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Tag: HSCA

  • The Washington Post’s Bomb on George Joannides

    The Washington Post’s Bomb on George Joannides

    The Washington Post’s Bomb on George Joannides

    Has the tide turned in mainstream media?

    By: Paul Bleau

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

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

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

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

    The importance of the article

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

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

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

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

    Unprecedented information quality from a news giant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Concluding remarks

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

    I do have some concerns about where all this goes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jeff Meek’s Interview of Joan Mellen

    Jeff Meek’s Interview of Joan Mellen

    The Other Official JFK Assassination Investigation

    by Jeff Meek

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    That Day in Dallas

    by Robert Tanenbaum

     

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

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

    I

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

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

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

    II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The Second Luna Hearing

    The Second Luna Hearing

    Unheard: The Silence of the MSM on the Luna Hearings

    By Matt Douthit

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    (The second hearing may be viewed here)

  • The JFK Files Volume II: Pieces of the Assassination Puzzle

    The JFK Files Volume II: Pieces of the Assassination Puzzle

    The JFK Files Volume II: Pieces of the Assassination Puzzle

    By Jeffrey Meek

    Jeffrey Meek is the only writer I know who is allowed to pen a regular column on the JFK case. He writes for the Hot Springs Village Voice newspaper. He has now published his second collection of articles from that paper and added two long essays he wrote for the new version of George magazine. I have previously reviewed his first collection on this site. (Click here for that critique https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-jfk-files-pieces-of-the-assassination-puzzle)

    The main title of this anthology is The JFK Files, Part 2. This second collection leads off with an interview of the late Jim Gochenaur. People who have watched Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited will know who Jim was. Jim was interviewed by the Church Committee. As the witness says here, and he said to Stone off-camera, that interview transcript went missing. When he arrived in Washington, he was first interviewed by staffers Paul Wallach and Dan Dwyer, and then by Senator Richard Schweiker himself. Schweiker, of course, made up half of the subcommittee running the inquiry into the JFK case for Senator Frank Church. The other half is Senator Gary Hart.

    What makes that loss even odder is that the man he was interviewed about, Secret Service agent Elmer Moore, was also brought in for an interview. The transcript of that interview is available. Jim met Moore back in early 1970 in Seattle when he was doing an academic assignment concerning the JFK case. The following year, he went to visit Moore in his office. Moore agreed to talk to him about his Secret Service inquiry into the JFK case, which began about 72 hours after Kennedy was killed. But he would only speak to him on condition that he took no notes or made no tapes, and he understood that if anything he said appeared in public, Moore would deny it. (p. 5)

    Since most of this site’s readers have seen Stone’s documentary, I will not repeat the things that Jim said on camera for this review. There are some things that Stone and I did not cover in that interview (we did that one jointly). For example, Jim told Jeff that Moore considered George DeMohrenschildt—nicknamed The Baron–a key player in the case. But unfortunately for Moore, he could not get access to him once President Johnson put the FBI in charge of the investigation. Moore also told Jim that he could not understand why Captain Will Fritz did not make a record of his questioning of Oswald, since he knew that there were two stenographers on hand for the Dallas Police. (p. 6). Moore also had a print copy of one of the infamous backyard photographs of Oswald with a rifle and handgun. Jim noted that one could easily see a line through Oswald’s chin. I don’t have to inform the reader why that is of central importance.

    Jim was also interviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Strangely, that was only a phone interview. Even though the HSCA lasted much longer than the Church Committee and was a direct investigation of the JFK case, the Church Committee was chartered with only inquiring about the performance of the FBI and CIA for the Warren Commission. But further, Jim said they were more interested in another acquaintance he made in Seattle, namely, former FBI agent Carver Gayton. Gayton had told him that he knew James Hosty–whom he met after the assassination. The former Dallas agent told Carver that Oswald was an FBI informant. (p. 11) This action by the HSCA is odd since Jim always insisted that Moore was a more important witness than Gayton was. This two-part interview with Jim Gochenaur is one of the volume’s three or four high points. Made all the more important and poignant since Jim has passed.

    II

    Another interesting interview that Jeff did was with a man named Lee Sanders. Sanders was on the Dallas Police force at the time they were participating in a reconstruction of the assassination. This was for the acoustics testing that the HSCA did towards the end of their term. Sanders was involved with crowd and traffic control during a five-day assignment. Live ammunition was being used in these tests. (p. 49)

    Sanders said that the DPD’s best marksman, a man named Jerry Compton, took part in the tests. He and an FBI sharpshooter took their shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Between test firings, Compton would come down out of the building. Sanders overheard Compton say that they were having problems repeating what the Warren Commission said Lee Oswald had done. As Meek writes, “The scuttlebutt from other officers was that there must have been other shooters.” (p. 49). Sanders then added, “We just didn’t think that one guy could have done this. We didn’t say that in public because it wouldn’t have been good for your career, not if you wanted to stay in good stature with the department.”

    Meek interviewed former Commission counsel Burt Griffin about his 2023 book, JFK, Oswald and Ruby: Politics, Prejudice and Truth. As an interviewing journalist, Meek is rather merciful with Griffin. His technique was to let him burn himself. Griffin tells Jeff that Jack Ruby shot Oswald out of anti-Semitism. He wanted to be seen as an avenger due to the infamous black bordered ‘Wanted for Treason’ ad in the papers. That was signed by a Bernard Weissman. This is Griffin’s money quote about Jack Ruby: “He was convinced at the time, and for the rest of his life, that antisemites were involved, with the goal being to blame the Jews for the president’s assassination.” (p. 56) Griffin properly labels this as his conclusion. He then adds that Jews were being blamed for the attack on General Walker in April of 1963. He then states, “So, antisemitism was an important factor in Dallas at the time.”

    Griffin then continues in this nonsensical vein by saying that there is no evidence that anyone else was involved in the JFK assassination except Oswald. He then adds the antique adage that the Commissioners always use: that the Commission’s goal was to locate a conspiracy. And if he could have done so he would have had an acclaimed political career. Meek does not say if he giggled during these comments. I assume he did not. His goal was to keep Griffin spouting these absurdities, which Griffin did by using Howard Brennan as a reliable eyewitness to the assassination.

    Something puzzling comes up next. It appears to be Griffin who surfaces the fact that the Commission has Jack Ruby entering the basement through the Main Street ramp. The book says that Sgt. Patrick Dean was the head of security, and Dean said no, Ruby did not come down that ramp. ( Meek, p. 57) But if one reads the Warren Commission volumes, one will see that it was Dean who was the first person to say that Ruby proclaimed he did come down the Main Street ramp. And this was right after the shooting. This information is also contained in Paul Abbott’s recent book about the shooting of Oswald by Ruby. (Death to Justice, pp. 226-27) In fact, Abbott implies that Dean might have manufactured this quote by Ruby since, initially at least, no one else heard it. It did not catch on as a cover story for the DPD until November 30th. (ibid) In fact, according to one disputed journalistic account, Dean even said he saw Ruby come down the ramp, which was not possible. (Abbott, p. 229).

    But here it states that Dean said that Ruby did not come down that ramp. It was then this dispute that caused a blow-up between Griffin and Dean. (Meek, p. 57). But yet in Seth Kantor’s book on Ruby he has excerpts from some of Griffin’s contemporaneous memos. This is what one of them says:

    If Dean is not telling the truth concerning the Ruby statement about coming down the Main Street ramp, it is important to determine why Dean decided to tell a falsehood about the Main Street ramp. (p. 288)

    In that memo, Griffin wrote that he thought Ruby came in some other way. And that Dean, who was responsible for security that day, “is trying to conceal his dereliction of duty.” In fact, Griffin even theorized that Dean “simply stated to Ruby he came down the Main Street ramp.” Evidently, through the intervening decades, something got lost in translation or dissipated down the memory hole.

    III

    One of the most fascinating tales in the book was not directly told to Meek. He relates it from an MSNBC show in 2013, an interview with HSCA staffer Christine Neidermeier. She said there was a lot of pressure for the committee to downplay any talk about conspiracy. It also became clear that it was going to be difficult getting straight answers from the CIA, and to a lesser extent, the FBI. (p. 69)

    She then related that she got a call from a man she thought was an FBI agent. Because he seemed to know everything she had told another agent. One of the things she said was that she leaned toward the conspiracy verdict since the HSCA could not duplicate what Oswald did in their rifle tests. The caller then revealed that he knew all about her classes at Georgetown, and also some of her friends. He then said that, with such a bright future ahead of her, maybe she should rethink her position. Niedermeier said this call rocked her back on her heels.

    Three other highlights of the book are interviews by Meek with Morris Wolff, Dan Hardway and Marie Fonzi.

    Wolff was a Yale Law School graduate who was employed by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy in his Office of Legal Counsel, where he worked on civil rights, and also contributed to the famous Peace Speech at American University. (Meek, pp 74-75) According to Morris, he was also a bicycle messenger between the AG and the president when Bobby wanted to get around J. Edgar Hoover. After JFK was killed, Bobby suggested that he go over to the staff of moderate Senate Republican John Sherman Cooper. According to Morris, when Cooper served on the Warren Commission, he was strongly opposed to the Single Bullet Theory. (p. 71)

    The interview with Dan Hardway was for a three-part review of the investigations of the JFK case by the federal government. HSCA staffer Dan tells Jeff that, at first, he and his partner Ed Lopez were stationed at CIA headquarters and allowed to have almost unrestricted access to requested files. That changed in 1978 when Scott Breckenridge, the main CIA liaison, told the HSCA that they were bringing in a new helper, namely George Joannides. George was coming out of retirement. And he assured the HSCA that he had nothing to do with the JFK case back in the sixties. (p. 150)

    As most everyone knows, this was false. Joannides was a CIA propaganda officer who was instrumental in running the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) faction of anti-Castro Cubans in New Orleans. And they had many interactions with Oswald in the summer of 1963. It was around the arrival of Joannides that Dan and Ed were moved out of the CIA offices and into a new building with a safe, and then a safe inside the larger safe. They would now have to wait for files and would get them with missing sentences. They would then have to turn over both the files and their notes into the safe at night. This might indicate that the pair were getting too close to Oswald’s association with the CIA and what really happened in Mexico City, which were the subjects they were working on.

    IV

    The closing three-part essay is an exploration of the life and career of the late Gaeton Fonzi. It is greatly aided by the extensive cooperation Meek had with his widow, Marie. Gaeton Fonzi began as a journalist, first for the Delaware County Daily Times and then for Philadelphia magazine. It was his meetings in Philadelphia with first Vince Salandria and then Arlen Specter that got him interested in the JFK assassination. After consulting with Vince, he was prepared to ask Specter some difficult questions about the Single Bullet Theory, which was the backbone of the Warren Report. Fonzi was troubled by Specter’s halting replies to his pointed questions. (pp. 172-73). He then wrote an article about this for Philadelphia called “The Warren Commission, The Truth and Arlen Specter.”

    In 1972, Gaeton moved south to Florida. He began working for Miami Monthly and Gold Coast. In 1975, he got a phone call that would have a great impact on his life and career. Senator Richard Schweiker was from the Philadelphia area and had apparently heard about Fonzi’s article about Specter. He and Senator Gary Hart now made up a subcommittee of the Church Committee. Their function was to evaluate the performance of the CIA and FBI in aiding the Warren Commission. Schweiker was inviting Gaeton to join as chief investigator, which he did.

    In only one year, that committee made some compelling progress. The combination of their discoveries and the broadcast showing on ABC of the Zapruder film helped cause the HSCA to be formed. Fonzi continued his work there and was hot on the trail of CIA officer David Phillips. That pursuit actually began under Schweiker. And when the HSCA began, the first Deputy Counsel on the Kennedy side, Robert Tanenbaum, went to visit the senator. After a general discussion, Schweiker asked Tanenbaum’s assistant to leave the room. The senator then opened a drawer and pulled out a folder made up largely of Fonzi’s work. He handed it to Tanenbaum and said, “The CIA killed President Kennedy.” (click here https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/robert-tanenbaum-interviewed-by-probe) That file is what got Fonzi the job with the HSCA.

    As we all know, once Tanenbaum and Chief Counsel Richard Sprague were forced to resign, the writing was on the wall for that committee. And Fonzi did a very nice job outlining this in his memorable book, The Last Investigation. That book was presaged by a long article Fonzi did for Washingtonian magazine, which had a significant impact on the critical community. (p. 174) Fonzi clearly implied in both the article and the book that the findings in the HSCA report were not supported by the research that the committee conducted. When the Assassination Records Review Board ordered the HSCA files declassified, this was proven out in spades.

    A column that Meek apparently got a lot of reaction to involved an interview with this reviewer. It was about John Kennedy’s evolving foreign policy views from 1951 until his death. This included his visit to Saigon and his signal 1957 speech on the Senate floor about the French crisis in Algeria. (p. 103) No speech Kennedy made up to that time elicited such a nationwide reaction as the Algeria address. The Africans now looked to Kennedy as their unofficial ambassador. Meek follows through on this with the Congo crisis: how Kennedy favored Patrice Lumumba, while Belgium and the CIA opposed him. This was at least partly the cause of Lumumba’s death in January of 1961, about 72 hours before Kennedy was inaugurated.

    There are two essays that I find problematic. The first is with Antoinette Giancana, daughter of Chicago Mafia chieftain Sam Giancana. As I have been at pains to demonstrate, the Mob had nothing to do with either Kennedy’s primary win in West Virginia or the result in the general election in Illinois. Dan Fleming proved the former in his important book Kennedy vs Humphrey, West Virginia, 1960. He conducted extensive interviews and found no evidence of any Mafia influence on anyone. And he also outlines three official investigations of that election, on a state level, on a federal level, and one by Senator Barry Goldwater, which all came up empty. As per Illinois, Professor John Binder did a statistical study showing that, in the wards controlled by Giancana, not only did the results not show his support for Kennedy, they indicated the contrary: that he might have discouraged voting for candidate Kennedy. That essay first appeared in Public Choice, and it has been preserved at Research Gate.

    The second essay I find problematic is the one dealing with the whole Ricky White/Roscoe white imbroglio from the early nineties. In August of 1990, Ricky White was presented as the son of the Grassy Knoll shooter, namely Roscoe White. Roscoe was also supposed to have killed Patrolman J. D. Tippit. Meek bends over backwards to be fair to Ricky White. I will not take up space to deal with all the problems with this story. But for a contrary view, I include a link to Gary Cartwright’s 1990 article critiquing this concept. (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7560/711990-014/html?lang=en)

    All in all, Jeff Meek has done some good work. We are lucky to have him toiling in the vineyards of the JFK case oh so many years afterwards. I hope he keeps it up.

  • New book on the HSCA by Tim Smith

    New book on the HSCA by Tim Smith

    Tim Smith begins his book on the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)—titled Hidden in Plain Sight—with two pertinent facts about the John Kennedy murder. First, the FBI found that the alleged rifle used in the case fired high and to the right of the target. Yet, the trajectory from the window which the Warren Commission said the alleged assassin fired from was a slight right to left angle. (Smith, p. 6). He then points out that President Kennedy is reacting to being hit before he disappears behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. And the projectile is rising 11 degrees out of his throat. (Smith p. 13) He follows this by saying, this indicates there was no delayed reaction by Governor Connally, but the Commission said there was. (Smith, pp. 15-16)

    Also, the governor is holding his hat at Zapruder frame 230, when the Warren Commission says that his wrist has been shattered. Agreeing with Josiah Thompson, the author says that Connally was likely hit at Zapruder frame 237. And further decimating the Single Bullet Theory, Connally always insisted that he heard the first shot. (Smith, pp. 16-17) He concludes his opening chapter by saying that the HSCA hinted at a later shot at Zapruder 327, after the alleged final shot at 313—which further blows up the official story. Today this last concept has become almost an accepted idea on the part of the critical community. (Smith, pp. 30-31)

    What Smith’s book does is chronicle and analyze the testimony of all the witnesses who testified in public before the HSCA. In that respect it is unusual, since I know of no other book that has dedicated itself to such a task. That chronicle begins with John Connally and ends with acoustics expert Dr. James Barger.

    I

    As Smith goes through the testimony in order, he tries to show that, even with their own witnesses, the HSCA was suggesting the contrary of what would be their conclusions. Although the HSCA ended up maintaining the Magic Bullet and three shot scenario, the testimony of people like Nellie Connally and Robert Groden undermined the ersatz concepts. Smith goes into related areas to show that the cover up about the Zapruder film was a desperate one at Life magazine. He points out the infamous breaking of the plates for the press run of the October 2, 1964 issue in order to cloud the head explosion and Kennedy’s fast rearward movement at Zapruder frame 313. (p. 51)

    He returns to the FBI test showing that the alleged rifle fired high and to the right; therefore, at a distance of 60 yards, the shot would have missed by several feet—at least. (p. 65) He also brings in problems with chain of custody, for example the important Warren Commission testimony of Troy West: the man who dispensed paper at the Texas School Book Depository and said Oswald never asked him for any. Undermining the Commission myth that Oswald wrapped the rifle in the Depository paper. (p. 65)

    One of the highlights of the book is Smith’s review of the testimony of Ida Dox, the professional medical illustrator who rendered drawings of the medical photos for the HSCA. One of the most startling revelations in the book is that Dox—real name Ida Meloni—said she never saw a picture of JFK’s brain. (p. 80) Smith then deduces that what we may have in the HSCA volumes is a tracing of a tracing. If that; since when Tim asked her if she drew the brain she said she could not recall. (p. 90) But Dr. Michael Baden, chief of the HSCA pathology panel, said she did so.

    Smith also delves into the problem that Dr. Randy Robertson first discovered: Baden had her alter the illustration of the back of Kennedy’s skull in order to transform what appears to be a drop of blood in the original, into a bullet wound in the drawing. The book also makes clear, with memoranda, that medical researchers Andy Purdy and Mark Flanagan were aware of this alteration. But when Tim asked her about seeing other illustrations from other books, which the evidence indicates she was supplied with, she did not want to answer the question. (Smith, p. 91) But it is clear that Purdy was the chief researcher on the medical side, and Flanagan was his assistant. (pp. 82-86) And they were securing materials for her. Make no mistake, this was an important strophe by the HSCA. Because it was part of their crucial decision to raise the posterior skull wound from the base of the head to the cowlick area.

    Smith writes that Baden’s elevation of the rear skull wound may have been presaged by his association with the Clark Panel doctors. While he was Attorney General, Ramsey Clark had appointed a medical panel to review the JFK autopsy and they had filed a report in which they raised the posterior head wound. Baden made a contribution to an anthology they wrote, and for which Clark wrote the foreword. (Smith, p. 88) As most know, the Clark Panel report first raising the posterior skull wound upward by four inches, was released on the eve of jury selection in the Clay Shaw trial. This made the trajectory of the fatal head shot more credible from back to front, since it now aligned with the nearly straight on positioning of JFK’s head in the Zapruder film, and not the false anteflexed position in the Warren Commission illustrations by Harold Rydberg. (Click here for background on this)

    The point being that the HSCA medical panel was gearing up for a Galileo moment for the original Bethesda pathologist, Jim Humes the Kennedy pathologist who had originally written that the wound was at the lower spot. According to Smith, Humes complied by moving both wounds—the head and the back—by about ten centimeters or four inches. Never addressing the question of how wounds move in dead people over time. (p.94)

    II

    The next group of witnesses also tended to concentrate on the medical evidence in the case. These were Dr. Lowell Levine, Calvin McCamy and Dr. Michael Baden. Levine was a DDS from NYU and was summoned to recognize if the teeth and fillings in the x-rays were President Kennedy’s, which he did. (p. 99) But as the author notes, this does not guarantee that the rest of the x-ray areas could not have been tampered with.

    McCamy had degrees in chemical engineering and physics and was a fellow of the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers. One of his missions was to verify the legitimacy of the backyard photographs. As the author notes, when McCamy was testifying about the line across the chin observed by many in the photos, and how the chin appears different in the BYP than in other pictures, things got a bit silly. The alleged expert actually said the following:

    This photograph is quite remarkable. This was taken by the Dallas police. It shows that it isn’t the picture that has a line across the chin. It is the man that has a line across the chin. He actually has an indentation right here, and that does show up in these photographs, right in the center and right here. (Smith, p. 108)

    As the author notes, McCamy was also allowed to make assumptions based on his reading of the Zapruder film. Smith scores him for being allowed to do this and calls some of his observations “beyond silly” for someone who is supposed to be interpreting the autopsy photographs. (Smith, p. 107)

    Next up was Michael Baden. Smith notes that according to the HSCA, the rear back wound was rising at about 11 degrees. (p. 113) He also observes that the HSCA did marginally consider a shot beyond Z 313 at about Z 328—which we will deal with later. (p. 116) Smith also scores the Baden idea that the holes in both Kennedy’s jacket and shirt line up with a bullet wound at the first thoracic vertebrae. (p. 119) Tim Smith disagrees and sides with Admiral George Burkley who signed the death certificate with the damage being lower, more aligned with the third thoracic vertebrae.

    Smith goes on to say that Baden bought into the magic bullet idea in defiance of Dr. Robert Shaw’s evidence that there was no fabric deposited in Governor Connally’s back, or any found on the magic bullet, CE 399. He asks: how could this be if the bullet theoretically went through 15 layers of clothing? (Smith, p. 121) Smith also contests a posterior headshot at Z 312. He believes, that this ever so slight bob forward is a smear on the film. Josiah Thompson, Gary Aguilar and Paul Chambers think it is also a result of the braking of the car, as Kennedy, who was already hit, drifts forward. (Smith, p. 115, p. 137)

    Baden depicted the wound in the cowlick area as a “typical gunshot wound of entrance”. Which on the original pictures, before the Ida Dox artistry, is simply not true. (Smith, p. 122) Smith also contests Baden on the issue of whether or not the pictures and illustrations of Kennedy’s brain are genuine.

    In sum, about Baden, who he spends 31 pages on, the author simply says, “He lied and knew he was lying.” (p. 126)

    III

    Continuing with the autopsy, Smith now takes up the evidence of Kennedy pathologist James Humes, and HSCA forensic pathology consultants Cyril Wecht and Charles Petty.

    The author reminds us about Warren Commission attorney Arlen Specter and his questioning of James Humes:

    Specter then asked if it would have helped to have the photos and x-rays, to which Humes responded that it might be helpful. Specter follows this up with a rather memorable observation: “Is taking photos and x-rays routine or something out of the ordinary?” (Smith, p. 147)

    Only in the JFK case could such questions be raised with a straight face. The author reminds us that Humes did not see the pictures until November of 1966. Which is why Specter asked the question. The big point of Humes’ HSCA testimony is his persuasion by the pathology panel to move the posterior head shot into the cowlick area. (Smith, p. 153). For the Warren Commission, he and his two partners—Thornton Boswell and Pierre Finck—had the entering head shot coming in near the bottom of the skull, four inches lower. Which is a lot of area on the rear of the skull. And, as Smith notes, in their private consultations with the HSCA panel, Humes and Boswell disagreed with that higher placement. (Smith, p.154) But in public, Humes did his Galileo turn.

    Under questioning, Humes admitted he did not know who some of the personnel working that night at Bethesda were e.g. photographer John Stringer. Smith adds, this is because he did not do autopsies. (Smith, p. 157) When asked why he did not weigh the brain that evening, he said, “I don’t know.” Humes also said that he did not understand why Admiral Burkley signed the autopsy report, since he did not remember him doing so. (ibid) Smith also comments that Humes only had one HSCA questioner, Gary Cornwell. (Smith, p. 155) Which seems odd considering his importance to the case.

    Cyril Wecht is noted for his quite vigorous and effective public dissent from the conclusions of the HSCA pathology panel. He disagreed with them, particularly about the Single Bullet Theory. Wecht wanted certain experiments done, and he did not think that Governor Connally could still he holding his Stetson hat in his hand after his wrist had been shattered. (pp. 167-69). Wecht also objected to the upward and then downward trajectory of the Magic Bullet. (Smith, p. 170). The forensic pathologist also brought up the mysterious problems with locating John Kennedy’s brain, which was missing from the National Archives. Chief Counsel Robert Blakey then indicated that the HSCA had done a study of this and tried to center on the role of Robert Kennedy. Yet the Assassination Records Review Board found out some rather jarring and opposing information about this quite troubling matter. Their information, from two sources, is the brain ended up at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. (Click here)

    Charles Petty is an interesting witness. He replaced Dr. Earl Rose as the coroner in Dallas in 1969. He told CNN in 2003 that he thought Kennedy’s autopsy was done well. A remarkable statement which even the HSCA’s Michael Baden did not agree with; in fact, Baden said it was the exemplar of bungled autopsies. (The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 61) When once asked if it would be important to examine the brain if the victim died from a head shot, Petty said “It would be nice if the brain were available.” But he then added that it would not be essential since in the JFK case we had the photos and x rays. (Ibid, p. 62). We have now found out of course, that the official photographer in the JFK case admitted to the ARRB that he did not take the pictures in evidence. Which begs the question: who then did and why? (See Doug Horne’s testimony in the film JFK Revisited.)

    In his HSCA testimony, Petty brought up Wecht ten times. He said that there was no evidence that CE 399 shattered the rib. (HSCA Vol. 1, p. 377) But then how did John Connally’s rib get smashed? Petty then When asked if it was accurate to say that the bullet went through wrist bone, he replied it was a tangential shot. (Ibid, p. 378) You can read this for yourself, try not to arch your eyebrows. Charles Petty made Baden look a bit decent.

    IV

    From here, the HSCA public hearings went onward and downward. About the testimony of an HSCA witness who worked for the Warren Commission, Larry Sturdivan, Smith writes, “It was sad to read, sadder to watch on video and pathetic to read in their Final Report.” ( p. 181). Strudivan’s educational background is a B. S. in physics from Oklahoma State, and an M. S. in statistics from the University of Delaware. But yet the HSCA relied on him for some of its most controversial scientific conclusions, like the infamous neuromuscular reaction to explain the fast and powerful backwards motion to JFK getting hit from a shot from behind. (Smith, p. 189) That ersatz doctrine and its application to the Kennedy case had been thoroughly discredited by the work of Gary Aguilar and Wecht. (Click here)

    As Smith notes, there is also another thoroughly discredited piece of evidence that the HSCA accepted as fact. That is the key testimony Blakey used to bolster the Magic Bullet, namely the testimony of chemist Vincent Guinn and his so- called Neutron Activation Analysis testing which linked CE 399 to bullet fragments in Connally. After describing the discrediting work of James Tobin, the late Cliff Spiegelman, Eric Randich and Pat Grant, Smith in the field that is now called Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis, Smith writes:

    There is now no reason to believe that the bullet fragments retrieved from Governor Connally’s wrist have any connection with CE 399, the magic bullet. (Smith, p. 209)

    There were other facts about the HSCA which tended to work against the Warren Commission. For example their expert could not link the projectile fired at General Walker to the rifle in evidence. (p. 197). They also could not link CE 399 to the rifle. The excuse for the latter was that, due to the repeated firing of that rifle, there was a build-up of particles in the barrel of the weapon. (Smith, p. 198) Also, one of their experts, astronomer William Hartman, said he detected a blur in the Z film at around frame 331 which could have indicated a shot after the alleged final hit at frame 313. (Smith p. 220) They were also hearing testimony from a photographic expert that the boxes in the so-called sniper’s nest had been moved between the Dillard photo taken just seconds after the last shot, and the Powell photo taken several seconds later. (p. 426) Marina Oswald told the committee that Lee Oswald liked John Kennedy and spoke well about him. (p. 249). She also said she did not think Oswald was a true communist. (p. 270) James Rowley, Secret Service chief in 1963, did all he could to conceal the fact that there were prior plots against JFK in 1963. (p. 361)

    Some of the testimony from people like J. Lee Rankin is hard to take. About the FBI, Rankin said that, “Well, as to their cooperation with us, I thought it was good.” Rankin said that later, after the investigations of the Church Committee, especially concerning the fact that J. Edgar Hoover knew about the CIA plots to murder Castro and did not tell the Commission about it, his opinion about their character changed. I guess we should be thankful for that. (Smith, p. 394). Rankin also said there was no pressure against finding a foreign conspiracy. Odd, considering the fact that they never even interviewed Sylvia Duran of the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. In fact, Luis Echeverria, the Secretary of the Interior at the time, more or less stopped any Commission inquiry into Mexico City. It is hard to comprehend how Rankin, Chief Counsel to the Commission, could not have known about this. By the way, Echeverria went on to serve as president of Mexico from 1970-76.

    Rivaling Rankin was the testimony of Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. Katzenbach was pressed as to why it was so important for him to write a memo 72 hours after the assassination saying the public should be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin. His reply was, “I don’t think that is artistically phrased. Perhaps you have never written anything you would like to write better….” It was also later revealed that Katzenbach did not believe the CIA was involved in any assassination plots. He says be based this on assurances that CIA Director Dick Helms gave to President Johnson in his presence in 1965. (Smith, p. 405)

    No comment.

    V

    Some of the questioning by the HSCA, to be kind, did not seem complete, well-prepared or vigorous. To point out some examples, there was Louis Witt, the Umbrella Man. He claimed he did not know the Latin looking man standing next to him on Elm Street as they stood, and then sat on the curb as the limousine drove by them. (p. 432) He claimed he did not even realize the president had been fatally shot. And he did not know this for sure until after he returned to work that day. (p. 437) He said he was not aware of the path of the motorcade route on November 22nd. (Smith, p. 429)

    As most know the HSCA tried to insinuate that if there was a conspiracy to kill JFK it was likely done by the Mob. Therefore they called people like Lewis McWillie, Jose Aleman and Santos Trafficante. McWillie disagreed with the committee as to when he was in Cuba and when he returned to Texas, and also that Jack Ruby was only in Cuba for six days and not a month as the Cuban records show. (pp. 444-45) Aleman claimed he heard Trafficante say that Kennedy would not be re-elected, he was going to be hit. (p. 459)

    Trafficante was in a denial mode. He said he never carried poison pills in order to kill Fidel Castro. In fact, he said that all he did was act as an interpreter in the plots because the U. S. government asked him to. He denied the Aleman claim. And he said he never knew Jack Ruby and Ruby never visited him while he was in detention in Cuba. (pp. 463-68)

    I will not deal with all the witness that Smith describes and analyzes. But I will say that he goes through every witness involved with the controversial acoustics tape, with which the committee decided that there was a shooter from in front of the limousine. (pp. 487-518) And which, in 2021, Josiah Thompson used as the cornerstone of his book Last Second in Dallas.

    So, this is clearly the most complete and in-depth compendium with which to measure the quality and comprehensiveness of the HSCA public hearings. On top of that the author includes four appendices, one on Howard Brennan, one on Sylvia Odio—neither of whom testified in public for the HSCA—one on the photographic puzzle called Black Dog Man and the last is on Life’s three versions—during which they broke the presses at great expense—of its photo essay for their October 2, 1964 issue. The last two pieces were written by Martin Shackleford and John Kelin.

    As per Brennan, he simply refused to testify before the committee. Under any circumstances. (Honest Answers by Vince Palamara, pp. 186-89) And Tim is at pains to show why he would not, even under subpoena. Why the HSCA would even want him to appear is kind of puzzling.

    According to Gaeton Fonzi, Odio was willing to testify about the visit to her Dallas apartment by Oswald, or his double, just a few weeks before the assassination. But she was eliminated from the agenda at the last minute for nebulous reasons. (Fonzi, The Last Investigation, pp. 258-59) Gaeton ends his fine book by saying she was now willing to testify in public and on TV—after being reluctant for many years—because she was frustrated. She was angry because the truth had been bottled up by forces she could not understand, yet she felt powerless to counteract. When Fonzi told her the HSCA would not call her for televised public testimony, she replied with, “We lost. We all lost.”

    Smith has written a worthy and unique book that continues the excavation of why the House Select Committee—which Fonzi called the last investigation—ended up as disappointing as it was.

  • Suppressing The Truth in Dallas, by Charles Brandt

    Suppressing The Truth in Dallas, by Charles Brandt

    In the fall of 1977, former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison wrote a letter to Jonathan Blackmer of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. They had just met in New Orleans and were developing an informational relationship, one in which Garrison would offer any files he could dig up on a subject and often advise on its value. Blackmer had been originally appointed by Robert Tanenbaum.  Tanenbaum was the New York City Chief of Homicide who had been the original Deputy Counsel for the Kennedy side of the HSCA. In this letter Garrison warned Blackmer about the perils of investigating the Kennedy case by using the usual tools of a police investigation.  Garrison wrote that these methods would not be adequate in the JFK case. The main reason being that, in reality, Kennedy’s assassination was a covert operation. Which had layers of disguise around it.

    That letter is still worth reading today.  And I wish Charles Brandt had read it. Because his new book on the JFK case is a prime example of how a former criminal investigator can go off the rails by relying on the lessons he learned in prosecuting felonies back—in Brandt’s case—the state of Delaware. Brandt is the author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction, in the crime genre.  He was a homicide investigator, prosecutor and finally Deputy Attorney General for Delaware.  In his book on the JFK case, Suppressing the Truth in Dallas, he lets us know about his past career quite frequently. And this is a serious problem with the work.

    For instance, fairly early in the book, Brandt states that Lee Oswald killed President Kennedy, wounded Governor John Connally and killed Officer J. D. Tippit. (Brandt, pp. 21-22) Brandt actually embarrasses himself with the following, “… the evidence is overwhelming that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally.” (p. 21) Which would mean that he buys the efficacy of CE 399. Very wisely, he does not actually say that. Because in explaining the Magic Bullet, the evidence would be shown to be rather underwhelming.

    I will give the reader one example of what Brandt does say to justify all this. He says that Oswald fired only three shots, and these were heard by the workers on the fifth floor, below the sixth floor crime scene. (Brandt, p. 22)

    I was quite disappointed when I read this. First, it ignores the evidence of Tom Alyea.  Alyea was the Dallas photographer who was the first civilian on the sixth floor on November 22, 1963. He told Alan Eaglesham that when the police first found the shells, they were within a hand towel of each other. Which means they could not have been ejected by the rifle found on that floor.  But Tom also said that they were then lifted up and dropped on the floor and this was the arrangement that was then photographed by the police. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 94)

    As per the noise of the dropping of the shells above the workers on the fifth floor, again, this is dubious. One of those witnesses, Harold Norman, presents a problem for prosecutor Brandt. Because it appears Mr. Norman changed his story. On November 26th, in his first statement to the FBI, there is no mention at all about those three sounds he heard from above. And there is nothing in the record about Norman saying anything like that prior to that report. What makes this even more suspicious is that Norman’s new story did not appear until his Secret Service interview of December 2nd.  (ibid, p. 55)

    Why? Because one of the Secret Service agents who Norman changed his story for was the infamous Elmer Moore. The man who worked on Dr. Malcolm Perry to change his story and the man who pulled a gun on Church Committee witness James Gochenaur. Moore also confessed that Secret Service Chief James Rowley and Inspector General James Kelly helped to frame agent Abe Bolden for his attempt to expose the plot to kill Kennedy in Chicago. (See Oliver Stone’s film, JFK: Destiny Betrayed)

    Right here, Brandt’s case would be in a world of trouble in any kind of legitimate legal proceeding. Two of his underlying evidentiary theses for Oswald’s guilt are quite questionable. But that is just the beginning of the problematic side of this book.  Brandt accepts the Warren Commission tenet of Lee Oswald being a communist.  He can do this since he proffers none of the new evidence from people like author John Newman, HSCA investigator Betsy Wolf, British researcher Malcolm Blunt, or journalist Jeff Morley. That sum total would indicate that Oswald was not a communist.  He was, in all probability, a CIA agent provocateur and FBI informant. The evidence adduced by Morley and Newman in Stone’s film JFK Revisited would be enough to show the problems with Brandt’s ideas about Oswald.

    Needless to say, Brandt also thinks that Oswald himself went to Mexico City in late September and early October of 1963.  Again, there are serious problems with that belief.  Many of them are put forth in the quite important, 410-page Lopez Report declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1995. For instance, the lack of a picture of Oswald entering either the Cuban or Russian consulate, and the fact that Oswald himself spoke fluent Russian and the voice on the CIA tapes portray someone who spoke poor Russian. (DiEugenio, op. cit. pp. 287-300). In fact, it was the Commission treatment of Oswald in Mexico City which Jim Garrison once referred to as being perhaps the key to the plot. Since he was one of the first to suspect Oswald had been impersonated there. (Memo from Garrison to Lou Ivon, 1/19/68)

    II

    As part of his case against Oswald, Brandt states that Oswald fled the scene of the crime, namely the Texas School Book Depository. He accepts the Warren Report story about Oswald descending the sixth-floor stairs, and later being found in the second-floor lunch room by supervisor Roy Truly and policeman Marrion Baker; then leaving the building and going back to his rooming house. This is what he says: “…flight is powerful evidence of guilt…” (Brandt, p.22)

    We have already shown that the idea that the sixth floor was a crime scene has some questions around it.  But something that shocked me about the book is that I could find no mention of the three secretaries on the fourth floor: Sandy Styles, Victoria Adams, and Dorothy Garner.  This is really strange in the face of the success of Barry Ernest’s book, The Girl on the Stairs and Rich Negrete’s follow up film, The Killing Floor. Those two works help express strong reservations that Oswald was on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting. And if he was not there, then how can this be powerful evidence of guilt? Also, we should not forget that people like Bart Kamp have presented evidence that the second-floor lunch encounter was an event created after the fact. It may not have happened as depicted in the Warren Report. (For more detail, click here.)

    But to go further than that, if Oswald was fleeing the scene of the crime, why did he then take a bus back toward the scene of the crime? (Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, p. 159) Because, if one accepts the Warren Report, that is what he did.  But then he got off that bus, walked several blocks, and hitched a ride in a taxi. But before he did that, he was about to get out of the cab and offer it to an elderly lady who asked that same driver to hail a taxi for her. (Lane, p. 165) The question is: Does a man who killed the president and wounded the governor of that state use public transportation to escape the scene of the crime? Does he then get off a bus, and then offer to give up his cab to someone he does not even know?  Where is the urgency in this?  How does it portray consciousness of guilt? I won’t even bring in the questions some writers have had about whether Oswald was really on that bus—the driver did not think it was him—or whether or not he was in that cab. Some believe that Oswald—or a double– was actually taken out of Dealey Plaza by a dark complected Cuban in a Rambler station wagon, as testified to by Deputy Sherriff Roger Craig. (Lane, pp. 173-74)

    But one of the most arresting characteristics about Brandt is his single-mindedness.  He portrays little if any doubt about what he is writing. But yet, that attitude is undermined by several mistakes he makes about the factual record.  For instance, in discussing the murder of J. D. Tippit, he says “A few brave eyewitnesses followed Oswald to a movie theater and watched him sneak in.” (Brandt, p. 23) I am not aware of any witnesses who followed Oswald from 10th and Patton, the scene of the Tippit shooting, to the Texas Theater, let alone “a few”. Most people who write books about the case should know that the two witnesses who complained about Oswald sneaking into the Texas Theater were Johnny Brewer and Julia Postal. The former worked at a shoe store down the street from the theater, and Postal was the ticket taker.

    To show the reader how determined Brandt is to turn Oswald into the assassin, he actually writes that Oswald tried to kill Officer McDonald inside the theater as he was being apprehended. (Brandt, p. 23) This has been pretty much demolished by Hasan Yusuf. As per the Tippit shooting, Brandt follows the Warren Report on that one also: Oswald shot Tippit.  Except in this instance, he uses the testimony of the HSCA’s Jack Tatum as his signal witness. Apparently, he missed Jack Myer’s essay exposing Tatum as rather problematic.

    As the reader can guess by now, Brandt also fingers Oswald in the attempted murder of General Edwin Walker. He does not explain how the projectile in that case went from a 30.06 to a 6.5 mm bullet–and also changed color, during the transfer from the Dallas Police to the FBI. Or how Oswald was never a suspect in the seven months that the police handled the case; but he quickly became the perpetrator shortly after the Commission and Bureau took over the Walker shooting. (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 100-01)

    Robert Tanenbaum once said about his experience as a homicide attorney, he always ended up with more questions than answers in handling a murder case. Well, Brandt seems to have nothing but answers in the JFK case. But as we have seen so far, he has not asked himself the right questions.

    III

    Having shown some of Brandt’s liabilities, what is his actual take on the crime?  Well, in addition to saying that Oswald did what the Commission said he did, he then chalks it all up to the Mob. (Brandt references Robert Blakey several times in his book.) As I noted above, by ignoring all the latest work on Oswald, he can simply make minimal observations about the man, and then label him a tool of organized crime.  Even though one of the pieces of evidence he uses–the whole connection with his uncle Dutz Murret as part of the New Orleans criminal element–was shown by the declassified record to be incorrect. Dutz Murret’s wife Lillian was examined by the House Select Committee on this point. She said that Dutz was not working for any mob connected bookie outfit in 1963.  His son Eugene said the same thing to the HSCA.  In fact Eugene said his father had disconnected with the Mob prior to 1959. (Interviews by HSCA with Lillian and Eugene, 11/6 and 11/7/78) So if there is any other significant evidence that Oswald was Mob associated, Brandt does not adduce it. (He does bring up an association much later, but we will deal with the problems with it in due time.)

    The structural framework for Brandt’s book is one of the oddest I have ever read.  In fact, in that regard it is up there with the likes of Mark Shaw and Lamar Waldron.  He begins by making Earl Warren out to be a villain–not just in the JFK case, but in what he did with criminal law in general. Which is kind of odd, since many prosecutors think that what Warren did in this area was a long time coming and had prior precedents to back it e.g. the exclusionary rule was introduced in the Weeks vs United States case in 1914. Other aspects of what Warren did, ordering defendants to have attorneys in the Gideon case, and reading a suspect his rights in the Miranda case, have usually been praised as ameliorating abuses by police and prosecutors.

    But incredibly, Brandt wants to put forth the idea that Warren was covering up for the Mob.  (Brandt, pp. 10-11). The way Brandt does this is rather odd.  Throughout the book, the author uses a phone call from Lyndon Johnson in which the president alluded to international complications in the JFK case. (Brandt, p. 41) Brandt treats this as a kind of nebulous pretext that LBJ was using.  Yet, to anyone who has read say, James Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable, it’s clear what Johnson was referring to.  It was to the alleged appearance of Oswald at the Cuban and Russian embassy in Mexico City. (Douglass, p. 83, p. 335). Johnson attempted to intimidate Warren with the threat of atomic warfare due to Oswald’s activities at the two embassies, with the implication that Oswald killed Kennedy for the communists. And by all accounts, LBJ succeeded.  For instance, after LBJ put the fear of God in him, Warren did not want the Commission to call any witnesses or have subpoena power. (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 311-12) How Brandt did not know about this, or failed to understand it, is really incomprehensible. But it was this nuclear intimidation that made Warren into a paper tiger on the Commission.

    From this faulty premise, Brandt goes on to postulate another faulty premise. Namely that Warren dominated the Commission members and the legal staff. (Brandt, p. 50) This is undermined by another event the author fails to mention. Warren could not even push through the chief counsel he wanted—namely Warren Olney. By all accounts Olney was too much of a maverick for FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, and commissioners Gerald Ford, John McCloy and Allen Dulles. (DiEugenio pp. 314-15) So, quite early, Warren had been cowed twice. Unlike what Brandt writes, the real power within the Commission was what I refer to as The Troika: Gerald Ford, John McCloy and Allen Dulles. With their handpicked chief counsel, J. Lee Rankin, they essentially ran the show. (DiEugenio, pp. 315-17)

    IV

    Brandt’s attempts at creating historical context for his structure is so unfounded and illogical that it becomes kind of an exercise in the theater of the absurd. For instance, his discussion of the Bay of Pigs invasion is one of the worst I have seen. Consider this for starters: he writes that Robert Maheu testified to the Church Committee about his actions in the Bay of Pigs. (Brandt, p. 73). I asked: What actions?  As far as I can see, Maheu had nothing to do with the Bay of Pigs.  The best volume I know of on the subject, Bay of Pigs Declassified, by Peter Kornbluh, never mentions Maheu.

    Brandt follows this with something just as inexplicable. He writes that the Bay of Pigs led directly to Kennedy’s death. The problem with writing this is that he never comes close to proving it.  If that is not bad enough, his characterization of the operation is a bit ridiculous. Consider how he regards Allen Dulles telling JFK he would have a disposal problem with the Cubans.  Brandt interprets this as the Cubans badmouthing Kennedy if the operation failed. (p. 81). This is not what Dulles meant. What the CIA Director was indicating was that if Kennedy did not go through with the operation, there would be a problem in resettling the thousands of Cuban exiles the CIA had assembled. 

    One of the most bizarre statements the author makes is that the Bay of Pigs constituted felony murder; an invasion of Cuba by the USA. I guess Brandt never heard of the Truman Doctrine, which dates from 1947. Or how it was used—to name just one instance– in the CIA’s prior disaster in Indonesia in 1958, when Eisenhower tried to overthrow Sukarno.

    Then we get to Brandt and Director of Plans Dick Bissell, the CIA’s chief architect and manger of the invasion.  Brandt quotes Bissell as saying there would be an “air umbrella” accompanying the invasion. (Brandt, pp. 83-84) As many writers on this subject, like Larry Hancock and David Talbot have concluded, Bissell was a rather unreliable source about the operation. Kennedy had insisted that any further air operations after the preliminary raids—which Brandt all but ignores—were to be conducted from an air strip on the island. (Kornbluh, pp. 125-27). Since no beachhead was ever established, these launches could not be made. Two reasons that the beachheads were not secured are due to lies the CIA had told Kennedy: 1.) There was no element of surprise, and 2.) There were no defections.

    Another fact that Brandt never mentions is crucial. Bissell and Director Allen Dulles both later confessed that they knew the invasion would fail.  But they were banking on Kennedy intervening with direct American forces to bail out the operation rather than have it collapse. (Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy, pp. 521-22) When Kennedy learned about this duplicity, he decided to fire the top level of the Agency: Dulles, Bissell, and Deputy Director Charles Cabell. I could find no trace of any of this in Brandt.

    Brandt continues in his vein as a very poor historian.  He says that the Bay of Pigs invasion included a top-secret plan to murder Castro. (Brandt, p. 85) This is false. There was no such plot included in the designs of the plan.  That whole affair was a completely separate operation secretly initiated and managed by the CIA.  Brandt makes this all the worse by writing that this plot was hatched by President Eisenhower, CIA director Dulles and Director of Plans Bissell and was then executed by President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

    To say this is horse manure is an insult to horses. Any real historian would know that the CIA Inspector General Report on the plots to kill Castro was declassified back in the nineties. In two places in that report it specifically states that the CIA had no presidential approval for these plots. (For instance, see pp. 132-33) But Brandt then doubles down on this and says Operation Mongoose also included assassination plots. Again, this is not true.

    But we later see why Brandt does this.  He wants to argue that these plots gave the Mob blackmail power over John Kennedy.  If Kennedy never knew of them and never authorized them, then such is not the case. And it creates another large fault line in his narrative. He adds to this later by saying that Bobby Kennedy concluded that the Mob killed President Kennedy. The best book on Robert Kennedy’s inquiry into his brother’s death is probably David Talbot’s Brothers. In that book, RFK considered three main culprits: the CIA, the Mob and the Cuban exiles.  He never came to a definite conclusion. According to Talbot that was going to happen when he won the presidency.

    V

    Brandt continues his cartoon history by saying that Joseph Kennedy was a bootlegger, and he used criminal influence to win the West Virginia primary for his son in 1960. (See Chapter 14, especially p. 59)

    Both of these premises are false. And I have expounded on this before at length. The book that this rubbish is owed to is Double Cross, by Sam and Chuck Giancana–which is a wild fantasy. As Daniel Okrent proved in his book Last Call, there is no evidence at all in any FBI files of anyone accusing Joe Kennedy of being involved with the Mob in these kinds of ventures. And since the man was investigated six times for high offices, that includes well over 800 pages of documents spanning over two decades. (Click here for more.) Biographer David Nasaw showed how Joe Kennedy was making literally tens of millions at that time through real estate, stock trading, and most of all, distributing movies and managing film companies. Why would the multi-millionaire—with a Rolls Royce and chauffeur–want to get into something illegal when, for instance, at that time insider trading was legal?

    Keeping to the fantasies of Double Cross, Brandt says that the Mob helped Joe Kennedy win the 1960 general election i.e. in Chicago.  Again, this is more rubbish.  John Binder did a careful study of the election results in Chicago in that year.  To put it mildly, they disprove this fiction.  The tallies were actually below average for that kind of election. And in talking to one of the ward bosses it was discovered that the actual instructions were to oppose the Kennedy candidacy. (See Binder’s essay, “Organized Crime and the 1960 Presidential Election. This would be a good place to add that the book is very sparsely annotated and has no index.)

    Toward the end, Brandt brings in David Ferrie through two witnesses in New Orleans. (See Chapter 39) He writes about Ferrie being questioned by the Secret Service and let go.  To my knowledge Ferrie was questioned by Jim Garrison and then the FBI. He then says that at the Camp Street building Ferrie frequented, he was prepping for the trial of Carlos Marcello. Reportedly, Ferrie was doing that at Marcello’s lawyer’s offices.  Brandt concludes that Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz would have found out about Ferrie, and had both of them in his office, Oswald and Ferrie, one in one room and one in another. (Brandt, p. 221). I wish I was kidding when I wrote that. Apparently, Brandt is unaware that Will Fritz was the man who turned down an interview with Rose Cheramie. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 228)

    To give Brandt some credit, his discussion of the testimony of Jack Ruby is acute as to its lack of credibility, and the author proves a few of Jack’s outright lies. (See Chapters 33-36). And he latches on to how important the testimony of Oswald’s landlady, Earlene Roberts, was and how important it should have been to find out who the two policemen were in that car beeping outside Oswald’s boarding house. The problem is that this is a rather slim portion of the book, and most of what he writes one can find elsewhere.

    I was not expecting much from Brandt since I did not find his previous work on the Hoffa case, I Heard You Paint Houses, very distinguished. But in all honesty, I have to conclude that his current book is even worse than I thought it would be.

  • Michel Gagne: On Not thinking Critically

    Michel Gagne: On Not thinking Critically

    Michel Jacques Gagne teaches at a junior college near Montreal. He has titled his book about the murder of John F. Kennedy Thinking Critically about the Kennedy Assassination. From that title, one would think the author would set forth a rather cool and methodical description of the state of the evidence in the JFK case today.

    That is not what this book is about. Gagne uses the same general pretext that the late Gary Mack used when he became an employee of the Sixth Floor Museum, namely, that he had formerly been a believer in a JFK conspiracy. But suddenly, one fine day, like St. Paul on the way to Damascus, he had a vision. The vision told him to read the Warren Report, which rather weirdly he had not yet done, even though he had been in the JFK field awhile. He then wrote two published pieces, one in 2013 and one in 2017 about the case. (The second one was for Michael Shermer in Skeptic, which tells us a good deal.) In his Author’s Preface, he tells us he has learned three things on his journey:

    1. To follow sound logic and evidence wherever they lead.

    2. Engage in respectful and meaningful exchanges.

    3. Do not speculate too much, if it’s not merited.

    Then there is a small section entitled “A Note on Nomenclature.” The following sentence appears:

    Though sometimes used pejoratively by other authors, this book’s use of the word “conspiracist,” “conspiracy theorist,” and “JFK buff” is based on objective definitions with no derogatory intent. (p. xxii)

    He does not define what those objective definitions are. If Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, then how can these terms not have a derogatory meaning? If Gagne is going to deny Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, and he is writing after the completion of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), then why should we trust him?

    It turns out, we should not and he reveals why in his introduction on the next page. There he begins the book proper, with an attack on the Warren Commission critics through Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK. That film is over three decades old. In the interim between its release and today, over 2 million pages of documents have been declassified by the ARRB. Should that not be the place to start, if one was doing “critical thinking” about the JFK case? For if Oswald acted alone, why did it take 30 years to begin declassifying those 2 million pages? And why, to this day, are about 14,000 of those pages still not open to the public? I could not locate those questions in this nearly 500-page book.

    II

    Very soon, Gagne writes that a conspiracy could not have occurred without being exposed by the proper authorities. (Gagne, p. 5) The FBI and the Warren Commission were the proper authorities. Knowing the kind of inquiry those two bodies ran; how could anyone make such a statement? FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover admitted on more than one occasion that he knew Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 246) Gagne then breaks his rule #2 as described above with: “As we will see, conspiracists rarely subject their convictions to the scrutiny of formal logical analysis…” When in fact, this process happens all the time in the critical community. (That rule will now be broken literally scores of times by Gagne. Per page count, he uses as much in the way of insult and invective contra the critics as say Vincent Bugliosi did.)

    We then go into Part 1 of the book. This whole opening section is simply a recital of the Warren Report’s evidence against Oswald. Right here I said to myself: “This is Gagne’s idea of thinking critically?” How anyone today could accept every major conclusion and every aspect of the evidentiary record as left by the Commission is kind of shocking. To note one lacuna: In this section, Gagne does not mention Sam Holland, who Josiah Thompson in Last Second in Dallas names as the most important witness to the crime. To note another: Gagne places Oswald on the 6th floor without comment. (Gagne, p. 27) He even notes the three witnesses on the 5th floor who allegedly heard shells hitting the ceiling above them, when, to take just one of them, Harold Norman made no mention of this noise during his first FBI interview on November 26, 1963. And there is no trace of him saying any such thing prior. The story did not materialize until December 2, 1963, apparently under the tutelage of the notorious Secret Service cover up agent Elmer Moore. (DiEugenio, p. 55)

    Concerning what happened after John Kennedy’s autopsy, Gagne implies that the exhibits were given over to the Kennedy family almost immediately. (Gagne, p. 29) As anyone can find out, they were really under the control of the Secret Service until Robert Kennedy had the materials turned over to the National Archives in 1965. A year later, the so-called Deed of Gift was written up. (Click here for details)

    Gagne also states that, after the autopsy, the brain was to be studied the next day, which is not possible. (Gagne, p. 30) A brain must be suffused in a chemical mixture before it is examined. As Review Board analyst Doug Horne states in the documentary film JFK Revisited, using a special technique, the shortest time this could be is 72 hours. But since Gagne is following the official records, the brain exam for Kennedy was on December 6th at the earliest. That date is handwritten on the supplementary autopsy report, while the rest of the report is typed, which suggests it was added after the form was prepared. (DiEugenio, p. 163). Needless to say, Gagne does not go into all the problems with that report or how so many experts today do not believe that Kennedy’s brain photos are genuine. There is a small mountain of evidence that indicates such is the case. Gagne ignores it. (DiEugenio, pp. 160–65)

    Gagne marches on with the official Warren Report record, impervious to the banana peels he is slipping on and how, incrementally, his argument is being dissipated. According to Gagne, Bethesda pathologist Jim Humes did not get into contact with Parkland Hospital until the day after the autopsy. In Oliver Stone’s documentary JFK Revisited, according to a nurse from Parkland, this is not true, but we also now have it right from Dr. Malcolm Perry. Within a few days of the assassination, he told reporter Martin Steadman that the autopsy doctors had called him that night and tried to get him to change his story about an anterior neck wound, indicating a shot from the front. They even threatened him with professional disciplinary hearings if he did not. (Click here for details)

    But Gagne marches on, oblivious to the quicksand under his feet. In the closing act of those three shocking days in Dallas, Gagne has Jack Ruby striding down the Main Street ramp to the Dallas Police HQ parking lot to shoot Oswald. (Gagne, p. 31) Even the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had severe reservations about that Warren Report scenario. For instance, they found a witness on the police force who had parked his car right across the street from the ramp before the shooting took place. Don Flusche said that Ruby did not come down that ramp. And he knew the man. (DiEugenio, pp. 227–28)

    The HSCA also found out that policeman Patrick Dean likely lied about Ruby being able to come in another way—from behind the building through an alley way. (DiEugenio, pp. 228–29) Gagne does not mention the fact that even the Warren Commission suspected Dean was not credible on more than one point dealing with this key issue. For instance, Commission attorney Burt Griffin wrote a memo in which he stated the following:

    1. Dean was derelict in securing all the doors to the basement.

    2. Griffin had reason to believe Ruby did not come down the ramp.

    3. He suspected Dean was now part of a cover-up and was advising Ruby to say he came down the Main Street ramp, even though he knew he didn’t. (DiEugenio, pp. 228–30)

    I don’t see how it gets much worse than the above. Except perhaps by adding this fact: Dean, who was in charge of security that day, failed his polygraph—even though he wrote his own questions! (DiEugenio, p. 229)

    As the reader can see, Gagne’s chronicling of the crimes of that weekend is just not credible. In fact, what Gagne does is an object lesson in why the Warren Report has fallen into disrepute. And for him to say that his belated reading of that report was his moment of conversion speaks little of, well, his critical thinking ability.

    III

    From here, Gagne jumps to the formation of the Warren Commission. His record is dubious on that score also. How anyone can write about that topic without mentioning Don Gibson’s work is startling. Gibson found the phone calls by Eugene Rostow and Joe Alsop to the White House which literally turned Lyndon Johnson around on this subject. LBJ did not want to form such an extralegal committee. He wanted a Texas based investigation supplemented by the FBI. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp.3–17) And with Gagne, I could not detect another crucial point: the use LBJ made of mushroom clouds to get people like Earl Warren and Richard Russell to consent to join. Neither wanted to serve.

    Why is this important? Because it’s clear that these atomic ploys had an impact on Warren. The man who ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that even those under bereft circumstances deserved an attorney, suddenly decided that Lee Oswald was not entitled to a defense. (DiEugenio, pp. 311–12) I did not notice any complaint that Gagne made about this fact; or the leaked stories that the FBI passed to the media to convict Oswald in the press. (DiEugenio, p. 309) What this meant was this: not only was Warren depriving Oswald of a right to counsel, but he was also doing it amid a wave of prejudicial publicity. Apparently, this unfairness means nothing to Gagne.

    If this litany of errors and omissions is not enough to typify Gagne’s wildly skewed book, I would like to turn the reader’s attention to pages 82–84. I have rarely read three pages strewn with as many mistakes. Jim Garrison did not halt his prosecution of Clay Shaw after the trial. (William Davy, Let Justice be Done, pp. 185–87) Garrison did convict someone, namely Dean Andrews, for perjury. (Davy, p.302) The jury at the Shaw trial did think the JFK case was a conspiracy. (Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, p. 250) That is why they asked to see the Zapruder film 9 times. The reason LBJ did not run in ‘68 was not due to ill health. As Jules Witcover reveals in his book 85 Days, the reason he abdicated was due to his near defeat by Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire and his upcoming trouncing in Wisconsin. I should add that on page 78 Gagne asserts that David Ferrie was questioned by the Warren Commission. For 59 years, apparently every author on the case missed that.

    Gagne can’t even get the authorship of books correct. Vincent Salandria never wrote a book. (Gagne, p. 77) The anthology False Mystery was assembled, edited, and marketed by John Kelin. (Email communication with Kelin, April 18, 2022) Gagne later writes that Zachary Sklar rewrote Garrison’s On the Trail of the Assassins. (Gagne, p. 98) This was news to Sklar when I told him about it. He said if that would have been the case, he would have gotten a co-writer credit on the cover. He added that Gagne never called him about this point. (Email communication of April 16, 2022)

    In dealing with the Assassination Records Review Board, Gagne is also lacking in rigor. He writes that the Review Board did not unearth any clear proof that the HSCA or the Warren Commission was duped or behaved in bad faith. Please sir.

    The Board unearthed the fact that Gerald Ford altered the final draft of the Warren Report. He moved the wound in JFK’s back up to his neck, which makes a substantial difference for the trajectory of the Magic Bullet. Ford knew that and that is why he changed it. In fact, Ford knew the Commission was a sham. He revealed this to French president Valery Giscard d’Estang. (See the film JFK Revisited) As journalist Jeff Morley found out, the man the CIA brought out of retirement to be their liaison to the HSCA was there under false circumstances. George Joannides was running and funding the Cuban exiles that Oswald was so suspiciously dealing with in the summer of 1963. It was a CIA operation codenamed Amspell, yet the HSCA had an agreement in place that said no CIA agent operating in 1963 would be allowed near the committee. HSCA Chief Counsel Bob Blakey was shocked when he learned the CIA had duped him. (See JFK: Destiny Betrayed) And if Gagne had spoken to Dan Hardway, he would have realized that with Joannides, the CIA now began to give the HSCA redacted documents and taking their good old time in doing so. (Author’s interview with Hardway at the AARC conference in 2014)

    IV

    As the reader can see, Gagne’s book is a veritable trail of folly and error. He can even write that no records from the Review Board contained any proof of any conspiracy. (Gagne, p. 100) It would literally take me several pages to reply to that howler, but just let me name two instances. The ARRB declassified The Lopez Report, the 350-page report on Oswald’s alleged activities in Mexico City, written by Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway. It strongly indicates that there was an impersonator in Mexico City passing himself off as Oswald. In addition to that, both the FBI and CIA lowered Oswald’s profile in September and October, in order to make sure that those weird activities were barely noticed and therefore Oswald was allowed to be on the motorcade route. (John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 621–30)

    A point that Gagne avoids in his overriding attempt to place Oswald on the 6th floor at the time of the shooting is the corroborating testimony of Victoria Adams, Sandy Styles, and Dorothy Garner. As author Barry Ernest has written, the last was only made possible by the Review Board. The difference between Garner and the other two is that she remained on the fourth floor while Adams and Styles descended. This is about 15–30 seconds after the shooting. Garner also did not see anyone coming down the stairs. Would she not have if Oswald was on the 6th floor? What makes this all the worse is that J. Lee Rankin knew about her testimony, yet neither Styles nor Garner was ever called as a witness before the Commission. (Ernest, The Girl on the Stairs, pp. 214–15) As Gagne must know, if the defense can show the prosecution is concealing exculpatory evidence they can move for a dismissal of charges.

    I don’t even want to write about Chapter 15, which is where Gagne writes about President Kennedy’s autopsy. This might be the worst part of the book. Gagne tries to minimize any evidence of there being missing photos in the autopsy inventory. (Gagne, p. 355) Yet, as Doug Horne elucidates in his five-volume book, this was clearly known and acknowledged in 1966. There was a review of the photos by the Justice Department late in the year. In attendance were Kennedy pathologists Jim Humes and Jay Boswell, autopsy photographer John Stringer, and radiologist John Ebersole. Stringer told the ARRB that the Justice Department lawyer, Carl Belcher, understood that there were photos missing at this time. (Horne, Inside the ARRB, pp. 145–47) Yet, knowing such was the case, the participants lied and said the inventory was complete. But here is the capper, Belcher had his named erased from the final copy. Lawyers call this consciousness of guilt.

    As to why John Kennedy’s autopsy was so poor, Gagne keeps in step with the rest of the book: it was because the Kennedy family rushed the proceedings. (Gagne, p. 353) That excuse has been pretty much riddled by writers like Harold Weisberg and Gary Aguilar. Both Humes and Boswell said this was not the case in testimony before the ARRB. (DiEugenio, p. 139) Humes specifically told a friend that he was ordered not to do a complete autopsy, but that order did not come from Bobby Kennedy. (Ibid) In fact, in his permission slip for the autopsy, RFK left the “restrictions” box unmarked.

    What Gagne is trying to avoid, of course, is the fact that there was an extraordinary amount of Pentagon brass in the room that night and they directly interfered with the autopsy procedure. In fact, under oath at the trial of Clay Shaw, Pierre Finck said that Humes was so constricted that he had to ask, “Who’s in charge here?” (DiEugenio, p. 139) Finck’s testimony further revealed that the brass did not allow the doctors to dissect the path of the back wound through the body. This is why we will never know if that wound transited Kennedy, which is one reason you do autopsies in a gunshot homicide case.

    It’s kind of shocking that Gagne uses John Stringer as a witness to say the autopsy photographs are real and intact. In addition to the above inventory with Belcher, Stinger told the ARRB that he did not take the photos of Kennedy’s brain in the National Archives. He said this under oath, with the pictures in front of him. (DiEugenio, p. 164) Can Gagne really not be aware of this? It was a central part of the documentary JFK Revisited.

    As the reader can see, under analysis, this book is really almost a comedy of errors. I won’t even go into the personal portrait of Kennedy that the author draws. Gagne insinuates that the Kennedys were in on the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro. The CIA’s own 1967 Inspector General report admits the Agency never had presidential approval for the plots. (I.G. Report, pp. 132–34) He also writes that Lyndon Johnson believed he was following Kennedy’s policy in Vietnam. (Gagne, p. 186) In JFK Revisited, Oliver Stone plays a tape of Johnson talking to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. On that tape LBJ says he was aware of Kennedy’s withdrawal plan and disagreed with it.

    Which brings up what is perhaps the reason for the book. Gagne had to have been aware of Oliver Stone’s two documentaries released last year and this year. Those films had a worldwide impact. His strategy seems to be to try and demean the director by attacking the 1991 feature film. Talk about not thinking critically! But beyond that, I could find no reference by Gagne to The Book of the Film, published in 1992. That was a reference work to that movie. It included a profusely annotated script. Talk about loading the deck. These are the techniques Gagne uses to attack critics of the official story.

    In sum, here is a book that might be one of the worst written in the last few years. This review could be much longer, but it would just be repeating the pattern above. Routledge Publishing, the house that released it, should be held responsible for letting such a volume enter the public arena.

  • The Kirknewton Incident

    The Kirknewton Incident

    Did a US Air Force Security Service Member Intercept a Communication

    Predicting the JFK Assassination?

     

    The time is October 1963. The place is an Air Force Base in Kirknewton (Scotland), located approximately 11 miles west of the capital city, Edinburgh. A US Air Force (USAF) Security Service member is carrying out his regular duties at the base. Although it is in the United Kingdom, the base is currently under the control of the USAF Security Service. His duties include monitoring and reporting intelligence communication traffic to his supervisors. They then relay this information on to the National Security Agency (NSA) Headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. The individual’s name is David Christensen.

    Christensen is listening to communications coming out of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. Suddenly, he eavesdrops on a link between Lisbon and Tangier (Morocco) that mentions a high-ranking figure in organized crime and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Recognizing the importance and gravitas of such an intercept, he immediately informs his supervisors, confident in the knowledge that they will pass the information up the chain of command.

    Christensen had done his duty. He was relieved. He may even have felt that because of the important content of the intercept, it would have been given Critical Intelligence Communications status, otherwise known as CRITIC. Such messages should be alerted to the President and other senior government officials within minutes, if possible.

    A few weeks later, when Christensen heard the news of President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on 22 November 1963, his heart sank. His life then followed a similarly low trajectory. As he said himself, in a letter he wrote in May 1978, to a fellow officer who served with him at the RAF Kirknewton base, “it really broke me up after Nov. 22, 63 especially when I had it all beforehand.” We will return to this letter shortly.

    Was David Christensen destined to become another accidental witness to history, having had prior knowledge of the JFK assassination, alerting the appropriate authorities who then did nothing and failed to protect the President?

    This is his story and how it was eventually brought to the attention of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978.

    David Christensen and RAF Kirknewton

    David Frederick Christensen was born on 26 January 1942 in the midwestern town of Dickinson, North Dakota. He grew up on a ranch near the town of Halliday, which was about 40 miles north east from the town of his birth. Christensen graduated from High School in Halliday in 1960 and married that same year. The young Christensen quickly joined the USAF and in 1961 was sent overseas to the RAF Kirknewton base in Scotland.

    The small town of Kirknewton has a population of just over 2,000. During World War II, a military airfield was built about a mile south of the town by the British Royal Air Force (RAF). Unsurprisingly, it was named RAF Kirknewton.

    The base began life as a grass airfield in late 1940. Its initial purpose was to provide a home for the 289 Squadron in November 1941. The 289 Squadron was an anti-aircraft operation unit who eventually relocated to another base around six months later. RAF Kirknewton was then used for a variety of purposes, including a short stint as a Refresher Flying Training School, which helped to prepare inactive pilots for postings to operational training units.

    In 1943, there was some hope that the RAF Kirknewton base would replace the RAF Findo Gask station, when that base became unserviceable. Findo Gask was situated 50 miles north of Kirknewton. That hope quickly evaporated however when RAF Kirknewton did not obtain the necessary clearance to build runway extensions, probably because of dangerous crosswinds in the area.

    From the 1950s onwards, RAF Kirknewton was no longer used for aviation and in early 1952, the base was handed over to the USAF Security Service––the intelligence branch of the USAF. RAF Kirknewton then began a new life as a strategic US intelligence listening station that was used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and NSA to eavesdrop on military and commercial naval traffic, with priority given to Soviet radar. The Cold War was really heating up at this point. Personnel at the base included radio operators, linguists, and analysts––many with Top Secret and higher security clearance.

    The planning for this phase in the life of RAF Kirknewton actually began in August 1951 at the Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas when the 37th Radio Squadron Mobile (RSM) was activated. This unit was then selected to move to the UK and into the RAF Kirknewton base.

    Ironically, President Kennedy’s last official act as President was at the Brooks Air Force Base on 21 November 1963, when he opened and dedicated the new Aerospace Health Medical Centre there.

    Around May/June 1952, the first personnel arrived in Scotland (via a three month stay in Bremerhaven, Germany for background investigations and security clearances). These first arrivals referred to Scotland as the “land of the heather, the moors, Scotch whiskey and the kilt.”

    The 37th RSM began formal operations at Kirknewton in August 1952 and by the following month the base had grown in size, with around 17 officers and 155 airmen in post. During its first year, RAF Kirknewton was used to evaluate antenna configurations, with the aim of determining the most effective configuration for intercepting Soviet communications and radar signals.

    The formal transfer of RAF Kirknewton from the British air ministry to the USAF had already taken place by 27 March 1953. Two years later, the 37th RSM was re-designated as the 6952nd RSM, but there was no change to the original mission.

    At the peak of its activity, RAF Kirknewton housed 17 officers and 463 airmen. Over 2,000 personnel served during the lifespan of the base. Towards the end of its life as a listening station, the base was even responsible for maintaining security over part of the hotline established in 1963 between Washington and Moscow, as the cable route passed through the area. The base was handed back to Britain in 1967.

    In James Bamford’s book, The Puzzle Palace (Penguin Books, 1983, page 270), we get an insight into the type of work Christensen would have been performing at Kirknewton. An unnamed former employee explained his routine at the base:

    Intercepted telegrams came through on telex machines. I was provided with a list of about 100 words to look out for. All diplomatic traffic from European embassies was in code and was passed at once to a senior officer. A lot of telegrams––birthday congratulations for instance––were put into the burn bag. I had to keep a special watch for commercial traffic, details of commodities, what big companies were selling, like iron and steel and gas. Changes were frequent. One week I was asked to scan all traffic between Berlin and London and another week between Rome and Belgrade. Some weeks the list of words to watch for contained dozens of names of big companies. Some weeks I just had to look for commodities. All traffic was sent back to Fort Meade in Washington.

    As “all traffic was sent back to Fort Meade in Washington” you would have thought that an intercept referring to the assassination of the President would have been given priority treatment and not “put into the burn bag” with birthday messages!

    Christensen’s Letter and Subsequent Investigation

    Earlier, I referred to a letter David Christensen wrote to an ex-colleague in May 1978. The recipient of his letter was Sergeant Nicholas Stevenson, who served two tours of duty at RAF Kirknewton. The second tour was between June 1962 and June 1965, so he was based there at the same time Christensen said he picked up the Lisbon/Tangier intercept. We can see here a typed copy of the letter provided to the HSCA by the NSA in 1978 (click here to see the original handwritten version of Christensen’s letter).

    Unlike his alert to senior officers in October 1963, Christensen’s letter to Stevenson did not fly under the radar. It was quickly brought to the attention of US government agencies and eventually the HSCA, led by Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey.

    When Christensen wrote the letter, he was in a Veterans Hospital in Sheridan, Wyoming. Stevenson was based at Corry Field, Florida.

    An earlier public release of the letter contained many redactions. This is what two of the pages looked like––clearly there were concerns about the content:

    Once Stevenson had read the letter, he alerted the USAF Security Service, who in turn notified the Office of Special Investigations (OSI). An OSI agent, based at the Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado, was assigned to contact Christensen, and interview him about the letter. This interview took place on or around 1 June 1978.

    A letter dated 2 June 1978 from Paul Fisher (Chief, USAF Security Service) provides an insight into what was discussed between the OSI agent and Christensen. Fisher’s letter was addressed to James Lear, Director of the NSA (click here to see Fisher’s letter). He wrote that the purpose of the interview with Christensen was to determine the names of any other individuals he may have contacted. He went on to state that “Mr. Christensen has a long history of alcoholism, family problems and now wants to see a cleared psychiatrist as he attributes all of his problems from Oct 1963, per the OSI agent. In addition, he has indicated to the OSI that he now fears for his life.”  

    The government agencies at this point clearly seemed to be more concerned about who else Christensen may have talked to about the letter, rather than the actual claim made about the JFK assassination and organized crime. Christensen’s health and personal problems were also highlighted, a common tactic when trying to undermine someone’s credibility.

    This illustrates that if Christensen did intercept a message in October 1963 predicting the JFK assassination, and tried to raise the alarm or alert authorities, then it had a very profound and damaging effect on his life. Something similar happened to Eugene Dinkin, Ralph Leon Yates, and Abraham Bolden to name just a few (click here for more on Eugene Dinkin).

    On 7 September 1978, Daniel Silver (General Counsel, NSA) wrote to the FBI about the letter and provided them with a typed copy. Silver indicated that the FBI may wish to bring the matter to the attention of any Committee of the Congress. The HSCA had already been investigating the JFK assassination for two years by then (click here to see Silver’s letter).

    Interestingly, Silver also corroborated a central claim made in Christensen’s letter about what was going on at the RAF Kirknewton base in October 1963.

    Silver wrote that “the information contained in Mr. Christensen’s letter that the Air Force Security Service was intercepting international commercial communications at Kirknewton, Scotland in 1963 is correct, as is the assertion that the station monitored communications links between Lisbon and other parts of the world.” As we will discuss later, other facts raised by Christensen in his letter can also be corroborated.

    The HSCA were indeed made aware of Christensen’s claim and on 8 November 1978, Chief Counsel Blakey met with a representative of the NSA to discuss further. The memorandum written up from this meeting confirmed that Christensen had been committed to “a mental institution” because of the October 1963 intercept. Blakey posed several questions to the NSA including what their capability was to retrieve communications from Kirknewton from the time period in question, and whether Christensen really was working for the USAF at the time and doing the kind of work consistent with “intercepting commercial communications.”

    Blakey followed this up on 15 November 1978 by writing to Harold Brown who was then Secretary of Defense under President Jimmy Carter. Brown had also worked in the Defense Department under Robert McNamara during JFK’s time in the White House.

    On the same date, a memorandum of understanding was also drawn up and signed by both Blakey and John Kester, who was the Special Assistant to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense. The purpose of the memorandum was in relation to the Defense Department’s agreement to release Sergeant Stevenson to be interviewed by the HSCA. It included the restrictions placed on them in this regard, such as that it be limited in scope to the allegations made by Christensen, no classified information would be disclosed by the HSCA without the written consent of the Defense Department, and that Stevenson would be accompanied at the interview.

    What is also interesting about the memorandum of understanding was an error in the original typed copy. As we can see, it referred to “the allegations of David F Christensen of involvement by the Government of Cuba in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” This was then scored out, initialed and corrected to read “of certain individuals.”

    Click here to see the full memorandum of understanding.>

    There is no record that Christensen made any allegation that the Government of Cuba was involved in the JFK assassination. I’m sure this mistake was just an honest clerical error!

    The Interview with Sergeant Stevenson

    The interview with Sergeant Nicholas Stevenson took place on 17 November 1978 in the Senate Intelligence Committee room. Two HSCA staff members conducted the session. They were Gary Cornwell and Kenneth Klein. Stevenson was accompanied by a legislative liaison officer from the USAF. Others in attendance included Eugene Yeates, Chief of Legislative Affairs at the NSA.

    I have been unable to find a verbatim account of what was discussed but a summary of the interview was subsequently written up by Klein that day (click here to see Klein’s report) and by Yeates in a memorandum dated 21 November 1978 (click here to see Yeates’ memorandum).

    At the meeting, Stevenson confirmed that he had known Christensen for a number of years and recognized other names in the letter. He added that he could not rule out that such a message was picked up at RAF Kirknewton but felt it would have been more widely known at the base and be the probable subject of a CRITIC. We have seen previously that this relates to a piece of Critical Intelligence Communications which should be treated with the utmost urgency and importance. Stevenson denied any specific knowledge of the allegation made concerning organized crime and the assassination of the President.

    HSCA investigator Cornwell suggested to Stevenson that he call Christensen to find out the name of the figure in organized crime. Stevenson replied that he was unwilling to do so. In Klein’s report, it is stated that the lawyer representing Stevenson, stated that “such a phone call could only be arranged through the Department of Defense.”

    It has always puzzled me why the HSCA did not pursue more vigorously the name of the organized crime figure mentioned in Christensen’s letter. The memorandum by Eugene Yeates stated that “the staffers remain particularly interested in determining the name of the individual who Mr. Christensen believes relates to the assassination” and ended with the words “If the Committee is able to determine a specific name, the staffers indicated that they would probably initiate a specific inquiry to NSA to again search our materials.”

    There is no available information that I have yet been able to find that the HSCA made any serious further efforts to determine the identity of the individual. Despite what Stevenson’s lawyer said, I would have thought the HSCA would have moved heaven and earth to find out the name of the organized crime figure, particularly as Chief Counsel Blakey was pointing the figure of suspicion for the assassination at organized crime. I also realize at the time (November 1978) that the HSCA and their Congressional investigatory mandate was due to run out at the end of the year. I accept that they may have had higher priorities to pursue at the time, such as the acoustical evidence from the Police Officer’s dicta-belt, that recorded the shots in Dealey Plaza.

    Author, Larry Hancock, did speak to Sergeant Nicholas Stevenson for his excellent book Someone Would Have Talked (JFK Lancer Productions & Publications, 2010 edition, page 367). Stevenson told Hancock that “he was unable to discuss the subject because of two brain operations which had totally eliminated all of his past memories.”

    On 21 November 1978, Eugene Yeates wrote a further letter to confirm that the NSA had “made a thorough search of all records” pertinent to the allegation made by Christensen and that “no communications or information relating to the Committee’s request” had been located. This letter was only released in full in November 2017 under the JFK Records Collections Act 1992 (click here to see the letter).

    Another document only released in full at this time was from Harold Parish of the NSA. His memorandum was dated 2 January 1979. In it, Parish outlines the scope of the search conducted by the NSA to find materials relevant to the Kirknewton incident. He concluded that the NSA had “done all reasonable things to locate the reported intercept with negative results.” Just before concluding this, he also admitted that the search only really consisted of a look through three boxes from 1963 containing unidentified materials. There were nearly 10,000 products on file from January through November 1963 that would take a minimum of four weeks to go through (click here to see the memorandum).

    The reality of the search is underlined by another memorandum dated 13 December 1978, this time by C. Baldwin of the NSA (click here to see the memorandum). Baldwin’s memo confirmed “that a review of the documents in these three unidentified boxes would constitute a reasonable effort to find the alleged record” and that the “latest date in the box was 1962.” We know Christensen’s intercept was made in October 1963.

    Baldwin’s memo goes on to state that Mr. Sapp of the NSA “requested that an additional search be made of materials dated later than 1963” but that after reviewing the listing of such boxes, “nothing on the list merits such a search.”  

    It is clear to me that the NSA’s response, that they had made a “thorough search” to locate information relating to Christensen’s allegation, was disingenuous at best and a complete fabrication at worst. It also makes me wonder why these documents were hidden from public view for nearly 40 years if there was nothing to see. I appreciate that time is precious for government agencies but maybe in the near future, I’ll get the opportunity to make a more “thorough search” of these materials. I look forward to that day.

    The Lisbon and Tangier Link

    The intelligence agencies and HSCA seemed to have closed the book insofar as David Christensen’s allegation was concerned.

    You will recall that he mentioned that the link picked up was between Lisbon and Tangier. We have seen that the NSA confirmed that they were indeed listening to communications between Lisbon and other parts of the world at the time Christensen was based at RAF Kirknewton.

    Lisbon and Tangier are only about 275 miles apart. They are both interesting places to research. Both are port cities with easy access to North Africa, Southern Europe and a gateway to the Atlantic.

    Lisbon was known as the Capital of Espionage during World War II, largely because Portugal was officially neutral during that bloody conflict. Like its neighbour Spain, Portugal was ruled by a fascist dictator for decades. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar held power from 1932 until 1968. But because of the country’s neutrality during the war, Lisbon became a haven for spies. Intelligence agents from the allies and axis countries all converged on Lisbon.

    After the war, many organizations continued to take advantage of Salazar’s anti-communist dictatorship. These included CIA-NATO sponsored “Gladio” stay behind units, set up allegedly to defend Western Europe from a possible Soviet invasion, but who ended up inflicting murder and terrorist attacks on their own populations to instill fear, and frame political opponents. James Earl Ray also spent around ten days in Lisbon just before his arrest in London in June 1968 for the alleged murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

    Tangier was an important trade centre and international zone from 1924 until it was integrated into Morocco in 1956. It was also a place where spies met and even the setting for part of a James Bond film in the 1980’s! Bond author, Ian Fleming, was a friend of JFK’s. Smuggling was a popular pastime, if we can describe it as that. There were also several alleged sightings of Lee Harvey Oswald in Tangier, but I am sceptical of their authenticity. I could write a separate article about this subject alone! 

    An interesting character who we do know was in Tangier was Thomas Eli Davis III. He was an associate of Jack Ruby and in the gun running business, which included Cuba. In fact, it is reported that Ruby’s first lawyer, Tom Howard, asked his client whilst he was awaiting trial for Oswald’s murder if there was anybody who could harm his defence if it came out at the trial. Ruby mentioned Thomas Eli Davis.

    Davis was arrested in Tangier on 8 December 1963 for trying to sell two pistols to raise money. What concerned the Moroccan police more though was that Davis also had in his possession a cryptic, unsigned letter in his handwriting that mentioned Oswald and the Kennedy assassination. It is likely though that the reference to Oswald was a Victor Oswald, an arms dealer that Davis met in Madrid around November 1963.

    Another, and possibly more interesting bit of information about Davis, is that he was in custody in Algiers, Algeria on the day of the JFK assassination for running guns to the violent Organisation Armée Secrète, commonly known as the OAS. The OAS were opposed to Algerian independence from France (which was won in March 1962) and had tried to assassinate President De Gaulle on numerous occasions because of his stance on Algeria. They also had a station in Madrid.

    According to author Seth Kantor, Davis’s release from custody in Algiers was facilitated by a CIA asset with the cryptonym QJ/WIN (The Ruby Cover-Up, Zebra Books, 1978, page 45). This mysterious individual was part of the ZR/RIFLE Executive Action assassination programme led by William Harvey, who hated Kennedy and Castro. Could Harvey’s programme have diverted its attention towards JFK?

    Anti-Castro Cuban refugees were also known to have left their country of birth and made their way to Tangier because of the Castro revolution.

    The connection between Lisbon and Tangier may not therefore have been as benign as one may originally think. It does not seem unreasonable that communications and intelligence chatter could have been picked up around October 1963 that included talk of the imminent assassination of JFK.

    The Figure in Organized Crime           

    Earlier in the article, we saw the letter that Christensen wrote in 1978. He wrote that “the man’s name most mentioned was number 4 in a certain branch of organized crime at the time. Was number 2 last year.”

    You don’t need to have the detective powers of Sherlock Holmes or Jessica Fletcher to work out that the person mentioned in the intercept therefore had to still be alive in 1977, the year before the letter was written––and was the number 2 man in that branch of organized crime.

    When we talk about organized crime and the JFK assassination, there are three names that generally come top of most people’s lists. They are Carlos Marcello from Louisiana, Sam Giancana from Chicago and Florida kingpin, Santo Trafficante Jr. All are on record as wishing harm on President Kennedy, and his brother Bobby, and all had the means, motive and opportunity to do so.

    Giancana though was brutally murdered himself in June 1975, so this would appear to rule him out as the person in the letter. Other high-profile Mafia figures who have been linked with the JFK assassination over the years include Joseph Civello (Dallas), Jimmy Hoffa (Teamsters Union), Johnny Roselli (CIA/Mafia Castro hits) and Antoine Guerini (Marseille Mafia).

    They were also all dead by 1977 (or in Hoffa’s case had disappeared). Antoine Guerini’s equally notorious brother, Barthélemy, was sentenced to twenty years in prison in 1969 and died in 1982. Suspected grassy knoll shooter, Lucien Sarti, was also dead, killed in a Mexico City shoot out in 1972. So, it is most unlikely that the man’s name mentioned in the letter, and who was number 2 in a certain branch of organized crime in 1977, could have been any of these men.

    It seems credible that the branch of organized crime mentioned in the letter could have been the lucrative heroin drug smuggling trade––going through Marseille and into North America. The so-called French Connection. It was thriving in the early 1960s and therefore under intense scrutiny by some government agencies. Montreal was a key city in this drugs corridor, as they made their way from Europe to the USA. This makes Paul Mondolini a potential suspect. He was alive in 1977.

    This is, of course, all speculation and it is easy to throw names around without any specific corroboration. As well as drug trafficking, there are many other “branches” of organized crime including murder and assassination. The list of potential candidates could therefore be very long. But I do not think it takes us much further forward to throw other names into the mix without evidence.

    What we do know for sure is that there was an opportunity for the HSCA to find out the name of the person in Christensen’s letter, but they either didn’t have time or did not believe it worthy of further investigation. The NSA didn’t help with their poor excuse of a search for relevant records and information. Could they have been worried about where it might lead them?

    An Officer and a Gentleman

    It’s easy to forget that within all this talk of the JFK assassination, organized crime figures, and Cold War paranoia, that the whole Kirknewton incident really revolves around one man––David Frederick Christensen.

    Only he really knows the whole story and may have taken his secrets to the grave. Christensen died on 22 December 2008. He was 66 years old and rests forever at the Halliday Cemetery in North Dakota.

    Some may say that he made the whole story up, perhaps to engineer some medical and financial assistance he may have been looking for from government. What happened between October 1963 and May 1978 (when he wrote the letter to Stevenson) is also a mystery. Who else did he tell about it? Was pressure brought to bear on him to keep quiet? These questions remain unanswered for now and require further investigation.

    What we do know is that it rarely ended well for people who bravely put their heads above the parapet and tried to sound a warning about the possible assassination of JFK.

    For those who doubt Christensen’s story, it’s worth reflecting on some of the other points mentioned in his 1978 letter.

    He included the names of other officers who served at RAF Kirknewton, such as Prater, Harley, and Hendrickson. A review of the alumni at the USAF RAF Kirknewton website confirms the existence of such named individuals who served there. The Berkely Bar in Edinburgh was an established drinking establishment for serving military personnel at the time. He had indeed married a girl call Marlene Burr in 1960 and they were later divorced. He refers to some people as 202s and 203s. A 202 was a Radio Traffic Analyst and a 203 a Language Specialist––work consistent with the RAF Kirknewton base at the time. Could the outfit in Texas have been a reference to the Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio?

    Amongst all these facts, I find it extremely unlikely that Christensen would then have thrown in a wild accusation about an intercept that mentioned the assassination of President Kennedy, unless it really did happen.

    As we all continue to research different aspects of the JFK assassination, maybe more about the Christensen story will be revealed. It’s a pity more of the documents and details about the HSCA investigation were not released until after his death. We may have been able to find found out a lot more if they were released earlier.

    What we should never lose sight of though is that David Christensen was a human being who served his country with distinction and received an honorable discharge. He was trusted with high security clearance and is not just a name to be read in documents.

    He had two sons and six grandchildren––a family man. He enjoyed playing card games and worked in the oil business when he left the Air Force. And his life was profoundly affected following Kirknewton. As he said himself––“it really broke me up after November 22, 1963” and “it cost him a divorce and everything from his wife.”

    Until evidence is presented to the contrary, perhaps we should also start referring to David F Christensen as another forgotten hero as far as the JFK assassination is concerned.

    We must keep searching for the truth.

    As JFK said himself once, “Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.”

  • Creating the Oswald Legend: Conclusion

    Creating the Oswald Legend: Conclusion

    In 1959, the US intelligence services, and notably the CIA, were trying to infiltrate revolutionary movements like Castro’s government and sympathetic organizations for purposes of infiltration and discreditation. Lee Harvey Oswald had all the earmarks of being prepared with that purpose in mind. In all likelihood, Oswald was a creature of American intelligence who was sent to the USSR to help him build what is called in espionage parlance, a ‘Legend’. He was a defector with Marxist ideology who may or may not have betrayed technical information about the U2 spy plane to the Russians.

    The plan was to return to the United States and use this Legend to infiltrate and smoke out subversives: Communists and Castro supporters, not only in public and private life, but also in defense contractor industrial plants. His primary target would have been the newly organized Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which was active in both New York and the Los Angeles area. In the LA area, the first people who established the organization attended Robert Fritchman’s First Unitarian Church. Coincidentally or not, one of his Marine buddies, Kerry Thornley, was also attending that Church. It is most likely then that Thornley, Fritchman, or both provided Oswald with information about the Albert Schweitzer College (ASC), a quite obscure higher learning institute in Switzerland and encouraged him to enroll and study there. For when Oswald made out his passport application to Europe, this was one of the destinations he listed. After being contacted by the Director of the college, his mother thought he might be attending classes there when he left the United States after being discharged from the Marines.

    The ASC was created by the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) and was supported by the Unitarian American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College. Percival Brundage, an important figure of the Eastern establishment, was one of the Directors of the Unitarian American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College. Brundage was also the Director of the Bureau of Budget (BOB) during the Eisenhower presidency and along with another Unitarian, James Killian, they were involved in the U-2 and CORONA satellite projects, the latter which was intended to replace the U-2 plane.

    Brundage held major stocks in Southern Air Transport, which Paul Helliwell, a CIA man in the Far East, had established. Helliwell was responsible for arranging and managing the drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle to finance CIA operations.

    As Senator Richard Schweiker stated, Oswald had the fingerprints of intelligence all over him. If there was one person whose fingertips were more dominant than anyone else, that person was James Jesus Angleton. He and his ultra-secretive CI/SIG unit were keeping tabs on the young Marine since his defection to the Soviet Union and maybe earlier. Thanks to Malcolm Blunt, we learned for the first time of the magnificent work of HSCA researcher Betsy Wolf. Her work was nowhere to be found in the HSCA report or in any typed memorandum. Malcolm could only manage to get her handwritten notes when they were declassified in 1998. Her notes helped solve a riddle that had plagued the critical community since 1995 and the release of John Newman’s Oswald and the CIA.

    When Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, he made plain his intent to dangle the U-2 spy plane secrets to the Soviets. Yet his defection and this dangerous offer did not cause the opening of a CIA 201 file. That did not occur until 13 months after. Years later, when Richard Helms was asked about this delay, he found it inexplicable. He replied, ‘’I am amazed.’’

    Betsy Wolf was most probably doubly amazed when she discovered this odd discrepancy. She set out to find a solution to his mystery. In an HSCA interview of a CIA officer named William Larson, he revealed that if there were more than five documents on someone at the CIA, a 201 file should be opened. Betsy was intrigued by this, because after Oswald’s defection, there were more than five documents concerning him. And yet a 201 file was not opened.

    But there was another paradox about Oswald’s files at CIA. Larson revealed that the documents about Oswald should have gone to the Soviet Russia Division (SR), but instead they went to the Office of Security (OS). Malcolm Blunt found out that the OS was cooperating with Angleton’s CI/SIG, or mole hunters unit. Betsy Wolf found out that there a dissemination of files form upon request from CIA offices. In Oswald’s case, someone from OS deliberately directed his files to the Office of Security instead of the General Filing System.

    Betsy Wolf’s notes included a new information about a never-before-seen interview of Robert Gambino, then Chief of the CIA’s Office of Security. Wolf interviewed her in the latter half of 1978, as the HSCA was closing down. Gambino told her that it was CIA Mail Logistics, a component of the Office of Central Reference (OCR), that was responsible for disseminating all incoming documents. Mail Logistics should have sent all Oswald documents to the SR division through the General Filing System. That was bypassed. Instead, they were sent to the OS. This was important information, because it revealed that someone had rigged the system at the time of, or even before, Oswald’s defection.

    It is possible that this was done for the purpose of a mole hunt, after former KGB officer Pyotr Popov was placed under surveillance. Popov was a double agent who had informed the CIA that information about the U-2 project had been compromised. It is possible that Angleton, who monitored Oswald more closely than anyone else, decided to use him in an to start a mole hunt to find out the alleged Soviet spy who had possibly betrayed the U-2 secrets that led to the alleged 1960 shootdown of the Gary Powers flown U-2 over the USSR., although some observers, like the late Fletcher Prouty, did not think this was how Powers was downed.

    Angleton would initiate this mole hunt as a cover to conceal the true purpose of the U-2 incident, which was probably the cancellation of the Paris Peace Summit between Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev. The CIA and the Military Industrial Complex were willing to sacrifice the U-2, since its utility was coming to an end, ready to be replaced by a newer airplane and satellites. A scapegoat was needed, and the Soviet mole—who was never found—was just that. The CIA had the excuse to officially search for him, without success.

    Three years later, Angleton would initiate a similar mole hunt in Mexico City after Oswald’s, or an impersonator’s, visit to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies, in order to reveal a Soviet mole who had helped the Cubans impersonate Oswald and expose an official CIA operation to embarrass the FPCC in countries where it had support. The victim this time was the receptionist at the Cuban embassy, Sylvia Duran.

    The Mexico City operation was used to conceal Kennedy’s assassination by forcing a major cover up that would ensure that the identity of the perpetrators would never be known. John Newman named Angleton as the CIA officer who was most likely the architect of the Mexico City plot and orchestrated the drama that evolved down there.

    What Betsy Wolf revealed was that Ray Rocca, Angleton’s most trusted associate, had cabled Luis Echeverria on November 23, 1963, to inform him about Oswald’s and Sylvia Duran’s relationship. What is striking about this is that it occurred long before Helms assigned Angleton to take over the Mexico City investigation from John Whitten, thus before Angleton became liaison to the Warren Commission. The day after the assassination, the CIA took Elena Garro de Paz under their protection. In other words, the CIA had both the accuser, Elena, and the accused collaborator Duran, under their control within 24 hours of Kennedy’s assassination. It is important to note that Philip Shenon used Elena’s story about Duran being a communist aide to Oswald quite liberally in his Commission supporting book A Cruel and Shocking Act.

    Besides Betsy Wolf’s revelations, the Angleton fingertips could have been laid upon Dallas, if one considers the strange behavior of certain Policemen like Gerald Hill and Captain Westbrook. A declassified CIA file revealed that the CIA Police Group had been transferred from the NE Division to Angleton’s CI staff. It was the Counter Intelligence Police Group (CI/GP) that was running the CIA’s police programs.

    After Angleton was fired by William Colby, he made the following bizarre remark to reporter Seymour Hersh: “A mansion has many rooms and there were many things going on…I am not privy to who struck John.” This comment was cryptic and it is difficult to interpret it with precision. Did Angleton mean that he was out of the loop and someone else within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, someone even higher up than him? Or, in a similar fashion to the mole hunt, was he trying to deflect all responsibility from himself and blame it on the ever-elusive mole? Do we have any indications that Angleton has ever admitted that his famous mole hunt was just an excuse and a cover?

    In part 5, we documented that Angleton revealed to Joseph Trento that E. Howard Hunt was in Dallas on the day of the assassination and possibly sent there by a high-level mole inside the CIA. Trento believed that Angleton was trying to hide his own connections to Hunt and that it was him that had sent Hunt to Dallas. If we consider Trento’s explanation, then we have an indication that Angleton was using the mole hunt as a cover whenever it was suitable to cover his sinister operations.

    Hunt himself vehemently denied that he ever was in Dallas that day, but Mark Lane proved in the Liberty Lobby trial that Hunt was contradicting himself. Hunt had testified to the Rockefeller Commission back in 1974 that on 11/22/1963 he was with his wife and children in Washington D.C. Lane asked him if he recalled his testimony at the first Liberty Lobby trial, where he had admitted that his children were upset when allegations came out that he was in Dallas that day and he had to reassure his children that he was not in Dallas that day and had nothing to do with the assassination.[1] Then Lane asked him a question that Hunt could not adequately answer:

    Mr. Hunt, why did you have to convince your children that you were not in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, if in fact, as you say, a fourteen-year-old daughter, a thirteen-year-old daughter, and a ten-year-old son were with you in the Washington D.C. area on November 22, 1963 and were with you at least for the next forty eight hours, as you all stayed glued to the TV set?’[2]

    Did Oswald visit Mexico City in the fall of 1963? Angleton may have designed the Mexico City plot, but it was David Phillips and Anne Goodpasture in Mexico who were controlling the information that made it possible to succeed. Years later, Phillips admitted that Oswald likely never visited Mexico City:

    I am not in a position today to talk to you about the inner workings of the CIA station in Mexico City…but I will tell you this, that when the record comes out, we will find that there was never a photograph taken of Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City. We will find out that Lee Harvey Oswald never visited, let me put it, that is a categorical statement…there is no evidence to show that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy.[3]

    Continuing with Mark Lane’s encounter with Phillips: he said that if the CIA gave deliberately false information about the incident, Mexico City would ask for the abolishment of the Agency and made a very enigmatic statement that “if some CIA guy that I never saw did something that I never heard of, I don’t want to have to come back here.”[4] Was Phillips trying to say that he was innocent and that someone else within the CIA was to blame for the crime? Or as a former actor, was he was trying to confuse his audience and appear innocent?

    Part of Oswald’s mission was to join the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which he was the only member in New Orleans. Through people like Guy Banister, Clay Shaw, and David Ferrie, he got into contact with Cuban exiles. In Dallas, the allegedly Marxist Oswald was in contact with peculiar characters like the the White Russians, most prominently George DeMohrenschildt and George Bouhe, and also with Michael and Ruth Paine.

    Oswald was probably employed indirectly by the CIA’s Domestic Operations Division, through some proprietary firm, most likely involved in industrial security. As Paul Bleau has shown, William Stuckey was in contact with the FBI in 1962 trying to find out if there was any member of the FPCC in New Orleans. It was Stuckey who arranged the New Orleans radio interview during which Oswald had a slip of the tongue that almost gave away his secret that in Russia he was under the protection of the US Government.

    When he was captured in Dallas, he again dropped a hint as to what he was. Roger Craig told Captain Fritz that he saw Oswald entering a station wagon after the assassination. Oswald replied “That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine. Don’t try to drag her into this.” Then in a very disgusted and disappointed tone, he added “Everybody will know who I am now.” The Warren Commission transposed the ‘now’ and wrote in its report “NOW everybody will know who I am.”[5]

    Oswald was likely not an official CIA agent, but he was made to believe so and he was probably the creation of a joint project by primarily the CIA, along with the FBI and the military, exemplified by a mentality mostly marked by the American Security Council. However, this author does not want to give the wrong impression that the American Security Council killed President Kennedy. Oswald just happened to be a protagonist in a drama, a theatrical play where some actors were known to him, but most of them—along with the director, the script writers, and the producers—were operating in the shadows. Oswald had no knowledge of how the story would end. He would soon realize that this theater was larger than he could imagine, that the stage was the Globe, like Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard (see Appendix).

    After Oswald’s funeral, his mother Marguerite, stated to a television camera:

    Lee Harvey Oswald, my son, even after his death, has done more for his country than any other living human being.

    To sum up Oswald’s tragic life and fate, one has to remember Jim Garrison’s words during an on camera interview for the TV mini-series “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” (Part 4; “The Patsy”):

    Lee Oswald was totally, unequivocally, completely innocent of the assassination of President Kennedy and the fact that history, or in the re-writing of history, disinformation has made a villain out of this young man who wanted nothing more than to be a fine Marine, is in some ways the greatest injustice of all.

    By all accounts, Oswald was innocent, never fired a shot, and he was not on the sixth floor of the TSBD at the crucial time. The latest research reveals that Oswald might have been outside on the steps watching the Presidential Parade.[6]

    If Oswald was innocent, then who committed this heinous crime? Ideally, when trying to solve a murder case, the first step would be to examine the crime scene, evidence and question the witnesses. Sadly, for the JFK assassination it would be an exercise in futility to even try to contemplate such a feat. It would be a Herculean task, since the crime scene has been tampered with, evidence has been destroyed, witnesses’ testimonies were withheld or altered and a massive cover up of Gargantuan proportions ensured that it would be impossible for future investigators to piece it together. It was not only the Dallas Police that did not do its job properly, but also the FBI, the medical doctors at Bethesda, and all the investigative bodies, from the Warren Commission to the HSCA, never really tried hard to uncover the truth.

    Faced with this improbable mountain to climb, what is left for today’s researchers is to focus on Fletcher Prouty’s phrase “Cui Bono?’’ and the classic triptych of the Means, Motive and Opportunity. In part 6, we examined Oswald’s elite connections and how JFK’s foreign policy was drastically reversed by LBJ when he ascended into power. We also discussed how enormous profits were made from the Vietnam War and this foreign policy reversal in general. However, this author would like to stress that this is circumstantial evidence and one cannot conclude beyond reasonable doubt who were those that instigated the assassination. Their identities will likely forever remain obscured from the eye of history.

    The same could be said for the actual assassins. We’ll probably never find out their names. Lucky for us, a wealth of official documents and tireless research by those who investigated the assassination left us some clues as to who were the facilitators who carried out the instigators wishes.

    Some researchers would blame the Mafia, the Cubans, the CIA, or the Military. This author believes that this is a false argument, that neither the CIA per se or the Military per se murdered the President. Most likely members of both participated outside their agencies, carrying out the wishes of a powerful elite, who believed in the American Century and its Manifest Destiny of financial conquest and economic possession, a refined neo-colonialism. This American Century was built on the solid foundations of the US dollar and the American war machine in order to expand around the Globe. As Henry Luce commented about the American Century in 1941, ‘’Tyrannies may require a large amount of living space, but Freedom requires and will require far greater living space than Tyranny.’’ Allen Dulles, the CIA’s Director, had always been in the service of the Power Elite and championed their interests whenever it was needed.

    John Kennedy was a part of that elite, but after a while he was perceived as a virus, an internal fault that had to be eliminated and his murder was seen as an erasure of a fault line in the system. This could not be exemplified better than by the chilling and arrogant words that Allen Dulles uttered to Willie Morris, young editor of Harper’s magazine, ‘’That little Kennedy…he thought he was a god.’’[7] Those opposing his policies were a ruthless elite partly composed of Malthusian ideology championing Eugenics, the survival of the fittest, and social engineering.

    Regarding Kennedy’s assassination and the critical community, a great deal of time has been spent on finding who the marksmen were: their location, the shot trajectories, etc. This has led to some weird, silly theories: e.g. James Files, John Roselli, Charles Nicoletti.

    The late great astronomer, Carl Sagan warned us about the dangers of not using our critical mind:

    Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along.[8]

    In the case of the JFK assassination, we have been up for grabs for the last 58 years, but it is time to practice these tough habits of thought to stop all those charlatans who have been throwing ashes so shamelessly into our eyes to obscure the truth.

    The weight of history will be against us in our effort to reveal the true circumstances of President Kennedy’s assassination, since there was so much obstruction of justice, destroyed evidence, disinformation, and an ongoing cover up, but we must persist in our quest for the truth.

    In an X-Files episode, a retired Navy Commander tells Agent Scully:

    We bury our dead alive, don’t we?…We hear them every day, they talk to us, they haunt us, they beg us for meaning. Conscience is just the voices of the dead trying to save us from our own damnation.

    Later, Scully tells Mulder about what a man said to her “that the dead speak to us from beyond the grave, that that’s what conscience is…I think the dead are speaking to us Mulder, demanding justice. Maybe that man was right. Maybe we bury the dead alive.”[9]

    Similarly, we have buried not only John Kennedy alive, but also his brother Robert and Martin Luther King. They have become our conscience, demanding justice and trying to save us from our damnation before it is too late. We only have to listen to our conscience.

    Go to Part 1

    Go to Part 2

    Go to Part 3

    Go to Part 4

    Go to Part 5

    Go to Part 6

    Go to Appendix

    References

    [1] Lane Mark, Plausible Denial, Plexus Publishing Ltd, 1992, p. 274.

    [2] Ibid, pp. 282–283.

    [3] Ibid, p. 82.

    [4] Ibid, p. 83.

    [5] “Roger Dean Craig,” Spartacus Educational

    [6] Prayer Man

    [7] Talbot David, The Devil’s Chessboard, HarperCollins 2015, p. 1.

    [8] Sagan Carl, The Demon Haunted World, Headline Book Publishing, 1997, p. 42.

    [9] X-Files, episode 3×15, Apocrypha.