process of assembling all of the details for a cable to KGB Central in Moscow. It is frustrating that, in 1999, when Boris Yeltsin handed over KGB files on Oswald to President Clinton, they did not include the Soviet Embassy cables that were sent at the time of this bogus 3-person telephone call. Those contemporaneous cables could provide corroboration for the later Soviet (Nechiporenko- Kostikov) account.

The second puzzle piece is the 1 October telephone transcript, wherein the Oswald impersonator mentions a meeting with Valery Kostikov – a man known to the CIA as the chief of KGB assassination operations for the entire Western hemisphere. In fact, according to CIA cables and Kostikov himself, the real Oswald did meet Kostikov in Mexico. What, then, was the purpose of this impersonation? When we hold this second piece side-by-side with the first piece, we are drawn to the possibility of a plot to murder the president, an integral part of which was planting – in CIA channels – evidence of an international communist conspiracy.

The third piece is a missing transcript. We know there was a 30 September tape because of the recollection of the CIA translator who transcribed it. Her name is Mrs. Tarasoff and she remembers not only transcribing it but also the fact that the Oswald voice was the same as the 28 September voice – in other words the same Oswald impostor. This piece is all the more unique because Mrs. Tarasoff remembers the Oswald character asked the Soviets for money to help him defect, once again, to the Soviet Union.

Finally, this piece has another side to it as well: it concerns what a CIA officer at the Mexico City station had to say about it. His name was David Atlee Phillips and, in sworn testimony to the HSCA, he backed up Mrs. Tarasoff’s claim about the tape and the request for money to assist in another defection to the Soviet Union. But the Phillips story has another twist. The day before his sworn testimony, Phillips told a different, more provocative version to Ron Kessler of the Washington Post. He told Kessler that on this tape Oswald asked for money in exchange for information. Why was this crucial transcript destroyed? What motivated Phillips to tell two different stories about this piece in less than 24 hours?

This third piece not only reinforces the likelihood that the plotters were seeking to ensure CIA sources would reveal a link between Oswald and the Soviets, but also invites us to ask questions about David Phillips. Indeed, one might ask, in view of the foregoing, what was Phillips doing during Oswald’s visit and the subsequent exchange of cables with CIA HQ concerning Oswald’s activities in Mexico?

…

The rest of this article can be found in The Assassinations, edited by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease.

October 15, 1999
The Alleged MLK Murder Rifle: Is Tennessee Afraid to let Jerry Ray Take Possession of Property Legally His?

From the September-October 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 6) of Probe

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October 15, 1999
Rose Cheramie: How She Predicted the JFK Assassination

From the July-August 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 5) of Probe

On November 20, 1963, Lt. Francis Fruge of the Louisiana State Police received a phone call from Moosa Memorial Hospital in Eunice. A Mrs. Louise Guillory, the hospital administrator told him that there was an accident victim in the emergency ward. Guillory knew that Fruge worked the narcotics detail and she felt that the woman was under the influence of drugs.

Fruge immediately left for the hospital. When he got there he encountered a middle-aged white female sitting down in the waiting room outside emergency. There were no serious injuries; only bruises and abrasions. She was only partly coherent. But Moosa was a private hospital and since the woman seemed bereft of funds, Guillory had called Fruge to see what he could do to help. The woman identified herself to Fruge as Rose Cheramie.

Fruge had no choice at the time except to place Cheramie in the Eunice City Jail. He then went out to attend the Eunice Police Department’s Annual Ball. About an hour later a police officer came over to the function and told Fruge that Cheramie was undergoing withdrawal symptoms. Fruge came back and, after recognizing the condition, called a local doctor, Dr. Derouin, from the coroner’s office. Derouin administered a sedative via syringe to calm her down. The doctor then suggested that she be removed from the jail and taken to the state facility in Jackson. After Fruge agreed, Derouin called the facility at about midnight on the 20th and made arrangements for her delivery there. Afterwards, Fruge called Charity Hospital in Lafayette and ordered an ambulance for the transport to the hospital.

Fruge accompanied Cheramie to the hospital. And, according to his House Select Committee deposition, it was at this point that Rose began to relate her fascinating and astonishing tale. Calmed by the sedative, and according to Fruge, quite lucid, she began to respond to some routine questions with some quite unusual answers. She told him that she was en route from Florida to Dallas with two men who looked Cuban or Italian. The men told her that they were going to kill the president in Dallas in just a few days. Cheramie herself was not part of the plot but apparently the men were also part of a large dope ring with Rose since Cheramie’s function was as a courier of funds for heroin which was to be dropped off to her by a seaman coming into the port of Galveston. She was to pick up the money for the drugs from a man who was holding her child. It seemed a quite intricate dope ring since she was then to transport the heroin to Mexico. The two men were supposed to accompany her to Mexico but the whole transaction got short-circuited on Highway 190 near Eunice. In the confines of a seedy bar called the Silver Slipper Lounge, Cheramie’s two friends were met by a third party. Rose left with the two men she came with. But a short distance away from the bar, an argument apparently ensued. And although some have written that she was thrown out of the vehicle and hit by an oncoming car, according to Fruge, Rose said that the argument took place inside the Silver Slipper, and that the two men and the manager, Mac Manual, threw her out. While hitchhiking on the 190, she was hit by a car driven by one Frank Odom. It was Odom who then delivered her to Moosa. As Fruge so memorably recalled to Jonathan Blackmer of the HSCA, Cheramie summed up her itinerary in Dallas in the following manner: “She said she was going to, number one, pick up some money, pick up her baby, and to kill Kennedy.” (p. 9 of Fruge’s 4/18/78 deposition)

At the hospital, Cheramie again predicted the assassination. On November 22nd, several nurses were watching television with Cheramie. According to these witnesses, “…during the telecast moments before Kennedy was shot Rose Cheramie stated to them, ‘This is when it is going to happen’ and at that moment Kennedy was assassinated. The nurses, in turn, told others of Cheramie’s prognostication.” (Memo of Frank Meloche to Louis Ivon, 5/22/67. Although the Dallas motorcade was not broadcast live on the major networks, the nurses were likely referring to the spot reports that circulated through local channels in the vicinity of the trip. Of course, the assassination itself was reported on by network television almost immediately after it happened.) Further, according to a psychiatrist there, Dr. Victor Weiss, Rose “…told him that she knew both Ruby and Oswald and had seen them sitting together on occasions at Ruby’s club.” (Ibid., 3/13/67) In fact, Fruge later confirmed the fact that she had worked as a stripper for Ruby. (Louisiana State Police report of 4/4/67.)

Fruge had discounted Cheramie’s earlier comments to him as drug-induced delusions. Or, as he said to Blackmer, “When she came out with the Kennedy business, I just said, wait a minute, wait a minute, something wrong here somewhere.” (Fruge, HSCA deposition, p. 9) He further described her in this manner:

Now, bear in mind that she talked: she’d talk for awhile, looks like the shots would have effect on her again and she’d go in, you know, she’d just get numb, and after awhile she’d just start talking again. (Ibid.)

But apparently, at the time of the assassination Cheramie appeared fine. The word spread throughout the hospital that she had predicted Kennedy’s murder in advance. Dr. Wayne Owen, who had been interning from LSU at the time, later told the Madison Capital Times that he and other interns were told of the plot in advance of the assassination. Amazingly, Cheramie even predicted the role of her former boss Jack Ruby because Owen was quoted as saying that one of the interns was told “…that one of the men involved in the plot was a man named Jack Rubinstein.” (2/11/68) Owen said that they shrugged it off at the time. But when they learned that Rubinstein was Ruby they grew quite concerned. “We were all assured that something would be done about it by the FBI or someone. Yet we never heard anything.” (Ibid.) In fact, Cheramie’s association with Ruby was also revealed to Dr. Weiss. For in an interview with him after the assassination, Rose revealed that she had worked as a drug courier for Jack Ruby. (Memo of Frank Meloche to Jim Garrison, 2/23/67) In the same memo, there is further elaboration on this important point:

I believe she also mentioned that she worked in the night club for Ruby and that she was forced to go to Florida with another man whom she did not name to pick up a shipment of dope to take back to Dallas, that she didn’t want to do this thing but she had a young child and that they would hurt her child if she didn’t.

These comments are, of course, very revealing about Ruby’s role in both an intricate drug smuggling scheme and, at the least, his probable acquaintance with men who either had knowledge of, or were actually involved in, the assassination. This is a major point in this story which we will return to later.

Although Fruge had discounted the Cheramie story on November 20th, the events of the 22nd made him a believer. Right after JFK’s murder, Fruge “…called that hospital up in Jackson and told them by no way in the world to turn her loose until I could get my hands on her.” (Fruge’s HSCA deposition, p. 12.) So on November 25th, Fruge journeyed up to Jackson again to talk to Cheramie. This time he conducted a much more in-depth interview. Fruge found out that Cheramie had been traveling with the two men from Miami. He also found that the men seemed to be a part of the conspiracy rather than to be just aware of it. After the assassination, they were supposed to stop by a home in Dallas to pick up both around eight thousand dollars plus Rose’s baby. From there Cheramie was supposed to check into the Rice Hotel in Houston under an assumed name. Houston is in close proximity to Galveston, the town from which the drugs were coming in from. From Houston, once the transaction was completed, the trio were headed for Mexico.

How reliable a witness was Cheramie? Extermely. Fruge decided to have the drug deal aspect of her story checked out by the state troopers and U. S. Customs. The officers confirmed the name of the seaman on board the correct ship coming into Galveston. The Customs people checked the Rice Hotel and the reservations had been made for her under an assumed name. The contact who had the money and her baby was checked and his name showed that he was an underworld, suspected narcotics dealer. Fruge checked Cheramie’s baggage and found that one box had baby clothes and shoes inside.

Fruge flew Cheramie from Louisiana to Houston on Tuesday, the 26th. In the back seat of the small Sesna 180, a newspaper was lying between them. One of the headlines read to the effect that “investigators or something had not been able to establish a relationship between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald.” (Fruge’s HSCA deposition p. 19) When Cheramie read this headline, she started to giggle. She then added, “Them two queer sons-of-a-bitches. They’ve been shacking up for years.” (Ibid.) She added that she knew this to be true from her experience of working for Ruby. Fruge then had his superior call up Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police to relay what an important witness Cheramie could be in his investigation. Fruge related what followed next:

Colonel Morgan called Captain Fritz up from Dallas and told him what we had, the information that we had, that we had a person that had given us this information. And of course there again it was an old friend, and there was a little conversation. But anyway, when Colonel Morgan hung up, he turned around and told us they don’t want her. They’re not interested.

Fruge then asked Cheramie if she wished to try telling her tale to the FBI. She declined. She did not wish to involve herself further. With this, the Cheramie investigation was now halted. Rose was released and Fruge went back to Louisiana. So, just four days after the assassination, with an extremely and provably credible witness alive, with her potentially explosive testimony able to be checked out, the Cheramie testimony was now escorted out to pasture. Eyewitness testimony that Ruby knew Oswald, that Ruby was somehow involved in an international drug circle, that two Latins were aware of and perhaps involved in a plot to kill Kennedy, and that Ruby probably knew the men; this incredible lead – ;the type investigators pine for – ;was being shunted aside by Fritz. It would stay offstage until Jim Garrison began to poke into the Kennedy case years later.

…

The rest of this article can be found in The Assassinations, edited by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease.

August 16, 1999
Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?

From the July-August 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 5) of Probe

It took almost two years for the American public to suspect a conspiracy was involved in the Kennedy assassination. It took less than two weeks before suspicions arose among many Israelis that Rabin was not murdered by a lone gunman.

The first to propose the possibility, on November 11, one week following the assassination, was Professor Michael Hersiger, a Tel Aviv University historian. He told the Israeli press, “There is no rational explanation for the Rabin assassination. There is no explaining the breakdown. In my opinion there was a conspiracy involving the Shabak. It turns out the murderer was in the Shabak when he went to Riga. He was given documents that permitted him to buy a gun. He was still connected to the Shabak at the time of the murder.”

Hersiger’s instincts were right, but he believed the conspirators were from a right wing rogue group in the Shabak. It wasn’t long before suspicions switched to the left. On the 16th of November, a territorial leader and today Knesset Member Benny Eilon called a press conference during which he announced, “There is a strong suspicion that Eyal and Avishai Raviv not only were connected loosely to the Shabak but worked directly for the Shabak. This group incited the murder. I insist that not only did the Shabak know about Eyal, it founded and funded the group.”

The public reaction was basically, “Utter nonsense.” Yet Eilon turned out to be right on the money. How did he know ahead of everyone else?

Film director Merav Ktorza and her cameraman Alon Eilat interviewed Eilon in January, 1996. Off camera he told them, “Yitzhak Shamir called me into his office a month before the assassination and told me, ‘They’re planning to do another Arlosorov on us. Last time they did it, we didn’t get into power for fifty years. I want you to identify anyone you hear of threatening to murder Rabin and stop him.’” In 1933, a left wing leader Chaim Arlosorov was murdered in Tel Aviv and the right wing Revisionists were blamed for it. This was Israel’s first political murder and its repercussions were far stronger than those of the Rabin assassination which saw the new Likud Revisionists assume power within a year.

Shamir was the former head of the Mossad’s European desk and had extensive intelligence ties. He was informed of the impending assassination in October. Two witnesses heard Eilon make this remarkable claim but he would not go on camera with it or any other statement. Shortly after his famous press conference and testimony to the Shamgar Commission, Eilon stopped talking publicly about the assassination.

There are two theories about his sudden shyness. Shmuel Cytryn, the Hebron resident who was jailed without charge for first identifying Raviv as a Shabak agent, has hinted that Eilon played some role in the Raviv affair and he was covering his tracks at the press conference.

Many others believe that pressure was applied on Eilon using legal threats against his niece Margalit Har Shefi. Because of her acquaintanceship with Amir, she was charged as an accessory to the assassination. To back up their threats, the Shabak had Amir write a rambling, incriminating letter to her from prison. The fear of his niece spending a decade in jail would surely have been enough to put a clamp down on Eilon.

Utter nonsense turned into utter reality the next night when journalist Amnon Abramovitch announced on national television that the leader of Eyal, Yigal Amir’s good friend Avishai Raviv, was a Shabak agent codenamed “Champagne” for the bubbles of incitement he raised.

The announcement caused a national uproar. One example from the media reaction sums up the shock. The newspaper Maariv wrote: “Amnon Abramovitch dropped a bombshell last night, announcing that Avishai Raviv was a Shabak agent codenamed ‘Champagne.’ Now we ask the question, why didn’t he [Avishai Raviv] report Yigal Amir’s plan to murder Rabin to his superiors..? In conversations with security officials, the following picture emerged. Eyal was under close supervision of the Shabak. They supported it monetarily for the past two years. The Shabak knew the names of all Eyal members, including Yigal Amir.”

That same day, November 16, 1995, the newspaper Yediot Ahronot reported details of a conspiracy that will not go away. “There is a version of the Rabin assassination that includes a deep conspiracy within the Shabak. The Raviv affair is a cornerstone of the conspiracy plan.

“Yesterday, a story spread among the settlers that Amir was supposed to fire a blank bullet but he knew he was being set up so he replaced the blanks with real bullets. The story explains why after the shooting, the bodyguards shouted that ‘the bullets were blanks.’ The story sounds fantastic but the Shabak’s silence is fueling it.”

Without the ‘Champagne’ leak, this book would likely not be written. Despite all the conflicting testimony at the Shamgar Commission, the book would have been closed on Yigal Amir and the conspiracy would have been a success. But Abramovitch’s scoop established a direct sinister connection between the murderer and the people protecting the prime minister.

So who was responsible for the leak? There are two candidates who were deeply involved in the protection of Eyal but probably knew nothing of its plans to murder Rabin. They are then-Police Minister Moshe Shahal and then-Attorney General Michael Ben Yair.

Shahal was asked for his reaction to the Abramovitch annoucement. He said simply, “Amnon Abramovitch is a very reliable journalist.” In short, he immediately verified the Champagne story.

Not that he didn’t know the truth, as revealed in the Israeli press:

Maariv, November 24, 1995

The police issued numerous warrants against Avishai Raviv but he was never arrested. There was never a search of his home.

Kol Ha Ir, January, 1996

Nati Levy: “It occurs to me in retrospect that I was arrested on numerous occasions but Raviv, not once. There was a youth from Shiloh who was arrested for burning a car. He told the police that he did it on Raviv’s orders. Raviv was held and released the same day.”

Yediot Ahronot, December 5, 1995

When they aren’t involved in swearing-in ceremonies, Eyal members relax in a Kiryat Araba apartment near the home of Baruch Goldstein’s family. The police have been unsuccessfully searching for the apartment for some time.

Everyone in the media knew about the apartment, as did everyone in Kiryat Arba. It was in the same building as the apartment of Baruch Goldstein, the murderer of 29 Arabs in the Hebron massacre of March ’94. The police left it alone because Raviv used it for surveillance.

He was also immune to arrest for such minor crimes as arson and threatening to kill Jews and Arabs in televised swearing-in ceremonies. But police inaction was inexcusable in two well-publicized incidents.

Yerushalayim, November 10, 1995

Eyal activists have been meeting with Hamas and Islamic Jihad members to plan joint operations.

This item was reported throughout the country, but Avishai Raviv was not arrested for treason, terrorism and cavorting with the enemy. Less explainable yet was the police reaction to Raviv taking responsibility, credit as he called it, for the murder of three Palestinians in the town of Halhoul.

On December 11, 1993, three Arabs were killed by men wearing Israeli army uniforms. Eyal called the media the next day claiming the slaughter was its work. But Moshe Shahal did not order the arrest of Eyal members. He knew Eyal wasn’t rsponsible. He knew they only took responsibility to blacken the name of West Bank settlers. His only action, according to Globes, December 13, 1993, was to tell “… the cabinet that heightened action was being taken to find the killers and to withdraw the legal rights of the guilty organization.”

After a week of international condemnation of the settlers, the army arrested the real murderers, four Arabs from the town.

At that point Shahal should have had Raviv arrested for issuing the false proclamation on behalf of Eyal. But Shahal did not because he was ordered not to interfere with this Shabak operation. As was Attorney-General Michael Ben Yair, who was so terrified of what could be revealed at the Shamgar Commission that he sat in on every session on behalf of the government and later approved, along with Prime Minister Peres, the sections to be hidden from the public.

After the assassination, it emerged that two left wing Knesset members had previously submitted complaints against Eyal to Ben Yair. On March 5, 1995 Dedi Tzuker asked Ben Yair to investigate Eyal after it distributed inciteful literature at a Jerusalem high school. And on September 24, 1995, Yael Dayan requested that Ben Yair open an investigation of Eyal in the wake of its televised vow to spill the blood of Jews and Arabs who stood in the way of their goals. He ignored both petitions, later explaining, “Those requests should have been submitted to the army or the Defence Minister,” who happened to be Yitzhak Rabin.

Both Shahal and Ben Yair were, probably unwittingly, ordered to cover up Eyal’s incitements. But when one incitement turned out to be the murder of Rabin, one of them panicked and decided to place all the blame on the Shabak.

Which one?

According to Abramovitch, “I have a legal background so my source was a high ranking legal official.” It sounds like the winner is Ben Yair, which hardly exonerates him or Shahal for supplying Eyal with immunity from arrest or prosecution, without which the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin would not have been possible. However, Ben Yair opened a police complaint against the leaker, and as late as June of ’96, reporter Abramovich was summoned to give evidence. The leak thus came from a “traitor” in Ben Yair’s office. And because there are Israelis who know the truth and are willing to secretly part with it, this book could be written.

The Testimony Of Chief Lieutenant Baruch Gladstein: Amir Didn’t Shoot Rabin

Everyone who saw the “amateur” film of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin witnessed the alleged murderer Yigal Amir shoot the Prime Minister from a good two feet behind him. The Shamgar Commission determined that Amir first shot Rabin from about 50 cm. distance. Then bodyguard Yoran Rubin jumped on Rabin, pushing him to the ground. Amir was simultaneously accosted by two policemen who held both his arms. Yet somehow Amir managed to step forward and shoot downward, first hitting Rubin in the elbow and then Rabin in the waist from about 30-40 cm. distance.

The amateur film of the assassination disputes the whole conclusion. After the first shot, Rabin keeps walking, there is a cut in the film and Rabin reappears standing all alone. Rubin did not jump on him and Amir has disappeared from the screen. He did not move closer nor get off two shots at the prone Rubin or Rabin.

And there is indisputable scientific proof to back what the camera recorded.

What if the shots that killed Rabin were from both point blank range and 25 cm. distance? Obviously, if so, Amir couldn’t have shot them.

Now consider the testimony of Chief Lieutenant Baruch Gladstein of Israel Police’s Materials and Fibers Laboratory, given at the trial of Yigal Amir on January 28, 1996:

I serve in the Israel Police Fibers and Materials Laboratory. I presented my professional findings in a summation registered as Report 39/T after being asked to test the clothing of Yitzhak Rabin and his bodyguard Yoram Rubin with the aim of determining the range of the shots.

I would like to say a few words of explanation before presenting my findings. We reach our conclusions after testing materials microscopically, photographically and through sensitive chemical and technical procedures. After being shot, particles from the cartridge are expelled through the barrel. They include remains of burnt carbon, lead, copper and other metals…

The greater the distance of the shot, the less the concentration of the particles and the more they are spread out. At point blank range, there is another phenomenon, a characteristic tearing of the clothing and abundance of gunpowder caused by the gases of the cartridge having nowhere to escape. Even if the shot is from a centimeter, two or three you won’t see the tearing and abundance of gunpowder. These are evident only from point blank shots.

To further estimate range, we shoot the same bullets, from the suspected weapon under the same circumstances. On November 5, 1996, I received the Prime Minister’s jacket, shirt and undershirt as well as the clothes of the bodyguard Yoram Rubin including his jacket, shirt and undershirt. In the upper section of the Prime Minister’s jacket I found a bullet hole to the right of the seam, which according to my testing of the spread of gunpowder was caused by a shot from less than 25 cm. range. The same conclusion was reached after testing the shirt and undershirt.

The second bullet hole was found on the bottom left hand side of the jacket. It was characterized by a massed abundance of gunpowder, a large quantity of lead and a 6 cm. tear, all the characteristics of a point blank shot.”

The author rudely interrupts lest anyone miss the significance of the testimony. Chief Lieutenant Gladstein testifies that the gun which killed Rabin was shot first from less than 25 cm. range and then the barrel was placed on his skin. In fact, according to a witness at the trial, Nat an Gefen, Gladstein said 10 cm and such was originally typed into the court protocols. The number 25 was crudely written atop the original 10. If the assassination film is to be believed, Amir never had a 25 cm. or 10 cm. shot at Rabin or even close to one. As dramatic a conclusion as this is, Officer Gladstein isn’t through. Far from it.

As to the lower bullet hole, according to the powder and lead formations and the fact that a secondary hole was found atop the main entry hole, it is highly likely that the Prime Minister was shot while bending over. The angle was from above to below. I have photographs to illustrate my conclusions.”

The court was now shown photographs of Rabin’s clothing. We add, according to the Shamgar Commission findings, Rabin was shot first standing up and again while prone on the ground covered by Yoram Rubin’s body. Nowhere else but in Gladstein’s expert testimony is there so much as a hint that he was shot while in a bent-over position.

After examining the bullet hole in the sleeve of Yoram Rubin, I determined that the presence of copper and lead, plus the collection of gunpowder leads to the likelihood that he, too, was shot from near point blank range… The presence of copper means the bullet used to shoot Rubin was different from that found in the Prime Minister’s clothing which was composed entirely of lead. The bullet that was shot at Rubin was never found.”

We now enter the realm of the bizarre, as is always the case when Yigal Amir chooses to cross-examine a witness. Chief Lieutenant Gladstein has provided the proof that Amir did not shoot the bullets that killed Rabin, yet Amir is determined to undermine the testimony.

Amir: “According to your testimony, I placed the gun right on his back.”

Gladstein: “You placed the gun on his back on the second shot and fired.”

Amir: “And the first shot was from 50 cm?”

Gladstein: “Less than 20 cm.”

Amir: “If one takes into account that there is more gunpowder from the barrel, then the muzzle blast should also increase.”

Gladstein: “To solve this problem, I shoot the same ammunition, and in your case, from the same gun, I shot the Baretta 9 mm weapon with hollowpoint bullets into the prime minister’s jacket.”

Amir: “When I took the first shot, I saw a very unusual blast.”

Amir is close to realizing finally that he shot a blank bullet but blows his case when he concludes, “We need a new expert because I didn’t shoot from point blank range.”

Away all talk about far-right, conspiracy nut theories. The Materials and Fibers Laboratory of Israel Police concluded that Rabin was shot from less than 20 cm and point blank range, no matter what Amir says. Furthermore, the bodyguard Yoram Rubin was shot by a different bullet than felled Rabin or was found in Amir’s clip. Unless Israel Police’s fibers expert is deliberately promoting far-right, conspiracy nut theories, Yigal Amir’s gun did not kill Yitzhak Rabin.

How did They Miss Amir at the Rally?

One of the questions the media asked after the assassination is how the Shabak missed identifying Amir in the sterile area where he “shot” Rabin. The first answer given by the Shabak was that because of the thick crowd, it was impossible to pick out Amir.

The “amateur film” purportedly made by Ronnie Kempler put that lie to rest. Amir is shown alone standing by a potted plant for long minutes without another soul in sight for yards around him. The only people who are filmed talking to him are two uniformed policemen.

Under normal circumstances, the Shabak would have prevented Amir from getting anywhere near the rally itself, and had he somehow gained access to the sterile area, he would have been apprehended on the spot. Because, you see, the Shabak had lots of information that Amir was planning to assassinate Rabin.

Take the famous case of Shlomi Halevy, a reserve soldier in the IDF’s Intelligence Brigade and a fellow student of Amir’s at Bar Ilan University. After being informed that Amir was talking about killing Rabin, he reported the information to his superior officer in the brigade. He told Halevy to go to the police immediately. Halevy told them that “A short Yemenite in Eyal was boasting that he was going to assassinate Rabin.” The police took Halevy very seriously and transferred his report to the Shabak where it wasn’t “discovered” until three days after Rabin’s assassination.

The weekly newsmagazine Yerushalayim on September 22, 1996 managed to convince Halevy to give his first interview since the discovery of his report and the subsequent media fallout. The magazine noted, “Halevy’s and other reports of Amir’s intentions which gathered dust in Shabak files have fueled numerous conspiracy theories…After the uproar, Halevy went into hiding.

“Shlomi Levy, if you did the right thing why have you hidden from the public?

“The assassination is a sore point with the Shabak. They’re big and I’m little. I don’t know what they could do to me.”

Halevy was the most publicized case because as a soldier in the Intelligence Brigade, the Shabak was absolutely required to take his evidence seriously, as did the police. But Halevy was not the only informant.

Yediot Ahronot, November 12, 1995

A number of weeks before the Rabin assassination, the Shabak received information about the existence of Yigal Amir and his intention to murder Yitzhak Rabin.

Yediot Ahronot was informed that one of the Eyal activists arrested last week was interrogated for being a possible co-conspirator with Yigal Amir because the assassin’s brother Haggai had mentioned him in his own interrogation.

At the beginning of his interrogation, the suspect broke out into bitter tears and told a tale that was initially viewed with tongue in cheek by the interrogators. Weeks before the murder, the suspect heard Amir speak his intentions and he was shocked. He was torn between informing the authorities and betraying his fellows, so he chose a middle route. He would give away Amir’s intentions without naming him.

After some hesitation, he informed a police intelligence officer about Amir’s plan in detail stopping just short of identifying him or his address. He told where Amir studied and described him as a “Short, dark Yemenite with curly hair.”

The description was passed along the police communications network and classified as important. The information was also passed to the Shabak, officers of which subsequently took a statement from the suspect. Because he was in a delicate position, neither the police nor Shabak pressed him further.

While interrogated, the suspect named the police and Shabak officers and his story checked out. He was then released. Shabak officials confirmed that the man had previously given them a description of Amir and his plan to murder Rabin.

Maariv, November 19, 1995

Hila Frank knew Amir well from her studies at Bar Ilan. After the assassination, she hired a lawyer and told him that she had heard Amir state his intention to murder Rabin well before the event. As a member of the campus Security Committee, she organized anti-government demonstrations. Thus, she was torn between exposing Amir’s intentions and the interests of the state.

To overcome the dilemma, Frank passed on her information to Shlomi Halevy, a reserve soldier in the Intelligence Brigade who promised that it would be given to the right people.

Yerushalayim, November 17, 1995

Why wasn’t a drawing of Amir based on Halevy’s description distributed to the Prime Minister’s security staff? Why didn’t they interrogate other Eyal activists to discover who the man threatening to kill the prime minister was?

Yediot Ahronot, November 10, 1995

A month and a half before the assassination, journalist Yaron Kenner pretended to be a sympathizer and spent two days at a study Sabbath in Hebron organized by Yigal Amir.

“Who organized this event?” I asked. He pointed to Yigal Amir…He had invited 400 and over 540 arrived. This caused organizational havoc.

When Amir spoke, people quieted down, testifying to some charisma. On the other hand, his soft tone and unimpressive stature wouldn’t have convinced anyone to buy even a Popsicle from him.

Maariv, December 12, 1995

During his “Identity Weekends,” hundreds of people heard Amir express his radical thoughts, amongst which were his biblical justifications for the murder of Rabin.

Yediot Ahronot, November 24, 1995

Yigal Amir turned into an object of attention for the Shabak beginning six months ago when he started organizing study weekends in Kiryat Arba and they requested a report on him. Raviv prepared the report.

Maariv, November 24, 1995

A carful of Bar Ilan students were driving from Tel Aviv when they heard the announcement of Rabin’s shooting on the radio. They played a game, each thinking of five people who might have done it. Yigal Amir was on all their lists.

How could the Shabak have missed Yigal Amir at the rally unless they did so on purpose? Yigal Amir did not keep his intentions to assassinate Rabin a secret. He told many hundreds of people gathered at his study weekends and seems to have told everyone within hearing distance at Bar Ilan University.

Besides the question of Amir’s most un-murderer-like desire to let the world know his plans, we must ask why the Shabak didn’t apprehend him. Yes, they knew about him. The proof is indisputable. Two people, one within Eyal, the other a soldier in the Intelligence Brigade told them. Their own agent Avishai Raviv heard his threats, along with hundreds of other people at the study weekends and reported them to his superiors.

So why didn’t they arrest him well before the rally, outside the rally or within the sterile zone?

Because wittingly or not, Yigal Amir was working for the Shabak.

The Kempler Film

Almost two months after the Rabin assassination, Israelis were shocked to read in their newspapers that an amateur film of the event would be shown on Channel Two news. The filmmaker was announced as a Polish tourist with a long, unpronounceable name. However, this story changed the day of the broadcast. The filmmaker was, in fact, an Israeli named Roni Kempler.

There were obvious questions asked by the public. Why had he waited a month to show the film when he would have been a few million dollars richer had he sold it to the world networks the day following the assassination? In his sole television appearance the night his film was broadcast, he explained he wasn’t interested in making money. What else could he say?

It was quickly discovered that Kempler was no ordinary citizen. He worked for the State Comptroller’s Office and was a bodyguard in the army reserves.

It is an extremely rare occurrence when the Israeli press publishes an opinion that expresses doubt about the veracity of the Shamgar Commission, which investigated the assassination on behalf of the government. Yet in the aftermath of a most revealing expose of the testimony of General Security Services (Shabak) agents and police officers present near the murder site published by Maariv on September 27, 1996, two letters were published in response. One was from Labour Knesset Member Ofir Pines who admitted he too heard numerous security agents shout that the shots which supposedly felled Rabin were blanks. He added rather weakly that in retrospect, perhaps he heard the shouts because he wanted to believe that the bullets weren’t real.

A second letter was from Hannah Chen of Jerusalem and she succinctly summarized some of the most blatant suspicions of Roni Kempler. The letter read:

Allow me to add my doubts about the strange facts surrounding the Rabin assassination. First, it was said that the video filmmaker who captured the murder didn’t own his own camera, rather he borrowed one. It’s odd that an amateur filmmaker didn’t own a camera and if he borrowed one, then from whom? Why weren’t we told what kind of a camera he used? Secondly, no one initially knew that he made the film, that a film of the assassination existed. Does that mean none of the security agents on the scene spotted him filming from a rooftop? And how did the video get to the media? Shouldn’t the Shabak have confiscated the film from its owner if this was the only documentary evidence describing the crime? And why didn’t the filmmaker voluntarily turn over the film to the police?

It is completely uncertain if the film is authentic. In my opinion, it was tampered with. Perhaps people were removed or bullet sounds added. It appears to me that we were all fooled. The filmmaker worked for the Shabak and everything to do with the film and the timing of its release were fake.

Ms. Chen expressed the view of many. Nonetheless, the film, as edited as it obviously was during its two months of non-acknowledgement, is as valuable to solving the Rabin assassination as was the Zapruder film in putting to rest the lone gunmen lie foisted on the American public in the wake of the JFK murder.

The event captured on the film that is becoming the center piece of doubts about the veracity of the Shamgar Commission is the door of Rabin’s vehicle that closes before he enters the car. To almost everyone who watches that door close, it is certain that someone, perhaps the murderer, was waiting in the Cadillac for Rabin. This is in direct contradiction to the official conclusion that Rabin entered an empty car. But there is more on the Kempler film that contradicts the official findings; much more.

As the fifteen minute film begins, Yigal Amir looks in the distance and as the television commentator noted, “Seems to be signaling someone.” It is not the first time that the possibility of an accomplice was noted. At the Shamgar Commission police officers Boaz Eran and Moti Sergei both testified that Amir spoke with a bearded man in a dark tee shirt who he appeared to know, about half an hour before the shooting.

As the film progresses, the viewer realizes that Shabak testimony to Shamgar was very wrong. One of the primary excuses given for not identifying Amir in the sterile area was because of the crowded situation. To prove the point, the testimony of police officers saying that “another well known demonstrator who works for the city rushed at Rabin and shook his hand,” is cited. Amir, then was not the only anti-Rabin individual in the sterile zone. However, Amir is not filmed in a crowd. He stood for long minutes meters away from anyone else. No one could have missed him had they wanted to see him.

Then, two security officers strike up a conversation with Amir. He was noticed and apparently had something to say to the very people who should have identified and apprehended him.

A few minutes later, Shimon Peres comes down the steps and walks towards the crowd at the barrier. He accepts their good wishes and walks to a spot about a meter and a half opposite the hood of Rabin’s car. He is accompanied by four bodyguards, one of whom clearly points to Yigal Amir sitting three meters away opposite them. Peres stops, looks inside the car and begins a conversation with the bodyguards. All now take a good look at the Rabin limousine windshield and turn towards Amir.

At this point there is a cut. Suddenly Peres is talking to Rabin’s driver, Menachem Damti. Damti was nowhere in the screen previously and was likely by his post beside the driver’s seat door. The cut was significant, probably of several seconds. There was something the folks who chopped the film didn’t want the public to see. Perhaps Peres acknowledged Amir too blatantly.

After a hard night at the rally, instead of getting into his car and going home, Peres decided it was more important to examine Rabin’s car and have a serious chat with his driver.

Ronnie Kempler was asked to explain the cut in the film under oath at Yigal Amir’s trial. He testified that, “Shimon Peres left and I filmed him as he was supposed to enter his car. But when Shimon Peres stood on the same spot for a long time, he stopped interesting me cinematically. I stopped filming and started again the moment he entered his car.”

Kempler’s account was wrong in every detail. If the film wasn’t cut and he shut off the camera, he decided to turn it back on while Peres was still standing opposite Rabin’s car, only now talking to Damti. Many seconds later, he started walking towards his own car. Kempler’s testimony was perjured, yet Amir’s lawyers, possibly not familiar enough with the film, let him off the hook.

Peres enters his car and Rabin descends the steps. The camera captures the agents at Rabin’s rear clearly stopping. They abandon Rabin’s back deliberately, a huge gap between them and Rabin opens allowing Amir a clear shot at the Prime Minister. Amir draws his gun from deep inside his right pocket and the television commentator notes, “Amir is drawing his gun to shoot.” Anyone, trained or not, could see that Amir was drawing a gun and at that point he should have been pounced on. But, this was not to be. Instead, he circles a student reporter named Modi Yisrael, draws the gun and shoots.

We now play the murder frame by frame. Rabin has supposedly taken a hollow point nine mm bullet in his lung, yet he doesn’t wince or flinch. He is not even pushed forward by the impact nor does his suit show signs of tearing. Instead, he continues walking forward and turns his head behind him in the direction of the noise.

Three doctors watched this moment with me; Drs. B. and H. asked for anonymity and Dr. Klein of Tel Aviv had no objection to being cited. I asked if Rabin’s reaction was medically feasible if he was only hit in the lung or if his backbone was shattered. I was told that if the spine was hit, Rabin would have fallen on the spot. However, in the case of a lung wound I was told that there are two types of pain reaction, one reflexive, the other delayed. Rabin, did not display the reflexive reaction, which would have most likely meant clutching the arm. Instead, he displayed a startle reaction, painlessly turning his head toward the direction of the shot. The conclusion of the doctors was that Rabin heard a shot, perhaps felt the blast of a blank and turned quickly towards the noise. This was a startle reaction and it cannot occur simultaneously with a reflexive pain reaction.

Rabin takes three or four steps forward and suddenly the film becomes totally hazy for just under two seconds. Cameraman Alon Eilat is convinced the film was deliberately made fuzzy by an artificial process duplicating a sudden, quick movement of the camera. To illustrate his belief, he put his finger on one point, a white reflective light on the windshield and notes that it stays in the same position while the camera is supposedly swishing. But the haze lifts momentarily almost two seconds later and Rabin appears, still standing but a step or two forward. He has taken at least five steps since the shooting. Then the swish returns and within the next round of haze, another shot is heard but not seen.

According to the Shamgar Commission and the judges at Yigal Amir’s trial, Yoram Rubin was on top of Rabin lying on the parking lot ground when the second shot was fired. The official version is that after hearing the first shot, Rubin jumps on Rabin and pushes him to the ground. Amir approached Rabin and Rubin and while being held by at least two other bodyguards pumped one bullet into Rubin’s arm and another into Rabin’s spleen. There followed a hiatus in the shooting, during which Rubin thinks to himself, “A defect in the weapon,” and then according to Rubin, “I shouted at him several times, ‘Yitzhak, can you hear me, just me and no one else, goddammit?’ He (Rabin), helped me to my feet. That is we worked together. He then jumped into the car. In retrospect, I find it amazing that a man his age could jump like that.” (The author finds it amazing that a man his age with bullets in his lung and spleen could jump at all.)

The Kempler film reveals that the whole story is utter hogwash. A famous photo of Rabin being shoved into the car shows up on the film as a flash. At that point, we know Rubin, injured arm and all, is not on the ground, rather he is on his feet holding Rabin. There are 24 frames/second in video film, so timing events is simple. From the time of the second shot to the flash, 4.6 seconds pass. Try repeating ,”Yitzhak can you hear me, just me and no one else, goddamit” three times in 4.6 seconds. Then add the hiatus, and how long is a hiatus before a man being shot decides it’s safe to get up, and think to yourself “A defect in the weapon.” Try all that in 4.6 seconds. Rubin’s timing is, simply, impossible.

Further, Rubin is not filmed on top of Rabin, and Rabin does not jump into the car. The photo of Rubin pulling Rabin into the car disproves that even without the added proof of the Kempler film. Rubin’s testimony, to put it mildly, is not born out by the Kempler film.

And now comes the piece de resistance, the most haunting moment of the tape. Two seconds before Rabin is placed in the car, the opposite back passenger door slams shut. This segment has been examined and tested by numerous journalists, every shadow on the screen traced, every possible explanation exhausted and in the end it has withstood all scrutiny. Someone, an unknown fourth person, possibly the murderer, was waiting inside the car for Rabin.

When I show this segment to audiences, inevitably I am asked, “Why did they make this film if it’s so incriminating?” I reply, “The film convinced the whole country that Amir murdered Rabin. People always say, ‘But I saw him do it with my own eyes.’ And that is what the film was supposed to do. But the conspirators were so sloppy, they left in the truth. Either they didn’t notice it, or they thought no one else would.”

So why didn’t Yigal Amir’s attorneys tear Kempler to bits on the stand or use the film to its maximum advantage? The truth be told, Amir’s attorneys either weren’t interested enough in his welfare, weren’t properly prepared or weren’t talented enough to challenge the kangaroo court head on. Take a look at how they handled the issue of the unexplainable closing door:

Defence: After the event, the back right door of the car was also open.

Kempler: I filmed what I filmed.

The end, no followup. And it’s not that the defence didn’t have plenty of ammunition. On the night his film was shown on Channel Two in January ’96, Kempler was interviewed by commentator Rafi Reshef. The fast talking, nervous Kempler was most unbelievable, as the following interview segments show;

Reshef: Why did you wait so long to release the film to the public?

Kempler: A few reasons. I didn’t want to be known. Also, I thought it was forbidden to show the film so soon after the murder. The public needed time to digest it as a historic film…But after the Shamgar Commission got it, I kept hearing on the street that I’m the sucker of the country. That really aggravated me, so I got a lawyer and decided to make some money selling it.

How altruistic! What Kempler forgets to mention is that he didn’t tell anyone he had filmed the assassination until two weeks later when supposedly he woke up to what he had and sent the Shamgar Commission a registered letter informing them. In the meantime, he was withholding vital evidence from the police.

Reshef: Did anyone observe you filming?

Kempler: Yes, the bodyguard…I’m sure I saw (singer) Aviv Gefen look right into my camera.

Kempler almost let slip that the bodyguards were watching him film, and indeed this is apparent on the film itself when just before the Peres cut, one of his bodyguards turns back and looks directly up to him, but he thought the better of it and switched to a nonsensical fantasy involving a pop singer.

Reshef: Why did you concentrate so much of the film on the killer?

Kempler: I felt there was something suspicious about him. I let my imagination run away with me and felt murder in the air. It wasn’t so strong when Peres was there but when Rabin appeared, ‘WOW.’

Kempler felt there was an assassination in the air and suspected Amir could be the assassin. This was truly a parapsychological feat but lucky it happened or he wouldn’t have bothered focusing in on Amir. And lucky he just happened to be the only cameraman on the balcony overlooking the murder scene. And luckily, it was so dark at the murder scene, few amateur cameras could have captured the act.

Reshef: There has been much speculation why you happened to be the only one in the right place to film the assassination. How do you explain it?

Kempler: I felt someone caused me to be in that place.

Reshef: What, are you a fatalist?

Nope, a mystic as we shall soon see.

Reshef: Did anyone try to interfere with you?

Kempler: There were undercover officers around. One told me it was alright to film but I had to stop when Rabin appeared.

Yeah, sure. Now compare Kempler’s version of events as told to Reshef with what Kempler testified to at Amir’s trial. To Reshef:

Kempler: An undercover policeman came up to me and asked me a few questions and asked to see my ID. I showed it to him and he walked away. He stopped, turned back and shouted, ‘What did you say your name was?’ I shouted it back. He said,‘Good.’ And that was that. The police had all the details of my identity.

So why didn’t they call that night to get the film? What is described is a very friendly encounter, indeed. Here is how the incident was transformed for Amir’s trial:

Kempler: There was an undercover cop who told me not to film. I told him he has no right to tell me not to film. I asked him if something secret was going on? I told him again he has no right to tell me not to film. And if he does it again, I would take down his particulars and issue a complaint to the police.

A rather drastically altered situation. Someone or more than one thought that Kempler’s explanation to Reshef about why he was permitted to film in such a sensitive security location was too weak, so he painted a new, tougher picture. An updated version of his previous explanation about why he focused in on Amir painted a much goofier portrait.

Kempler: When I stood on the balcony, I spent a lot of time in the dark and to my regret, my imagination began to work overtime. I begin to imagine many things, even God forbid, a political assassination…I have no explanation why I had this feeling. I’m not sure it wasn’t something mystic.

And because of this mysticism, Kempler felt, “The defendant stood out. I don’t know what he did… but I recall he stood out. I can’t recall anything other than what I filmed.”

Indeed he couldn’t because at the beginning of his testimony Kempler says the film shown to the public, “contained no changes or alterations.” By the end, he admits, “There are gaps and there are differences.”

Why the change of heart? Because Amir’s attorneys pointed out some very suspicious contradictions in the film.

Defence: We don’t hear everything in the film but we hear lots, including shouts. So why don’t we hear the shouts of “They’re blanks.”

Kempler: Don’t ask me. I’m not the address.

Defence: Yoram Rubin testified that he fell on Rabin, why don’t we see that in the film?

Kempler: I’m not a video or camera expert. I’m not the address for questions like that.

The address, of course, is the technical department of the Shabak, where the film was altered during the time Kempler decided not to turn it over to the police or sell it. But this was not a skilled technical department. While the film was being edited and altered, Yigal Amir was filmed a second time, during his reconstruction of the murder a few days after the event. And this reconstruction at the crime scene deeply compromised the validity of the Kempler film.

The first error made was enormous and was pointed out to me later by a man who claimed he was the first to report it to the press. In the reconstruction film, Amir shoots with his right hand, as numerous eye witnesses saw him do. But in the still of the Kempler film released initially exclusively to the newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Amir is shooting with his left hand.

And that’s not all. In the reconstruction film, Amir has bushy unshaped sideburns past the middle of his ear. The shooter in the Kempler photo still has squared sideburns at the top of his ear. Another person was superimposed over Yigal Amir for the still and there is maybe one possible reason why. The superimposed figure’s arm looks longer, thus reducing the range of the shot, a necessity to be explained shortly. This is just one possibility. There are others, so far, less convincing. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, Amir’s image was almost certainly removed from the Kempler film still and replaced by another.

But the reconstruction film belied the Kempler film in other ways, as reluctantly testified to by Lieutenant Arieh Silberman, Amir’s chief investigator, at the defendant’s trial.

Defence: Did you notice the differences between the video shown on Channel Two and the film of the reconstruction? Did you see the reconstruction film?

Silberman: I saw the reconstruction. It was of the same event in principle but there was an obvious difference. You can see the difference.

Defence: You’re responsible for the defendant’s investigation. Why is there a difference between the reconstruction film and the video shown on Channel 2?

Silberman: To my eyes, the difference isn’t significant. The defendant doesn’t think so. He never brought it up. I wasn’t at the reconstruction.

Defence: Why is there a break where we don’t hear part of the audio?

Silberman: I didn’t make the film. It was handled by the technicians of several units. I’m responsible for investigating the defendant, not the film.

Defence (Amir now acts as his own attorney): Is there a difference between the original film and what was shown on Channel Two?

Silberman: Could be.

Defence: What’s the most outstanding difference?

Silberman: The position of the prime minister.

Defence: In the reconstruction, I go straight toward him.

Silberman: True.

Defence: And in the original video I took a roundabout route.

Silberman: According to what I saw, you circled someone before getting behind (Rabin).

Amir reconstructed his alleged crime wrongly according to the Kempler film. And he shot with the wrong hand according to the still of the Kempler film. If Amir’s attorneys had bothered to press the issue, they might have been able to construct a plausible argument that he wasn’t even at the scene of the crime, according to the Kempler film.

[This next section is a chapter Chamish wrote after his book, Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin?, was published.—Eds.]

At Long Last: Rabin’s Third Wound Proven

November 1998. It had been a good eighteen months since the last hidden documentation about the Rabin assassination had been uncovered. Since then some serious evidence had emerged about the political side of the murder. A year before, the government released some sections of the previously closed Shamgar Commission findings which incriminated Avishai Raviv far more deeply in widespread crimes of provocation. Two months later, one former Eyal activist, Benny Aharoni signed a sworn statement to Knesset Member Michael Eitan, that under orders from Raviv, he phoned three dozen reporters and delivered the infamous “We Missed But We’ll Get Rabin Next Time” message, well before the shooting was announced on the Israeli media. And journalist Adir Zik had gathered powerful evidence of Carmi Gillon’s complicity in the murder.

But the tap had shut tight on any new medical, police or forensic documentation. It looked as though the evidence I had collected for this book would be the last of the proofs that Yigal Amir had not shot fatal bullets into Rabin. The strongest evidence was the testimony of Police Chief Lieutenant Baruch Gladstein proving that Rabin was shot point blank and Dr. Mordechai Guttman’s surgeon’s notes describing a frontal chest wound which passed through the lung before shattering the vertebrae at D5-6.

When this book was written I had read Guttman’s full surgical report, which included the description of three gunshot wounds and the publicly released procedural summation of November 5 which removed the frontal chest wound and shattered spine. Thus, it was Dr. Guttman’s written word from the night of the murder versus his altered version of events, co-authored with Drs. Kluger and Hausner, the next day. Whenever Dr. Guttman was confronted with his report of the chest wound on the murder night, he answered that he had mistaken Rabin’s ribs for his spine. If so, that Dr. Guttman couldn’t tell the difference between ribs and the spinal column, as one doctor attending a lecture of mine told the audience, he should be disbarred from ever practising medicine again. However, another doctor did give Dr. Guttman the benefit of the doubt: if the bullet shattered the vertebrae at the point where the ribs join the spine, such a mixup was both logical and understandable. The main problem was that we were missing reliable descriptions of Rabin’s condition before and after the doctors went to work on him. Dr. Guttman’s report of a frontal chest wound lacked overall perspective and seemed an oddity that could be sloughed off with the explanation that he was mistaken when he wrote it.

In early December, American filmmaker Peter Goldman arrived in Israel with the intention of gathering the evidence needed to justify raising funds for a full length documentary based on my book. I gave him my contacts, who were new to him and we shared one contact in common. I expressed the opinion that visiting him would be a waste of time. I had a meeting with him a year and a half before and followed it up with two phone calls. It was all for naught; this contact had not provided me with any new evidence. Undaunted, Peter met him anyway and was well rewarded for following his instincts. Just a few hours before departing the country, Peter presented me with three new documents. I immediately understood that they were the final pieces of the puzzle. We now had a complete diary of Rabin’s treatment at Ichilov Hospital. Document one was the initial visual diagnosis of Rabin by Dr. Guttman. Hastily written in English, the diagnosis reads, “GSW Abdomen and Chest”: Gunshot wounds to the abdomen and chest. When I read the word chest, I thought I had found the smoking gun. Rabin arrived with a chest wound. Amir never shot him in the chest. Case closed. I would have to change my book. There were only two wounds, not three. There was no third shot in the hospital. Rabin was shot in the chest in the car. However, within a few days, two experts set me straight. A chest wound can also begin from the back if the bullet travels forward and injures the chest. Page two was far more detailed. It begins with a description of Rabin’s first bodily examination and provides us with indisputable proof of Rabin’s condition immediately after he was placed on the examination table. Page three was the summation of the operation. At last, we no longer had to depend on the public summation of November 5 to understand the cause of Rabin’s death. I now had the whole story in hand and it was told in the following reports:

1. First diagnosis

2. First bodily examination

3. Surgical procedure

4. Operation summation

5. Altered public summation

By the time I had completed my book, I had read 3 and 5. Four months after the book was released, I received 1, 2 and 4. And to my great relief, they confirmed my thesis conclusively. The documents, though not lengthy nor wordy are surprisingly complicated and packed with information which can be interpreted in different ways. Nonetheless, one piece of information cannot be disputed: Rabin’s first chest wound cannot possibly be the same one which Dr. Guttman described on the last page of his surgical procedure report.

As recalled, Guttman operated on a wound beginning in the upper lobe of the right lung, which exited the lung in the direction of Dorsal Vertebrae 5-6, leaving a 2.5-3 cm. exit wound in the lung before shattering the vertebrae. That is the wound Rabin ended up with. Here is the wound he arrived with. According to the newly uncovered first bodily examination report, Rabin’s chest wound was caused by, “an entrance wound in the area of the right shoulder blade which lodged under the skin in ICS3 at MCL 3-4.” Translated: The bullet entered the right shoulder blade and took a straight line path to Intercostal Space 3 at Midclavicular line 3-4. Simplified: The bullet went from the right shoulder blade to just below the right nipple. Dr. Guttman could not have mixed up the ribs and the spinal column because this bullet was lodged in the mid-section of the ribs, almost as far from the spine as is possible. I received a detailed explanation from a physician who had the foresight to bring visual aids in the form of large-scale skeletal charts. In report 3, Dr. Guttman does indeed begin the operation with procedures to treat a rear chest wound. And Rabin responds. His pulse returns to 130, his blood pressure to 90. Then without explanation as to why, his pulse drops to 60, his blood pressure also to 60 and then all vital signs disappear from the monitor. It is at this point that Dr. Guttman suddenly operates on a frontal chest wound which shatters the backbone. The physician explained, “It’s as if that wound came out of nowhere. The patient’s vital organs had stopped functioning and other procedures were called for. There was no reason to begin a new operation, unless there was a new wound.”

The physician then tried every hypothetical bullet path to match the frontal chest/spine wound Dr. Guttman finally operated on, with the rear chest wound Rabin arrived with, as described in documents 1 and 2. Even with the most deft of contortions, the wounds didn’t match. In order for one bullet to do all the damage described in reports 1, 2, and 3, it would have to take the following journey: Amir would have had to have shot Rabin in a near straight line from the side, not the back, something he did not do. The bullet would have entered the shoulder blade and carried on to the upper lobe of the right lung, switching directions to go down to Dorsal Vertebrae 5-6, which are in the mid-back. Then it would have had to have shattered the vertebrae and been deflected upward, entering and exiting the lung again before lodging just below the skin in the area of the right nipple. The physician concluded, “If that was so, and I add that it most certainly wasn’t so, why was the first diagnosis a straight line back to chest wound and why didn’t Dr. Guttman report the two additional lung punctures? Even if somehow one bullet caused these two wounds, it was incumbent on the surgeon to accurately describe the damage.”

Finally, all three of Rabin’s wounds were revealed. The first two wounds, to the chest and abdomen occurred before Rabin’s arrival. The third, frontal chest wound, had to have been inflicted after he entered the hospital. Of the second wound, the bullet entered the abdomen via the left flank. Dr. Guttman failed to notice another rather important detail as we shall soon see. We now examine report 4, and what a tale it tells. The operation is now over and the surgical team writes its conclusion of their very busy night. And what a talented team it was. Department Heads all. No longer is Dr. Guttman the sole witness to the night’s events. Though he writes the summation, it is witnessed by Drs. Kluger and Yaacovitz, anaethesiologist Dr. Ostrovski and nurses Evelyn and Svetlana. Svetlana, co-signs the report and adds signed confirmation, finally, of Dr. Guttman’s surgical procedures. Let’s begin easy. At the bottom of the page are the times of the whole night’s events. Rabin was received at 22 hours, on the table at 22:05, under anesthesia at 22:10, operated on beginning at 22:15 and ending at 23:30. The problem here is that Rabin’s death was officially announced at 23:20. We’ll assume for now that the clock was wrong in the operating theater. The real story is at the top of the page. First, it goes a long way to confirming the laboratory conclusions of Chief Lieutenant Gladstein by noting that Rabin was shot from close range. Next, in report 1, we read that Rabin was admitted with gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen. By report 4, some new wounds seem to have been added. The major wounds are still GSW to chest and abdomen. But now four secondary wounds are added in English. They are:

GSW to right lung

laceration of spleen

hemorraghic shock

spinal shock?! [sic]

Dr. Guttman added the question and exclamation marks for emphasis, apparently indicating that this was the final cause of death. At least, that’s what the physician and an IDF officer from the medical corps both guessed. Laceration of the spleen and hemorraghic shock were likely internal wounds caused by the shot to the flank.

However, the first and last wounds are highly problematic, as the physician explains. “First, you must accept that unlike the nearly conclusive evidence of two chest wounds that we examined before, this document is open to much more interpretation. Still, some really bothersome questions should be asked. “Let’s look at the secondary gunshot wound to the lung. Why would the doctors have even mentioned it? They reported a major gunshot wound to the chest and that, except in the rarest of injuries, includes the lung. What’s the point of mentioning the lung wound again unless it came from another gunshot?”

The Shamgar Commission examined these very same documents and asked the same question. They were told that the second wound to the right lung was caused by the bullet that entered the flank. It passed through the spleen and stomach before lodging in the right lung. That is the official version held by the Israeli government and accepted by the judges at Yigal Amir’s trial.

However the physician notes a fact the Shamgar Commission somehow missed. In order for a bullet shot in the left flank to reach the right lung, it has to pass through the left lung and most likely the heart. If the doctors were so fastidious about noting a secondary wound to the right lung, why didn’t they record the entry and exit wounds that must have occurred in the left lung?”

And now the biggest issue of all, spinal shock. Recall that the state pathologist Dr. Yehuda Hiss conducted a limited autopsy on Rabin after Dr. Guttman’s team had completed its work and found no damage to the spinal column. Recall also, that based on this conclusion, the Shamgar Commission and the judges at Yigal Amir’s trial concluded that Rabin suffered no spinal damage. And finally, recall that the film of the assassination shows Rabin walking after the shot to his back, an impossibility if vertebrae 5 and 6 were shattered as Dr. Guttman reported.

Well, now it’s not only Dr. Guttman reporting spinal shock. It’s also five other members of his team. Would we could put them all in a courtroom and ask each why they agreed to appear on a report which concluded that Rabin died of spinal shock when the government of Israel’s Justice Ministry and courts insist he did not.

I asked the physician, can spinal shock be caused by something other than breakage in the vertebrae or spinal cord? Perhaps a severe bruise or shaking can cause spinal shock. “Out of the question,” he replied. “Spinal shock is the trauma resulting from a break or breaks in the spinal column. The breaks can be in the outer vertebrae or in the cord, but there is no other definition of spinal shock.”

The physician made another poignant observation. “When the patient arrived, the doctors did not record any symptoms of spinal shock. Again this is possible but hard to understand. One of the first things doctors look for in shooting cases is spinal shock. It’s very easy to diagnosis. When the spinal nerves are severed, the blood stops pumping naturally and is forced downward by gravity. So, typically, the upper body is white and the lower body, red. The victim was shot at 9:45 and examined at 10:05. You would expect that twenty minutes after being shot in the spine, spinal shock would be detected and diagnosed.”

The physician was reluctant to let me hear what I was waiting all these long months to prove. He would not say that the summation proved there was a third shot at Rabin from the time he was admitted to Ichilov Hospital but he stated, “If I didn’t know who the victim was or the circumstances of his death, I think I’d have to conclude that the patient received another wound subsequent to his initial admission. But I would advise you to stress your strongest points and they are that two separate chest wounds are reported by Dr. Guttman and that it is inconceivable that Rabin had no spinal damage. The six members of the operating team were too skilled to have all been wrong about that.”

There you have it. It is a certainty that Rabin suffered a frontal chest wound and spinal shock, neither of which Yigal Amir could physically have caused. But there is even more to the documents than just the description of the wounds. There is confirmation of a vital vignette in my book.

I recounted an episode told to me by Zeev Barcella, editor of the country’s largest circulation Russian-language newspaper, Vesti. On the morning of the assassination he received a phone call from a Russian-born operating nurse who told him, “The media is lying about Rabin’s wounds. I saw them. His spinal cord was shattered and they’re saying it wasn’t.” Ninety minutes later the nurse called Barcella back and with well-remembered fear in her voice said, “I didn’t call you before and you don’t know who I am.” Then she hung up the phone. The newly uncovered documents revealed new names to me of people who were in the operating theater that night. The nurse’s first name, Svetlana and her signature were on the surgical summation. By comparing another document I possessed, I discovered her full name, Svetlana Shlimovitz. I found her phone number, introduced myself as best I could and had the following short conversation:

“Svetlana, I would like to know what happened to Rabin in the operating theater.”

“How did you get my name?”

“You signed the surgical summation report.”

“I don’t work there anymore and I can never say what happened. Bye.”

And she hung up. Barcella’s story was true as well. As was my book. I got it right the first time around.

August 15, 1999
Patricia Lambert, False Witness

False Witness: Aptly Titled

By Jim DiEugenio and Bill Davy

From the May-June 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 4) of Probe

Following on the heels of Gus Russo’s Live By the Sword, another propaganda tract has been published. False Witness, by Patricia Lambert, is a hit piece on Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone. Curiously, Lambert formerly went under the name Patricia Billings. We can’t help but wonder if she was related in some manner to Dick Billings, the Time-LIFE journalist who actively worked to undermine Garrison’s case, and who had strong ties to the CIA.

Patricia Lambert has basically taken a stale track and updated it with extremely selective sections from new documents to perform the same function that authors and journalists like Milton Brener, James Kirkwood, James Phelan, and Hugh Aynesworth have performed in the past. Once again, she attempts to portray Garrison’s investigation as a complete fraud from start to finish. Her thesis: every person under suspicion by Garrison was either put upon or persecuted by the deluded DA. This includes David Ferrie and especially Clay Shaw. Therefore, Stone built his film on a foundation of quicksand. Consequently the attacks on the movie were justified as the picture, by necessity, was a false portrait of the JFK case. When one compares the documentation in the book to the bulk of the record, the book’s title takes on new meaning, describing its author instead of its subject.

Lambert’s caustic attack on Garrison paints him as a child molester and compares him to cult leader David Koresh. This last comparison is key to Lambert’s characterization of Garrison. Otherwise how could Garrison control the likes of Bill Alford, Andrew Sciambra, Numa Bertel, Al Oser, Lou Ivon, John Volz, Richard Burnes, D’alton Williams, Frank Meloche, Lynn Loisel, James Alcock, George Eckert, Sal Scalia, Bill Boxley, William Martin, et. al – all of whom assisted Garrison in his investigation and must have come under his spell. According to Lambert, the answer is simple of course. Garrison was also a Svengali. Oliver Stone is not spared Lambert’s vitriol either. By quoting an out of context interview, he is likened to Adolf Hitler’s documentarian, Leni Riefenstahl. When an author deals in this kind of hyperbole, it only serves to detract from the credibility of the writing. Absent the hyperbolic treatment however, this work is still less than credible. A recent Baltimore Sun review describes it as having “scant historical merit.”

Patricia Lambert is a longtime friend and colleague of David Lifton who helped him on his manuscript for Best Evidence. Predictably, Lambert begins the book by saying that she was a believer in Garrison at the start of his probe who gradually grew disenchanted with him as his probe expanded and unraveled and finally ended with the failure of the Clay Shaw trial. This approach always leaves us a bit suspicious since, as with Sylvia Meagher, it always leaves out the overpowering attack on Garrison that took pains to ensure his failure. Lambert, working from a stacked deck, ignores that attack and its origins and motive. Therefore, the picture drawn is already skewed and distorted.

Lambert loads the book with sources who have an agenda. She uses people like Aaron Kohn, David Chandler, Milton Brener, James Phelan, and Shaw’s lawyers without hesitation or qualification. And, of course, she sterilizes the sources by not informing the reader why and how they are compromised. For example, today there are literally dozens of FBI cables between Kohn in New Orleans and FBI HQ in Washington. Most of them explicitly discuss ways to sidetrack or smear Garrison. Lambert uses Kohn, but mentions none of this. David Chandler lived in an apartment owned by Shaw in New Orleans, so how neutral would one expect him to be? Chandler also admitted knowing Kerry Thornley, a character to which we will return at length, as well as to having met Oswald on several occasions before the assassination. Milton Brener represented Layton Martens, a Shaw associate and friend of David Ferrie’s, as well as Walter Sheridan, a man who went to dishonest lengths to attack Garrison. And of course, Shaw’s lawyers can hardly be considered an unbiased source.

The dodging of this new evidence to whitewash Garrison’s attackers reaches almost humorous dimensions in the case of Phelan. Lambert knows she has a serious problem here since Phelan, with the new file releases, has been revealed to be a longtime FBI informant who informed to the Bureau about Garrison and dropped off documents in Washington which he had gotten from the DA. Further, this is something that Phelan always denied doing, in the apparent hope that these records would never be declassified. This new record on Phelan is either ignored or cavalierly dismissed.

A perfect example of Lambert’s method appears in a footnote on the subject of Phelan. In a reference to Probe, she writes that an article relating Phelan’s career to former ONI operative Bob Woodward’s, was “so obscure it was incomprehensible.” Attesting to Woodward’s suspicious background, the article’s author, Lisa Pease, quoted a writer who noted that Woodward had attended Yale where the CIA was “encouraged to recruit.” To characterize a four-page article as incomprehensible based upon selectively quoting one sentence is fundamentally dishonest. The evidence that Lisa Pease mounted in her article to show that Woodward was in bed with the intelligence community and that he lied in his book, All the President’s Men, is simply and utterly forceful. And it parallels Phelan’s long career of FBI contacts, his relationship with longtime CIA asset Bob Maheu, and his (and Gerald Posner’s) mentor at Random House, the infamous Bob Loomis. Lambert ignores both the evidence and the parallel. Only an author with a clear agenda could do so. (Anyone interested can read both the Phelan and Woodward articles on the Internet at www.webcom.com/ctka/pr196-starrep.html. Decide for yourself whether it is the article’s comprehensibility, or Lambert’s comprehension, that is the problem.)

Ferrie the Liberal!

Like Gus Russo before her, Lambert goes out of her way to whitewash the true record and roles of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw. Her defense of Ferrie is, again, almost humorous. Like Russo, Lambert makes the impossible claim that Ferrie really didn’t hate Kennedy all that much. According to Lambert (no one else is cited), he actually liked JFK’s civil rights and fiscal program. She adds that there is no evidence of Ferrie’s participation in the Bay of Pigs operation. Oops. Newly declassified documents show that Ferrie helped prepare underwater diving teams for that episode, trained anti-Castro Cubans at CIA training camps and then watched films of the debacle with Cuban exile heavy Sergio Arcacha Smith. She even tries to minimize the importance of the discovery in 1993 of the photograph of Ferrie together with Oswald at a Civil Air Patrol barbecue. To quote Lambert, “it established only an overlap of association with that organization, which from the outset was a possibility David Ferrie never denied but didn’t recall.” What does “an overlap of association with that organization” mean? Either Ferrie and Oswald were in the CAP together or they were not. The photo and witness testimony prove this. And are we really to believe that Ferrie would not later remember this previous association? Then why was he at Oswald’s landlord’s the night of the assassination looking for his library card?

God Bless Clay Shaw!

Given the preceding, Lambert’s treatment of Clay Shaw is quite predictable. Although it may come as a surprise to the Vatican, any reader of False Witness will find that the Catholic faith has a new addition. In this book, Lambert beatifies Shaw, describing him as “almost saintly.” She even prints the long-exposed canard that Ferrie never knew Shaw (p. 4). Even New Orleans-based reporter and Life magazine stringer David Chandler knew this to be false. Recently, his son told us through the Internet that Shaw had told his father that he did know Ferrie through the homosexual underground, but that Shaw could not admit this since it would be tossing Garrison too big a bone. In addition, there are at least eight other affidavits in Garrison’s files which attest to this fact. Ferrie himself admitted he knew Shaw to his pal Raymond Broshears. Ferrie also admitted this to Garrison investigator Lou Ivon. So Lambert’s attempt to push the clock back on this score is fatuous.

Incredibly, Lambert also expects us to believe the old deception that Shaw was a liberal who actually liked Kennedy. Again, the evidence shows the opposite. Ferrie told Ivon that Shaw hated JFK. Shaw’s associations with the aging upper class monarchy of Europe would also belie this claim. His ties to the rightwing in New Orleans e.g. to the conservative Dr. Alton Ochsner, and to anti-Castro Cuban exiles, would also indicate otherwise. As Donald Gibson has noted, Shaw’s goal with the International Trade Mart, to open up Latin America to American capitalism, would also seem opposed to Kennedy’s idea of building strong and independent economies there.

Davis was Bertrand!

Lambert misses again when she attempts to explain away that ever-so-interesting call Dean Andrews received from a “Clay Bertrand” asking him to represent Oswald after the assassination. As most researchers know, Andrews was in the hospital at the time of the call. Garrison’s detractors like to claim Andrews was on medication at the time and made the whole thing up. However, as Bill Davy proves in his book, Let Justice Be Done, the FBI’s own reports show that Andrews was not given medication until some four hours after he received the Bertrand call.

Later, after Andrews got himself in hot water with the DA’s office for retracting his original statements, he claimed that he made up the name, Clay Bertrand. Later still, however, he named the “real” Clay Bertrand: Eugene Davis. A New Orleans bar owner and manager who was working two jobs just to stay afloat, the hapless Davis was hardly the cultured and refined Bertrand that Andrews had originally described. Under oath, before the New Orleans Grand Jury and in a sworn statement, a shocked Davis denied ever using the Bertrand alias.

Also, if Davis were Bertrand, why would Andrews be fearful of his life? When Mark Lane wanted to interview him, Andrews begged off, saying he had been warned by “Washington, D.C.” that he would “have a hole blown in his head if he talked.” Many years later when Anthony Summers interviewed Andrews, the normally loquacious lawyer was still reticent on the subject of Bertrand. Summers wrote, “he [Andrews] has since said that to reveal the truth about his caller would endanger his life, and my own brief contact with Andrews confirmed that the fear is still with him today.” Again, if the lowly Davis were Bertrand, why would “Washington” be threatening Andrews? As the readers of Probe have seen, “Washington” was providing extensive “help” to Clay Shaw.

Unsurprisingly, Lambert swallows the Davis nonsense hook, line and sinker. Lambert, however, offers one small twist – Andrews was a publicity hound eager to jump on a perceived gravy train by offering to represent Oswald. The Bertrand story would be his entrÈe.

No one (other than Andrews) ever came forward to claim Davis was Bertrand. Yet the FBI, the DA’s office, investigative reporter Lawrence Schiller, journalist Bill Turner and the New Orleans Police Department all uncovered witnesses who knew of Shaw’s use of the Bertrand alias. In fact, the number of witnesses in the files who are now on record as stating that Shaw used the alias of Clay Bertrand is well into the double digits. To illustrate just how common this knowledge was in New Orleans at the time, consider this anecdote from Ed Tatro.

Tatro was a young college student who decided to go down to New Orleans to watch the Shaw trial in person. One night he visited one of the bistros in the French Quarter. The New Orleans residents noted his Boston accent and asked him what he was there for. When he told them, the residents started giggling. He asked them what was so humorous. The reply was, “Look, everybody down here knows that Shaw uses the name Bertrand. But that poor devil Garrison can’t prove it to save his soul.”

Shaw’s lawyers also get kid gloves treatment from Lambert. Irvin Dymond, Bill and Ed Wegmann, and Sal Panzeca are all portrayed as working class heroes who did what they did for very little money. Yet Lambert does not realize that by saying they made a small amount of money – about $30,000 total for three years work – she knocks out another pillar of Shaw’s superficial edifice. For how could Shaw now plead he was bankrupted by Garrison? Shaw made at least this much money on his French Quarter house renovations let alone his salary from the ITM and whatever his funds may have been from the Central Intelligence Agency. If Lambert wants to say the private investigator expenses broke him, what are we to make of that? That finding evidence of his innocence was so difficult that it became a significant financial burden?

But further, Lambert can actually write that Shaw’s attorneys got no help from the FBI, let alone the CIA. This is a blatant untruth, exposed by dozens of newly declassified documents. Jim DiEugenio used these documents to write a long two-part article on Shaw’s lawyers in Probe (Volume 4 #s 4 and 5) back in the summer of 1997. DiEugenio showed that the Wegmanns were already hooked in with Banister’s apparatus previous to the Shaw prosecution through ONI operative and prominent New Orleans lawyer Guy Johnson. Then, during the two year wait for Shaw’s trial to begin, Shaw’s lawyers got help not only from members of the FBI, who interviewed witnesses for them on the eve of trial, but also from people in the CIA, who actually appear to have talked witnesses out of their stories. This does not even mention the role of former Justice Department heavy Herbert Miller who seems to have worked with both Walter Sheridan and the CIA as a conduit between people like Gordon Novel (infiltrator in the Garrison office) and the Agency. This aspect of the case is expanded upon in Davy’s new book.

Klansmen and Klan Targets, Working Together!

As with Andrews, Lambert’s swipe at the Clinton/Jackson witnesses is equally as vapid. In Anthony Summers’ third and latest reprint of Conspiracy, now titled, Not In Your Lifetime, he has added a disclaimer to his Clinton, Louisiana section. The note advises that new research has come to light that will reportedly cast doubt on the Clinton evidence. (This after Summers makes a strong case for the veracity of the Clinton/Jackson people). Since Summers maintains contact with researcher, Paul Hoch and Hoch is generously acknowledged in False Witness, Summers is obviously referring to Lambert’s “evidence.” Note to Tony Summers: Should you decide to reprint Conspiracy for yet a fourth time, you can remove the disclaimer. It isn’t needed.

In summary, the Clinton incident refers to a sighting of Oswald in the company of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw. Shaw was identified when the town marshall approached him and asked to see his driver’s license. The car was registered to the Trade Mart, and the town marshal later testified that the name given by the man matched the one on his driver’s license: Clay Shaw. Several of the people who saw Oswald in Clinton testified during Shaw’s trial, and were collectively referred to as “the Clinton witnesses.”

Lambert leads off her Clinton chapter, titled “The Clinton Scenario and the House Select Committee,” with quotes from Shaw’s lawyers that sets the tone for what follows. Sal Panzeca states, rather disingenuously, “I was told that we could discredit these witnesses because Garrison’s men ‘did it wrong.’ That the witnesses were told what to say and they said it.” Yet under cross-examination at the Shaw trial, the defense didn’t even come close to discrediting them. On the contrary, even the usually biased James Kirkwood reported that “the Clinton people had a strong effect on the press and spectators and, one presumed, the jury at the opening of the trial.” Another of Shaw’s attorneys, William Wegmann, is also quoted: “Clinton, that’s Klan country.” And in that quote lies the dark tactic of this chapter – smear the Clinton folk as racist Klansmen to destroy their credibility. (Lambert also says the left-wing Italian journals that divulged Shaw’s PERMINDEX connections are not credible either. Apparently in Lambert’s world only middle-of-the-roaders are to be believed. Or should we say only those who are pro-Shaw?) According to Lambert’s theory (and it is just a theory), town marshal John Manchester and fellow Klansman, registrar Henry Earl Palmer, concocted this conspiracy. Additionally, they brought in non-Klan participants, Reeves Morgan, Lea McGehee, Maxine Kemp and Bobbie Dedon from 10 miles away in Jackson. But incredibly, added to this nest of racist conspirators were two African Americans, Corrie Collins and William Dunn!

Even Lambert seems confused by this strange mix, writing “Four of those in warring camps that summer (Manchester and Palmer on one side, Collins and Dunn the other) presented a strangely unified front six years later, testifying for Garrison.” Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop Lambert from speculating wildly that the black witnesses were coerced by the Klansmen. Later, she switches gears and again speculates that the silver-tongued Garrison caused their cooperation, suggesting “that susceptibility to Garrison’s rhetoric among Clinton’s black community may have been a factor in their cooperation with him.” These last two statements are literally dripping with racism. In the narrow view of False Witness black folk are too feeble-minded to think on their own, allowing themselves to be manipulated by Garrison’s eloquence and charisma, and are easily bullied by the KKK. This, despite the fact that these African Americans were taking great risks by participating in the Clinton voting drive, asserting the very independence Lambert would deny them. She goes even further by quoting Clinton District Attorney, Richard Kilbourne, who pooh-poohs the whole notion of the Clinton scenario. However, nowhere in Lambert’s “analysis” do we find any mention of Kilbourne’s own racist views, which are quite adequately on display in the documentary work-in-progress, Rough Side of the Mountain. Since Lambert sources the film, we have to assume she’s seen it.

More wild speculation is thrown into the mix as Lambert quotes a rumor that Garrison was going to run for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket with racist Alabama Governor, George Wallace. Later, Lambert writes that no one heard about Oswald being in Clinton until after Garrison began his investigation. According to witness Lea McGehee, this is false. Not only was he aware of it from his own personal experience, but word of the incident was printed in the Councilor periodical before the Garrison probe started.

But the centerpiece of Lambert’s chapter are the “shocking revelations” contained in the notes of an investigator named Anne Dischler. First, we are treated to such illuminating and relevant facts that Dischler “has 27 grandchildren, has her own ministry, owns and operates a retail fabric store, is an expert seamstress, bakes her own bread, and can shoot with the best of them.” The “shockers” in Dischler’s notes are anything but – with one exception. According to Dischler she had seen a 3×5 black and white photograph of the black Cadillac taken while the car was parked across from the registrar’s office. Dischler revealed to Lambert, “‘Clay Shaw was in the driver’s seat – it looked like him to me … I remember the white-haired man in the picture and the small face of Oswald. It seems like Oswald was on the passenger side of the front seat but I’m not sure’ … This picture came from the district attorney’s office, she said, perhaps from Sciambra.” Of course since the picture has long since disappeared, this allows Lambert to further speculate that Garrison had expertly manufactured a doctored, composite photograph. At least Lambert gives Garrison credit for being multi-talented!

Other revelations from Dischler’s notes include a possible additional Caucasian male who was registering that day, Winslow Foster. It has long been known that another white male, Estus Morgan, was in town that day. According to Lambert, someone – she doesn’t know who, of course – just overlaid Oswald’s identity onto the actions of Morgan. There is no credible evidence to back any of this up, as even Lambert concedes: “Who conceived this story is unknown, and precisely how they implemented it is unclear.” According to Lambert, once Garrison got wind that the Clinton story was getting out of hand and that Dischler was getting too close to the truth, he pulled her and Francis Fruge off the case and sent up his evil henchman, Andrew Sciambra, to keep the lid on things. Of course this doesn’t explain what Garrison investigators Frank Ruiz and Kent Simms were doing up there. Again, in a chapter rife with speculation and theorizing, this is yet another absurd hypothesis.

Lambert’s assault on the HSCA is mercifully short, but still long on speculation. Once again, Garrison just poured on the charm and charisma “winning converts among the [HSCA] staff.”

Lambert ends her Clinton follies by segueing into her next chapter, an attack on Garrison’s book, On The Trail of the Assassins, calling it one of the “strangest” in the history of American letters. Apparently she has never read her friend David Lifton’s writings. Garrison’s rather quaint notion of a coup d’Ètat pales in comparison to Lifton’s theories about papier mache trees on, and underground excavations below, the grassy knoll, casket swapping and body alteration.

Lambert, Lifton and Thornley

We should not be surprised at this point to find that Lambert presents a superficial and deceptive treatment of the Kerry Thornley controversy. She devotes one paragraph to this rather interesting and important aspect of Garrison’s investigation.

Allow us to fill in what she left out.

Thornley was a Marine Corps buddy of Oswald’s whose testimony to the Warren Commission was used to portray Oswald as a Communist loner. As Garrison noted in his book, Thornley’s testimony is at odds with other service friends of the alleged assassin, who do not recall him as a committed Marxist. Another important fact about Thornley is that he wrote two books about Oswald, one before and one after the assassination: The Idle Warriors (unpublished until 1991), and Oswald (published in 1965). Both books accomplish the same end as Thornley’s Warren Commission testimony. The 1965 work is a non-fiction tome that reads something like Warren Commission witness Dr. Renatus Hartogs profile of Oswald. Consider this line:

I’m certain that in his own eyes Oswald was the most important man in the [Marine] unit. To him the mark of destiny was clearly visible on his forehead and that some were blind to it was his eternal source of aggravation (p.19).

Later in the book, Thornley writes, “Frankly, I agree that the man was sick, but I further think his sickness was, in the long run, self induced in the manner previously outlined.”(p. 69) In the last three chapters of the book, Thornley basically traces the Warren Commission version of the last few days of Oswald’s life. In the last chapter he lays all the blame for the murder at Oswald’s feet, i.e., there was no conspiracy, large or small. In fact, Thornley’s early writings on the case are pretty much indistinguishable from what the Warren Commission pumped out. They are so similar that one wonders if the Commission borrowed its profile of Oswald from Thornley in the first place.

According to both Thornley and Jim Garrison, the Secret Service swept down on Thornley on November 23rd, and in short order he was on a plane to Washington with his manuscript of The Idle Warriors. Thornley reveals in his later, non-fiction book that he talked to Warren Commission counsel Albert Jenner on a number of occasions about his testimony. According to Garrison, Thornley stayed in the Washington D. C. area for almost a year. He then moved out to California where his parents resided. Ironically he worked at an apartment complex which housed, of all people, CIA-Mafia-Castro assassination plots intermediary Johnny Roselli. Around this time, David Lifton was going through the Warren Commission volumes and noted Thornley’s testimony. He looked him up in person and they became friends. During the early part of Garrison’s investigation, Lifton popped in to help out, and introduced Thornley to the DA. It was this event which marked the beginning of the falling out between Garrison and Lifton. For, from the evidence adduced by the new file releases – all ignored by Lambert – Thornley was a much more suspicious character than the one Lifton has always presented. We think it’s time people find out what the files reveal, and what is not to be found in False Witness.

First, as should have been apparent from the beginning, Thornley was an extreme right-winger who had an almost pathological hatred of Kennedy. This could have provided a reason for him to do the number he did on Oswald for the Commission. Thornley worked briefly for rightwing publisher Kent Courtney in New Orleans and was a friend of New Orleans-based CIA journalist Clint Bolton. According to an article in New Orleans Magazine, Thornley was also once employed by Alton Ochsner’s INCA outfit, the CIA-related radio and audiotape outfit which sponsored Oswald’s famous debate with Cuban exile leader Carlos Bringuier. According to former Guy Banister employee Dan Campbell, Thornley was one of the young fanatics who frequented 544 Camp Street. Additional facts make the above acquaintances even more interesting. Thornley tried to deny that he knew Bringuier, yet his girlfriend Jeanne Hack described an encounter between Thornley and a man who fit Bringuier’s description to Bill Turner in January of 1968. And as Thornley notes in his introduction to the 1991 issue of The Idle Warriors, he showed his manuscript to Banister before the assassination back in 1961.

This last point brings up one of the most important issues concerning the whole Thornley episode: his early denials and later reversals. Two memos written by Andrew Sciambra in February of 1968 reveal that Thornley denied knowing Banister, Dave Ferrie , Clay Shaw, and Shaw’s friend Time-Life journalist David Chandler. Garrison, however, had evidence that revealed the opposite to be the case. And years later, on the eve of the House Select Committee investigation, Thornley admitted to knowing all of these shady characters. Then, of course, there was the issue of Thornley’s association with Oswald himself in the summer of 1963. Thornley denied before the New Orleans grand jury that he associated with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963. This seemed improbable on its face since, as noted above, both men knew each other previously and both men frequented some of the same places in 1963.

But further, consider Thornley’s rather equivocal denial on the witness stand:

Q: Did she [Barbara Reid] see you with Oswald?

A: I don’t think she did because the next day I started asking people…

Q: You don’t think so?

A: I don’t know whether it was Oswald, I can’t remember who was sitting there with me….

The above statements earned Thornley a perjury indictment from Garrison. But there was much more. Garrison had no less than eight witnesses who said they had seen Oswald and Thornley together in New Orleans in 1963. And some of them went beyond just noting the association between the two. Two of these witnesses, Bernard Goldsmith and Doris Dowell, both said that Thornley told them Oswald was not a communist. This is amazing since, as noted earlier, the Warren Commission featured Thornley as its key witness to Oswald’s alleged commie sympathies. This indicates that Thornley himself 1) knew the truth about Oswald’s intelligence ties and 2) was probably involved in creating a false cover – a “legend,” in intelligence parlance – for the alleged assassin. On top of these devastating admissions, there is the information from Mrs. Myrtle LaSavia, who lived within a block of Oswald in New Orleans. She stated that she, “her husband and a number of people who live in that neighborhood saw Thornley at the Oswald residence a number of times – in fact they saw him there so much they did not know which was the husband, Oswald or Thornley.” A few weeks ago at the National Archives, Oswald researcher John Armstrong discovered FBI documents which show that other neighbors of Oswald picked out photos of Thornley as a frequent visitor to the Oswald apartment. According to a radio interview Garrison did in 1968, the DA had witnesses who saw Thornley shopping with Marina Oswald. If this is so, not only did Oswald encounter Thornley in New Orleans in 1963, but the two were quite close.

This apparent closeness may have had a purpose beyond the framing of Oswald as a leftist in the public mind. There are two indications of this. The first is noted by Harold Weisberg in his book Never Again:

When the New Orleans Secret Service investigation led it to the Jones Printing Co., the printer of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee handbills, and the Secret Service was on the verge of learning, as I later learned, that it was not Oswald who picked up those handbills, the New Orleans FBI at once contacted FBI HQ. The FBI immediately leaned on the Secret Service HQ and immediately the Secret Service was ordered to desist. For all practical purposes, that ended the Secret Service probe – the moment it was about to explode the myth of the “loner” who had an associate who picked up a print job for him. (p. 18)

What Weisberg does not reveal in this passage is that the guy who picked up the flyers was identified as Kerry Thornley. In an interview with journalist Earl Golz in 1979, Weisberg stated that two employees at the print shop picked out photos of Thornley, not Oswald, when he questioned them about the “Hands off Cuba” flyers. Weisberg secretly taped one of the interviews with the employees. When Weisberg informed Garrison investigator Lou Ivon of this new development, Bill Boxley – a CIA plant in Garrison’s office – tried to distort what had happened. Weisberg pulled out the tape, quieting Boxley. But later, the tape disappeared.

The other 1963 incident that makes Thornley even more fascinating was his trip to Mexico in July/August. As Jeanne Hack noted in an interview, Thornley was usually a quite talkative individual, but when it came to this Mexico trip, he was quite reluctant to speak about it. According to his 11/25/63 FBI statement, Thornley said “that he made this trip by himself and emphatically denied that Oswald had accompanied him from New Orleans to California or from California to Mexico.” Doth Thornley protest too much? In another FBI memo written the same day Thornley was interviewed, the following statement appears: “Thornley is presently employed as a waiter in New Orleans and has recently been in Mexico and California with Oswald. Secret Service has been notified.” Again, if this is so it is very interesting to say the least. But even if it were so, the Secret Service probably followed up about as vigorously as it did the Jones Print Shop incident.

Thornley’s behavior during the ongoing Garrison probe was strange, to say the least. As noted above, he told the DA’s representative he never met Shaw, Ferrie, Chandler or Oswald, at least not Oswald in New Orleans. He was a bit hazy on Banister saying that he “may have met Banister somewhere around Camp Street” but he was not sure. His equivocations on Oswald are even more striking. He told Andrew Sciambra the following:

He also admits that there are some coincidences which have taken place which make it appear that he and Oswald were in contact with each other but he declares that these are only coincidences and that he has never seen Oswald since the days in the Marine Corps together.

In a later interview with Sciambra, Thornley also denied knowing Bringuier and Ed Butler of INCA, even though he applied for a job at the latter. Every one of these denials turned out to be false and Thornley admitted to them later. But on top of this, there is the apparent element of the protection of Thornley when he became a hot item in New Orleans in 1968. For instance, according to Mort Sahl, Thornley insisted on meeting Sciambra at a curious location for one of their interviews: NASA. Sciambra recalled thinking as he entered the place that if someone like Thornley could command access to such a place then Garrison really didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades. Several of Oswald’s cohorts from Reily Coffee had gone to NASA before the assassination. It seems odd that a coffee company would be a training ground for such a scientifically oriented facility. Garrison camp infiltrator Gordon Novel also went there while on the lam from Garrison.

And then there was the problem of locating Thornley. Garrison investigator and former CIA agent Jim Rose took on that assignment. Through his network of Agency contacts he found Thornley was living in Tampa. The supposedly working class Thornley had two homes in Florida, one in Tampa and one in Miami. He lived at the Tampa residence which, according to Rose’s notes, was a large white frame house on a one acre lot. In addition, he owned two cars at the time. All this from a man who had only been a waiter and doorman up to that time.

After the Garrison investigation, Thornley slipped into obscurity. But he resurfaced in the late seventies around the time of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He reappeared as a kind of stoned hippie who had a rather eccentric interest in aliens, Nazis, and the occult. He assembled a long narrative in which he now stated that, “I did not realize I was involved in the JFK murder conspiracy until 1975, when the Watergate revelations made it rather obvious.” The reason it became obvious was that he recognized Howard Hunt as one of the men who recruited him into the plot. In this new mode he even admitted that Oswald had been framed for the crime. Quite an admission from the author of the 1965 book which concluded the opposite.

At around this same time, Thornley sent Garrison a long manuscript outlining the Kennedy plot as he saw it. This document is in the form of a long affidavit executed while Thornley was living in Atlanta. To anyone familiar with the true facts of the case and Thornley’s suspicious activities, it is a long and involved and deliberate piece of disinformation. In it, Thornley admits that he had met both Ferrie and Banister by the summer of 1962. But yet, they are not the true conspirators. The real ones are people named Slim, Clint, Brother-in-Law, and one Gary Kirstein i.e. nameless, faceless non-entities. (Later, Thornley named one as Jerry M. Brooks, former rightwing Minuteman turned informant to Bill Turner.) Thornley’s communications with the HSCA were frequent as he tried to rivet their attention on his new and improved JFK plot.

When Oliver Stone’s JFK came out, Thornley was paid to make an appearance on the tabloid program A Current Affair (broadcast on 2/25/92). Some of what Thornley said on camera is worth quoting:

I wanted to shoot him. I wanted to assassinate him very much. . . . I wanted him dead. I would have shot him myself. I would have stood there with a rifle and pulled the trigger if I would have had the chance.

Clearly, Thornley’s hatred of Kennedy is virulent. Thornley also had some interesting comments about Garrison. Concerning the DA’s indicting him for perjury, Thornley commented, “Garrison, you should have gone after me for conspiracy to commit murder.” Of course, the conspiracy Thornley is hinting at is the later manufactured one with Slim, and Brother-in-Law etc. He also insisted in 1992 that he had not betrayed his friend Oswald, even though he now thought the case was a conspiracy. Thornley was apparently doing his distracting limited hang-out number for bucks this time around. Thornley died in 1997 of a kidney ailment.

What is the sum total of the reliable evidence about Thornley available in the new files and ignored by Lambert? First, Thornley lied about his relationship with the intelligence network surrounding Oswald. He knew all of these players. He also lied about not knowing Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The question of course is: Why did he lie? And the answer seems to point to some deeper involvement. This seems to imply that the Weisberg investigation of the flyers at Jones print shop and the FBI telex about Oswald accompanying Thornley to California and Mexico have some validity to them. It also suggests that Thornley’s admission about knowing Oswald was not a communist has some weight. That is, Thornley may have known the truth about Oswald all along and may have helped him construct his cover. Garrison went so far as to suspect that it was Oswald’s head imposed on Thornley’s body in the famous backyard photograph. Whatever the truth about Thornley’s possible role in the setting up of a patsy, Lambert’s writing about him – cribbed from Lifton – is too brief, too superficial and ultimately dishonest in what it leaves out. In other words, it is propaganda that deliberately avoids the new evidence. It would also appear that Lifton looked at Thornley with a much too gullible and trusting eye.

The worst thing about Lambert’s book is that it shows that an old adage by Robert Blakey about the Kennedy assassination seems to be true. Blakey said that after his experience with the House Select Committee, it was his opinion that the JFK case was like a Rorschach test, people saw in it what they wished to see. Lambert’s book is proof positive of this. With all the new material now available at the National Archives on the Garrison investigation, Lambert still decided that she had an agenda to fulfill. And she had to have been aware of this, since she uses only bits to mold it. But, in the main, she ignores the record. Thus her book is hopelessly biased. And her book also bodes ill for Lifton’s long-awaited biography of Oswald. Will Lifton report on the new evidence truthfully and fully? Will he claim his version of the events is more accurate than more primary evidence, as he did with Palmer McBride (see the exchange of letters, pp. 26-27)? Or will he, too, be a false witness to the record?

June 15, 1999