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  • Major Trump Declassification Announcement

    President Trump makes major announcement on the declassification of the JFK files.  Read more.

  • The Anna Paulina Luna Task Force

    The Anna Paulina Luna Task Force

    The Anna Paulina Luna Task Force

    Mark E. Adamczyk Esq.

    If you are interested in the history of the JFK assassination and want to know what actually happened to President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, you have probably heard or read about the recently-appointed “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets”. This is a congressional panel established by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chaired by Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.). 

    The stated primary mission of the task force is to investigate and recommend the declassification of long-held government records related to significant historical events and topics of public interest.  The task force was formed in response to President Trump’s executive order signed on January 23, 2025, titled “Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” which mandates federal agencies to prepare plans for releasing these records. According to journalist Jeff Morley, both CIA Director John Ratcliffe and DNI Chair Tulsi Gabbard are in favor of the order.

    As of today, the task force has made notable headlines. On February 25, 2025, Representative Luna announced via X that she met with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), securing a commitment to make declassified JFK files publicly accessible through a dedicated NARA website. She indicated that documents would be uploaded in real time once declassified, and she addressed efforts by some within the NARA agency to delay access, claiming those “obstructionists” were being removed. Additionally, Luna has scheduled the task force’s first hearing for March 26, 2025, which will focus specifically on the JFK assassination. This hearing aims to examine evidence and interview firsthand witnesses, including doctors who treated Kennedy at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where the task force plans to travel as part of its investigation.

    A visit to Dallas to interview the Parkland doctors and a tour of Dealey Plaza would be educational for the task force.  Representative Luna has publicly questioned the official Warren Commission findings, asserting her belief in a “two-shooter” theory based on conflicting evidence and abnormalities she claims were overlooked.  

    But here’s the problem: Why spend the task force’s time and money investigating things we have known for years?  As written by JFK Assassination Chokeholds co-author Paul Bleau, we already know that over forty witnesses, including almost all of the medical personnel at both Parkland and Bethesda Medical Center—where the autopsy was held—clearly saw the massive injury to the back of JFK’s head, describing what could only be an exit would.  The evidence we already know makes it all but impossible to conclude that there was not at least one shot fired at JFK from the front of his limousine, which vitiates the Warren Commission’s conclusion that only three (3) shots were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the rear.  

    The task force is on the correct path by investigating NARA and the Archivist’s inaction and failures under the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). Pursuant to the JFK Act, the Assassination Records and Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s already made final declassification decisions on the thousands of assassination records still withheld in full or in part.  Under the exhaustive rights afforded to agencies still seeking postponement of assassination records to this day, they already had their complete legal opportunity to appeal those final declassification decisions to the ARRB and the President for continued postponement.  

    Which brings us back to the focus that should be front and center for Representative Luna’s task force – the Archivist.  As discovered by JFK Assassination Chokeholds co-author Andrew Iler, the ARRB’s final declassification decisions from the 1990s have been buried at NARA.  Why?  The Archivist should immediately be called into an oversight hearing with the task force to explain why NARA did not follow the ARRB’s final agency orders on postponed assassination records and release them as ordered by the ARRB.  The Archivist should be compelled to explain why it is nearly impossible to find the ARRB’s final declassification orders at NARA.  The path to the proper declassification of the JFK assassination records lies in the ARRB’s final orders.  

    The final point, and this is critical, is revealed in comments recently made by Representative Luna in an interview with Clayton Morris on Lear Redacted.  Luna stated that she is confident, based on discussions with the White House and Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence), that there will be a full release of assassination records through the efforts of the task force.  I have no doubt in Representative Luna’s confidence, and her energy and passion on this effort should be commended.  

    However, here is the troubling comment Luna gave in the interview.  The Archivist has apparently told Representative Luna that even if President Trump orders the declassification of assassination records, the President’s decision then needs to go back to the originating agency for a “re-review” by the agency head.  Representative Luna disagrees with NARA’s assessment, and she is correct.  The Archivist’s position is directly contrary to the JFK Act.  Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) standards, an agency head does have the authority to make declassification decisions in their discretion.  The JFK Act is not FOIA, and it is not close.   Under the JFK Act, the final declassification decision, short of the President, was with the ARRB and only the ARRB.  If the ARRB ordered the full release of a record by a specified date, the agencies (many years ago) had a final 30-day right of appeal.  And the following is important: Short of an appeal based on clear and convincing evidence justifying continued postponement, the Archivist had a legal duty to release the assassination record and publish it for public disclosure. 

    Luna said that if a record is ordered declassified, then “do it, and call it a day…declassification does not need to go through bureaucratic nonsense.”  Again, she is correct.  Under the standards of the JFK Act, only the President in 2017 had the final call on declassification. And any further Presidential decisions for continued postponement must be stated in a public Presidential certification stating a current identifiable harm to the United States or a living person.  

    The correct legal path on the declassification process under the JFK Act is simple.  After the Archivist is compelled to make the ARRB’s final release decisions available and easily searchable, President Trump and his legal advisors need to review the ARRB’s final decisions in the Archivist’s possession.  If there is no longer a current identifiable harm in the withheld record to a living person or current intelligence source or method, the record must be released in full today pursuant to the JFK Act.  Further, President Trump needs to immediately order all originating agencies to turn over (to the Archivist) any assassination records that were not provided to the ARRB in the 1990s as required by the JFK Act.  The same Presidential review process would apply to those records as well.  The task force, with Congressional oversight powers in the JFK Act itself, has the authority to make sure all of this happens without further delay.  No further “plans” are necessary, especially not from the intelligence agencies who are determined to maintain secrecy.  

    In 2025, it is fiction to believe that a record from 1963 could still pose an identifiable harm.  Maybe a handful of records by a stretch of the imagination, but not thousands.  In short, President Trump should not tolerate more obstruction from the intelligence community.  As explained in JFK Assassination Chokeholds, the American people have already tolerated more than 60 years of obstruction of justice in the JFK case.  Unless President Trump can explain how and on what basis a withheld record still poses a current and identifiable harm to the United States or a living person, the record can and must be released today pursuant to the clear Congressional mandates in the JFK Act. 

  • The Oswald Puzzle: The Pieces That Won’t Fit – Part 2

    The Oswald Puzzle: The Pieces That Won’t Fit – Part 2

    The Oswald Puzzle: The Pieces That Won’t Fit – Part 2

    By Johnny Cairns

     

    U.S. Military Policies on Communist Affiliation: A Zero-Tolerance Stance

    “I am a Marxist and have been studying Marxist principles for well over 15 months”. Letter to Socialist Party of America, October 3rd, 1956; (Greg Parker, Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War; p.250)

    Larry Hancock recently said to me that “as an individual (Oswald) was an American citizen and free to espouse any beliefs that were legal and did not espouse violence.” (Dave Boylan. Private Correspondence with Johnny Cairns.) This argument is fundamentally incompatible with the rigid security measures, legal precedents, and ideological purges of Cold War America.

    Yes, as a private citizen, Oswald would have had the constitutional right to hold Marxist beliefs. However, as we’ve already explored, such beliefs were not merely frowned upon but actively treated as subversive and dangerous. Even vague associations with leftist ideology were enough to end careers, prompt surveillance, and trigger legal repercussions.

    But more importantly, Oswald was not a private citizen—he was an active-duty U.S. Marine, bound by the strict regulations of a military institution that explicitly prohibited Communist affiliation. His open, repeated expressions of Soviet allegiance, his reverence for Marxism, and his vocal disdain for American capitalism weren’t just ideological posturing—they were direct challenges to the national security apparatus of the United States. And yet, the Marine Corps did nothing.

    Oswald’s status as an active US Marine placed him under an even stricter loyalty standard than a civilian. Upon enlistment, he swore an oath:

    “I, Lee Harvey Oswald, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”

    Oswald also signed the Loyalty Certificate for Personnel of the Armed Forces. The number one provision of this certificate read: The Department of Defense has the authority to establish procedures implementing the national policy relating to loyalty of persons entering on duty with the Armed Forces. This has been determined by proper authority to include restrictions as to certain standards of conduct and membership in, or sympathetic association with, certain organizations.” (Parker, p.263)

                                                 II

    Let us add, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) Article 134; Marines found possessing, distributing, or promoting Communist literature could face disciplinary action, dishonourable discharge, or court-martial. Disloyalty statements, such as Oswald’s repeated praise of the Soviet Union and his accusatory references to fellow Marines as “You Americans, American imperialism” and “exploitation” were grounds for immediate scrutiny. (Epstein, p.82)  https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title10/html/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partII-chap31-sec502.htm

    And how about this: The Communist Control Act of 1954 (CCA) made membership in or association with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) illegal, classifying it as a subversive organization working to overthrow the U.S. government. The CPUSA’s official publications, The Daily Worker and The People’s Daily World—which Oswald openly subscribed to and read while stationed at Santa Ana, California—were directly linked to this illegal organization. Under Cold War-era policies, merely consuming Communist literature was considered a national security threat. 50 USC CHAPTER 23, SUBCHAPTER IV: COMMUNIST CONTROL

    Beyond the CCA, federal policies actively sought to root out any Communist influence within government and military institutions:

    The Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organisations; (AGLOSO) catalogued groups deemed Communist-affiliated, and association with these groups led to termination, blacklisting, and potential prosecution. Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist | National Archives

    Executive Order 9835 (1947); established by President Harry S. Truman, mandated the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, mandating investigations into federal employees and military personnel suspected of disloyalty. https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/trumans-loyalty-program

    Executive Order 10450 (1953); President Dwight D. Eisenhower further expanded these investigations, stating that even sympathies toward subversive organisations could be grounds for dismissal. https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/Regulations/EO_10450.pdf

    House Un-American Activates Committee; (HUAC) hearings paraded suspected Communists before Congress, demanding loyalty oaths and public confessions. Government employees lost their jobs for past associations, and yet an active-duty U.S. Marine, stationed at a military base, openly consuming Communist literature, escaped scrutiny? If loyalty investigations were aggressively enforced across all levels of American society, how did Oswald’s Marxism on a military base not trigger an immediate inquiry? House Un-American Activities Committee – Wikipedia

    Yet the historical record simply does not support the idea that such behaviour was tolerated in the U.S. military. Other servicemen—guilty of far less—were swiftly discharged, disgraced, or investigated under Cold War security measures.

    Radulovich, Abramowitz, Peress: The Harsh Reality of the Red Scare

    The Cold War’s loyalty purges were merciless, cutting through government, academia, and the military with ruthless efficiency.

    One of the most infamous cases was that of Milo Radulovich, a U.S. Air Force reservist who was discharged. But not for his own political beliefs. But because his father, a Serbian immigrant, subscribed to a Serbian-language newspaper that the U.S. government deemed to have Communist affiliations. His sister, too, was suspected of leftist sympathies. 

    Radulovich himself had never engaged in subversive activity, but mere association with “questionable” individuals was enough to end his military career. He became yet another casualty of Cold War hysteria, a victim of an era that demanded absolute ideological purity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Radulovich

    “Simply getting Russian magazines, books, or progressive news magazines, etc. was perfectly legal.”
    – Larry Hancock, via Dave Boylan (Private Correspondence with Johnny Cairns)

    Oswald did not simply “get” Russian or progressive news magazines—he subscribed to publications directly linked to the Communist Party USA. His subscription history alone would have been enough to trigger an investigation, security clearance review, or outright discharge under Cold War loyalty policies. His fellow Marines confirmed that Oswald did not hide his Communist affiliations.

    Paul Edward Murphy provided an affidavit stating:

    “Oswald had a subscription to a newspaper printed in English which I believe was titled either The Worker or The Socialist Worker. Members of the unit saw copies of this paper as they passed through the mailroom; when the paper was identified as being directed to Oswald, few were surprised.”

    Erwin Donald Lewis, another Marine, corroborated this:

    “It was a matter of common knowledge among squadron members that Oswald could read, write and speak Russian. I knew from personal observation that he read the ‘Daily Worker.’ I heard he had a subscription to that publication.” (WC Vol VIII; p. 323.)

    The People’s Daily World, another Communist newspaper Oswald subscribed to, gained infamy shortly after World War II when several of its editors were convicted under the Smith Act for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government! (Summers; p.147)

    While Radulovich was expelled over his father’s newspaper, Oswald was actively subscribing to CPUSA newspapers while serving in the military.  And not only was he not investigated, but he was also allowed to continue service without disruption.  The inconsistency is staggering.

    Howard Abramowitz & Irving Peress: Expelled Without Evidence of Subversion

    Radulovich was far from alone. In 1954, Howard Abramowitz, a decorated Korean War veteran, was forcibly discharged from the Enlisted Reserve. But not for active Communist ties, but simply for past membership in leftist organizations. Even honorable military service was not enough to protect him from the Red Scare. Howard D. Abramowitz – Wikipedia

    Captain Irving Peress, a U.S. Army dentist, was expelled from the military after refusing to answer questions about his political affiliations. He had not been caught in any subversive activities, nor had he been accused of actively promoting Communist ideology. Yet his silence alone was enough for Senator Joseph McCarthy to brand him a “Fifth Amendment Communist,” leading to his immediate discharge. Irving Peress – Wikipedia

    III

    The military was not the only institution where ideological purity was ruthlessly enforced. The Red Scare cast its shadow over every facet of American society, reaching deep into government offices, university halls, and even the glamour of Hollywood. Professors, civil servants, and filmmakers alike were compelled to renounce any association—real or perceived—with leftist ideology or risk professional and personal ruin.

    Academics and scientists saw their careers disintegrate for nothing more than distant affiliations with suspected radicals, while schoolteachers were blacklisted for the simple act of refusing to sign loyalty oaths. In this climate of paranoia, there was no room for nuance, no distinction between passive interest and active subversion. Mere suspicion was a death sentence for livelihoods—proof was optional.

    And then there was Lee Harvey Oswald—a man who openly and unapologetically declared his allegiance to Marxism. A man who spoke Russian in the barracks, studied Communist texts, and loudly praised the Soviet system while serving in the military at the height of the Cold War. A man who, by every precedent of the era, should have been immediately arrested, blacklisted, or imprisoned.

    And yet, he faced nothing. No investigation. No dishonourable discharge. Why was he tolerated? The answer is inescapable.

    U2 Realties?

    “Nothing Lee Oswald knew or could have provided had to do with the loss of the U2 aircraft…” (The Oswald Puzzle; p.50)  To put it mildly, this is contested by the testimony of Francis Gary Powers and works such as Oswald & The CIA, Spy Saga, Destiny Betrayed, etc. 

    The Motherland Awaits

    “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”  Walter Scott.

    Lee Harvey Oswald’s hardship discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps remains one of the most striking anomalies in his so-called “legend.” Discharges of this nature typically took months. Yet, for Oswald, the process unfolded with astonishing speed; as if the bureaucracy had stepped aside to expedite his path to the Soviet Union.

    Nelson Delgado recalled the rapidity of the process: Oswald’s discharge “must have been a fast processing, because I wasn’t gone over 15 days and when I came back, he was already gone.” (WC Vol. VII; p.255)

    Even those familiar with standard military procedures were perplexed by the urgency of Oswald’s departure. Delgado continued: “I knew he was putting in for a hardship discharge… but, like I say, it usually took so long to get a hardship discharge.” (WC Vol. VII; p.257)

    Colonel B. J. Kozak, a military officer with direct knowledge of dependency discharges, provided an even more specific timeframe: “It normally took between 3 to 6 months for a hardship discharge to be approved.” (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed; p.136). Yet, for Oswald, all standard protocols were seemingly cast aside. He submitted his request on August 17, 1959—and by August 28, just eleven days later, the Dependency Discharge Board had already approved it.(WCR; p.688)

    Why did the system move mountains to ensure that Oswald could leave his post without delay? Why was “Oswaldovich” granted a swift exit from a fiercely anti-Communist institution at the height of the Cold War?

    Serious Questions arise about Oswald’s pilgrimage to the USSR

    Lee Harvey Oswald’s journey to the Soviet Union is riddled with contradictions, logistical anomalies, and inexplicable conveniences. It is a tale of a man who, by all accounts, was of limited means. Yet, he managed a journey that required substantial finances, elite accommodations, and a series of improbably smooth bureaucratic processes—each step raising more questions than answers.

    Oswald has long been characterized as frugal, a man of limited financial resources. As The Oswald Puzzle states, “Oswald had limited funds and was frugal by nature.” (The Oswald Puzzle; p.68) 

    Yet how do the authors reconcile this claim with the fact that, upon his arrival in Helsinki, Oswald did not seek out a modest or budget-friendly hotel but instead took residence in two of the most opulent establishments the city had to offer?

    His first stop was the Hotel Torni, a five-star hotel renowned for hosting VIPs, including former U.S. President Herbert Hoover. The late Ian Griggs, a highly respected researcher and founder of Dealey Plaza UK, who visited the hotel, described it as the Finnish equivalent of the Savoy in London. (Destiny Betrayed;p.138.)

    Oswald then moved to the Klaus Kurki Hotel, another prestigious institution, located on Bulevardi, one of Helsinki’s most exclusive streets. According to Griggs, if the Torni was Helsinki’s premier luxury hotel, the Klaus Kurki was not very far behind. (Ibid; p.138.)

    So, how do we square this with the image of a cash-strapped, penny-pinching Oswald? Why did a supposedly frugal ex-Marine, who had only just embarked on an arduous defection journey, opt for deluxe accommodations that would have strained his already limited funds?

    IV

    Then, there is the larger financial mystery: How did Oswald fund this trip at all? At the time of his departure from the United States, Oswald’s bank account contained a mere $203.00, yet the cost of his journey to the Soviet Union amounted to at least $1,500. (Melanson p.13)  Nelson Delgado was also baffled: “I couldn’t understand where he got the money to go… it costs at least $800 to $1,000 to travel across Europe, plus the red tape you have to go through.” (WC Vol.VIII; p.257.)

    This raises the obvious question: Where did Oswald obtain the additional funds? Travel expenses aside, what about his day-to-day living costs? How did he afford food, toiletries, laundry, clothing, and grooming essentials over a period of over a month?  How did he pay for Soviet “tourist vouchers” which cost a total of 300 dollars. (WCR, p. 690) Every journey requires sustenance—so how did Oswald survive on what was, by all accounts, an insufficient sum?

    Even more suspicious is the manner in which Oswald was granted a visa for the Soviet Union.

    The Oswald Puzzle claims, “It is true that Oswald’s tourist visa for Russia was granted relatively quickly in Helsinki, but that was not particularly exceptional for that location.” (The Oswald Puzzle; p.68) Yet this claim obscures a crucial detail: Oswald’s visa was processed in record time, in just 24 hours, at the Soviet consulate in Helsinki—an embassy known for expedited handling of special cases. Normally, a tourist visa took at least a week to process. (Destiny Betrayed; p.139.) In fact, the only Soviet embassy in Europe where a visa could be issued in such a short span of time was the one in Helsinki. (Ibid.)

    Who arranged for this remarkable convenience?

    The answer may lie in a man named Mr. Golub, an official at the Soviet consulate in Helsinki, who handled Oswald’s visa. Mr. Golub had direct ties to the American Embassy in Helsinki, where U.S. officials reportedly sent select individuals to him for “priority processing.” (Ibid, p.138.) So, was Oswald simply the recipient of a string of coincidental bureaucratic miracles? Or was someone ensuring his seamless transition into the Soviet Union?

    Upon his arrival in Moscow, Oswald wasted no time in making his intentions known. “I was warned you would try to talk me out of defecting,” Oswald declared at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1959. ( John Newman, Oswald & the CIA; p.5). This statement alone raises an obvious question: Who warned Oswald that U.S. officials would attempt to dissuade him from defecting? Who had prepared him for this moment?

    V

    Yet the most damning aspect of Oswald’s embassy visit was not his declaration of intent. It was the information he freely offered to American officials. According to The Oswald Puzzle, “Even though he did not state that such information was classified—if he had, he might well have been detained by security on the spot.” (p.72).

    This claim is demonstrably dubious. Because, by multiple accounts, Oswald did state that he had classified information and was prepared to share it with Soviet officials.

    According to CIA records, Oswald openly declared that he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps.  Also, he had voluntarily informed unnamed Soviet officials that, as a Soviet citizen, he would make known to them the information he possessed concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty. He even intimated that he might know something of special interest. (Newman, p.6). John McVickar, an official at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, later recalled that Oswald explicitly stated his intent to turn over “classified things” to Soviet authorities. (Ibid)

     

    Rimma Shirakova, an Intourist guide who met Oswald upon his arrival in Moscow, agreed with this. She recalled that Oswald told her outright that he was in possession of classified information about U.S. airplanes. (Destiny Betrayed;p.140)

    Oswald’s open declaration at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that he intended to provide classified military information to the Soviet Union constituted serious violations of U.S. law, military regulations, and his sworn oaths. 

    Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U.S.C. § 793-798) Violation: Wilfully conveying or attempting to convey classified national defense information to a foreign government. Espionage Act of 1917 – Wikipedia

    Penalty: Up to life imprisonment, or the death penalty in cases of extreme national security risk. 

    Treason Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article III, Section 3) Violation:Levying war against the U.S. or “giving aid and comfort” to an enemy nation. Penalty: Death or imprisonment. U.S. Constitution | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

    Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) Article 94 (Mutiny and Sedition) –Encouraging or aiding an enemy. 10 USC 894: Art. 94. Mutiny or sedition

    Article 104 (Aiding the Enemy) – Attempting to supply intelligence to a foreign power. 904. Article 104. Aiding the Enemy – UCMJ – Uniform Code of Military Justice – Military Law

    Article 134 (General Article) – Conduct unbecoming a Marine. Penalty: Dishonorable discharge, court-martial, life imprisonment, or death. What is Article 134 of the UCMJ? – UCMJ – Uniform Code of Military Justice – Military Law

    Communist Control Act of 1954 Violation: Affiliation with or providing assistance to a Communist government or organization. Penalty: Denaturalization, deportation, or imprisonment. 

    Oath of Enlistment – United States Marine Corps Violation: Oswald swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Penalty: Immediate dishonorable discharge and legal action under military law. 

    What Should Have Happened at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow?

    Immediate Detainment:

    Any U.S. citizen, let alone a Marine veteran with a security clearance, admitting to plans of turning over classified information should have been immediately detained by security personnel. 

    Interrogation by Military & Intelligence Agencies: On the spot, Oswald should have been subjected to intense questioning by CIA and military intelligence officers to determine: What classified information he had already revealed. If he was acting alone or under foreign influence. And his true intentions and affiliations. 

    Revocation of U.S. Passport & Citizenship Review: Oswald’s passport should have been confiscated immediately. The State Department should have initiated proceedings to revoke his U.S. citizenship under laws barring Americans from aiding enemy nations. 

    Legal Charges & Potential Arrest: Oswald’s admission that he was offering classified material to the Soviets should have resulted in formal espionage or treason charges. The FBI and CIA should have been notified immediately to launch an investigation. 

    Monitoring & Surveillance: At the very least, Oswald should have been flagged as a national security threat, placed under continuous surveillance, and denied re-entry into the U.S. until a full security review was conducted. 

    And yet, despite these laws, despite his explicit statements, Oswald walked out of the U.S. Embassy a free man.

    Had any other American—especially an active-duty Marine—made such declarations during the height of the Cold War, their fate would have been sealed in an instant. But Oswald? Oswald was allowed to continue on his Soviet adventure.

    The question is: why?

    Click here to read part 1.

  • The Oswald Puzzle: The Pieces That Won’t Fit – Part 1

    The Oswald Puzzle: The Pieces That Won’t Fit – Part 1

    The Oswald Puzzle: The Pieces That Won’t Fit – Part 1

    By Johnny Cairns

    “I worked in Russia. Er… I was… er, under the protection… er, that is to say, I was not under the protection of the American government, but as I was at all times… er, considered an American citizen.” Lee H. Oswald, New Orleans- 1963. 

    Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? That is the $64,000 question, isn’t it? A question that has been debated endlessly since that fateful afternoon in November of 1963 when he was dragged from the darkness of the Texas Theatre and thrust into history. He was cast as an assassin, charged, murdered without trial, and sentenced to a posthumous verdict of guilty—his name forever etched in infamy. Truly as it was written long ago; The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. 

    Oswald’s death remains a festering wound on the soul of a nation—a nation that, for over sixty years, has continued to grieve the loss of one of its finest leaders: President John F. Kennedy.

    The name Oswald will forever be synonymous with one of the gravest injustices in history. And yet, his short life remains an open contradiction—an enigma that defies easy explanation.

    On one hand, we have the Marxist Marine—a contradiction in itself. A public ‘defector’ to the Soviet Union. A man who, throughout his life, openly espoused socialist, Marxist, and communistic ideologies at the height of Cold War America.

    On the other, we have a man who always seemed to be at the center of American intelligence operations. A man who was impersonated multiple times—including once when he wasn’t even in the country. A man whose closest acquaintances were a who’s who of the most fiercely militant anti-communists of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

    Men such as:

    •David W. Ferrie

    •George De Mohrenschildt

    •Clay L. Shaw (alias Bertrand)

    •Guy Banister

    These were not just random acquaintances. This was a who’s who of intelligence-linked operatives, far-right extremists, and shadowy figures operating at the nexus of covert operations.

    Their connections to Oswald were so striking that Senator Richard S. Schweikerwould later remark: “The fingerprints of intelligence are all over Oswald.”

    And it is this very contradiction that compelled me to write this review of The Oswald Puzzle.

    II

    In the interest of full transparency, I must first acknowledge my respect for co-authors Larry Hancock and Dave Boylan. They are serious researchers, meticulous in their methodology, and their work is thorough, well-sourced, and deeply considered. In fact, it was through the generosity of Dave Boylan that I was able to write this review at all. With the book’s UK release delayed until mid-March, Dave was kind enough to send me a copy from the U.S.—a gesture I greatly appreciated. 

    And on the surface, Larry and Dave stand on solid ground here. They follow Oswald’s own writings, a literary North Star, which guides them through the “swamp” of “conspiracy” research and into their contrarian conclusion on his true ideology. 

    In essence, Oswald’s writings are a literal treasure trove of Marxist ideology. But you know what they say: actions speak louder than words, but Inaction screams loudest of all. 

    For example, if we take the view that I espouse, that Oswald’s Marxism was a facade, a carefully constructed legend, then his writings should be the first thing held as suspect. After all, a good intelligence operative doesn’t just prove their loyalties with actions; they do it with words designed to be seen. And Lee Oswald was seen.

    But before we jump into that, I think we need to remind ourselves what the culture surrounding Socialism, Marxism, and Communism looked like in the United States of the 1950s. Would there even be a distinction between the three? 

    Though Senator Joseph McCarthy himself had faded from power by the time Oswald’s ‘Marxism’ emerged, the suspicion and paranoia he unleashed still gripped America’s national psyche in a stranglehold of fear. The spectre of Communist infiltration loomed large, fuelling an era where mere suspicion could end careers, shatter reputations, and destroy lives. The machine of McCarthyism had been set into motion, and even in his absence, it continued to devour those deemed ideologically impure.

    This unrelenting witch hunt led to the blacklisting, expulsion, and imprisonment of Americans—men and women whose constitutional rights were shattered, cast into political exile for even the faintest whiff of leftist affiliation. Careers were obliterated, reputations tarnished beyond repair, and lives upended—all in the name of eradicating the Communist spectre.  Yet, in the midst of this ideological purge, Oswald—the overt, self-proclaimed Marxist—stood untouched.

    Why?

    For nothing about Oswald’s documented behavior, affiliations, or the way he was treated by the U.S. government aligns with the paranoia and persecution of Cold War America.  How did Oswald escape the fate of so many “suspected” leftists before him? Men whose mere associations with Communism—often far less explicit than Oswald’s—led to ruin?

    • Alger Hiss.

    • Langston Hughes.

    • Milo Radulovich.

    • Dalton Trumbo.

    • Irving Peress.

    • Howard Abramowitz.

    Yet Oswald—a man who openly espoused Marxism, declared his allegiance to Communist ideology, and even attempted defection to the Soviet Union—remained inexplicably untouched. What made him so exceptional that he was able to avoid a national security investigation?

    And here lies the dichotomy at the heart of the Oswald Puzzle—a contradiction too glaring to ignore. If Lee Harvey Oswald’s blatant Marxist/Communist ideology was truly genuine, then why was it tolerated by the staunchly conservative, fervently anti-Communist institutions of Cold War America?

    Why did the Civil Air Patrol, the United States Marine Corps, and ultimately the U.S. government itself turn a blind eye?

    It is a question Larry and David, in my opinion, fail to answer. 

    Civil Air Patrol

    “Oswald and Ferrie were in the unit together. I know they were because I was there. I specifically remember Oswald. I can remember him clearly, and Ferrie was heading the unit then. I’m not saying that they may have been together; I’m saying it is a certainty.” (Bill Davy, Let Justice Be Done; p.5) 

    Who was David Ferrie? Was he a pivotal figure in the life of Lee Harvey Oswald? If you were to judge by The Oswald Puzzle—where he is mentioned only once in passing—you’d think not. And if that glaring omission isn’t shocking enough, then the book’s characterization of Ferrie as merely a “commercial airline pilot” should leave you a bit dumbfounded.  Because, to put it mildly, David Ferrie was far more than that.

    He was a dangerous, militant right-wing extremist, a rabid anti-communist, and a man with deep, verifiable connections to U.S. intelligence, paramilitary operations, and underground networks.

    His absolute hatred for Communism is best captured in a letter he wrote to the U.S. Air Force, offering his services in the fight against the “Red menace”:

     “There is nothing that I would enjoy better than blowing the hell out of every damn Russian, Communist, Red or what have you. We can cook up a crew that will really bomb them to hell… I want to train killers, however bad that sounds. It is what we need.” (Davy, p. 7) 

    CairnsPt1CAP

    And this fanatic wasn’t just some peripheral character in Oswald’s orbit. As one can see from the above, he was the squadron leader of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Civil Air Patrol unit.

    So now we must ask the question: Are we truly expected to believe that a man who wanted to “train killers” to obliterate Communists would have had a benign, indifferent view of a cadet who—according to The Oswald Puzzle—was already:

    “forceful in the expression of his own views on government, social issues, and geopolitics”? A cadet who, according to William Wulf, “started to expound the Communist doctrine? Who was allegedly “highly interested in communism” and believed that “communism was the only way of life for the worker”. 

    Most astonishingly, however, was the revelation that Oswald “was looking for a Communist cell in town to join” (The Oswald Puzzle; p.40) ( WC Vol VIII; p.18)

    Would such a cadet have been tolerated under the leadership of a rabid “Red” hater like Ferrie?

    We do, however, have testimony on record that directly contradicts the characterisation of Oswald as a budding Marxist in his youth.

    His fellow Civil Air Patrol cadet, Ed Voebel, who joined the CAP alongside Oswald, dismissed the notion outright when testifying before the Warren Commission:

    “I have read things about Lee having developed ideas as to Marxism and communism way back when he was a child, but I believe that is a lot of baloney”. Voebel also stated that he saw no evidence whatsoever that Oswald was studying communism in 1954.

    Robert Oswald’s testimony would further reinforce this:

    “If Lee was deeply interested in Marxism in the summer of 1955, he said nothing to me about it… Never in my presence, did he read anything that I recognised as communist literature”. 

    So what changed?

    If Oswald showed no interest in Marxism in 1954-55, then what triggered his sudden transformation? The evidence suggests that his introduction to Marxist literature was not organic but rather coincided with his encounters with David Ferrie.

    Can’t you see the contradiction?

    Even more damning is that The Oswald Puzzle explicitly states:

    “It is around this time that Oswald is showing clear and consistent indications of his beliefs regarding political and social systems.” (The Oswald Puzzle; p.40) Yet if this were true, then why—just a year later—would Oswald, the supposed overt Marxist, voluntarily enlist in the United States Marine Corps—an institution built to uphold and defend American capitalism and imperialism? The very antithesis of Marxist ideology.

    Oswald’s half-brother, John Pic, testified before the Warren Commission that Oswald had no ideological motivation behind his enlistment. Instead, he suggested that Oswald joined the Marines simply “to get from out and under the yoke of oppression from (his) mother”, Marguerite. (WC Vol. XI; p.10) 

    Possible. But I believe the answer lies elsewhere—at the feet of David Ferrie.

    One of Ferrie’s primary roles in the Civil Air Patrol was to encourage and recruit young men into the U.S. military—particularly the Marines. He frequently boasted about his connections to intelligence and military operations, and he would speak to cadets about the orders he received from those channels.

    In fact, when Lee, underage, tried to join the Marines just after his 16th birthday, his mother was visited by a man passing himself off as a Marine Corps recruiter. As Bill Davy rightly points out, “this was a clear violation of the law”.

    Ferrie, as it turns out, “often posed as a military officer and exhibited domineering and controlling behavior towards his cadets”. (Davy, p.6; James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, pp. 152-153) 

    Now, consider this. If Oswald was truly the overt “Marxist”, why, while preparing to enlist in the U.S. military, did he begin to do two opposing things simultaneously? He starts to obsessively study his brother’s Marine Corps manual, memorizing it “by heart.” While, at the same time, devouring Communist literature. (WC Vol I, 198.)

    Now take a moment to really let that one sink in for a second. 

    That’s tantamount to me, as a supporter of the Glasgow Celtic, turning up each week to Ibrox Stadium to cheer on the Glasgow Rangers. It defies all logic. (And would never happen). And logic should be an easy trail to follow, especially if one is as intelligent as Oswald. 

    To just ever so briefly skim over Oswald’s relationship with Ferrie is not presenting the totality of the evidence.  As James DiEugenio, a specialist in New Orleans, wrote: “Oswald’s relationship with Ferrie had a powerful, perhaps crucial, effect on his life.” (The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 177). Which is likely the reason that, in the wake of the assassination, Ferrie was frantically trying to conceal that relationship. (ibid, p. 176)

    The Marxist Marine

    “At the time he entered the Marine Corps, Lee Oswald… was very much interested in socialism and Marxism.” (The Oswald Puzzle; p.40) 

    Yet, which is the real Oswald?

    “Oswald was not a Communist or a Marxist. If he was, I would have taken violent action against him, and so would many of the other Marines in the unit.” James Bothelo. 

    Two statements. Two conflicting realities. Both cannot be true. So, which one is the illusion? With this, we enter a phase of Oswald’s life that defies explanation—at least if one assumes his Marxist convictions were genuine. His enlistment in the United States Marine Corps (USMC) stands as a glaring contradiction, compounded by the military’s staggering negligence in addressing his overtly pro-Soviet behavior.

    How could a staunch Marxist thrive within the staunchly anti-Communist U.S. military? How was his open admiration for the Soviet Union and Castro’s Cuba tolerated—at the height of the Cold War? And why did none of it trigger the alarm bells that destroyed so many others?

    Some have suggested that the Marine Corps simply viewed Oswald as an eccentric ideologue, dismissing his vocal admiration for the Soviet Union and his praise for Fidel Castro’s revolution as nothing more than a harmless personality quirk. But is that even remotely plausible in the rigid, hyper-vigilant, anti-Communist climate of the 1950s?

    Had Oswald merely harboured private sympathies for leftist ideals, perhaps this argument could be entertained. But that is not what happened. His behavior was neither subtle nor sporadic. He was a Marine who, while actively serving in the U.S. military—a force dedicated to opposing Communism—repeatedly and publicly expressed Marxist ideology, Soviet allegiance, and disdain for American capitalism.

    This is not just an inconsistency—it is a contradiction. And one that requires rigorous scrutiny.

    The Marxist Résumé

    “He must have had a secret clearance to work in the radar center, because that was a minimum requirement for all of us”. John Donovan. (WC Vol VIII; p.298)

    “We all had secret clearances.” Nelson Delgado. (Vol VIII; p.232)

    Below is a documented list of some of Marine Radar Operator Oswald’s openly pro-Soviet activities while serving in the U.S. Marines, under normal Cold War security policies. Any one of these actions should have immediately marked him as a severe national security risk.

    • Openly Studying/Declaring interest in Marxist/Communist Ideology. (WCR; p.388) (Oswald Puzzle; p.57)
    • Declared publicly his support for the Soviet system. (WCR, p.388) 
    • Believed that communism was “the best system in the world”. (WCR, p.686)
    • Gigged by his fellow Marines about “being a Russian spy”. (WC Vol; VIII; p.322)
    • Described by his commanding officer as a “Little nuts on foreign affairs”. (WC Vol VIII; p.290)
    • Complained about the incompetence of the “American Government”. (WC Vol VIII; p.292)
    • Made Remarks About “American Imperialism” and “Exploitation”. (Edward Epstein, Legend; p. 82)
    • Referred to Fellow Marines as “You Americans”. (Ibid)
    • Made serious references to “American Capitalist Warmongers”. (WC Vol; VIII; p. 315)
    • Denounced Capitalism and praised the Soviet economic system to fellow Marines. (WCR; p.868)
    • Nicknamed “Oswaldovich”. (WCR; p.388)
    • Made remarks stating his preference for “The Red Army”. (WC Vol VIII; p.323) (WCR; p.388)
    • Had his name in Russian on one of his jackets. (Vol VIII; p. 316)
    • Played Russian records at extremely loud volume (particularly Tchaikovsky’s “Russian War Dance”) (Ibid)
    • Studied The Russian Language. (WCR; p.388) (Oswald Puzzle; p.55-56)
    • Made remarks in Russian frequently or used expressions such as “da”, “nyet,”or “comrade” to his fellow Marines. (Vol VIII; p. 315) (WCR; p. 686)
    • Read a Russian language newspaper. (Vol. VIII, p. 315-321-292)
    • Read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, which is fundamentally a Marxist work but is also foundational to Communist ideology. (Vol. VIII, p. 254)  
    • Read and subscribed to publications directly linked to the Communist Party USA: The Daily Worker-The People’s World. (Elaborated on later). (WC Vol VIII; p.292-320-323) (Tony Summers Conspiracy; p.147)
    • On February 25, 1959, Oswald sat for a Marine Corps Russian proficiency exam—an event that, in itself, is rather shocking in its improbability. The Oswald Puzzle states that “Oswald may have been motivated by the fact that scoring at certain levels of proficiency would add to his monthly base pay” or “he just wished to test himself” in the Russian language.“ In other words, Oswald—a Marine assigned to anti-aircraft radar operations, with a secret clearance—chooses to take a Russian language proficiency exam.  But it’s not because it had any bearing on his military duties. But either for a small financial bonus or as a personal intellectual challenge. This explanation, however, is so weak that it collapses under even the slightest scrutiny.

     

    The late District Attorney of New Orleans, Jim Garrison, famously ridiculed the absurdity of such a test for someone in Oswald’s position. He noted, “In all my years of military service during WWII and since, I had never taken a test in Russian… I could not recall a single soldier EVER having been required to demonstrate how much Russian he had learned… A soldier genuinely involved in anti-aircraft duty would have about as much use for Russian as a cat would have for pyjamas.” (On The Trail of The Assassins, p. 23). (WCR; p.685) (The Oswald Puzzle; p.56) 

    • Received mail on base suspected to be from the Cuban government. And openly supported Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution.  (WC Vol VIII; p.240-243)

    By any rational metric of Cold War security policy, Oswald’s conduct should have led to:

    1. A full-scale investigation by the USMC and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).
    2. Immediate dishonourable discharge.
    3. Blacklisting from any future government employment.
    4. Court-martial proceedings.
    5. Possible imprisonment for espionage or subversive activities.

    And yet, none of this happened.

    If one attempts to reconcile Oswald’s “radicalism” as nothing more than a mere “personality quirk”, then the U.S. Marine Corps was running the most reckless, incompetent security operation imaginable—hardly consistent with the military ethos of Cold War America. And if The Oswald Puzzle expects us to swallow that narrative, the real scandal isn’t just Oswald—it’s the alarming possibility that other “personality quirks” were freely roaming U.S. military bases, unchecked, with the potential to defect to the Soviet Union.

    Even more alarming, Oswald had access to one of the most sensitive military installations in the world—Atsugi, Japan. This base housed the U-2 spy plane program, one of America’s most closely guarded Cold War secrets. And yet, this proclaimed Marxist, who referred to his fellow Marines as “you Americans,” was reportedly seen strolling around the base, casually taking photographs (Philip Melanson, Spy Saga, p.8).

    Oswald’s Ability to Follow Orders and Authority

    It has often been argued that Oswald’s temperament—frequently characterized as rebellious, defiant, and resistant to authority—would have made him wholly unsuitable for intelligence work. Detractors paint him as a loose cannon, a man who bristled under orders and was incapable of following directives. 

    However, as with so much else in the Oswald enigma, this portrayal is contradicted by testimony on the record. Nelson Delgado testified that;

     “He used to take orders from a few people there without no trouble at all…If he had respect, he would follow, go along with you.” (WC Vol VIII; p262)

    This statement suggests that Oswald’s alleged inability to follow orders was not an intrinsic trait, but rather a selective disposition—he was fully capable of obedience when he deemed it warranted. A quality, one might argue, that could be highly desirable in certain intelligence circles. 

    How Did Oswald Learn Russian?

    The Oswald Puzzle makes the case that Oswald’s Russian proficiency was solely the product of his own self-discipline, a testament to his determination to master the language through solitary study. The book cites various Marines recalling his commitment to learning Russian, as if this alone explains how a young radar operator—without formal instruction—somehow acquired an impressive grasp of one of the most notoriously difficult languages in the world. (The Oswald Puzzle; p.55)

    This argument, however, begins to unravel when faced with a striking omission from the book—a name that should have been central to the discussion but is instead left out entirely: Rosaleen Quinn.

    Quinn was the aunt of Oswald’s fellow Marine, Henry J. Roussel, Jr., and she had a personal stake in learning Russian. She was preparing for a position at the American Embassy in Moscow, which required passing a State Department exam in the language. To achieve this, she undertook a Berlitz course and received formal tutoring for more than a year. (WC Vol. VIII; p.321) (XXIV; p.430)

    At her nephew’s arrangement, Quinn spoke with Oswald one evening for over two hours in Russian. She later recalled that Oswald spoke the language better and more confidently than she did! (Melanson; p.11)

    That revelation alone should be enough to pierce the myth of Oswald as a self-taught Russian student. Here was a woman who had received structured, professional training, yet she found herself outpaced in fluency and confidence by a 19-year-old Marine with no formal instruction.

    It gets even more implausible when we consider the timing. This conversation took place after Oswald had already failed his Russian proficiency test in February 1959. According to The Oswald Puzzle: 

    “Oswald got two more questions right than wrong, however, his overall rating on the test was poor. Oswald scored -5 for “understanding” (listening to spoken Russian) +4 for reading and +3 for writing. Those scores suggest that he had been teaching himself Russian from a book up to that point in time”. (p.56)

    So we are supposed to believe that a man rated as “poor” in Russian just months earlier—who had a negative score in listening comprehension (-5)—could, by the time he spoke with Quinn, outclass a trained Russian speaker? 

    Jim Garrison captured the absurdity of this contradiction perfectly when he wrote: “I am reminded of the man of said his dog was not very intelligent because he could beat him three games out of five when they played chess.” (Garrison, p.22)

    But beyond the numbers, there is an even larger problem. Russian is not an easy language for an American to master, even with professional training. Dr. James Weeks, a professor of modern languages at Southeastern Massachusetts University, taught Russian himself and underwent military language training. He was consulted by researcher Phillip Melanson and was asked whether Oswald’s supposed rate of progress was feasible.

    Weeks stated that attaining Russian fluency requires more than twice as many hours as Spanish or French—1,100 hours or more, including instruction. Weeks opined that the kind of progress described in Oswald’s case would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to attain in such a short time by using only the radio and self-study props. (Melanson, p.12)

    This is not an opinion—it is a fact supported by decades of linguistic research. 

    We must also consider a particularly revealing exchange from the January 27, 1964, executive session of the Warren Commission, in which Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin made a rather curious admission:

    “We are trying to run down to find out what (Oswald) studied at the Monterey School of the Army in the way of languages”. History Matters Archive – January 27, 1964 transcript, pg

    This single sentence raises profound implications. Why was the Warren Commission investigating Oswald’s possible enrolment at Monterey?

    The Monterey School (Defense Language Institute) was not some casual language academy—it was a top-tier training ground for U.S. military and intelligence personnel. Students did not elect their own courses; they were assigned languages based on operational requirements.

    If Oswald had indeed studied at Monterey, this would explain both the speed and depth of his Russian proficiency, as well as why his behavior in the Marine Corps—so outwardly pro-Soviet and politically suspect—never raised alarms within the military establishment.

    The very fact that Rankin and the Warren Commission found it necessary to “run this down” suggests they had reason to believe Oswald’s Russian training was more than just the efforts of a self-motivated Marine flipping through textbooks in his spare time. (Melanson, p.12)

    Click here to read part 2.

  • Fair Play for Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert of the Warren Commission?

    Fair Play for Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert of the Warren Commission?

    Fair Play for Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert of the Warren Commission?

    By Paul Abbott

    The Warren Commission has been undeniably and rightly vilified since its 1964 release up to and including the ultimate counterargument – 2023’s The JFK Assassination Chokeholds. Its Oswald-did-it-and-did-it-alone conclusion seemed to be arrived at first, and then the evidence seemed cherry-picked in order to make that verdict stick. But aside from Commission dissenters like Hale Boggs and Richard Russell, there were others within its ranks who tried to pursue at least a halfway decent investigation into the peripheries of the Lee Oswald orbit. 

    Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin were the two attorneys tasked with leading the Commission’s inquiry into Jack Ruby, which included how he came to kill Oswald. This involved their mobilization to Dallas – between late March to early May of 1964 – to question dozens of witnesses related to Ruby and the Oswald murder. This included employees of Ruby’s and members of the Dallas Police Department who witnessed the Oswald slaying. 

    Reading through witness statements, it was clear that both Hubert and Griffin only pushed so far when it came to scrutinizing the conditions at Dallas City Hall on the morning of 11/24/63. But Griffin did sense a weakness in Sgt. Patrick Dean and his inability to adequately address the question of whether the stairwell door from the Annex Building into the basement car park was locked. Reading that exchange it is clear that Griffin sensed that this was an alternative method of entry for Jack Ruby that morning, and he was calling out Dean for his attempts to deflect away from it. Aside from this episode, Griffin took exception to Dean’s account of how Ruby told him he entered the basement, down the Main Street ramp, just minutes after shooting Oswald. This was done, despite the lack of initial corroboration from fellow DPD personnel or from the Secret Service’s Forrest Sorrels. It all led to Griffin talking to Dean off the record during a break and imploring him to tell the truth – in a blink two times if you’re in trouble kind of way. As Griffin outlined in a subsequent memo to his WC superior, J. Lee Rankin:

    ‘ I told him (Dean) that in the two or three hours that he and I had been talking, I found him to be a likable and personable individual, and that I believed he was a capable and honest police officer… I then stressed that this investigation was of extreme importance to the National Security and that .. if there was some way that he could be induced to come forward with a forthright statement without injuring himself, the Commission would probably be willing to explore a means to afford him the protection that was necessary…’ 

    In response to the way he felt he was treated by Griffin, Dean lodged a complaint with Dallas DA Henry Wade, who conveyed this to the Warren Commission. 

    Griffin and Hubert returned to Washington from Dallas and put forth a case for either a chapter or sub-chapter to be included in the final report by the Warren Commission titled ‘The Killing of Lee Harvey Oswald’. To justify this and the numerous threads they had picked up on Jack Ruby, Griffin, and Hubert tended a report to Rankin for his consideration. It is included as verbatim below:

     

    May 14, 1964

    To:    J. Lee Rankin

    From:   Leon D. Hubert Jr. 
                  Burt W. Griffin

    Subject: Adequacy of Ruby Investigation

    1. Past Recommendations. In memoranda dated February 19, February 23, February 27, and March 11, we make various suggestions for extending the investigation initiated … in connection with the Oswald homicide. Shortly after March 11, 1964, we began preparation for the nearly 60 depositions taken in Dallas during the period March 21 – April 3; after we returned from Dallas we took the deposition of C.L. Crafard (two days) and George Senator (two days), worked on editing the depositions taken in Dallas, and prepared for another series of 30 other depositions taken in Dallas during the period April 13-17. On our return from Dallas, we continued the editing of the Dallas depositions, prepared the Dallas depositions exhibits for publication, and began working on a draft of the report in Area V. As a consequence of all this activity during the period March 11-May 13, we did not press for the conferences and discussions referred to in the attached memoranda. The following represents our view at the time with respect to appropriate further investigation.

    2. General Statement of Areas Not Adequately Investigated. In reporting on the murder of Lee Oswald by Jack Ruby, we must answer or at least advert to these questions:
      1. Why did Ruby kill Oswald;
      2. Was Ruby associated with the assassin of President Kennedy;
      3. Did Ruby have any confederates in the murder of Oswald?

      It is our belief that, although the evidence gathered so far does not show a conspiratorial link between Ruby and Oswald, or between Ruby and others, nevertheless evidence should be secured, if possible, to affirmatively exclude that:

      1. Ruby was indirectly linked through others to Oswald;
      2. Ruby killed Oswald, because of fear; or
      3. Ruby killed Oswald at the suggestion of others.

    3. Summary of Evidence Suggesting Further Investigation. The following facts suggest the necessity of further investigation:
      1. Ruby had time to engage in substantial activities in addition to the management of his Clubs. Ruby’s nightclub business usually occupied no more than five hours of a normal working day…. It was his practice to spend an average of only one hour a day at his Clubs between 10:00 am and 9:00 pm. Our depositions were confined primarily to persons familiar with Ruby’s Club activities. The FBI has thoroughly investigated Ruby’s nightclub operations but does not seem to have pinned down his other business or social activities. The basic materials do make reference to such other activities (see p. 27 of our report of February 18), but these are casual and collateral and were not explored to determine whether they involved any underlying sinister purpose. Nor were they probed in such a manner as to permit a determination as to how much of Ruby’s time they occupied. 
      2. Ruby has always been a person who looked for money-making ‘sidelines.’ In the two months prior to November 22, Ruby supposedly spent considerable time promoting an exercise device known as a ‘twist board.’ The ‘twist board’ was purportedly manufactured by Plastellite Engineering, a Fort Worth manufacturer of oil field equipment which has poor credit references and was the subject of an FBI investigation in 1952. We know of no sales of this item by Ruby; nor do we know if any ‘twist boards’ were manufactured for sale. The possibility remains that the ‘twist board’ was a front for some other illegal enterprise. 
      3. Ruby has long been close to persons pursuing illegal activities. Although Ruby had no known ideological political interests (see p. 35 of our report of February 18), there is much evidence that he was interested in Cuban matters. In early 1959, Ruby inquired concerning the smuggling of persons out of Cuba. He has admitted that, at that time, he negotiated for the sale of jeeps to Castro. In September 1959, Ruby visited Havana at the invitation of Las Vegas racketeer, Louis J. McWillie, who paid Ruby’s expenses for the trip and who was later expelled from Cuba by Castro. McWillie is described by Ralph Paul, Ruby’s business partner, as one of Ruby’s closest friends. Ruby mailed a gun to McWillie in early 1963. In 1961, it was reported that Ruby attended three meetings in Dallas in connection with the sale of arms to Cubans and the smuggling out of refugees. The informant identifies an Ed Brunner as Ruby’s associate in the endeavor. Shortly after his arrest on November 24, Ruby named Fred Brunner as one of his expected attorneys. Brunner did not represent Ruby, however. Insufficient investigation has been conducted to confirm or deny the report about meetings in 1962. When Henry Wade announced to the Press on November 2, 1063, that Oswald was a member of the Free Cuba Committee. Ruby corrected Wade by stating “not the Free Cuba Committee; The Fair Play for Cuba Committee. There is a difference.” The Free Cuba Committee is an existing anti-Castro organization. Earl Ruby, brother of Jack Ruby, sent an unexplained telegram to Havana in April 1962. We believe that a reasonable possibility exists that Ruby maintained a close interest in Cuban affairs to the extent necessary to participate in gun sales or smuggling. 
      4. Bits of evidence link Ruby to others who may have been interested in Cuban affairs. When Ruby’s car was seized on November 24, it contained various right-wing radio scripts issued by H.L. Hunt and a copy of the Wall Street Journal bearing the mailing address of a man who has not yet been identified. In May 1963, Early Ruby, operator of a dry cleaning business, is known to have telephoned the Welch Candy Company (owned by the founder of John Birch Society). The purpose of the call is unknown. Jack Ruby’s personal notebook contained the Massachusetts telephone number and address of Thomas Hill, a former Dallas resident, working at the Boston headquarters of the John Birch Society. Although it is most likely that all of those bits of circumstantial evidence have innocent explanations, more have yet to be explained. 
      5. Although Ruby did not witness the motorcade through Dallas, he may have had a prior interest in the President’s visit. A November 20 edition of the Fort Worth Telegram showing the President’s proposed route through Fort Worth, and the November 20 edition of the Dallas Morning News showing the President’s route through Dallas, were found in Ruby’s car on November 24. 
      6. On November 16 Jack Ruby met at the Carousel Club with Bertha Cheek, sister of Mrs. Earlene Roberts, manager of Lee Oswald’s rooming house. Mrs. Cheek said that she and Ruby discussed her lending Ruby money to open a new nightclub. Ruby was not questioned about this matter. On November 20, 1963, a woman, who may be identical to Earlene Roberts, was reported to be in San Antonio at the time of President Kennedy’s visit. The possible identification of Mrs. Roberts in San Antonio has not been checked out. In addition, the link formed by Mrs. Roberts between Oswald and Ruby is buttressed in some measure by the fact that one of Ruby’s strippers dated a tenant of the Beckley Street rooming house during the tenancy of Lee Oswald. We have previously suggested the theory that Ruby and Mrs. Cheek could have been involved in Cuban arms sales of which Oswald gained knowledge through his efforts to infiltrate the anti-Castro Cubans. Our doubts concerning the real interest of Mrs. Cheek in Jack Ruby stem from the fact that one of her four husbands was a convicted felon and one of her friends was a police officer who married one of Ruby’s strip-tease dancers. We have suggested that Ruby might have killed Oswald out of fear that Oswald might implicate Ruby and his friends, falsely or not in an effort to save his own life. We think that neither Oswald’s Cuban interest in Dallas nor Ruby’s Cuban activities have been adequately explained. 
      7. Ruby made or attempted to make contacts on November 22 and 23 with persons, known and unknown, who could have been co-conspirators. Ruby was visited in Dallas from November 21 to November 24, 1963, by Lawrence Meyers of Chicago. Meyers had visited Ruby two weeks previously. Ruby also made a long-distance call shortly after the President’s death to Alex Gruber in Los Angeles. Gruber had visited Ruby about the same time as Meyers in early November. Both Gruber and Meyers give innocent explanations. Meyers claims he was in Dallas enjoying life with a ‘dumb but accommodating broad.’ Gruber claims Ruby called to say he would not mail a dog that day, as he had promised to do. Finally between 11:35 pm and 12 midnight, Saturday, November 23, Ruby made a series of brief long-distance calls culminating with a call to entertainer Breck Wall at a friend’s house in Galveston. Wall claims Ruby called to compliment him for calling off his (Wall’s)  set at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. Background checks have not been made on these persons.
      8. In fact, we believe that the possibility exists based on evidence already available that Ruby engaged in illegal dealings with Cuban clients who might have had contact with Oswald. The existence of such dealings can only be surmised since the present investigation has not focused on that area. 
      9. We suggest that these matters cannot be left ‘hanging in the air.’ They must either be explored further or a firm decision must be made not to do so, supported by stated reasons for the decision. As a general matter, we think the investigation is deficient in these respects:
        1. Substantial time segments in Ruby’s daily routine from September 26 to November 22 have not been accounted for. 
        2. About 46 persons who saw Ruby from November 22 to November 24 have not been questioned by staff members, although there are FBI reports of interviews with all of these people.
        3. Persons who have been interviewed because of known associations with Ruby generally have not been investigated themselves so that their truthfulness can be evaluated. The FBI reports specifically do not attempt evaluation. The exception has been that where the FBI has been given incriminating evidence against Ruby, it has made further investigation to determine whether others might also be implicated with Ruby. In every case where there was some evidence implicating others, these other persons were interviewed and denied the incriminating allegations. Further investigation has not been undertaken to resolve the conflicts. 
        4. Much of our knowledge of Ruby comes from his friends Andrew Armstrong, Ralph Paul, George Senator, and Larry Crafard. Investigations have not been undertaken to corroborate their claims. 
    4. Specific Investigative Recommendations 
      1. We should obtain photos of all property found on Ruby’s person, in his car, or at his home or clubs, now in possession of the Dallas District Attorney. We already have photos of Ruby’s address books, but no other items have been photographed or delivered to the Commission. These items included H.L. Hunt literature and newspapers mentioned in paragraphs 3d and 3e.
      2. We should conduct staff interviews or take depositions with respect to Ruby’s Cuban activities of the following persons:
        1. Robert Ray McKeown. Ruby contacted McKeown in 1959 in connection with the sale of jeeps to Cuba. The objective of an interview or deposition of McKeown would be to obtain information on possible contacts Ruby would have made after 1959 if his interest in armament sales continued. 
        2. Nancy Perrin. Perrin claims she met with Ruby three times in 1961 concerning refugee smuggling and arms sales. She says she can identify the house in Dallas where meetings took place. Perrin now lives in Boston. Ruby admits he was once interested in the sale of jeeps at least, to Cuba. 
      3. We should obtain reports from the CIA concerning Ruby’s associations. The CIA has been requested to provide reports based on a memorandum delivered to them on March 13, 1964, concerning Ruby’s background including his past Cuban activities, but a reply has not been received as yet. 
      4. We should obtain reports from the FBI based on the requested investigation of allegations suggesting that Earlene Roberts was in San Antonio on November 21.
      5. The Commission should take the testimony of the following persons for the reasons stated:
        1. Hyman Rubenstein, Eva Grant, Earl Ruby. All are siblings of Jack Ruby. Hyman is the oldest child and presumably will be the best witness as to family history. He talked to Jack on November 22, reportedly visited Jack the weekend before the assassination, and participated in Ruby’s twist board venture. Eva lived with Jack for 3 years in California prior to World War II, induced Jack to come to Dallas in 1947, and managed the Vegas Club for Jack in Dallas from 1959 to 1963. Earl was a traveling salesman with Jack from 1942-1943; a business partner from 1946-1947, and made phone calls before November 22, 1963 and afterwards which require explanations.
        2. Henry Wade. This person can testify to the development of the testimony by Sgt. Dean and Det. Archer against Ruby and of seeing Ruby on November 22 in the Police Department building
        3. Jack Ruby
      6. We should take the deposition of the following persons for the reasons stated:
        1. Tom Howard. This person is one of Ruby’s original attorneys and is reported to have been in the police basement a few minutes before Oswald was shot and to have inquired if Oswald had been moved. He filed a writ of habeas corpus for Ruby about one hour after the shooting of Oswald. He could explain these activities and possibly tell us about the Ruby trial. We should have these explanations. 
        2. FBI Agent Hall. This person interviewed Ruby for 2.5 hours on November 24 beginning at approximately 12 noon. His report is contradictory to Sgt. Dean’s trial testimony. He also interviewed Ruby on December 21, 1963.
        3. Seth Kantor. This person was interviewed twice by the FBI and persists in his claim that he saw Ruby at Parkland Hospital shortly before or after the President’s death was announced. Ruby denies that he was ever at Parkland Hospital. We must decide who is telling the truth, for there would be considerable significance if it were concluded that Ruby is lying. Should we make an evaluation without seeing Kantor ourselves?
        4. Bill Dellar. This person claims to have seen Oswald at the Carousel Club prior to November 22, and this rumor perhaps more than any other has been given wide circulation. Should we evaluate Dellar’s credibility solely on the basis of FBI reports?
      7. The FBI should re-interview the following persons for the purposes stated:
        1. Alex Gruber. To obtain personal history to establish original meeting and subsequent contacts with Ruby; to obtain details of the visit to Dallas in November 1963, including where he stayed, how long, who saw him, etc. The FBI should also check its own files on Gruber.
        2. Lawrence Meyers (same as Gruber)
        3. Ken Dowe. (KLIF reporter) To ascertain how he happened to first contact Ruby on November 22 or 23; (Ruby provided information to KLIF concerning the location of Chief Curry), and whether KLIF gave any inducements to Ruby to work for it on the weekend of November 22-24. 
        4. Rabbi Silverman. To establish when Silverman saw Ruby at the Synagogue and obtain names of other persons who may have seen Ruby at the Synagogue on November 22 and 23. Silverman states that he saw Ruby at the 8 pm service on November 22 and the 9 am service on November 23; but both of these services lasted at least two hours and we do not know whether Ruby was present for the entire service. Silverman (and others) could ‘place’ Ruby, or fail to do so, during critical hours. 
        5. Mickey Ryan (same as Gruber plus employment in Dallas.)
        6. Breck Wall. This person was an entertainer at the Adolphus Hotel, Dallas, at the time of President Kennedy’s assassination. Ruby called him in Galveston at 11:47 pm on Saturday, November 23, 1963. He also visited Ruby at the County Jail. A background check should be conducted as to this person. 
        7. Andrew Armstrong, Bruce Carlin, Karen Bennett Carlin, Curtis Laverne Crafard, Ralph Paul, George Senator. These persons were deposed at length because of their friendship with Ruby, familiarity with Ruby’s personal and business life, and contacts with Ruby on November 22, 23, and 24. In general, each has professed to have had no knowledge of Ruby’s activities during those three days.

          Andrew Armstrong was very active in the operation of the Carousel and worked closely with Ruby for 18 months. His deposition covers Ruby’s activities and emotional state generally and particularly several hours on November 22 and 23. A background check should be conducted as to this person and selected parts of his testimony should be checked out to test his veracity.

          Karen and Bruce Carlin were the recipients of a $25 money order bought by Ruby approximately 9 minutes before Ruby shot Oswald. Marguerite Oswald testified that she believed she knew Karen Carlin. Background checks should be conducted on the Carlins.

          Crafard fled Dallas unexpectedly on Saturday morning November 23. Although we tend to believe his explanation, we believe a background check on him plus verification of some of his activities on November 23 are warranted.

          Paul is Ruby’s business partner. A background check should be conducted as to him, and his telephone calls during November should be checked out.

          George Senator, Ruby’s roommate, alleged by Crafard to be a homosexual, claims not to have seen Ruby except at their apartment Sunday morning and for a few hours early Saturday morning. The senator’s background and own admitted activities on November 22, 23, and 24 should be verified. 

    5. Other areas of Ruby Investigation which are not complete.
      1. Various rumors link Ruby which do not appear to be true; however, the materials we have are not sufficient to discredit them satisfactorily. Such rumors include: 
        1. Communist associations of Ruby
        2. Oswald’s use of a Cadillac believed to belong to Ruby;
        3. After the depositions of Nancy Perrin, Robert McKeown, and Syliva Odio have been taken, further investigation may be necessary with respect to Ruby’s Cuban associations. 
      2. Ruby’s notebooks contain numerous names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Many of these persons have either not been located or deny knowing Ruby. We believe further investigation is appropriate in some instances; however, we have not yet evaluated the reports now on hand. 
      3. We have no expert evidence as to Ruby’s mental condition; however, we will obtain transcripts of the psychiatric testimony at the Ruby trial. 
    6. Other Investigative Suggestions. We have suggested in earlier memoranda that two sources of evidentiary material have been virtually ignored:  
      1. Radio, TV, and movie recordings. Two Dallas radio stations tape-recorded every minute of air time on November 22, 23, and 24. We have obtained these radio tapes for all except a portion of November 24, and the tapes included a number of interviews with key witnesses in the Oswald area. In addition, the tapes shed considerable light on the manner in which Dallas public officials and federal agents conducted the investigation and performed in public view. We believe that similar video tapes and movie films should be obtained from NBC, CBS, ABC, UPI, and Movietone News, and relevant portions should be reviewed by staff members. Wherever witnesses appear on these films who have been considered by the Commission in preparing its report, a copy of such witnesses’ appearance should be made a part of the Commission records by introducing them in evidence. If one person were directed to superintend and organize this effort, we believe it could be done without unreasonable expenditures of Commission time and money. 
      2. Hotel and motel registrations, airline passenger manifests, and Emigration and Immigration records. Copies of Dallas hotel and motel registrations and airline manifests to and from Dallas should be obtained for the period October 1, 1963, to January 1, 1964. We believe that these records may provide a useful tool as new evidence develops after the Commission submits its report. We do not suggest these records necessarily be examined by the Commission staff at the present time. But, for example, it is likely that in the future, persons will come forward who will claim to have been in Dallas during the critical period and will claim to have important information. These records may serve to confirm or refute their claims. 

       

      LHHubert/smh

      Cc: Mr. Hubert

    So what of the people that Griffin and Hubert referred to in their memo? Below are those that had already testified to them in Dallas in April 1964:

    • Earlene Roberts – Oswald’s landlady in Oct & Nov ’63: was not asked about linkage to Jack Ruby through her sister, Bertha Cheek.
    • Bertha Cheek – friend of Jack Ruby and sister of Earlene Roberts: testified about investment dealings with Jack Ruby. Brief acknowledgment only that her sister was Oswald’s landlady on 11/22.
    • George Senator – Jack Ruby’s friend and roommate: testified to his friendship with Ruby, business dealings of Ruby’s and his (Ruby’s movements) across the weekend of 11/22.
    • Andrew Armstrong – employee of Jack Ruby’s: testified to Ruby’s personality, running of Carousel Club, and Ruby’s movements across weekend of 11/22.
    • Larry Crafard – employee of Jack Ruby’s who left Dallas suddenly on 11/23: testified to being employed by Ruby and his volatility.
    • Ralph Paul – business associate of Jack Ruby: testified about Ruby’s historic and current business dealings. 
    • Karen Carlin – employee of Jack Ruby: testified about Ruby’s management of the Carousel Club and Ruby’s movements across the weekend of 11/22.
    • Bruce Carlin – husband of Karen Carlin: testified about Ruby’ and Ruby’s movement across the weekend of 11/22.

    Of the people highlighted as being of further interest to Griffin and Hubert in their memo, only the people below were subsequently interviewed by the Warren Commission:

    • Henry Wade – District Attorney for Dallas: he doggedly defended Sgt. Pat Dean
    • Lawrence Meyers – friend of Jack Ruby: gave insight into Ruby’s business dealings in Dallas and his (Ruby’s) adoration for JFK
    • Nancy Perrin Rich – former employee of Jack Ruby: focused on Ruby’s volatility and links to DPD 
    • Hyman Rubenstein – Jack Ruby’s older brother: testified about Ruby’s family upbringing, Jack Ruby’s volatility, and business dealings leading up to and in Dallas
    • Earl Ruby – Jack Ruby’s younger brother: also testified about Ruby family upbringing, Jack Ruby’s volatility, business dealings leading up to and in Dallas plus handling of Ruby’s defense for shooting Oswald
    • Eva Grant – Jack Ruby’s older sister: testified on Ruby’s upbringing, Dallas business, and contact with him on weekend of 11/22.
    • FBI agent who first interrogated Ruby after the Oswald shooting: testified to the conversation that he had with Ruby at Dallas City Hall on 11/24 that didn’t include any reference by Ruby as to how he entered the basement.

    It is interesting to note in particular that Ruby’s first attorney after the Oswald slaying, Tom Howard, was also referred to as a figure of interest for Griffin and Hubert but did not testify before the Warren Commission. Howard would die suddenly in 1965, therefore he remains a mysterious figure in the grand scheme of things because:

    –  he was present in the City Hall basement when Oswald was shot

    –  it was only after Howard first spoke with Ruby a few hours later, that Ruby was first actually documented–by Forrest Sorrels– as disclosing how he entered the basement down the Main Street ramp. 

    –  and he was one of three people out of five who met at Ruby’s apartment on the night of 11/24 and would later die under sudden and mysterious circumstances.

    We have the benefit of 60 years to reflect on Griffin and Hubert’s position in May of 1964, some 4 months prior to the release of the Warren Report. As such, we know that:

    –  Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert were not allowed to return to Dallas to conduct the next round of witness depositions there. That said, they did still carry out depositions on witnesses before the Warren Commission, only they took place in Washington D.C., clearly under the close watch of the Warren Commission hierarchy.

    –  In response to his treatment by Griffin and some suspicion in some sectors of the media, Patrick Dean lodged a request to Police Chief Jesse Curry to carry out a lie detector test. This was granted but despite being allowed to write his own questions to answer, Dean failed the test. 

    • Subsequently, the Warren Commission was never told that the test took place, and therefore its results. When the House Select Committee on Assassinations found out about Dean’s failed test during its investigation 14 years later there was no trace of it to be found. 

    –  Dean was flown to Washington D.C. and received a personal assurance by Earl Warren, in the presence of Allen Dulles and J. Lee Rankin, that no member of the Commission has the right to accuse any witness of lying or falsely testifying. In short, Dean got a pass from the highest level of the Warren Commission.

    –  There was no dedicated chapter to the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald – just a section within an existing chapter. 

    –  There was no acknowledgment or further pursuit of the leads Griffin and Hubert had inferred regarding Ruby’s links to:

    • Cuban gunrunning in the late 50’s, 
    • subsequent anti-Castro Cuban associations 
    • dealings in narcotics

    –  Ruby pled for the Warren Commission to take him to Washington so he could safely reveal all he knew. 

    What this all reinforces is that the fix really was in when it came to how deep the Warren Commission investigators would be allowed to dig and how far-raising leads could be pursued. So, in effect, it not only did its best to cement Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole assassin of President Kennedy, but it also basically plied the same on Jack Ruby – only he was cast as the police-loving, shady nightclub owner who killed Oswald on his own impulsive volition. 

    Was there anything more to Ruby’s own sudden demise in early 1967 after he had been granted a retrial outside of Texas? 

    Who knows? There may be some answers to the Oswald / Ruby aspect in the remaining JFK Files.

    (Paul Abbott is the author of the book Death to Justice: The Shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald.)

  • Clint Hill Passes

    The only Secret Service agent who tried to act in the face of a crossfire has passed on, agent and author Clint Hill is dead.  Read more.

  • Sky News Australia Interview of Jim DiEugenio

    Sky News Australia Interview of Jim DiEugenio

    Please watch the interview here.

    The SkyNews.com.au show notes are available here.

    Interview Transcript

    Well, it won’t be long until the world finally knows the truth about former US President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

    Last month, President Trump signed an executive order to declassify the secret files on JFK’s 1963 death.

    Since then, the head of the task force that’s aimed at exposing federal secrets, Anna Paulina Luna, has declared that from what she’s seen so far, she believes the single bullet theory is faulty.

    She believes there were two shooters involved.

    Our first investigation will be announced, but it’s going to be covering on a thorough investigation into the John F. Kennedy assassination.

    And I can tell you, based on what I’ve been seeing so far, the initial hearing that was actually held here in Congress was actually faulty in the single bullet theory.

    I believe that there were two shooters.

    And we should be finding more information as we are able to gain access into the SCIF, hopefully before the files are actually released to the public.

    Now, most Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

    So what has been hidden away for decades that we’re all about to find out when the JFK files are released?

    James DiEugenio is considered one of the best writers and researchers in America on JFK’s assassination.

    He’s written multiple books on the subject, including co-author of the JFK assassination chokeholds that prove there was a conspiracy.

    And he joins us on Power Hour now.

    James, thank you for joining us.

    We heard Anna Paulina Luna claim that she believes there were two shooters.

    That’s a conclusion, I believe, that you’ve come to as well.

    Can you talk to us about the evidence that support this?

    Yeah, well, I think it’s really good that she’s going to reopen this.

    And I think Trump signing that executive order was another really good thing.

    As per the belief that there was more than one shooter, there’s a Pruder film which shows Kennedy rocketing backwards when Oswald was supposed to actually be shooting from behind him.

    There’s the 42 witnesses at Parkland Hospital and at Bethesda at the morgue who did the autopsy that night who say that there was a big baseball-sized hole in the back of Kennedy’s head, which is strongly indicative of a shot from the front.

    All right?

    There’s also the fact that there was no sectioning of either wound.

    There was no dissecting of either wound, either the back wound or the head wound, to see if it was a through-and-through shot, if it did actually penetrate the body.

    There’s all this kind of evidence out there today that was not public back in 1963, which indicates that there was more than one assassin.

    And she’s correct.

    The Warren Commission report was, to put it mildly, you know, rather faulty.

    The Warren Commission determined in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

    How did it get it so wrong?

    Well, there’s a lot of reasons why the Warren Commission report was faulty.

    You know, one of them was that they relied almost – about 80 percent of their work was based upon the work of the FBI.

    And the FBI, of course, did not do a very thorough investigation.

    To put it mildly, you know, J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI, was not in really friendly terms with Bobby Kennedy, who was at that time was about to resign.

    But he was the attorney general, all right?

    And if you recall, you know, this is very interesting.

    That weekend, Kennedy was killed on a Friday.

    That weekend, J. Edgar Hoover went to the racetrack.

    In other words, he didn’t even come into work on Saturday.

    He actually went to the racetrack with his second-in-command, Clyde Tolson.

    So it was not, you know – again, I’m being mild – it was not a very thorough investigation by the FBI for a lot of different reasons.

    Why has some of these files been kept secret for so long?

    The FBI says it’s discovered now 2,400 new documents related to JFK’s assassination.

    What are you expecting from them?

    You know, I’m really glad you brought this up because those 2,400 documents that the FBI has just found, those were not even previously reported.

    You know, everything was supposed to be declassified by 94 to 98 by the review board.

    Apparently, they didn’t even know about these documents.

    I think we’re going to find out a lot more about Oswald in New Orleans, and I think we’re going to learn something about Oswald’s reported visit to Mexico City, which was about in late September, early October of 1963, all right?

    And he was, of course, in New Orleans that summer before going to Mexico City.

    Oswald was, to put it mildly, a very, very interesting character, which the Warren Commission never even scraped the surface of, all right?

    Most people today who have studied this case don’t believe the Warren Commission verdict about him being a communist, all right?

    They think he was some kind of low-level intelligence agent.

    What do you make of the assessments that are out there?

    There are a few that it was a foreign adversary, the mafia, or the CIA.

    You know, seeing a lot of the theories that are exposed and all the research and investigating that you’ve done, what’s your assessment of them?

    I think that the most logical conclusion today, and that which most people who have researched this case believe, that it was kind of like a triangular kind of a plot involving the Central Intelligence Agency at one point, the Cuban exiles at another point.

    And then when Oswald was not killed the day of the assassination, the CIA brought in his ally that has organized crime, you know, who they have been trying to knock off Castro before.

    And they brought in the mafia to go ahead and send Jack Ruby in to silence Oswald.

    Donald Trump promised that he would declassify the files during his first term, but he was visited by the CIA, the FBI, I should say, the FBI, and was told by Mark Pompeo not to open them.

    Why do you think he delayed opening up the files?

    You know, that’s a very interesting question, because a week or so before, Trump had tweeted that I’m looking forward, you know, to declassifying the last of the JFK documents.

    Then the very day he was supposed to do this, he’s visited by the CIA and the FBI, and he backs out of it.

    Now, according to his talk with Andrew Napolitano, he said words of the effect that if they would have shown you what they showed me, you wouldn’t have done it either.

    And Andrew said, who is they, and what was it they showed you?

    Okay, you know, and then Trump said, well, next time I talk to you, and there’s not 15 people around, I’ll tell you what that meant.

    You know, so he’s never explained exactly what it was, all right, that gave him pause.

    The implication is that it didn’t look very good for the Warren Commission, you know, but we don’t really know that.

    But the fact that they both went in there on the last day, and they warned him not to do it, I think that’s a very, very revealing kind of situation.

    Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it?

    It just makes you wonder why the truth was covered up for so long.

    And do you think that trust will be restored in the government when these files are made public?

    Well, I’m sure you’re aware of this. 65% of the public does not believe the official story on the JFK assassination.

    And a lot of social scientists believe that the lack of the belief in government today, which is very low, and the lack of the belief in the media, which is almost as low.

    A lot of them attribute this to the 1963-1964 events.

    You know, they trace the fall of the belief in government and the media because it began in 1964 when the Warren Commission report was first issued.

    And it was so vigorously defended by the mainstream media in the United States.

    And this includes CBS, NBC, and the New York Times.

    So hopefully we’ll get some restoration of this when all these files are finally out there in the open.

    And perhaps when Representative Luna’s investigation takes place in an open environment.

    One of the worst things about the Warren Commission is that it was a closed, all closed hearings.

    You know, so this contributed to the cynicism about their verdict.

    It’s interesting you bring up the media.

    I wanted to get your assessment on what role the mainstream media really played in covering up the truth, I suppose.

    You know, has it been frustrating for you hearing a narrative on repeat that’s possibly not the truth?

    It’s always been my belief that the main obstruction between the American public and the truth about the JFK case is what is termed today the mainstream media.

    Because from the very beginning, you know, from the very beginning, 1963 and 1964, the mainstream media was out there, okay, defending the Warren Commission verdict.

    To give you one very good example, in the fall of 1964, on the day the Warren Commission report was issued, both NBC and CBS broadcast shows endorsing its verdict.

    Now, Gabriella, the Warren Commission report is 888 pages long.

    How could you possibly read that many pages in one day and then report its contents without even referring to the evidence behind it?

    Because that wasn’t released until a month later.

    And this is what I think, I believe, that has contributed to this air of cynicism about the media.

    They’re reporting on something they couldn’t fact check.

    It would be impossible to fact check it.

    It’s interesting, you know, you’re expecting quite a bit from these files.

    Do you think there’s, as you say, 65% of Americans don’t believe that the Warren Commission got it right?

    Is there going to be much in here that’s going to shock us?

    You know, I really, I wish I could say one way or the other, but since I’m supposed to be a responsible kind of a person, without reading this stuff, you know, I can’t really say that.

    Now, I do know people have gone down to Washington, like Andrew Iler, okay, and a lawyer from Canada.

    And he told me that a lot of these closed files deal with Oswald and Mexico City.

    And let me add one last thing about this subject.

    The review board, which expired in 1998, made what is called a final determination on all the documents that they saw, which means that they all should have been declassified in October of 2017.

    If the agency made a final determination, that’s what that means.

    So the question is, why are we here in 2025 still debating about these documents that should have been declassified almost eight years ago?

    This is what gives people an air of cynicism and skepticism about this case.

    Absolutely.

    Look, when we do finally get the truth, what does this mean for RFK Jr., for the whole Kennedy family?

    Well, that’s a very good question also.

    Bobby Kennedy Sr., okay, never believed the official story.

    And as his son, Robert Kennedy Jr., he has never believed the official story about what happened to his uncle.

    And I think that when all this stuff comes out, finally,  you know, they’re going to both be vindicated on this subject.

    Also, I should say one other thing, and this isn’t commonly known.

    John F. Kennedy Jr., JFK’s only son, never believed the official story either.

    And according to an old girlfriend of his that doesn’t like to talk about it, but she does write letters, you know, one of his goals was to enter the political arena and try to find justice for what really happened to his father.

    Now, that’s a very interesting story, which I believe is largely true, that very few people know about.

    Yeah, well, absolutely.

    It’ll be really interesting to see what happens, and importantly for that family.

    The task force aimed at exposing federal secrets is also going to investigate the assassinations of RFK and MLK.

    It’s also going to look at the Epstein client list, the origins of COVID-19, UFOs, the 9-11 files.

    There’s so much that we’re going to learn about.

    What are you expecting from these other cases?

    You know, I thought that was really interesting.

    You know, there’s such a thing as picking up too much that you can carry.

    You know, that’s a lot of very serious cases for one committee to go into.

    You know, can you possibly do justice?

    I think it’s seven or eight cases to all those things.

    You know, but if they do, you know, and if they do find that something is faulty every place, well, then this really gives questions about, A, the mainstream media, and also our American historians, who seem to have been afraid to go into all the details about all of these cases, which the MLK, RFK, and JFK cases were really instrumental in what happened to America in the 60s.

    There would have been no Vietnam War if those three men had lived, which means about 58,000 Americans would be alive today and about 3 million Vietnamese.

    So there’s a whole change, a shift in the historical focus if those three people were killed by conspiracies.

    Where we are today in 2025, we are finally getting some truth, more transparency.

    Do you have faith going forward about the government in the U.S.?

    Do you expect there could be other instances being covered up in the future?

    Well, you know, it depends a lot on this congressional committee.

    You know, if these things are done in the open, and if they’re done with the best information that we have, and the committee members are really honest about their job, I think it might have a significant impact, you know, going forward.

    And I think it’ll be interesting to watch this.

    And, Gabrielle, I think one thing to look for is how much pressure from the outside is put on this committee.

    Because the MSM has a lot to lose if she comes out of the gate really swinging strong.

    Okay.

    Their credibility is going to be on the line.

    So that will be a very interesting tell about how that committee is going to deal with the pressures from the outside.

    They really don’t want this to happen.

    James DiEugenio, thank you so much for your time.

    How can we stay up to date with your work?

    Okay.

    I’m at kennedysandking.com.

    That’s my website.

    And I have a sub-stack under my name also.

    So that’s how you can read the most current information in this case.

    Thank you very much for having me on.

    Really appreciate you coming on the program.

    We’ll speak to you again soon.

    Okay.

    Bye-bye.

  • The Death of Tippit – Part 3

    The Death of Tippit – Part 3

    The Death of Tippit – Part 3

    By John Washburn

    My prior articles covered unusual movements of particular police officers in the period up to the death of Tippit and the 20 or so minutes immediately afterward. 

    The focus of this article is whether those officers also display peculiarities in the period up to and including the arrest of Oswald at the Theater.

    THE MOBIL GARAGE AT 10TH AND BECKLEY

    In my William Mentzel article, I gave a reason why Tippit would drive from Top Ten Records to E 10th Street via Sunset Avenue rather than the more obvious route via West 10th.  I deduced that because the Sunset route was the route Louis Cortinas said he took to get from Top Ten Records to the Tippit murder scene at 400 block E10th, on hearing of the shooting there. The route via Sunset would avoid the traffic lights at W 10th Street and Zang Boulevard. Those at Top Ten Records who saw Tippit leave there said he left at speed, hence it follows that Tippit would also have gone for the fastest route.

    I posited that he rendezvoused with Mentzel at E 10th and Beckley at 1:07 pm before then setting off to an ambush further east along E 10th approximately two minutes later. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-missing-calls-of-officer-mentzel-pt-1]

    The testimony of Officer Hutson (credit to Education Forum member Steve Thomas) reveals that there was a Mobil gas station at 10th and Beckley. This map shows the current site.

    WashburnTippit3 1

    Notes to map

    *The red dotted line is the route Louis Cortinas took from Top Ten Records (green spot) after he heard Tippit had been shot.

    “M” is the red site of the Mobil gas station. 

    The yellow dotted line is the Lansing alley, which runs parallel with E 10th and Jefferson.

    The blue spot is Beckley and Jefferson, where – per CE 2645 – Mentzel said he was after Tippit was shot. 

    The blue spot is also where Hawkins, Hutson and Baggett were, heading towards the Texas Theater before officers were alerted to go there by radio call at 1:45 pm. 

    The peach colored spot is where Sgt. Jerry Hill placed himself in his radio call at 1:21 pm, Twelfth and Beckley. 

    The purple spot is Hardy’s Shoe Store, where the fugitive was seen before purportedly entering the Texas Theater at approximately 1:45 pm. 

    HUTSON, HAWKINS AND BAGGETT

    The testimony of Officer Hutson (Vol VII p 26)  was taken at 9:00 am April 3, 1963 by Counsel Belin. Hutson said that he arrived at that gas station with officers Hawkins and Baggett. Hutson said the other two officers got out of the car to make a landline call and were inside the premises when the alarm regarding a suspect at the Marsalis Library came over the patrol radio. Hutson said he sounded the siren to get their attention. That event occurred at approximately 1:30 pm.

    Hutson had appeared in my prior article because his Warren Commission testimony contradicted Reserve Sgt. Croy’s description of traffic conditions on Main Street. Hutson’s testimony set out how he, as a three-wheel motorcycle patrol officer, hitched a car ride with Hawkins and Baggett after he’d arrived in Oak Cliff. He did that as his clutch had burnt out.

    Hutson’s testimony indicates that he arrived at the 400 block of E Jefferson sometime before 1:30 pm and then went to the Mobil location with Hawkins and Baggett from where he heard the library call (which turned out to be a false alarm) on patrol radio at 1:30 pm. 

    Hutson’s testimony also indicates there may be calls missing from the tape and transcripts. He said, “I believe they gave us a call for us to call. I mean, their number to call in.” 

    No such calls remain on transcribed tapes. 

    Contrast that with Officer Hawkins, who omitted any mention of the Mobil incident. His testimony (WC Vol VII, p. 91) was taken at 9:50 am on 3 April 1963 by Counsel Ball.  I set out the relevant extract so as to convey the lack of precision in his movements and the glaring omission of the incident at the Mobil Garage.

    Mr. BALL. Tell me, did you receive any instructions as to what to do?

    Mr. HAWKINS. No, sir, I did not.

    They called—I heard a citizen come in on the radio and state that an officer had been shot, and it looked like he was dead.

    We had just finished the accident at this time, and I was driving an officer, Baggett, and I proceeded to Oak Cliff to the general vicinity of the call after checking out with the dispatcher, stating that we were proceeding in that direction.

    We arrived in Oak Cliff, and there were several squads in the general vicinity of where the shooting had occurred- different stories had come out that the person was- the suspect had been seen in the immediate vicinity.

    Mr. BALL. Did you go to 10th and Patton?

    Mr. HAWKINS. We drove by 10th and Patton—we didn’t stop at the location.

    Mr. BALL. What did you do then?

    Mr. HAWKINS.  We circled the vicinity around Jefferson and Marsalis and in that area, talking to several people on the street, asking if they had seen anyone running up the alley or running down the street, and then they received a call, or I believe Officer Walker put out a call that he had just seen a white man running to the Oak Cliff Library, at which time we proceeded to this location. Officer Hutson had gotten into the car with us when we arrived in Oak Cliff, and there were three of us in the squad car- Officer Baggett, Officer Hutson, and myself.

    Mr. BALL. Hutson is also a patrolman?

    Mr. HAWKINS. Yes, sir.

    Mr. BALL. A uniformed patrolman?

    Mr. HAWKINS. Yes, sir; he is a three-wheel officer. We went to the library, and this turned out to be an employee of the library who had heard of the news and was apparently running in the library to tell the other employees there.

    We then, after this checked out, we then continued circling in the area around 10th and Patton and Marsalis and Jefferson.

    We then heard on the police radio that a suspicious person was at the TexasTheatre, and at this time, we proceeded to the theatre.

    Ball – one of the more challenging of all counsel – would not have been aware of this omission because Hawkins’ testimony was taken in the same hour with different counsel.

    Hawkins, referring to ‘circle[d] the vicinity of Marsalis and Jefferson’, which is where the library was, avoids the fact he’d been half a mile west at the gas station and that Hutson had to set off the siren to get him out of the shop  

    Hawkins’ actions also need to be seen in the light of the call he put out on Channel 2, DPD time 1:30 pm. Bear in mind that there is no reference to Westbrook directly or indirectly before this call on either Channel 1 or 2.

    221 (Patrolmen R. HAWKINS and E. R. BAGGETT) Can you give Captain WESTBROOK any information as to where he was shot?

    Dispatcher (Henslee). Repeat. 

    221 (Patrolmen R. HAWKINS and E. R. BAGGETT) Can you give Captain WESTBROOK any information as to where this happened?

    Dispatcher (Henslee). In the 400 block of East 10th near Patton.

    15 (Captain C. E. TALBERT). Did you say he was DOA (Dead On Arrival) at Methodist?

    The wording indicates Hawkins was with Westbrook in person to make that call on his behalf. But Hawkins’ question is extraordinary given that Westbrook, by his Warren Testimony, already knew the location where Tippit was shot. It had been on patrol radio, and Owens drove him there. Hawkins also knew the location. He’d been to 10th and Patton and drove by the murder scene.

    The dispatcher seems to have done a double take. The first question, “where was he shot” could be interpreted as was he “shot in the head”?  But the rephrasing the second time around, “where this happened,” removed such ambiguity.  

    Hawkins should have wondered why he had to ask the same question twice. As we shall see, Hawkins is also a person of interest as he handcuffed Oswald on arrest. 

    It is not possible to ascertain whether by 1:30 pm, Channel 2 DPD time was in step with real time or Channel 1’s still tampered time. However, there is a benchmark. 

    Both Channels had a command to cut sirens on Hines Boulevard. The odd Westbrook call was a minute before that. The library call – where Hutson places them at Mobil – was a minute after the Hines call. That odd call on Channel 2, therefore, times as approximately 1:28 pm, which fits with Westbrook’s second arrival in Oak Cliff.

    To recap on the calls that were on Channel 1.

    1:29     The Hines cut sirens call.

    1:30     CT Walker. “223, he’s in the library at Jefferson — east 500 block Marsalis and Jefferson”. That is the time Hutson, Hawkins, and Baggett were at the Mobil gas station, 10th and Beckley.

    1:31     Owens. “We’re all at the library”.

    1:35     Westbrook (550) made a call “What officer have you got commanding this area over here where this officer was shot?” area over here where this officer was shot?” Then Owens and others return to 410 E 10th. There is then more WFAA-TV (Reiland) footage, which showed Westbook, Poe, Owens, and Croy examining a wallet at the scene. 

    Westbrook testified that after the library incident, he was in the vicinity of Crawford Street and Storey Street. Those locations are, respectively, two blocks and one block from the Mobil gas station. He gave the Warren Commission no clear reason why he would have been there. 

    Mr. BALL. Now, you came from the library—where is that library?

    Mr. WESTBROOK. The library is at Marsalis and Jefferson, sir. It must be here on Turner Plaza, right here.

    Mr. BALL. You drove west on Jefferson, did you?

    Mr. WESTBROOK. We drove west on Jefferson.

    Mr. BALL. And you got out of the car where?

    Mr. WESTBROOK. We got out of the car about here [indicating].

    Mr. BALL. At what street?

    Mr. WESTBROOK. It was between two streets, and I would say it was between this Storey and Crawford.

    Mr. BALL. Why did you get out of the car at that time?

    Mr. WESTBROOK. Just more or less searching- just no particular reason- just searching the area.

    Mr. BALL. You were just looking around to see what you could see?

    Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes, and at this time, I had a shotgun—I had borrowed a shotgun from a patrolman.

    Mr. BALL. Where did you go when you got out of the car?

    Mr. WESTBROOK. I walked through, and this is a car lot or a parking area, right along in here, and I don’t know whether I am wrong on my location or not, but I think I’m right.

    SUMMARY

    Summarising all of that in order to try to make some sense of it. 

    Westbrook arrived in Oak Cliff twice. The first time, he arrived with Owens. He then went back to the Depository, returning in Car 207. On his second arrival in an unmarked car, he made contact with Hawkins, and at approximately 1:28 pm, he asked Hawkins to put out a call on Channel 2, which gave the impression this was his first arrival in Oak Cliff. 

    Hawkins then went to the Mobil gas station and made a landline call. Westbrook was then in the area towards the Mobil gas station. Thereafter, Westbrook was present for the discovery of a planted wallet at the Tippit murder scene, and then Westbrook also discovered a jacket.

    Westbrook later tried to cover up the finding of the jacket and the wallet. Hawkins covered up making a call from the Mobil garage and placed himself six blocks away to the east. 

    WESTBROOK, THE JACKET, and WALLET

    Westbrook’s subterfuge is betrayed by the Reiland TV film (the wallet) and the submission to the Warren Commission regarding the jacket. As Henry Hurt so ably pointed out, this jacket had two laundry marks on it.  The FBI visited over 700 establishments in Dallas and New Orleans.  They could not find one that could match either mark. (Reasonable Doubt, p. 151) Further, the FBI could not find any other article of Oswald’s clothing with a laundry or dry-cleaning mark. As Hurt also notes, the Commission made no mention of the extensive –and failed- FBI effort to find a match.  In a real investigation, Westbrook would have been pointedly interrogated about this lacuna.

    The evidence would seem to suggest a situation whereby Hawkins, Westbrook, and others were communicating to put the final phase of the original plan in place. As many have theorized, the plan being the elimination of Oswald at the Texas Theater; after the appearance of a decoy to give the impression that Oswald had arrived on his own shortly before his arrest.  Were that the intended plan, then there would be the unexpected difficulty of more officers being in the area due to the impromptu killing of Tippit, and the decoy being on the run from the Tippit murder scene.

    An operation like that would require two things. A group of accomplice officers would need to be the first to arrive at the Texas Theater, to secure the decoy and deal with Oswald. Meanwhile, other officers would need to be distracted to go elsewhere by false alarms. 

    There is support for both in the evidence. 

    From Hutson’s testimony:

    Mr. Hutson. Yes, sir. Then, we left that location as we were proceeding west on East Jefferson, and as we approached the 100 block of East Jefferson, the radio dispatcher said that a suspect had just entered the Texas Theater.

    The 100 block of E Jefferson was just two blocks east of the Theater, which was in the 200 block of W Jefferson. East and West Jefferson meet at Beckley. That indicates Hawkins was already headed west towards the Texas Theater before the radio dispatch call at 1:45 pm made it a place of interest. 

    However, Hawkins said of that,

    We then heard on the police radio that a suspicious person was at the Texas Theatre, and at this time we proceeded to the theatre.”

    Hawkins omitted that he was headed towards the Texas Theater, before the call on police radio.  

    NO FUGITIVE BUT FALSE ALARMS

    There were also false alarms. It is relevant which officers made those false alarms. 

    For the fugitive – by the Warren Commission version of events – to have got to the Texas Theater on foot, he would have had to cross the six lanes of Zang Boulevard and the four lanes of Beckley Avenue. Either crossing would be conspicuous. Also, something Commission zealots do not like to admit, the distance from 10th and Patton to the theatre is significantly less than from the Beckley boarding house to the Tippit murder scene. It was possible to get there in 10-11 minutes.

    Assistant Counsel Liebeler commented on that. 

    “Then I was surprised to learn that the police radio did not send out information about the suspect being in the Texas Theater until 1:45, about 30 minutes after the police first learned of the Tippit killing from Benavides over Tippit’s radio. What were Oswald and Brewer doing during this 30 minutes? Oswald was strangely inactive during this period, considering all that he had done in the 45 minutes following the assassination.”

    Let us speculate: a reason for the lack of detection in that half hour because the fugitive was being held safely – in a vehicle – before the final part of the tableau was played out?

    Altogether, there were four false alarms directing police to the east and north of the Tippit murder scene, away from Beckley and Zang. Each false alarm was made by a person of interest, and as covered later, each person was one of the early arrivals at the theater.

    1. The furniture stores in 400 block E Jefferson, the alarm led by Hill,
    2. Officer McDonald put out a call telling people to go to the (Abundant Life) Church at E10th and Crawford, 
    3. CT Walker put out an announcement that the fugitive was in the Library at Marsalis and Jefferson. 
    4. At approximately 1:40 pm, Westbrook (using 550) put out an announcement: 550: …and work to North Jefferson. We’ve got a witness that seen him go north.

    BACK TO MENTZEL

    Despite Tippit being shot in Mentzel’s district 91, Mentzel himself made no declaration on the radio of where he was until after Oswald was arrested.

    Until the Texas Theater (west of Beckley and Zang) became a point of interest after 1:40 pm, it’s difficult to see why Mentzel would – legitimately – stay away from the area of action, which was east of Beckley and Zang. 

    Mentzel didn’t play an overt role in the arrest of Oswald, but he was in the vicinity of the theater. That’s apparent because after Oswald was arrested, Mentzel offered, over patrol radio, to deal with the car CT Walker had left behind at the theater. Walker having got into the car which carried Oswald to City Hall.

    Again, let us speculate: could the purpose of Hill’s call “12th and Beckley” have been to signal to confederates that the fugitive had been picked up safely? 12thand Beckley was 250 yards from Hardy’s Shoe Store, 213 W Jefferson, two blocks north and one block west. Was Mentzel harboring the fugitive, having rendezvoused with Hill?

    But prior to that, in my Mentzel article, there was a gap in my assumption as to the form of a trigger that could have caused Tippit to head east at the right time after a rendezvous with Mentzel. The “right time” being after the components of the ambush were in place.

    I had deduced that Tippit was taking landline instruction from the phone at Top Ten Records, on East Jefferson.  Tippit merely needed to listen rather than saying anything.  This was at approximately 1:00 pm, departing two or three minutes later at speed. 

    Mentzel, per CE 2645, was talking on the landline at Luby’s Cafeteria, also on E Jefferson, a short distance to the west of Top Ten Records. I assumed a rendezvous at the 10th and Beckley (the Mobil Gas station) as that would account for several things.  

    Firstly, why did Tippit leave Top Ten at speed only to then drive slowly along E 10th to his demise? The inference I drew was that he may have gotten new instructions by a rendezvous.

    Secondly, Edgar Tippit, the victim’s father,  told author Joe McBride that an officer–all but certain Mentzel–was working with his son during Tippit’s last minutes alive. (McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 427-30) Both men were a short distance apart at Top Ten and Luby’s, close enough for a simple rendezvous.

    However, if the objective was to get Tippit to 10th and Beckley as a trap, then Mentzel would hardly be able to walk up to Tippit to say, “let’s go to E10th and Beckley”. The fact that there was a landline at the gas station at E 10th and Beckley ameliorates the problem. Mentzel, or possibly Tippit himself, would have been able to make a landline call from there, and that would have been the trigger for Tippit to head east.

    Mentzel’s story that he was using the landline at Luby’s to get through to DPD HQ provided some cover for his having been seen using that landline.  Similarly, Mentzel’s statement in CE 2645 that he was cruising in the area of Zang and W10th would give a degree of cover if it were to come out he’d been seen at the gas station on Beckley and E10th (those two locations are 150 yards apart). 

    WHY DID TOP TEN ONLY EMERGE IN 1981?

    The story regarding Tippit and Top Ten records didn’t come out until Earl Golz wrote about it in 1981. Some Dallas police officers must have known about Tippit and Top Ten. Louis Cortinas said he drove straight to the Tippit murder scene on hearing on the radio he had been shot. It would be apparent to him that he’d been one of the last people to see Tippit alive. Wouldn’t he have reported that at the scene?

    But this memorandum from 3 December 1963 was sent by Carl Walters, a clerk to the Warren Commission, to the FBI Special Agent in Charge, Dallas Office. It concerns a phone call from a “John D Whitten” stating that Oswald was seen in Top Ten Records the morning of the assassination.

    WashburnTippit3 2

    The Memorandum has the annotation “No Action – Oswald was at work all morning 11/22/63”. 

    So, Top Ten Records was a place of interest in December 1963, and that memorandum provided evidence that Oswald was impersonated on the morning of the assassinations at a place in proximity to the Texas Theater. I return to this point later since there is also evidence that police officers searched the Texas Theater on the morning of the assassination. 

    Interestingly, a John Whitten was a CIA officer assigned by CIA Director Richard Helms to review the CIA records on Oswald. Was he the source of the information? There is no – local – John Whitten in the Dallas City Directory for 1963. Researcher Bill Simpich thinks it is.

    Whitten’s preliminary finding that Oswald acted alone was delivered by Helms to President Lyndon Johnson the day Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby, 24 November 1963 [https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/WhatJaneRomanSaid/WhatJaneRomanSaid_5.htm]

    Whitten continued the investigation with a staff of 30. On December 6, Whitten read an FBI report on Oswald showing that the FBI had information about Oswald’s links with pro-Castro Cuban groups, which neither the FBI nor Helms had communicated to his investigation. He complained to Helms and James Angleton that this information rendered his initial conclusion “completely irrelevant”.

    Helms took the investigation away from Whitten and handed it to Jim Angleton.

    Whitten testified to the HSCA in 1979 that as soon as he learned he had been denied key files on Oswald, he complained to Helms. That was around Christmas time 1963. 

    Whitten was never promoted again and took off to Vienna in self-imposed exile.  According to Jeff Morley, he became a singer.

    THE ARREST – THE OFFICERS ENTERING THE TEXAS THEATER

    A document for the FBI, written by James Bookhout, of 30 November 1963 states that Officers CT Walker, Hutson, McDonald and Hawkins were in on the arrest of Oswald.[https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/9/4607/7460709/content/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/mcdonald_m_n/mcdonald_m_n.pdf]

    But Westbrook put himself there by his own account, as did Hill.

    CT Walker on 2 December 1963 said [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth339462/] he entered with Hutson and McDonald but omitted Hawkins. 

    Hawkins on 2 December 1963 said  [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338399/m1/1/] he entered with Hutson, McDonald, and CT Walker.

    McDonald on 3 December 1963 said [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340009/] he entered with “three others”. 

    Hutson on 3 December 1963 said [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338138/m1/1/] he entered with Hawkins and CT Walker but omitted McDonald.

    By the time of their Warren Commission testimonies, there were some changes to what these people said. Only CT Walker said the same as in December 1963. McDonald named three officers and said he entered with CT Walker, Hutson and Hawkins. Hutson again said he had entered with Hawkins but clarified that CT Walker and McDonald were joining them on the floor of the theater.  Hutson’s testimony is clearly articulated, internally consistent, and consistent with radio. It undermines those superior officers, displaying a pattern of inconsistent accounts. 

    Jerry Hill, in his 5 December 1963 statement, stated [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337082/m1/1/] that he entered the front of the theater with Agent Bob Apple (there was no Warren testimony for Apple to check against). He immediately went to the balcony. Hill said Captain Talbert was there and asked if the roof had been checked. In that statement, Hill also said that the radio message that a suspect was in the theater came out at 1:55 pm. However, that call was, in fact, at 1:45 pm, and even the tampered DPD tape had corrected the time by then. 

    McDonald said 2:00 pm was the time of entering the Texas Theater. That’s wrong – the time of entry was 1:50 pm. By 2:00 pm, Oswald was already being taken to City Hall. CT Walker said the 1:45 pm radio call was at 2:00 pm. Hawkins and Stringer were silent on the time. 

    Contrast that with the 3 December 1963 statement of Hutson, who correctly puts the time of the 1:45 pm call as 1:45 pm. 

    For Hill, McDonald, and CT Walker to all be adding 10-15 minutes to the real time is consistent with parties adding time to make the time of Tippit’s shooting appear later than it was. But in so doing, they did not realize that there would later be transcripts where the time stamps would synchronise with real time.  Because by 1:45 pm, those events were publicly verifiable. 

    Making matters worse for Hill, McDonald, and CT Walker, is the fact that the three-quarter hour of 1:45 pm is a pretty easy time to remember.

    HUTSON PULLED A GUN

    Back to Hutson’s testimony, which said: [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338138/]

    Mr. Hutson. Yes, sir. Then, we left that location as we were proceeding west on East Jefferson, and as we approached the 100 block of East Jefferson, the radio dispatcher said that a suspect had just entered the Texas Theatre.

    …then……

    Mr. HUTSON. We pulled up to this location, and I was the first out of the car to hit the ground. As I walked up to the fire exit doors, Officers Hawkins and Baggett were getting out of the car, and the door to the theater opened, and this unknown white male was exiting. I drew my pistol and put it on him and told him to put up his hands and not to make a move, and he was real nervous and scared and said: “I am not the one. I just came back to open the door. I work up the street at the shoe store, and Julia sent me back to open the door so you could get in.” I walked up and searched him briefly, and I could see by the description and his clothes that he wasn’t the person we were looking for. Then I entered the theater from this door, and Officer Hawkins with me, and Officer Baggett stayed behind to cover the fire exit door. We walked down the bottom floor of the theater, and I was joined there by Officer Walker by me, and as we walked up the north aisle from the center section, I observed Officer McDonald walking up the south aisle from the center section, and we observed two suspects sitting near the front in the center section.

    Mr. BELIN. You were on the right center or the left center?

    Mr. HUTSON. I was on the left center.

    Mr. BELIN. That would be the left center,

    Hutson testified at 9:00 pm on April 3, 1964. CT Walker testified on the same day at 1:30 pm. Both of these testimonies were taken by Belin. The timing of those testimonies is relevant. Belin asked Walker whether anyone drew a gun on entry. But Walker, despite claiming to have entered with Hutson, only referred to himself as having a gun. 

    McDonald testified that he drove to the front of the theater and then walked to the rear of the theatre, where he met Hutson, Hawkins, and CT Walker. But McDonald too failed to mention the incident of the pulling of the gun. 

    That indicates that only Hutson and Hawkins initially entered the theater, but CT Walker and McDonald for some reason pretended that they’d entered at the same time. 

    WESTBROOK

    Westbrook’s discrepancies were again legion. He said to the Warren Commission and in a report dated 3 December 1963 [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338798/] that he, Stringer, and FBI Agent Barrett (there was no Warren testimony for either of those two) went in a squad car with an unknown officer driving to the rear alley of the theater. Westbrook failed to mention Hutson and the gun incident with the shoe shop employee Brewer. Westbrook also said that there were two or three cars at the rear. But Hawkin’s 1:47 pm radio message said that there were five cars at the rear. 

    Barrett, on November 23, 1963, filed an FBI report. [page 3: https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/9/4607/7460709/content/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/mcdonald_m_n/mcdonald_m_n.pdf] He refers to entering via the front and made no reference to Westbrook.

    Ewell said that Westbrook drove him to the front of the theater with Stringer in an unmarked car.

    However, Sgt. Stringer, on 3 December 1963, said that he was questioning a boy in the 100 block of S Patton with an officer when the alert at the Texas Theater came through. And that officers Hawkins and Baggett drove him to the alley at the rear of the theater. [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337160/m1/1/]

    Stringer lied. Firstly, he was not at South Patton the minute before the Texas Theater call came through. He was on Crawford Street putting out the message on the radio regarding the examination of the jacket. Second, he did not arrive with Bagget and Hawkins; Hutson did. Third, he made no mention of Hutson pulling the gun on the person who opened the theater rear door.

    By that, Westbrook and Stringer were both lying about the method of arrival and the point of entry. No one else supports either of their accounts other than Hawkins. Who, by the time of his Warren Commission testimony, had changed his December story to add Westbrook.

    “Mr. BALL. Where did you park?

    Mr. HAWKINS. I parked my squad car in the alley at the rear of the theater.

    Mr. BALL. Then, what did you do? 

    Mr. HAWKINS. Officer-I believe Officer McDonald was at the back door at the time, and Officer Hutson and Captain Westbrook and Officer Walker and myself went in the rear door. All went to the rear door, and at this time we saw a white male there and began talking to him and he identified himself as being the manager of a shoe store next door and that he was the person who had noted the suspicious acting on the suspect, and he at that time was brought into the rear of the theater and on the stage.” 

    To summarize: Hawkins had put out a strange call for Westbrook and then made a land-line call from the Mobil garage at 10th and Beckley at 1:30 pm. Hawkins’ car was the closest to the theater at the time of the 1:45 pm call, already heading towards it. CT Walker and McDonald were in the theater very soon after (or possibly before, via the front). Westbrook was pretending he had entered the back of the theater, avoiding the fact he’d driven and parked at the front. All of those irregularities indicate that there was more going on than merely the arrest of Oswald. 

    A HYPOTHESIS

    It might be that certain officers – all of whom later lied on one matter or other – did not need to rely on the message on patrol radio that a person had entered the Texas Theater if they already knew what was to happen next.

    Those officers were Westbrook, McDonald, Hill, CT Walker, and Hawkins. Four of whom had issued false alarms, and one had made a landline call from the Mobil gas station.

    That then takes us back to the proposition that there were two persons of interest in the Texas Theater. Oswald, who–according to employee Butch Burroughs–had been there from just after 1 pm on the first floor; and the decoy, who entered at about 1:40 pm and went to the balcony. With that, Oswald was taken out of the front, the other out the back. 

    Is there further evidence for this hypothesis? Yes. The choreography of officer movements and the layout of the theater are relevant.

    THE BALCONY, DOWNSTAIRS, THE FRONT AND THE BACK

    The first radio reports had the suspect being in the balcony of the Texas Theater. Butch Burroughs said Oswald was in the theater from just after 1:00 pm. Bernard Haire said an Oswald lookalike was taken out of the back. Officer Stringfellow filed a report saying Oswald was arrested in the balcony.

    The balcony of the Texas Theater was accessed from stairs at the front of the Jefferson Street foyer, or by an external fire exit in the alley at the rear. The main floor of the theater was accessed either from the main doors at the back of the foyer or ground level fire exits opening to the alley at the rear. It was also possible to get from the outside front to the outside back, and vice versa, via an outside tunnel alley. 

    It is not disputed that Oswald was arrested on the first floor and left via the front. But if the fugitive was in the balcony and taken out via the back, the question is who went up there to deal with that and who assisted with that person being taken out the back.

    Hill admitted he went in via the front and up to the balcony. Westbrook seems to have covered up that he, too, entered via the front. McDonald seems to have parked at the front, and then either gone in via the front entrance, or used the rear entrance via the tunnel alley. 

    Hutson’s testimony reveals an odd command from Westbrook:

    Mr. HUTSON. The gun was taken from the suspect’s hand by Officer McDonald and somebody else. I couldn’t say exactly. They were all in on the struggle, and Officer Hawkins, in other words, he simultaneously, we decided to handcuff him. We had restrained him after the pistol was taken, but he was still resisting arrest, and we stood him up and I let go of his neck at this time and took hold of his right arm and attempted to bring it back behind him, and Officer Hawkins and Walker and myself attempted to handcuff him. At this time, Sgt. Jerry Hill came up and assisted as we were handcuffing. Then Captain Westbrook came in and gave the order to get him out of here as fast as you can and don’t let anybody see him, and he was rushed out of the theater. I was in the row of seats behind. I saw Officer Walker and Sgt. Jerry Hill had hold of him, and that is the last I ever saw him. 

    As emphasized: Why would Westbrook say, “don’t let anybody see him”? That order was not obeyed for Oswald. Oswald was seen and filmed leaving the front of the theater. Did Hutson overhear Westbrook referring to a second person who would be taken out the back?

    But before dealing with that, another question arises. Why did the Theater staff not inform the audience and shut for the day once it was apparent the President had been shot and was dead? Wouldn’t such an outcome be a risk to any plan to make the theater the place for Oswald’s arrest?

    The testimony of Julie Postal, the ticket seller, has points of interest regarding that theory:

    Mrs. POSTAL. No, sir; I was looking up, as I say, when the cars passed, as you know, they make a tremendous noise, and he ducked in as my boss went that way to get in his car.

    Mr. BALL. Who is your boss?

    Mrs. POSTAL. Mr. John A. Callahan.

    Mr. BALL. Where did you say he was?

    Mrs. POSTAL. Yes; I say, they bypassed each other, actually, the man ducked in this way, and my employer went thataway, to get in his car.

    By that, Callahan, who managed the theater, not only didn’t shut the theater, but got in his car after Postal purportedly saw someone “duck in”.  Elsewhere, she had denied seeing someone duck in herself, but here she said he passed Callahan. That oddity can’t be dismissed as just her observation. Detective LT Cunningham said:

    We were questioning a young man who was sitting on the stairs in the balcony when the manager told us the suspect was on the first floor. (Report to Chief J. E. Curry 12/03/63)

    Detective John B. Toney said: There was a young man sitting near the top of the stairs, and we ascertained from manager on duty that this subject had been in the theater since about 12:05 PM. (Report to Chief J. E. Curry 12/03/63)

    However, Julia Postal testified that the Theater opened at 12:45 pm. The “manager” can’t have been Butch Burroughs, he wasn’t the manager, and he said he saw no one that early. (Jim Marrs, Crossfire, pp. 353-54) 

    Greg Parker has published some background to the ownership of the Texas Theater [https://gregrparker.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Texas-Theatre-mysteries-5-1.pdf?595453&595453] which links Callahan and the theater ownership to right-wing interests. Why would Callahan absent himself from the scene of a major event, which had caused his staff to call the police, at precisely the point it was heating up?

    LAURA KITTRELL

    Laura Kittrell was a Texas Employee Commission employee who had interviewed Oswald in connection with his seeking work in October 1962 and again in October 1963.

    She gave a dossier of evidence to the HSCA, “the Kittrell manuscript”. The handwritten notes at the beginning are transcribed in type towards the end [https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/sightings-of-lho-oct.-1963/687524?item=687528].

    Kittrell’s father, William Henderson Kittrell, had been secretary of the Democratic Executive Committee of Texas, and she took 22 November 1963 off work to attend the Kennedy lunch at the Trade Mart. She said when she returned to her office the following week, her files had been taken by the FBI. She said that all the records relating to her interviews with Oswald in October 1963 were omitted from the Warren Commission report.

    Kittrell thereafter took an interest in the assassination and interviewed Tom Bowden, the former caretaker of the Texas Theater, in 1976. He told her something remarkable: that on the morning of the assassination, police officers searched the theater. (See page 166 of the dossier). 

    The dossier also shows how Kittrell’s interest was active well before the Warren Commission had reported. 

    A Department of Justice Attorney, Barefoot Sanders, sent information from Kittrell to Warren Commission Counsels Jenner and Liebeler on April 9, 1964, stating, “I enclose a message of some length which I had the Secret Service pick up from Miss Laura Kittrell. Since this seems to concern an area of inquiry of the Commission in which you two are interested, I am forwarding it to you for your consideration and perusal” (page 5 of the dossier).

    The dossier shows she wrote to J Edgar Hoover, and that on December  26, 1963, she wrote to Senator Robert Kennedy. She wrote to Robert Kennedy again on June 4, 1965, in frustration that she had not been called to testify for the Warren Commission. Her letter to Kennedy was sent from his office to Hoover, who wrote to Kennedy on August 27, 1965, stating, “there is some question as to her emotional stability”. 

    Hoover’s response also casts doubt as to whether she had contact with the Secret Service. But the letter from Barefoot Sanders confirms that she had. 

    The attachment Sanders sent is missing from the dossier. The letter from Hoover downplays her father’s political connections. But page 156 of the dossier shows Earl Golz of the Dallas Morning News stating that the father was prominent and had been acquainted with Roosevelt, Truman, and John F Kennedy. The effect of Hoover’s inaccurate letter to Robert Kennedy was to cast doubt on Kittrell and throw him off the scent. The Warren Commission files do not have a file for Kittrell. Kittrell said that the first person she met in October 1962 was Oswald but that the second person she met in October 1963 didn’t have the same bearing (page 166 of the dossier). 

    She said that Oswald himself on  October 4, 1962 “looked very military as neat as a pin” and was “trim, energetic, compact and well-knitted” but the second person she saw on 22 October 1963 behaved badly and said he was “a trifling, shirtless, good-for-nothing lout who sprawled oafishly over his chair”. She was trained in asking questions to identify potential Social Security fraud.

    As Kittrell’s interest can be pinned with certainty as early as December 1963, then her statements and interest cannot be put down to ‘conspiracy theories’ that grew as a result of the Warren Commission report. The report wasn’t published until September 1964. 

    Kittrell said that the first Oswald in 1962 was the person all now know as Oswald. She said he had taken an aptitude test twice and on the verbal reasoning part of that test scored 126 and 127. She said that was the level expected from a college graduate, as the normal range was 100-120.

    Kittrell also noted that Oswald’s second child was born on 20th October 1963. She stated that it was quite strange for him to be at the Employment Commission on 22nd October 1963, given that plus the fact he already had a job at the Depository. She, therefore, suspected fraud of some kind. 

    BURT GRIFFIN AND CRAFARD

    That all indicates that at some time before 9 April 1964, Kittrell had independently reached the same conclusion as some Commission staff. What was it?

    A memo from Burt Griffin to staff, March 13, 1964, stated that Laverne “Larry Crafard” was one of four persons who they suspected might be impersonating Oswald. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination]

    The dossier contains an FBI document dated  August 17, 1965 (page 37 of the dossier), which summarizes the issues. That document states that Kittrell later saw a photograph of Crafard in the Warren Commission papers, and she said he was the person she had interviewed as “Oswald” in October 1963.  It was Counsel Jenner who had asked Ruth Paine on March 20, 1964 (Vol III  p 94) whether Oswald resembled Crafard, and she said he did. 

    Further, the Commission Staff note of March 10, 1964, had specifically asked for questioning regarding any discrepancies in the appearance and habits of Oswald at 1026 N Beckley and at Mary Bledsoe’s house (see my earlier article)

    [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/mary-bledsoe-and-the-bus-part-2]

    Especially relevant is the Commission staff giving attention to Crafard being a possible decoy for the set-up of Oswald. But not calling Kittrell to the stand. The dossier shows that Kittrell was asked by the person she interviewed in October 1963 if she had visited the State Fair. She said no. Crafard told the FBI that he came to Dallas with the State Fair on 15 October 1963 and was a roustabout for a side show. (Crafard Exhibit 5226, Warren Commission, [https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Crafard_Ex_5226.pdf] ). If it was Crafard, did he ask that question to ensure she would not remember seeing him in that role?

    If what Kittrell said is true, then she would indicate two things.

    Firstly, Crafard–as the Commission suspected–was impersonating Oswald in Dallas in November 1963. 

    Secondly, on the morning of 22 November 1963, the manager of the Texas Theater was in some way made aware of the police using his building for some purpose later in the day.

    Overall, Kittrell’s actions and attention would make redundant any plan to involve her in painting a story of an unstable Oswald.  She would be a woman who not only wasn’t duped but was dangerous.

    PUTTNG IT ALL TOGETHER

    The evidence I have set strongly suggests a group of police officers involved in the planned assassination of Kennedy involving:

    • getaway operations, as set out in earlier articles,
    • safe movement of Oswald in a Rambler to the Texas Theater (likely assisted by Officer Nelson),
    • staking out the Texas Theater (Mentzel),
    • evidence planting at the depository (led by Hill).

    That was supplemented by a decoy operation which involved the Marsalis bus. Otherwise, why single it out? That element of the operation was supposed to involve Tippit who, as with the other patrol officers, was under the command of Sgt. Hugh Davis. 

    A plan to have Oswald portrayed as a decoy lone assassin – who would be eliminated at the Texas Theater having been duped – would require another decoy. Oswald would carry the risk of absconding if he made his own way to the Texas Theater, if he figured what was really happening. But securing Oswald’s passage by chaperoning him goes against a lone nut narrative. That is why a second decoy would be needed to give the appearance that Oswald had made his own way to the Theater, via 1026 N Beckley, walking and on public transport. 

    The purpose of visiting 1026 N Beckley would be to explain how ‘Oswald’ had managed to acquire a jacket (having left the Depository without one) as well as a pistol. 

    I posit that the Texas Theater operation was supposed to involve Tippit, Mentzel and McDonald, (all under the command of Sgt. Davis), CT Walker and Hawkins (both traffic division). Walker, like Mentzel, was in the area of Oak Cliff at the time of the assassination of Kennedy, near E Jefferson and E10th. Captain Westbrook had the seniority to be the center of co-ordinated corruption of the DPD for that plan. 

    The successful operation in Dallas may have been a back-up “off the shelf” operation for the prior unexecuted plans to assassinate Kennedy in Chicago on November 2, 1963, and in Tampa on November 18, 1963. The other two may also have been dress rehearsals for the successful attempt in Dallas.

    Per Exhibit 5002, Hill was not formally allocated to Westbrook’s bureau for November. But Hill was working out of Westbrook’s office. Was Hill’s role one of shifting the allocation of officers and leaning on officers to participate?

    If Tippit had turned mid-operation, then he would have become a liability to everyone else involved. From 12:30 pm, everyone with any involvement would be guilty of conspiracy to assassinate the President. It would follow that Westbrook would have to go along with and organise an operation to improvise and associate the decoy with the ambush of Tippit. Hutson not going along with that is more evidence that he was not a confederate. Was his chance presence in Hawkins’ car – due to his burned-out clutch – and thence his presence for the arrest of Oswald a factor in Oswald not being killed in the Texas Theater? 

    Indeed, was the absence of Tippit also a problem? If his role was protecting the decoy on the way to the theater, then it would follow that he would be the right person to deal with the decoy at the theater. According to work done by Bill Drennas, Tippit himself was seen at Top Ten Records on the morning of the assassinations. [https://www.jfk-assassination.net/top10.htm]

    If Oswald had been killed at the Theater, then there would have been no TV coverage of him saying he was a “patsy”. There would have been no identity parades. Jack Ruby would not have needed to kill him. Jack Ruby’s role would have been invisible. So would Larry Crafard’s presence in Dallas. 

    What is certain is that Hutson’s presence in Hawkins’ car has enabled us to observe that Hawkins was lying. Just as Owens’ evidence shows that Croy, Hill, and Westbrook were lying, too.

    WHERE WAS DAVIS?

    In addition to that, there is a missing officer to consider, Sgt. Hugh Davis. CE 2645 says: 

    “On May 27, 1964. HUGH F. DAVIS, Sergeant, Dallas, Texas, Police Department, advised that on November 22, 1963, he was the supervising sergeant assigned to Districts 80 and 90, of Platoon 2, which was working the 7:00 am to 3:00 pm. shift that month. Sergeant DAVIS advised he recalled at the time of the assassination call he was driving Unit Number 179, an unmarked car, and was dispatched thereafter to the Texas School Book Depository at Elm and Houston Streets, where he remained until 3:45 P.M. that afternoon. Sergeant DAVIS advised that the course of his travels took him nowhere near 1026 North Beckley in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.”

    The reference to Districts 80 and 90 omitted that Davis had – by the testimony of Owens – taken over control of Tippit (District 78). There is a further discrepancy concerning the command and supervision of southwest Dallas that day. That is apparent from a study of the patrol district numbers and call sign system.

    Southwest Dallas comprised patrol districts 71-99, Downtown 101-119, Northwest 21-39, and Northeast 41-69. Call signs that ended in zero, being 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, were for supervisory use for the next 9 numbers. So, call sign 70 would be the supervisor for 71-79 districts, etc. There were no districts 00 to 09 or 11 to 19. Those were used for senior officers higher up the chain of command. Because Owens replaced southwest Dallas Lieutenant Fulgham, Owens was allocated call sign 19. 

    Call sign 70 was allocated to Sgt Samuel E Varner, reported in CE 5002 as in “Special Enforcement Detail”. 80 was allocated to Sgt Hugh Davis. 90 wasn’t allocated that day as Davis was in overt control of 81-89 and 91-99. 

    Therefore, by that system, Sgt. Varner (70) was in supervisory charge of districts 71-79, hence Tippit (78). Sgt. Owens (19) was in commanding charge of Varner and Davis.

    Looking back to what Owens said to the FBI on 20 May 1963. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination]

    “Sergeant OWENS advised he could not furnish any information as to when or how TIPPIT’s assignment from District 78 had been changed as he, OWENS, had gone to lunch and had not returned during the time that TIPPIT’s assignment had been changed.”

    Owens then stated that Tippit’s command (78) changed to the same command as Angell (81). That was the command of Davis. 

    Varner makes no impact on the patrol radio tapes. Varner also has no mention in CE2645. By what Owens said and the absence of Varner in any patrol radio traffic, it seems Davis took supervisory control over all of southwest Dallas, 70s, 80s, and 90s. On the basis that Davis was in charge of so many officers, one would expect a radio presence from him. 

    Davis (80) said “Clear” at 12:38 pm. There is then a call to 80 (Davis) at 12:42 pm, 80 says “80 Code 5,” which is en route. That call is missing from all transcripts, including the independent Shearer/Kimball transcript. That call was 30 seconds before Angell announced he was “still Lansing and 8th”. There is then no message from Davis for the rest of the day. 

    The next mention of Davis is from Owens at 1:42 pm, who asked, “is 80 in service?”. Despatch then called “80”, Owens then said “think he was called to Elm and Central. We need somebody to notify the officer’s wife”. There are then no more calls to, from, or about Davis. 

    Hence, Davis was invisible from 12:42 pm (by what remains on the tapes). That is extraordinary given what was going on in Southwest Dallas and given he had supervisory control of all officers there, including the one who was shot. 

    The matter of contacting a dead officer’s wife isn’t trivial. So why would someone supervising an out-of-the-ordinary number of patrol officers be incommunicado at the Depository? Was Davis, being the covert commander of Tippit, the person Tippit wished to meet face to face after he left Gloco, heading down Lancaster at speed?  Was this who Mentzel was communicating with?

    If Westbrook and Hill set up the decoy element of the ambush of Tippit, then someone would have likely been setting up the killing itself. Witnesses at the murder scene said that Tippit behaved as if he knew the person who shot him. Could it have been someone on the force like policeman Harry Olsen? (McBride, p.584 ) The drive from Olsen’s house-guarding location near Lansing and 8th to the murder scene was just 500 yards via the Lansing alley.

    The positions of Lewis (35) and Parker (56) also require similar analysis to the above. There was no supervisor with call sign 50, which is who Parker should have been accountable to. Sgt. Putnam (60), as a possible substitute for 50 was allocated to other duties.

    Bearing in mind that Parker was supposed to be 20 miles away in Garland, northeast Dallas, it is odd that immediately after the radio blackout at 12:30 pm, the Dispatcher asked at 12:33 pm, “Anyone know where 56 is?” That is not an obvious priority question given that the President had just been shot in Downtown Dallas. Making matters worse, when Parker did reply at 12:44 pm, he said he was at “East Jefferson”. Far out of the district and in Southwest Dallas.

    Childon (30) would have been in supervisory control of Lewis, but he had no presence on the radio. That could be explained by the fact that the 31-39 patrol districts contained both the Trade Mart (the intended location for Kennedy’s luncheon speech) and Love Field Airport. The patrolling of Northwest and Downtown Dallas was understandably distracted by the visit of Kennedy. Southwest Dallas was not..

    I have previously concluded that the Dispatcher Murray Jackson cannot have made the 12:45 pm radio call to Tippit and Nelson. This order sent Tippit to an area in Oak Cliff that was far away from where he was supposed to be.  It also sent patrolman Roger Nelson there, but he never arrived.  The order was not on the first transcript sent to the Warren Commission, which left the question: what was TIppit doing so far out of his area? I also conclude that there were so many irregularities regarding out-of-position officers and silent officers that Jackson could not have been unaware of them all.

    Why did Jackson not question why there were so many discrepancies occurring in the 71-99 patrol districts of southwest Dallas? That being the part of Dallas with no exposure to any part of the planned Kennedy visit and motorcade. Those were discrepancies which occurred before the assassination of Kennedy, and then before, as well as after, the assassination of Tippit. 

    Warren Commission apologists tend to take all police officer evidence as fact and then discredit the inconvenient evidence of those ordinary members of the public who contradicted the Warren Commission line. 

    But any version of events that doesn’t take account of Tippit’s changed command, his actual locations, the lies of particular police officers, as well as tampered tapes will never get close to the truth. 

    Click here to read part 1.

  • Cuba 1960 and Lansdale’s Playbook

    Cuba 1960 and Lansdale’s Playbook

    CUBA 1960 and LANSDALE’S PLAYBOOK

    By: Paul Bleau

    Introduction

    The CIA executive action program, code-named ZR RIFLE  ZRRIFLE, was in full display by mid-1960 in plans to remove Castro.  This was one year before William Harvey perfected it.

    The CIA tapped into regime change expertise from its Far East resources, who developed a strategy to devise an assassination attempt on Castro that would be blamed on Chinese Communists. This approach had been used successfully in the Far East and would be enacted for the eventual assassination of the Cuban leader JFK, according to most researchers.

    The 1960 plan involved CIA officers Desmond Fitzgerald, JC King, James Noel, and likely Ed Lansdale and David Phillips, who operated out of Cuba in 1959-60. The stratagem of blaming Chinese Communists may have been linked to American interests in the Far East. Most observers believe that by 1963, there was a shift to putting the blame squarely on the Soviets and Cubans for the assassination of JFK. While this focus was intensive, we may ask ourselves if the 1960 plot may have resurfaced as a contingency plan.

    In 1964, when Lyndon Johnson and the U.S. war machine were itching for its full-fledged military entry into the Vietnam arena, the U.S. fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident false reports of Vietnamese attacks on U.S. destroyers. Was there also a belated attempt to try and factor the Chinese into a conspiracy that eliminated JFK? 

    While the following December 1963 CIA file did not gather much interest, it is one of a number that began circulating right after the assassination 104-10308-10320 ATTRIBUTION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S ASSASSINATION TO AN ALLEGED CHICOM/CASTRO PLOT. In it, details are planted around Chinese and Castro sympathizers backing a plot, with funding received at an unidentified Wall Street Bank. Two individuals (Ramon Cortes and Inu Fernandez) are fingered as intermediaries present in Dallas and possibly being involved. (For more on Cortes, see State Secret -Chapter 6, Bill Simpich).

    Were there to be links between these two and Oswald? Was there some sort of tactic being contemplated here to help bolster motivation for a conflict on the other side of the world? We may never know the answers to these questions- it was sometime in early December 1963 that the CIA and Ambassador Thomas Mann in Mexico received their marching orders from Hoover and LBJ to stop arguing in favor of a Castro connection to a murder plot. In 1966, Mafioso Johnny Rosselli, who was the link between the mafia and the CIA in a partnership to eliminate Castro, said the following:  

    The last of the sniper teams dispatched by Robert Kennedy in 1963 to assassinate Fidel Castro was captured in Havana. Under torture, they broke and confessed to being sponsored by the CIA and the US government. At that point, Castro remarked that, ‘If that was the way President Kennedy wanted it, Cuba could engage in the same tactics’. The result was that Castro infiltrated teams of snipers into the US to kill Kennedy. 

    Roselli’s propensity to talk too much is what likely got him killed, chopped up, and put in a drum that was found floating in Dumfoundling Bay. Roselli was certainly wrong about Castro leading the operation; in fact, the super secret CIA Inspector General report on the plots was written to correct errors in his story. Rosselli may have been right about who some of JFK’s shooters were. He certainly was spot on about the tactics that were used if one considers the following CIA execution plan:

    File 104-10315-10011

    BleauCuba1

    This document is as explicit as it can get when it comes to directly evoking the use of the ZRRIFLE executive action program for the removal of Fidel Castro. Thrown right in the reader’s face is the subject of the Dispatch: “Proposed operation to have the Chinese Communists suspected of an assassination attempt.”

    There is a lot to unpack in this planned false flag:

    1. The record can be found at the Mary Ferrell Foundation: Title: DISPATCH: PROPOSED OPERATION TO HAVE CHINESE COMMUNISTS SUSPECTED OF ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT Pages: 2 Agency: CIA RIF#: 104-10315-10011 Subjects: ANTICASTRO PLOT 
    2. It is dated July 8, 1960, and is about a topic brought up on June 25, 1960
    3. It comes from the Chief of the Far East Division (Desmond Fitzgerald), sent to the chief of the Western Hemisphere Division (J.C. King), who relays it to the Chief of Station in Havana (James Noel)
    4. The subject is very straightforward: LCHARVEST PSYCH: Proposed Operation to have Chinese Communists blamed for Assassination Attempt
    5. LCHARVEST (TPFAST, TPTERRY, VLVIGOR) involved operations against Peoples Republic of China (PRC) scientists and efforts to monitor PRC state technology
    6. Chester Dainold is a pseudonym for Desmond Fitzgerald and Oliver G. Galbond, a pseudonym used by Colonel J.C. King, Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, Directorate of Operations, CIA (MFF).

    Fitzgerald headed the Far East Division between 1957 and 1962, when he worked closely with Ed Lansdale, a legendary PSYCHOLOGICAL OPS expert. In 1953, Lansdale was sent to Vietnam to act as a consultant for the French in their efforts to repel the uprising in their colony. The plan was to mount a propaganda campaign to persuade the Vietnamese people in the south not to vote for the communists in the forthcoming elections.

    “In the months that followed they distributed targeted documents that claimed the Vietminh and Chinese communists had entered South Vietnam and were killing innocent civilians. The Ho Chi Minh government was also accused of slaying thousands of political opponents in North Vietnam.” https://spartacus-educational.com/COLDlansdale.htm

    In late 1961, Robert Kennedy and the all-powerful SAG team tasked Lansdale to lead Operation Mongoose, a covert action program for sabotage and subversion against Cuba. Lansdale appointed William Harvey as his CIA point person, who maintained a CIA relationship with Roselli all the way to 1963, even though RFK had demoted him after the Missile Crisis. It was Desmond Fitzgerald who replaced Harvey.

    ZRRIFLE Plus

    The Executive Action program perfected by William Harvey in 1961 was really a spinoff of assassination programs used throughout the ages. Harvey learned about these in meetings with British and French intelligence who were well acquainted with the finer points of this science. e.g., British MI 5 officer Peter Wright. Mafia collaboration synergized these techniques.

    What is fascinating with the current file is the level of detail shared and that it predates Harvey’s work and is suggestive of what many have come to think about what took place on November 22, 1963. 

    Let us break down the plan and  then translate it to the JFK assassination conspiracy: 

    PROPOSED OPERATION TO HAVE CHINESE COMMUNISTS SUSPECTED OF ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT = PROPOSED OPERATION TO HAVE CASTRO BLAMED FOR JFK ASSASSINATION 

    BleauCuba2

    Replace this with JFK’s exposure in upcoming motorcades and appearances in crowded places.

    BleauCuba3

    Better yet, let’s plan the route ourselves with help from our CIA asset, Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell…   sketches and maps: As in Sergio Arcacha Smith’s possession of the sewage systems maps and David Ferrie’s sketch of Dealey Plaza… Places of vantage; like Dealey Plaza where there can be triangulation of fire… Routes of escape/ Exfiltrating… Through the railyards, in the Nash Rambler with a Latino getaway driver, through the panicked crowds, Red Bird Airport, the Flight from Dallas in a CIA plane… Locations of sites for caching the weapons… as in Julia Ann Mercer’s sighting of Ruby the morning of the assassination involved in delivering a package near the knoll, or Lee Bowers (railroad tower operator) seeing suspicious movements in the railyards and the TSBD being open to renovation teams during the days preceding the motorcade.

    BleauCuba4

    In other words, let us add touches such as an FPCC-linked, Castro-backed commie-assassin to the mix through impersonations, incriminating forged correspondence, false testimonies of assets alleging interaction between the patsy and the enemy as well as financial backing (recall the false testimony of Oswald receiving payouts in the Cuban embassy in Mexico City), back-yard photos portraying Oswald as an unhinged, well-armed Marxist fanatic, etc.

    BleauCuba5

    Simply put, we need more than just a good story… we need to set the stage with rumors and fabricate trails of “evidence” for the red herring to be believed: Planting wallets, leaking propaganda through media assets, tampering with evidence, framing patsies and opponents, etc. 

    Conclusion

    While some lone-nut theorists have often brought up the complexity of carrying out what many researchers have come to believe about the assassination, file 104-10315-10011 tells a compelling story: Regime change specialists like Lansdale, Harvey, Fitzgerald, and Phillips all had plenty of experience in the use of ZRRIFLE-like tactics during the decade that preceded Castro’s rise to power; they all likely became involved in applying these tactics for the elimination of Castro beginning in 1960; they were all omnipresent in regime change special ops aimed at Cuba in 1963 and these are the tactics that have been revealed with time, according to many researchers, to be the ones that were used to remove Kennedy.

    So yes, orchestrating a regime change is complex… Only real specialists can deliver something this grandiose.

  • Congress Attempts Forced Declassification

    Congress will now try and force declassifications of documents in several cases, including the assassination of JFK.  Read more.