Reader Rich Negrete has made this remarkable film based on the information given the Warren Commission by Victoria Adams, Sandy Styles and Dorothy Garner. These three witnesses provided powerful testimony that Oswald was not on the sixth floor at the time of President Kennedy’s assassination. Rich goes into detail as to how the Warren Commission decided to dodge the clear implications of these witnesses. Because they knew it would counter their pre-conceived conclusions, this evidence was altered, ignored, and even destroyed. He does all this with delicacy, accuracy, and forceful effect.
Although a major source is Barry Ernest’s milestone book The Girl onthe Stairs, in some ways Rich Negrete goes beyond that book. For instance in the information about Dorothy Garner and the professional opinion of Dr. Joseph Dolce, who worked for the Warren Commission. The amount of primary source information placed on the screen is copious and potent. It helps show why and how the Commission did what they did with this episode. For a first time film-making effort The Killing Floor is impressive. I personally hope there are more of these to come. And I thank Rich for letting us place it on our web site.
Jean Stafford (1915-1979) is best remembered for writing novels and short stories; she won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1970. But in 1966 she ventured into nonfiction with a profile of Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, Marguerite. This made her a person of interest to me as I researched my book, Praise from a Future Generation (Wings Press, 2007).
Stafford grew up in Boulder, CO, not too far from where I live, and where she later attended the University of Colorado. Today her papers are housed in CU’s Norlin Library. She was only peripheral to my project, and there was already plenty of available data about her. So even though it’s in my back yard, and even though I made regular use of Norlin resources, I never went to the Stafford archive during my own book’s research phase.
Her profile of Marguerite Oswald appeared first as an article in McCall’s magazine, and later as a book, both called A Mother In History. I devoted a few pages to it in Praise From, but a vexing question remained. “[Lee] never did tell me why he went to Russia,” Stafford quoted Marguerite as saying. “I have my own opinion. He spoke Russian, he wrote Russian, and he read Russian. Why? Because my boy was being trained as an agent, that’s why.”
This is a compelling statement. Does it not demand a follow-up question? It seems inconceivable that Stafford would not ask something: if nothing else, “Oh? Tell me more.” Yet her next question, in the published text, is about what Lee might have done with his life had he lived.
A friend recently told me that CU’s archive includes audio recordings of Stafford’s interviews with Mrs. Oswald. They might clarify the matter; they might reveal a follow-up question that, for some reason, had been deleted. So I contacted the archive and scheduled a visit.
•
Before going to the archive I set myself the onerous task of re-reading A Mother In History. The book is short, and mercifully so: short, unpleasant, and mean-spirited. Even one of Stafford’s biographers (there are several) faulted its tone, calling it “profoundly unsympathetic” and “a cruel portrait, executed pitilessly.”
The book is divided into three sections: one for each of the days Stafford spent talking to Marguerite. The opening thirty-odd pages describe the first day, and it is here that Marguerite made the comment about her son being trained as an agent. Also in these early pages, Stafford indicates that the first day was not tape recorded. She wrote that as she got up to leave, “I asked [Marguerite] if she would object to my bringing a tape recorder the following day; she said that on the contrary, she would be glad if I did…”
Throughout A Mother In History, Stafford’s support for the lone nut scenario is never in doubt. Later she characterized her role as a “stenographer” – by implication, an impartial participant. But her point of view is clear, as is her lack of sympathy for Marguerite. Mrs. Oswald spent most of her time “researching the case,” she reported on page five, “studying theories of conspiracy (right-wing, left-wing, wingless, Catholic, Baptist, Jewish, Black Muslim, anarchist, fascist, federalist, masterminded by the cops, masterminded by the robbers.)”
This is, of course, an absurd exaggeration. Stafford never seemed to consider that, in the aftermath of the assassination and Lee Harvey’s sensational murder, Marguerite Oswald must have been under enormous emotional strain, especially since the evidence against her son was so flimsy.
•
At the Stafford archive, materials relating to A Mother In History are stored in a single modest container. In it are several typed manuscript drafts, galleys, some of Stafford’s handwritten notes, and the article version from McCall’s. Not included are the audio recordings I’d been told about, though they’re listed on the Finding Aid I consulted. The original tapes have been digitized, the archivist informed me. To hear the audio I must fill out a form, then wait for CU’s Digital Reproductions people to contact me.
Yet I got lucky. I came across a fifty-seven-page interview transcript not listed on the Finding Aid. It appeared to be the original, with the look and feel of a 1960s-era typescript: faded onionskin paper, double spaced with wide margins, and page numbers typed in each upper left corner. The numeral 2 was handwritten at the top right of each page, possibly indicating it’s a second copy. The whole thing was fastened with a plastic-coated, archivally correct paperclip.
What I could not determine was its origin. There was no indication who made the transcript. It was undated; and though the words “A Mother in History” were handwritten in pencil at the top, it was otherwise untitled.
As I waited impatiently to hear the audio, I obtained a PDF of the transcript and relied on it as I drafted this article. After I got it I noticed a missing page. The archivist told me it was missing from the original, too. I did not hear the audio until September, two months after I went to the archive. I compared the two; the transcript is a faithful rendering. (For convenience I’m using the word “transcript” more often than “audio,” but the two align perfectly.)
It has all proven to be quite illuminating. The bottom line? Marguerite Oswald never made the provocative statement Stafford attributed to her: “He never did tell me why he went to Russia. I have my own opinion. He spoke Russian, he wrote Russian, and he read Russian. Why? Because my boy was being trained as an agent, that’s why.”
She didn’t say it! But I must clarify: Marguerite sort of said it. Although the troublesome quote is in A Mother In History’s first section, the day Jean Stafford indicated she did not record, most of the words are, in fact, in the transcript and audio. But they are scattered over four transcript pages, and nearly four minutes in the recording. So Stafford recorded this after all – but seems to have cherry-picked choice selections and stitched them together, without alerting the reader.
Still with me? In the middle of transcript page 25 is this phrase: “He ever did tell me why he went to Russia. I have my own opinion.” (This is not a typo: the transcript says ever, not never.)
Three pages later (and after several more questions from Stafford), at the top of transcript page 28, is another portion of the published quote: “He spoke Russian, he wrote Russian and he read Russian.”
At the top of page 29: “…because my boy was being trained as a agent that’s why.”
These are the elements, with a few missing words, that constitute the quote on page 32 of A Mother In History. In the book it is presented without ellipses or any other editorial device to indicate omitted content. Such editorial devices are, of course, accepted conventions; they imply that what you are reading is edited but trustworthy. Not using them, especially on a subject like this, is unethical and misleading.
How do we interpret this? The quote is compelling by any measure, but Marguerite Oswald didn’t quite say it. Yet it runs contrary to the lone nut myth, which Jean Stafford supports. Why would she cobble it together?
In an early draft of this article I offered up a possible explanation, one that let Stafford off the hook. It was a misguided effort, so I deleted it. I can’t explain the inexplicable. Certainly, the idea of a connection between Lee Harvey Oswald and the U.S. government was not new. Marguerite even told a dismissive Warren Commission her son was an agent when she testified in February 1964. But in 1966, when Stafford’s book was published, it had none of the credibility it has now. I think she introduced it, but failed to explore it, in order to make Marguerite look mentally unstable.
•
In contrast to Jean Stafford’s covert hostility, Marguerite was gracious and friendly. A greeting card in the archive illustrates this. “Please make a schedule to suit your needs,” she wrote Stafford, shortly before their three days together. “I am happy to oblige.”
In addition to the quote that first drew my attention, other sections of A Mother In History are, when compared to the source transcript and audio, demonstrably false. While Jean Stafford’s motives are unknown, it had to have been deliberate. Even allowing for the occasional honest error, the book contains manufactured quotes, and the false implication that the first day of interviews, where a manufactured quote appears, was not recorded. As we have seen, it was recorded. By implying there was no documentation for this part of her interviews, did Stafford mean to deter anyone from checking that quote’s accuracy?
You know how it is with liars: once you know they’ve lied to you, everything else they say is suspect.
•
The pitiless tone of A Mother In History might best be understood (if not excused) when viewed in the context of the times: reassuring anxious readers that there was not a conspiracy, and that the alleged assassin’s mother is a kook you can safely ignore. Still, why did Stafford even bother? A big paycheck might be enough to explain it. But interviewing and writing about Marguerite Oswald should have excited her. The assassination was the biggest story of the era.
Jean Stafford was a bestselling author, widely acclaimed during her lifetime. As far as the Kennedy assassination goes, she is a fringe dweller. A Mother In History is an unimportant book that is best forgotten. It felt dishonest when I first read it years ago, and my recent visit to the CU archive reinforces that view. The book may represent Stafford’s professional nadir, but to be fair it is only a tiny portion of her overall output – as indeed, materials relating to it are but a fraction of the University of Colorado’s Jean Stafford archive.
I regret that, in Praise From a Future Generation, I took so much of A Mother In History at face value. I assumed Jean Stafford’s dishonesty was a matter of spin control. How very naïve of me to not even consider the possibility of calculated distortion.
A far more balanced and sympathetic portrait of Marguerite Oswald may be found in “The Unsinkable Marguerite Oswald,” by Harold Feldman. It appeared in Paul Krassner’s The Realist in September 1964. Circulation of The Realist, of course, was vastly eclipsed by McCall’s, to say nothing of Stafford’s book publisher Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. But “The Unsinkable Marguerite Oswald” is highly recommended. A Mother In History is not.
Jim Garrison was not able to prove to a jury that Clay Shaw was part of a plot in the assassination of JFK. But according to Mark Lane, who polled the jury after the trial, he did convince that jury that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
Garrison was up against too many forces from the government, intelligence community and the media. He was overmatched. Two of his top targets died within a day as he was closing in on some of the key perpetrators. David Ferrie, who was thick as thieves with both Oswald and Shaw, mysteriously died, leaving behind two unsigned suicide notes. His Cuban exile, mafia-linked colleague, Eladio Del Valle, was both shot and macheted to death. Garrison saw his offices bugged, his witnesses harassed and intimidated, his subpoenas turned down, and some of his inner circle turned on him. The press and the U.S. justice system gave him a difficult time; he was labelled as crooked, homophobic, ambitious and was harassed to no end before, during and after the trial.
Garrison was so maliciously slandered by the press, no one would even take the time to look at what was in his files. This included two generations of the critical community. Thanks to Len Osanic, we now have those files in zip drive format. Today there can be little question that Garrison did have something. In fact, he had a lot of things
The goal of this article is not to rehash this whole line of argumentation. Diligent researchers like Bill Davy, Joan Mellen and Jim DiEugenio have sealed the deal on this aspect through excellent work and eloquent writing. The goal is to show that there is still more to excavate in these files.
I began reading these files 5 months ago. I am currently creating a lead file for myself. It has over 300 pages in it. I am quite certain that I have missed important clues that would double the size of this file so I hope others will comb through them.
Sort of as a trial balloon, I have sent some interesting pieces to some of the best in the business. The reactions have been very positive from a savvy group.
While I am not yet prepared to put a degree of certainty on the following affirmations, let me suggest the following:
Oswald was assigned at least one Cuban escort
David Ferrie admitted his part in the plot to a room-mate
Clay Shaw was not only a well-paid CIA asset, he was likely known by, if not connected to, Allen Dulles
There is an interesting continuum of Oswald babysitters who link Dallas to New Orleans
The 1963 ITM is an organization of interest
David Ferrie may have been a provider of young males for Shaw
We can add another potential patsy to a fairly large list of candidates I discuss in my Prior Plots articles.
The list of people who frequented 544 Camp Street is much better documented and incriminating
We know more about INCA than ever before
There is stronger evidence of Ruby`s links to New Orleans
In this first article we will discuss Clay Shaw, the 544 Camp Street Network, and the FPCC front for Oswald.
Case 1) Further evidence that Clem Bertrand is Clay Shaw
Many witnesses have confirmed that Clem and Clay Bertrand were Clay Shaw aliases. He used this name in an airport lounge (Materials Clay Shaw 2 Page 20) and in a moment of absent-mindedness gave it away to policeman Aloysius A. Habighorst after he was arrested. (See line ten to the left in Alias box)
Just for good measure, let us add the following signed statement, which speaks for itself:
And how about this signed statement by a witness (key passages):
Add to this Oswald’s lawyer Dean Andrews being backed by Clay Shaw under the alias Clay Bertrand, plus compelling declassified FBI witness testimony. But let’s have fun anyway. Hardly a slam-dunk on its own, the comparison of the Clay Shaw and Clem Bertrand signatures provides more primary data.
Clay Shaw was involved in real estate and was the director of the International Trade Mart. His signatures can be found in the Garrison files. Here are a few taken from copies of documents he signed:
We can also find this Library card made out to, and signed twice by, Clem Bertrand of the ITM:
At first this card was dismissed by the Garrison team because the phone numbers did not match the destinations. However, they decided to reconsider this piece of evidence:
I wondered what a hand-writing expert might say about these signatures, one who had solid credentials, with no dog in the race, one who might like to weigh in simply to help out with no agenda, nor any fees. Luckily, I was able to find such a person. The following is just a small part of her pedigree:
Here are the signatures I asked her to compare:
Here is what she responded:
“Hello Mr. Bleau,
I have reviewed the signatures you sent me. I must first tell you that these signatures are not of good quality. They are copies of copies of copies…. Ideally, I should examine originals or first-generation copies, i.e. made from the original.
Despite everything, I can tell you that there are several similarities between these signatures on several levels:
• Movement
• Tilt
• Proportions
• Spacing
• Continuity
• Graphic level
This makes it possible to retain the hypothesis (subject to) that they were executed by the same hand.
I am surprised to see the use of French names (Lavergne and Bertrand) in the signatures.
Sincerely,”
This opinion concurs with that of the illustrious handwriting expert Elizabeth McCarthy who testified at the Clay Shaw trial: and she did have originals and first generation copies to work from. McCarthy stated that, in over three decades, she had been certified to testify in 28 states and three foreign countries. She worked on as many as two cases per day with about a quarter of them going to court. So the dissenting opinion about this subject is by a dyed in the wool FBI man and J. Edgar Hoover loyalist: Charles Appel. This article is not meant for those who would support the FBI in the Kennedy case.
Today, it is well-nigh indisputable that Clay Shaw and Clay or Clem Bertrand are the same person and that this high-level intelligence asset was trying to get Dean Andrews to represent Oswald, someone he clearly knew. Why do I say this about Shaw’s intel status? Because Malcolm Blunt has just discovered that in CIA documents, contrary to what many had tried to say about Shaw, his expenses were being paid by the Agency while doing those many overseas reports. This is even more evidence that Shaw lied to the public and under oath at his trial about his association with the CIA.
In a future article, this author will argue that Shaw, because of his links to the ITM and Permindex, must have been known to Allen Dulles. Thus adding a third Oswald babysitter to Ruth Paine and George DeMorenschildt as Dulles-linked persons of interest. The Old Man had his fingers in many pies.
The 544 Camp Street network
After writing a seventy-page, two-part article on Exposing the FPCC, I did not think that I could add very much to expose a charade of Oswald provocateur activity in New Orleans. I was wrong. The Garrison file sources, provided me with even more heavy artillery to fully dismantle this cover, and to shine light on Oswald’s network partners.
The revelation of the 544 Camp Street address stamped on Oswald’s FPCC flyers caused lone-nutters fits. Because anti-Castro Cuban exiles, rabid right wingers, Guy Banister, David Ferrie and other people who revolved around Oswald during the Summer of 1963 were frequently seen in the same building. These flyers were a major problem which was admitted to by the HSCA. We also know that this address had housed another one of Banister’s anti-Castro partners in the name of the Cuban Revolutionary Council led by Sergio Arcacha Smith; who in late 1961 was part of a quasi-anti-FPCC riot in Tampa which came to be known as the Marti-Park incident.
From Jim DiEugenio’s article there is not much more that we need to add to show that Oswald was a member of a network playing the role of a provocateur. As Jim DiEugenio points out in this reply to Alecia Long, at least seven witnesses either saw Oswald at 544 Camp Street, or with Guy Banister on the streets in New Orleans. This included three people who worked for Banister, and two INS agents. When one adds in the layer of intrigue placed over this by the ARRB, the logic becomes pretty ineluctable. For the declassified record has shown that the Board proved both the CIA and FBI had ongoing counter-intelligence campaigns against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). Oswald was the only member of the New Orleans contingent. And he stamped Banister’s address on one, or more, of his leaflets that summer. A fact which Banister was quite upset about. (HSCA interview with Delphine Roberts of 7/6/78). And then there was the ITM connection to Oswald’s leafleting activities. Let us quote from Jim DiEugenio’s reply to Alecia Long’s column in the Washington Post.
Another important aspect of Oswald in New Orleans that Long discounts is Oswald’s leafleting in front of Shaw’s International Trade Mart in mid-August. This also had some interesting telltale points to it. First, [Carlos] Bringuier and his right-hand man Carlos Quiroga said that they went to see Oswald in an attempt to infiltrate his FPCC “group” after the ITM incident. The visit occurred before it happened. And Quiroga arrived with a stack of flyers about a half foot thick. In other words, the DRE appears to have been supplying Oswald with his leaflets in preparation for the incident. Secondly, the reason we have films of the event is that Shaw’s first assistant at the ITM, Jesse Core, had summoned the cameras. (Davy, Let Justice be Done, p. 38) Beyond that, it was this leafleting episode that caused George Higginbotham to alert Banister, and his reply was “One of them is one of mine.” (Oswald had hired two helpers from the unemployment office to aid him.) But there was something else to note. In addition to calling the cameras for the ITM incident, Jesse Core picked up a pamphlet from the prior Canal Street episode, the one which got Oswald arrested. He noted that it had Banister’s address on it. He mailed it from the Trade Mart to the FBI with a message attached: “note the inside back cover.” (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 568) This would suggest that both Shaw and Core knew about Oswald’s mistake. How would they know unless they were aware of Banister’s operation? Which recalls the work done for Banister by Bill Wegmann and Guy Johnson. But further, the FBI then knew about Oswald at 544 Camp Street before the assassination.
Wegmann and Johnson were part of Clay Shaw’s defense team.
On August 27, 1978, Banister’s secretary Roberts was re-interviewed by HSCA Investigator Robert Buras. She said she
believes that LEE OSWALD came into the office to be interviewed for a job, but doesn’t remember anything specific, because so many people came in for interviews. At a later date Banister introduced Marina and OSWALD to her in his office, but they walked right out and she did not talk to them. She could not recall hearing Marina speak, or how they were dressed. On several occasions LEE OSWALD would come in and go into Banister’s office and she could not hear any conversation from that room. She believed that OSWALD was either working, or attempting to work, for Banister. She does remember hearing Guy Banister holler at Jim Arthus and Sam Newman about letting OSWALD the second-floor room and about keeping the Fair Play for Cuba Committee literature from his office. Arthus used to come into the office and put leaflets on Banister’s leaflet table as a joke because all the other literature was anti-communist.
Scott Malone reported: “Delphine is definitely a kook, but I found someone else to corroborate her story. She told Mary Brengel about having seen OSWALD in Banister’s office two weeks after the assassination. She did not mention Marina’s presence.”
Even more telling, if we are to believe a 1979 Dallas Morning News article from the Garrison files, it is Banister who, according to his secretary and girlfriend Delphine Roberts, helped Oswald settle into his Camp Street locale:
The list
Lone-nut backers have used the tired tactic of trying to distance 544 Camp Street from Guy Banister and David Ferrie offices by shielding it with a wall and a floor or two. The other deflection is to insist on the separation in time between Oswald and the previous occupiers: The Cuban Revolutionary Council. As the above section demonstrated, there can be no doubt about Oswald’s links to Banister and Ferrie, and no architectural imagining can elide it. When analyzing the following lists made available in the Garrison files, we will see that the time argument to try and create separation between Oswald and the nest of anti-Castro militants holds no water… Something that both the HSCA and Richard Schweiker of the Church Committee fully understood.
Their mission touched a hot button in New Orleans:
This author is still analyzing the list of names that we can closely connect to this address. What he has found so far is quite incriminating.
Consider the following profiles of some of the crusaders:
William T. Walshe:
One of Mr. Walshe’s important credentials was that he was secretary of the New Orleans based Mississippi Valley World Trade Center (MPWTC) which links him closely to its Secretary: None other than Clay Shaw according to the following listing.
Mississippi Valley World Trade Conference Annual Award 1955
Name: MISSISSIPPI VALLEY WORLD TRADE COUNCIL
Type Entity: Non-Profit Corporation
Status: Not Active (Action by Secretary of State)
2006 Annual Report/Reinstatement form is required in order to reinstate Print Annual Report/Reinstatement Form for Filing
Mailing Address: 124 CAMP ST., NEW ORLEANS, LA 70130
Domicile Address: 124 CAMP ST., NEW ORLEANS, LA 70130
File Date: 09/05/1956
Registered Agent (Appointed 9/05/1956): C. C. WALTHER, 3524 GENTILLY BLVD., NEW ORLEANS, LA 70119
Registered Agent (Appointed 9/05/1956): CLAY SHAW, 505 DAUPHINE ST., NEW ORLEANS, LA 70116
President: C. C. WALTHER, 3524 GENTILLY BLVD., NEW ORLEANS, LA
Vice President: WILLIAM T. WALSHE, 1208 WEBSTER ST., NEW ORLEANS, LA
Secretary: CLAY SHAW, 505 DAUPHINE ST., NEW ORLEANS, LA
To understand the status of this organization, one simply needs to note the following:
From January 4th to January 20th, First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan of the Soviet Union visited the U.S. During his stay, Mikoyan met Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and President Eisenhower and was profiled by Allen Dulles head of the CIA. One of the organizations that was debriefed by Dillon was this MPWTCA highlighting further the proximity between Dulles and Shaw. In 1961, President Kennedy, appointed Republican Dillon Treasury Secretary which put him in charge of the Secret Service.
Walther himself was rather connected, with links to General Cabell: (New Orleans Times-Picayune May 10, 1961 S1-P3)
CIA Must Keep Quiet — Cabell General Cites Strides of Reds in Science
The Central Intelligence Agency, because of the sensitive nature of its activities, must maintain a policy of silence at all times in regard to its knowledge of the participation in United States affairs, the deputy director of the CIA said in New Orleans Tuesday [9th] night.
Air Force Gen. C. P. Cabell said that he therefore could not “rise to the defense of the CIA” in regard to its reported connection with the recent Cuban invasion, a connection which has come under repeated fire from many quarters.
Gen. Cabell arrived in New Orleans late Tuesday to address the International Relations Association of New Orleans, previously called the Foreign Policy Association of New Orleans. At a meeting held at the Sheraton-Charles Hotel, he discussed “Communism and Science.” He left shortly after the meeting to return to Washington.
Interviewed at International House shortly before his talk, Gen. Cabell refused to comment on the Cuban invasion and the CIA’s role in the affair.
“This is a sensitive subject, certainly, and one which should be discussed only by President Kennedy and Secretary of State Rusk,” he said. “The Central Intelligence Agency is not a policy making agency; we merely serve the policy makers.”
Therefore, it would make matters only worse, he continued, if officials of the CIA and other like agencies continued to make comments concerning the Cuban situation.
“It could very possibly occur that these comments would differ in meaning and suggestion from those made by the only two people who should be commenting on it – the President and the Secretary of State,” he said.
Discussing the scientific accomplishments of the Communists in his talk before the International Relations Association, Gen. Cabell said that “there is no reason at all to belittle or magnify the accomplishments of scientists living under Communistic regimes, and there is no reason to draw invidious comparisons between our efforts and their efforts.
“What we must realize is that the accomplishments are real,” he continued, “and that their successes so far have led them to place even more emphasis on scientific research and development in what Khruschev calls ‘the splendid years under Communism.”
Cabell said that science is the servant of Communism and that, stripped of all its usual verbiage, “Communism is a future social order being constructed out of present-day socialism through the application of science.
“We must recognize the vast scientific resources of the Soviet Union and the growing strength of China are being integrated with their political ambitions to reconstruct society in the Communist countries and eventually in the entire world.”
He concluded that “we should stand forewarned that every resource available to being used by the Communists to advance their political ends.”
The International Relations Association changed its name from the Foreign Policy Association Tuesday night because, according to its president, C. C. Walther, the group is no longer affiliated with its originator, the Foreign Policy Association of New York.
It has been reported by eminent author Donald Gibson that Clay Shaw was present during Cabell’s speech. (Davy, p. 293)
Harold K. Marshal and wife Mrs. Naomi Marshal has her own links to Clay Shaw according to excerpts from this 2013 notice written by her son. article in NoLaVie
My mother, known to our neighbors to the south as “La Mujer del Norte” (the woman from the north), traveled extensively in Latin America on business during those heady days in the 1940s and ’50s, when New Orleans was dubbed “Gateway to the Americas” — long before Miami, Atlanta and Houston opened economic sluices to the south, effectively shutting New Orleans’ wrought-iron-laced gates for years to come.
On her way to prominence in foreign trade, Mother shattered several glass ceilings, becoming the first woman officer of the New Orleans Board of Trade and a member of the city’s Export Managers Club. She was an avid supporter of the original International Trade Mart, a five-story modernist block of offices and displays of foreign government trade offices, spearheaded by Clay Shaw, its first director, which was demolished to make way for the New Orleans Sheraton hotel.
Her life was full, including her idea to locate the ITM tower at the foot of Canal Street, rather than in the new Duncan Plaza (City Hall) complex.
Clay Shaw moderated a panel that featured Gilbert Mellin
On October 23, 1959 Clay Shaw moderated a panel discussion that included local business leader and CRC backer Gilbert Mellin; a gathering where anti-communist attitudes were in full view.
Manuel Gil
Was employed as Production Manager by INCA. Authorized to sign checks for “Cuban Revolutionary Council”, and a charter member of INCA. (WC Vol 26, p. 769; CE 3119; CD 87 SS 517 p. 3 DTR 00-381; CD 407, p. 15; Oswald in New Orleans, Weisberg, pp. 343, 345, 356, 362-363)
INCA was run by Ed Butler who was friendly with Lloyd Cobb and Clay Shaw of the ITM, who in turn cooperated with him in his anti-communist endeavors. Ed Butler also contributed in the sheep-dipping of Oswald into his Warren Commission, pro-Castro persona. Of course, Gil was in close contact with Sergio Arcacha Smith.
William Monteleone
Monteleone’s hotel is where Shaw was the moderator for Anti-Communist panel discussion featuring Mellin.
According to this CIA file, an informant of unknown reliability claimed that Shaw was linked to one of the Monteleone girls in situations of gross immorality with overtones of sexual deviancy. While this admittedly is of little worth in terms of evidence, it is interesting that this even exists in a CIA file. Is this CIA profiling of U.S. citizens even legal? Unless perhaps they were keeping an eye on one of their own.
According to the manager of the Newman building, a “young Monteleone” ran the CRC (Garrison Files):
In 1951 Provosty Arthur Dayries, who was working for the VA at the time, became assistant superintendent of police—a political appointment by New Orleans Mayor deLesseps “Chep” Morrison. This was after the retirement of Milton Durel, and aimed to bring internal crime within the police department to a stop. At the time, many police captains were part of an underground lottery, gambling, prostitution, and drinking network within the city, which was designated as a “vice” or “graft” investigation (the terms are used interchangeably throughout the materials). He was promoted to superintendent in 1954, following an investigation into the former superintendent of police, Joseph Scheuring, and his lack of leadership in working to end the police network.
Prior to the hiring of Dayries as assistant superintendent, Mayor Morrison hired a former FBI agent from Chicago–though originally from Louisiana–named Guy Banister to handle the internal affairs investigation from within the mayor’s office. When Dayries was promoted to superintendent, he hired Banister to serve as his assistant. The two repeatedly came into conflict. Banister would often speak to the media before statements had been cleared by Dayries or Mayor Morrison. Additionally, Banister would routinely overstep his bounds within the police department regarding his leadership. At one point he attempted to take over Dayries’s job while he was in Florida speaking at a conference, before being reprimanded by the mayor.
While Banister at one time did claim Dayries was corrupt, they certainly frequented the same personages.
The Rodriguez clan
According to this information in the Mary Ferrell files Arnesto Napoleon Rodriguez y Gonzalez worked with ONI in the 1930s. Father of Arnesto, Jr., an FBI informant who was in communication with Lee Oswald in New Orleans during the summer of 1963. AMJUTE-1 is named as Arnesto Napoleon Rodriguez y Gonzalez on a list of cryptonyms. Arnesto’s other son, Emilio Rodriguez was also a CIA asset based in Mexico City, after being a stay behind agent in Cuba.
Arnesto Napoleon Rodriguez told an investigator for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that Oswald “came to the Berlitz School of Languages on one occasion and attempted to talk to him about the possibility of taking a language course, and about Cuba in general. He said he told OSWALD he was busy at the time; if he would return at a later date, they could discuss the situation. OSWALD, however, never returned.” He denied having any tapes of Oswald. [CIA 79, 166-78, 113-48, 72; Sciambra to Garrison 2.14.67 interview with ER Sr.] According to Larry Hancock Arnesto, father and son, were both in the court-room when Oswald got arrested for his fight during his leafletting activities, and Emilio was well connected to the JM. Wave crowd.
Carlos Crimadier (or Grimader on the list)
He was the auditor for the Crusade. Here is how the HSCA describes him:
Richard D. Reily
If the name Richard D. Reily rings a bell, it is because he is a family member of the same family who owned the Reily Coffee Company where Oswald worked for a few weeks during the summer of 1963 in the Crescent City.
Ronnie Caire
According to Ronnie Caire’s testimony to the HSCA, the Ronnie Caire advertising agency provided marketing services for the CRC. Caire also interviewed Oswald during the summer of 63 when he applied for work. (https://www.jfk-assassination.net/weberman/nodule11.htm) Caire says he had been approached by Sergio Arcacha Smith and that he knew both Banister and E. Howard Hunt. He stated that the CIA approached him through the CRC because he was politically connected. (https://www.jfk-online.com/jpsasfrd.html) (For more information, click here.) According to Arnesto Rodriguez Senior, Caire was the principal organizer of the Crusade and was very close to Smith. In fact, he said that Caire’s offices served as the HQs for the Crusade. If this is the case, then this places Oswald in offices occupied by the CRC and the Crusade. Hmmm.
It is interesting to note that Oswald also applied for work at United Fruit (Garrison: Oswald Miscel. Files, Bercham Exhibit 1), and Michoud Assembly Facility (NASA) where Shaw tenant William Kloepfer worked. He also applied in photography for Jules Weiss who was close to Shaw and also Warren Bernados who also knew him. The funny thing is that Bernados and Weiss had been partners but split, yet Oswald put the partnership company on his unemployment job search report, and both claimed he had passed by to apply for work after they split up. (Garrison Files Shaw Leads 2) Was Oswald really looking for work? … or was he simply being fed names he could use for his unemployment insurance claims? He told Dean Andrews that he was being paid $20 a day to hand out FPCC leaflets. In the Garrison files, we can see all the names of the employers where Oswald supposedly applied. It would be interesting to see how many of these tie into the network we are describing.
Arcacha Smith
Smith was head of the CRC at this time and figures on this list in a major way. Sergio Arcacha Smith His links to David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Layton Martens, Carlos Quiroga, Carlos Marcello, Carlos Bringuier, Arnesto Rodriguez, Ronnie Caire, Warren DeBrueys of the FBI who monitored the FPCC in New Orleans, and a host of well-connected anti-Castro operatives (many of whom relate directly to Oswald and Clay Shaw) is well documented… So is his theft of fund-raising revenue, and his determination not to cooperate with Jim Garrison.
Others known to have come into contact with Oswald and Newman Building occupants, include Cuban exiles of interest like Carlos Bringuier of the DRE who, according to his book, had met Bill Stuckey for the first time in August 1962 (Crime Without Punishment, page 101); and Celso Hernandez and Frank Bartes (who replaced Sergio Arcacha Smith in the CRC). These Cuban exiles all had touch points with Oswald. The FPCC and DRE were monitored by David Phillips (CIA) as well as Warren DeBrueys (FBI) and George Joannides (CIA). The CRC was under Howard Hunt’s watchful eye. Bringuier associate Miguel Cruz also came into contact with Oswald and is identified as informant T-2 as mentioned in DeBrueys’ FPCC file. (Blakey letter to Attorney General of U.S., October 16 1978)
Joan Mellen’s research indicates that after his brawl on Canal Street with Bringuier, Hernandez and Cruz, Oswald, while under arrest, asked to meet DeBrueys. Warren was out of the office and his associate met Oswald for hours. Which sounds like overkill for a small disturbance. The following file (see bottom right) shows that a Ramon Hernandez complaint about Oswald hand-outs also reached the FBI’s top FPCC dog in New Orleans:
If the picture one gets from this is that Shaw, Ferrie, Banister and Oswald’s multiple connections to this network of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, right-wing extremists and intelligence actors was not coincidental, then you are beginning to see quite clearly. If you are not quite there yet perhaps the story of one of the last well-connected Cubans to appear on this list will seal the deal. His name is Carlos Quiroga, co-chair of the youth wing of the Crusade to Free Cuba, second in command at the CRC, well-connected to Smith, Bringuier, Bartes, Ferrie, Banister… and Oswald.
His testimony to Garrison was polygraphed… His lies were plentiful, blistering and confirmed by another polygraphed witness. Quiroga deserves a section of his own.
Carlos Quiroga
Oswald`s landlady Jesse Garner saw Quiroga meet Oswald at his apartment. Quiroga claimed that he was trying to infiltrate the FPCC. This could have been done by filling out one of the flyers that Oswald was distributing. According to Jesse Garner in her Warren Commission testimony, Quiroga seems to have brought way more than one application: Note how both lawyer Wesley Liebeler and Jim Garrison underscore the quantity of flyers Quiroga brought with him:
Another false claim made by Quiroga was that this had been the only time that he had met Oswald.
The following lie detector test results reveal that: Quiroga met Oswald a number of times. He also knew that Oswald`s association with the FPCC was but a front and that Oswald was part of an anti-Castro operation. That he knew that David Ferrie knew Guy Banister and he had seen Oswald with at least one other Latino subject.
The exchange below between Quiroga and Jim Garrison, provides corroboration to the damning test results, in that two witnesses–one who had also been polygraphed–contradicted Quiroga`s statements.
David Lewis, a roommate of Banister employee Jack Martin, witnessed Quiroga with Oswald a number of times. While his testimony and character have been the subject of numerous attacks, there was no denying that his own polygraph results bolster the proof of deception brought forward by Quiroga’s polygraph. We can also add Ricardo Davis as one other witness who accompanied Quiroga when he was with Oswald on an occasion.
The motive of Latinos to be involved in the Crusade is self-explanatory. The Anglo-Saxon members most likely had business motivations. New Orleans was the gateway for North South trade. The last thing they wanted was a Castro stimulated revolution of Central and South American states that would disrupt markets and supply chains. After discussing with a member of the research community from New Orleans, who briefly perused the list, he concluded that a number of multi-millionaires were represented and wanted Castro out.
One example is Mrs. R. G. Robinson, who was likely the wife of Robert Gibson Robinson, son of the founder of Robinson Lumber Company (1893). Robert Gibson, was instrumental in the internationalization of this stellar family-run company. (See this link its website,
Robert Gibson Robinson, his son, upon recognizing the declining supply of export quality Heart Pine, began the company’s first foreign manufacturing facility in Nicaragua in 1942 to supply Pitch Pine to Robinson’s customers around the world.
After World War II, Jack, Charlie, and Sam, the third generation of Robinsons entered the business, expanded into hardwoods and began operations in Honduras and Brazil.
Mexico was also an important supplier of product. Just like with United Fruit, a communist take-over in these areas would have been disastrous.
Consider this about a Stockton B. Jefferson:
If this is the CPA husband of Mrs. Stockton B. Jefferson from the list, we can link another member of the Crusade who saw Castro as an existential risk. Note the association with Avondale Shipyards. One of the founders of Avondale Shipyards was a newspaper owner and father of Fred Koch, founder of Koch Industries. Harry Koch
Oswald letter to FPCC
In one of my articles for Kennedysandking, Oswald’s Last Letter, I presented strong evidence that a letter to the Russian Embassy was a fake designed to paint Oswald in cahoots with Russia for the assassination. A very early researcher has convinced me that at least one of Oswald’s letters to the FPCC was done with close assistance. For this important clue, we need to go back to 1964 and quote directly from Harold Feldman, OSWALD and the FBI.
After presenting arguments that Oswald was an FBI informant, Harold astutely makes the following points: “If the FBI did not employ Oswald or work with him, then who wrote the letters he addressed to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York? Oswald alone certainly didn’t. Whoever wrote the letters to New York was coherent, commanded a good vocabulary, rarely misspelled a word, and punctuated decently. Oswald himself wrote English that a sixth-grader would blush to acknowledge. Here is a letter he wrote to his mother from Russia on June 28, 1963. I preserve the original spelling and punctuation:
Dear Mother.
Received your letter today in which you say you wish to pay me back the money you used last year, that, of course, is not nessicary however you can send me somethings from there every now and than.
If you decide to send a package please send the following:
One can Rise shaving cream (one razor (Gillet)
Pocket novels westerns and scienace fiction — Time or Newsweek magazine
Chewing Gum and chocolate bars.
That’s about all. Ha-ha
I very much miss sometime to read you should try and get me the pocket novel “1984” by Wells.
I am working at the local Radio plant as a mettal worker. We live only five minutes from there so it is very conveinant.
Well thats about all for now. I repeat you do not have to send me checks or money!
Love XX
Lee P.S. Marina sends a big Hello to you also
Now compare this semi-literate effusion with the following addressed to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee about two years later. (A New York Times report on the letters to FPCC indicates that they were handwritten, so presumably no public stenographer improved their style.)
Dear Mr. Lee:
I was glad to receive your advice concerning my try at starting a New Orleans F.P.C.C. chapter.
I hope you won’t be too disapproving at my innovations but I do think they are necessary for this area.
As per your advice I have taken a P.O. Box (N.O. 30061).
Against your advice I have decided to take an office from the very beginning.
I u c [apparently meaning, as you see] from the circular I had jumped the gun on the charter business but I don’t think it’s too important. You may think the circular is too provocative, but I want it to attract attention even if it’s the attention of the lunatic fringe. I had 2,000 of them run off.
The major change in tactics you can see from the small membership blanks, in that I will charge $1 a month dues for the new Orleans chapter only and I intend to issue N.O. F.P.C.C. membership cards also.
This is without recourse to the $5 annual F.P.C.C. membership fee.
However, you will lose nothing in the long run because I will forward $5 to the national F.P.C.C. for every New Orleans chapter member who remains a dues paying member for 5 months in any year. . . .
And so on for several more well-integrated paragraphs. He now spells “receive” and “necessary” correctly. He has mastered the apostrophe. His ideas cohere. He tackles words like “innovations,” “provocative,” “recourse,” “disapproving,” “approaching,” and “application” with success, something that would have been clearly beyond the powers of the voluntary exile in Minsk.
Until the authorship of the letters to the FPCC is settled, I think it reasonable to suppose that Oswald did not compose them, at least not without help. Who, and where, is the invisible scribe? No associate of his New Orleans period has been found, or even hinted at. If Oswald was employed by the FBI to operate in “Castro groups,” as the news report suggests, it is also reasonable to suppose that in the letters to FPCC his pen was guided by the FBI.”
In the following you will see that the actual hand-written version indicates a few differences with the above typed version (example its vs it`s). In my view the analysis by Mr. Feldman remains valid and astute given what he had to work with. He is correct in saying that this letter is so much better in grammar, word selection and style than other Oswald correspondence.
The FPCC in 1963
In my first prior plots article, I based my research on author Van Gosse’s work to estimate maximum FPCC membership to be between 5 and 7 thousand in 1961 and argued that such a low number made it impossible for persons of interest like Richard Case Nagell, Oswald, Policarpo Lopez, Vaughn Marlowe, Harry Dean, John Glenn, Santiago Garriga–who were potential patsies to varying degrees–to all be coincidently linked to the FPCC; especially for those in the Deep South where the FPCC had much less activity. Based on recent data that I have obtained, the odds are astronomically worse than what I first thought.
According to Malcolm Blunt, Vincent T. Lee, who was the last head of the organization, stated that the number of members had plummeted to about 1500 by mid-1963, finances were very poor and that the other FPCC officers were no longer even answering to him. Even the Treasury Department noted that the FPCC was almost inactive. Furthermore, members in the Deep South tended to be disproportionately African American, and the FPCC was riddled with informants.
In other words, the statistical probability of seeing a white person in the Deep South genuinely involved with such a vegetative outfit was rather small… seeing seven of the subjects profiled… well, no comment.
Framing Oswald
Two persons both Garrison and Blunt included in their files are the Buchanan brothers, Jerry and Jim Buchanan. They appear to be part of the large number of frame-up artists (FBI Report of Joseph Boston). Jerry claimed he had a fight with Oswald in early 1963 while he was distributing FPCC flyers in Miami.
Here is the capper: Both Jerry and Jim were officers of the International Anti Communist Brigade, where one of the Blame it on Castro Kings, Frank Sturgis, left his alpha male scent.
Birds of a feather
In article 2 of its formation documents, the International Trade Mart specifies one of its roles as “the development, promotion and maintenance of trade and commerce between the people of the United States of America and the people of the world, particularly the other American republics.”
It goes without saying that a communist country like Cuba, that was nationalizing many of its industries, was not in tune with the ITM mission.
In 1968, its president, the CIA connected Lloyd Cobb, went even further by stating: “the aims of the new International Trade Mart would be: to act as a catalyst to develop trade and not be just a display area for foreign goods; to encourage and stimulate U.S. investors into joint enterprises with Latin Americans; to counter Communist propaganda…” (The Story of the International Trade Mart, page 15).
Since the assassination, the ITM has gone through a merger and a multitude of changes, moves and expansion– making it an entirely different post-Cold War entity today. It is safe to say that during the Red Scare and Missile Crisis, New Orleans and its captains of industry where a tight-knit bunch who worked in synch with one another to target communist threats. The omni-present intelligence network was a partner in this economic and national security danger. This is why Oswald set up an office in the heart of one of the major anti-communist blocs in North America at the time and played a provocateur role using the brain-dead FPCC as a front: to work with a network in rooting out communists. A network which included Guy Banister, Cuban exiles, David Ferrie, INCA, WSDU, the CRC, The Friends of Democratic Cuba, The DRE, the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, intelligence actors and Clay Shaw who was a well-paid CIA contract agent. This is why we have seen so much interaction between persons on the list with Oswald and Shaw. Given the role of the ITM, how could Shaw not be well connected and work in symbiosis with the apparatus countering communism as well as with the New Orleans power elite.
Just how invested the ITM, or at least some of its governance members were, in controlling the environments capitalists dealt in is not known. The Garrison files do offer some clues which the research community should pour into. Let us look at some of the people who were involved in with the ITM some sixty years ago.
We can begin with what Garrison himself observed when questioned on May 27, 1969 (Garrison Files: Crusade to Free Cuba, file 2, page 38)
Article 4 of the ITM foundation papers lists the original board directors in 1945. While a 1963 list would be worth analyzing, this one is already very revealing, especially when comparing with INCA members and operatives:
We know Shaw was close to Butler and Ocshner of INCA and that Philbrick was Oswald’s idol. Garrison was obviously intrigued by certain names such as Eustis Reily on the INCA list. This author finds the Stern names (WDSU) interesting. Since William Stuckey had a weekly radio program at the station and they allowed Walter Sheridan to work out of their offices while doing his NBC hatchet job on Garrison in 1967.
Declassified files prove that Lloyd Cobb, Theodore Brent (top dogs at the ITM) and Clay Shaw, who joined later, were intel connected . For instance, Cobb was on a panel of CIA cleared lawyers in New Orleans. (William Davy, Let Justice be Done, p. 182) According to Joan Mellen, Brent’s Mississippi Shipping Company ended up being a CIA proprietary. (Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, p. 131) Oliver Stone’s film, JFK: Destiny Betrayed, proves that Shaw was a highly valued contract agent and had a covert security clearance for the Agency. The last name on the ITM list William G. Zetzmann also figures on a partial list of INCA members almost 20 years later.
A New Orleans based researcher sent me the following information: “I spoke with Paul Fabry, head of Radio Free Europe and other CIA organizations and later with his secretary, who told me that it was always their understanding that the ITM was “an agency operation”. The bronze plaque in the lobby of the ITM listed Alton Ochsner, James Coleman and a guy named Wm. Norman (atty and spook).”
Now let us see what we can peace together in terms of ITM occupants, employees and visitors.
According to the Story of the ITM: A list of first tenants included David Kattan, Otis McAllister Co., Hemisphere Trading Co. (of which Alonzo G. Ensenat was Manager), United China & Glass Co., W. R. Grace & Co , S. Jackson & Son, Inc., Dictaphone Corp., Lily-Tulip Co., and Lucky Tiger Co.
It would be helpful if researchers could profile these occupants of the ITM and others who were there in and around the time of the assassination. For instance, J. Peter Grace presided over W.R. Grace & Company as of 1945 for many decades. He is profiled this way by Source-watch: The name J. Peter Grace (1913-1995) “is found in the Council for National Policy (CNP) Membership Directory for 1984-85 and 1988. Grace holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University (1936). Grace “started in 1936 as Assistant Secretary at W. R. Grace, in 1945 became President and CEO. Grace is a member of the Newcomen Society, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Knights of Malta: American Chapter of the Board of Founders, Knights of Malta President, 114 Avenue of the Americas [Who’s Who in America (1976-77, 1992-93)]. Grace was involved in Project Paperclip — a post-World War II CIA arrangement to remove classified information from dossiers so that former SS members and 900+ Nazi scientists could emigrate to the U. S. Hundreds of war criminals would find employment within government agencies and companies such as W.R. Grace chemical company whose president was J. Peter Grace.”
Alonzo Ensenat certainly has strong ties to Clay Shaw. He was president of Hemisphere Trading Co. in New Orleans until founding Ensenat & Co., an import-export firm, in 1947. He was president of the company until retiring in 1980.
Mr. Ensenat was a member of the committee that organized International House in New Orleans in 1943 and was on its first board of directors. This is where Shaw went to work on his return from World War II. The chain of International Houses was started by the Rockefellers and spread worldwide as part of their globalist, one world vision. The chairman of the Board of Trustees was John McCloy, a frequent Rockefeller lawyer. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 383) In 1945, Ensenat was an organizer of the International Trade Mart and was one of its first tenants when the building opened at 2 Canal St. in 1963. International House and the International Trade Mart later merged to form the World Trade Center of New Orleans. In 1946, Mr. Ensenat was an organizer of the Foreign Trade Zone, a duty-free zone that helped increase traffic through the Port of New Orleans after World War II.
Ensenat was on the executive committee of the Mississippi Valley World Trade Council (Secretary, Clay Shaw), which sponsored annual conferences in New Orleans to promote American exports in the 1950s and ’60s. He was president and general chairman of the conference in 1960 when it received the U.S. Department of Commerce’s “E” Award for excellence in promoting exports. He also was a charter member and past president of the World Trade Club of New Orleans. As opposed to this globalist goal, as Professor Donald Gibson has shown, Kennedy was a nationalist, both for the United States and largely in the Third World. This was a distinct break in policy between him and Dwight Eisenhower. (See DiEugenio, Chapter 2)
But beyond the uplinks to the Eastern Establishment, the ITM and Shaw had downlinks into the Crescent City. Aura Lee was a former secretary to Shaw at the ITM. After watching a press conference by Shaw where he denied knowing David Ferrie, she stated to Dr. Charles Moore, that she had seen Ferrie enter Shaw’s office at the Trade Mart several times. It happened so often the she thought Ferrie had privileged entry into his office. (DiEugenio, p. 209)
Bill Gaudet had an office in the ITM. According to Harold Weisberg, it was adjacent to two vacant offices. He published the Latin American Reports. Weisberg described him as C.I.A affiliated. (Andrew Sciambra Assistant D.A., interview with Weisberg on 4/14/1969). According to Sciambra, Cuban exiles often reported that Gaudet was CIA or FBI. Gaudet witnessed Oswald talking to Banister. (DiEugenio, p. 112)
On March 31, 1967, Betty Parrot told Garrison’s assistant DA Andy Sciambra, that Bill Dalzell lived in her home and that he was involved in a group called the Friends of Cuba with Sergio Arcacha Smith, BILL CRAIG, GRADY DURHAM, an individual named LOGAN who was also a member of the C.I.A., BILL KLINE, an attorney, REGIS KENNEDY, a member of the FBI, an individual named HOFFMAN and an individual named EASTERLING.
She also stated that “this group later moved from their office in the Balter Building and moved into an office in the International Trade Mart and then operated under the name of The Voice of Cuba or The Friends of Democratic Cuba.”
Layton Martens, listed as second in charge of the CFC after Arcacha Smith, knew David Ferrie through the Civil Air Patrol very well and also knew Clay Shaw but claimed Ferrie did not know Shaw. Here is what he told Garrison’s Assistant D.A. Alvin Oser when questioned on March 12, 1967, when asked: Have you ever been at the International Trade Mart?
LM: Yes.
AO: When was that?
LM: Well, a couple of vacations, a girlfriend’s mother worked there and I used to stop in and see her. I used to tell her hello. I did some soliciting there for funds for the F.R.D. and I went once with CLAY to see the plans for the new building.
Another ex-Civil Air Patrol cadet under Ferrie, Lawrence Fox, told assistant DA Jim Alcock (April 14, 1967) that he also solicited funds for the Crusade to Free Cuba at the ITM with David Ferrie. He said he was involved with Layton Martens and Arcacha Smith. (Garrison Files Miscellaneous reports 2 page 20)
In a report (described as relatively accurate but unconfirmed) about CIA leads in New Orleans dated May 24, 1967 to Jim Garrison by Assistant D.A. William Martin, he describes a Dave Baldwin who was hired by Shaw:
“(DAVE) BALDWIN) formerly of this City and a former newspaper reporter for the New Orleans States Item, was a covert member of the Central
Intelligence Agency and operated in India during the years of 1950, 1951 and_l952. Subsequent to his service in India Mr. BALDWIN returned to this city and was employed by CLAY SHAW as Public Relations Director for the International Trade Mart from 1952 through 1955…
…It was told to me that, during his employment at) the Trade Mart, DAVID BALDWIN succeeded in recruiting CLAY SHAW for C.I.A. operations, or, conversely, that CLAY SHAW had already been recruited by the C.I.A. by the time of BALDWIN’s employment, and that his employment of BALDWIN was suggested or sponsored by the C.I.A. During his operations in India. Mr. BALDWIN used as a cover his employment as a correspondent for North American Newspaper Alliance, the Louisville courier Journal, and the New Orleans Item.”
And there was Jesse Core, who replaced Baldwin. Core became Clay Shaw’s aide-de-camp at ITM. Core happened to pick up a flyer while Oswald was leafleting on Canal Street. He brought it back to the ITM. From there, he mailed it to the FBI office. He noted the part of the flyer which had Guy Banister’s office listed on it. This would suggest that he and Shaw knew this was a problem for Oswald, Banister and the FBI. Further, it was Core who notified WDSU TV about Oswald’s leafleting event outside the ITM. (DiEugenio, p. 161)
And we have this report that is so information-packed that I will share it intact:
In other words, at about the time Garrison’s inquiry was being exposed against his will by local reporter Rosemary James, The Times pulled the plug on their own inquiry.. When, in fact, they had leads in their files that backed up the DA. This parallels what Time-Life did through editor Holland McCombs, due to his friendship with Clay Shaw. (Click here for details https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/last-second-in-dallas-part-1)
Respected researcher David Boylan sent me this provocative piece of information about another interesting occupant: “I’m not sure if you guys have seen this. EAR’s (Emilo A. Rodriguez) statement just before he became a full-time employee. Page 6 is pretty interesting. He worked for the Berlitz School located at the ITM. His brother Arnesto would later run the Berlitz school and attempt to teach Oswald Spanish.”
“The signature is still redacted but I’m sure it was signed by David Morales. Morales had been working with EAR and Sforza in Cuba and exfiltrated them both in June 1961.Szorza would get an office but Morales wanted to keep EAR away so that EAR could continue his deep cover work.”
Summary
In parts 1 and 2 of this series, it was demonstrated that when Oswald started an FPCC chapter in New Orleans, he did so to infiltrate it as an informant.
In part 3 of this series of articles we have not only sealed the deal on proving that Oswald’s FPCC activities were simply a role he was playing as part of city-wide anti-Castro offensive that had national backing. We also show how Oswald and Clay Shaw’s work environments overlap in terms of contacts, mission and activities.
It was in the ITM’s DNA of that day to support anti-Castro efforts through propaganda, funding, organizing and networking as covertly as possible. Clay Shaw and Oswald’s intelligence fingerprints go back years before their appearances in New Orleans. Richard Schweiker of the Church Committee famously stated that everywhere you look with Oswald you find the fingerprints of intelligence. Shaw let his spook-slip show a number of times through his reckless socializing and hobnobbing with David Ferrie as well as through his anti-Communist support activities, network links and association with Permindex. Which in those day were not just a patriotic duty: in the New Orleans business community, it was part of people like Clay Shaw’s understood job description.
There has been a lot of discussion about the close physical proximity of 544 Camp Street to Banister and right-wing activists. Thanks to the Garrison files, we can work on proximities within the networks Oswald and Shaw shared. It is within these associations–which in the mind of their members were noble and deemed essential–that a few key people on a need to know basis exchanged money, orders and words that contributed to the murder of a President who was not in tune with a national mission, and thus considered a national threat. There was also a need to cover up and create distance between network members and Oswald.
One member of this network that has not been discussed yet was a muscular Latino who was often seen accompanying Oswald, or perhaps an Oswald double. He was considered so suspicious that the whole Garrison team was on the look-out for him. He was never identified. He was seen so often and described in corroborative terms that can leave no doubt that Oswald, the supposed lone-nut drifter, had at least one escort.
As our readers know, I wrote a column not long ago on Noam Chomsky’s appearance on a podcast called Green and Red. Chomsky and the podcast co-host, Bob Buzzanco, were fulminating about how Oliver Stone’s recent media appearances were misleading the left about both President Kennedy and the whole issue of what America’s role was in Vietnam. I replied to both of them. (Click here for that column) When Buzzanco later challenged the people behind JFK Revisited to a debate, I decided to oblige him. I would not do so on his show, since it would help him raise his audience, which I had moral reservations about. I said I would do so on Aaron Good’s American Exception podcast, a neutral site.
That debate did take place. (Click here for that debate) When Oliver Stone heard it, he immediately called me, as he was excited about the result. The problem with debates, of course, is trying to balance out the positive points you wish to make with the necessity of playing defense, that is negating the charges being made by the other side. Therefore, in addition to doing a follow up show with Aaron on this, I would like to make some comments on that score here.
First of all, to dispose of the last part of the debate, Buzzanco had said that there was little discovered about Oswald’s intelligence ties since the days of the House Select Committee (HSCA), which is an utterly false statement. John Newman wrote a whole book about this area which, contrary to what Buzzanco tried to imply, was not directly explored by the HSCA. In Oswald and the CIA, Newman discovered that both the CIA and FBI had anti Fair Play for Cuba Committee campaigns ongoing in the summer of 1963, which, of course, Oswald’s activities in New Orleans would seem to fit neatly into both. In addition to missing this, there was no place in those volumes where Oswald’s relationship with either the CIA or FBI was examined in any formal way. It turns out that the work of the HSCA’s Betsy Wolf, who was studying Oswald’s relationship with the CIA, was not declassified into the new millennium. To put it mildly, her work created a new plateau in this field. (Click here for details)
In the last part of the debate, it is hard to comprehend how someone who likes to pontificate about the impact of JFK’s murder could declare he knows little or nothing about the actual circumstances of his assassination, but like Noam Chomsky, such is the case. Suffice it to say that what happened during Kennedy’s autopsy—both the main one and the supplementary—would appear to indicate just what Chomsky says did not occur: a high-level plot. In the film JFK: Destiny Betrayed, we show that:
The photos of Kennedy’s brain cannot be of Kennedy’s brain, simply not possible.
In all probability, General Curtis LeMay was in attendance that night and tried to disguise how he got there.
Buzzanco is apparently ignorant of all this, as is Chomsky, which is no surprise really. What they lack in knowledge, they make up for in arrogance and snark.
Like so many leftist critics of Kennedy, Buzzanco said that somehow I should watch myself in talking about JFK’s civil rights program. This shows that, in addition to swallowing Chomsky, he has bought into the almost incessant and deceptive MSM campaign to bury what Kennedy did on civil rights. I made it a purpose of mine to go back into the record and find out what the truth was about this issue. Why? Because a while back, someone said to me words to the effect: Jim what you did with Kennedy’s foreign policy, you could probably do with all the other aspects of his presidency.
That turned out to be accurate. After a long four-part analysis, which surveyed literally dozens of books on the subject, I concluded that President Kennedy had done more for civil rights in less than three years than Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower did in three decades. In fact, it was not even close. Kennedy went to work on the issue the night of his inauguration. He was disappointed that there were no African Americans in the Coast Guard parade that day. He called up Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon and asked him about it. When Dillon said he had no idea why that was, Kennedy told him: Well, find out what the problem is.
The result of this was two affirmative action orders within a year. The first taking place in March, just two months after his inauguration. That first order dealt with employees in the federal government. There was a second one about purchases by the federal government, that is any contracting, with say the Pentagon or State Department, by a private vendor made that company also responsible for affirmative action guidelines.
What had happened was this: Kennedy was disappointed with the Civil Rights Commission set up by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson while he was in the senate. Although Kennedy voted for it, he thought it was toothless. So, he decided to enlist the Commission’s lawyer, Harris Wofford, as a campaign advisor in 1960. After Kennedy was elected, he instructed Wofford to write out a program for civil rights. Wofford specifically wrote that the president should not even think of trying to pass an overall bill in the first or even the second year since it would be stymied by the southern filibuster. Wofford advised Kennedy to try and get some momentum through executive orders, the Justice Department and perhaps the courts.
And that is what Kennedy did. For example, differing with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, Attorney General Robert Kennedy said the administration would support the Brown vs. Board decision. Bobby Kennedy then indicted the Secretary of Education in Louisiana for resisting that ruling. In Prince Edward County Virginia, the state would not support an integrated school system. The Kennedys collected contributions from wealthy donors and William Vanden Huevel actually built a new school system from scratch—superintendent, principal, counselors, teachers, and buildings—so that the local children could register for classes. (Click here for that story)
I could go on and on, for example funding voting drives, integrating both state and private universities in the south, filing suits against voting rights violations. No previous president went as far on as many fronts than JFK did. It’s not even close. And this was before he submitted his omnibus civil rights bill to congress in February of 1963. (For all the details, click here) As with Indochina, Buzzanco drank the Kool-Aid on this one.
Buzzanco also said that in my claim that Kennedy was much more reformist than what is made out to be, all I had to back me was Richard Mahoney’s book JFK: Ordeal in Africa, which shows that Buzzanco has not read this site very often. On the concept of President Kennedy’s reformist foreign policy, Robert Rakove’s book, Kennedy, Johnson and the Non-Aligned World is one of the best. That was published in 2013, decades after Mahoney’s 1989 book. On just the area of Africa, there is Philip Muehlenbeck’s fine work, Betting on the Africans. That volume was published in 2012, again decades after Mahoney. Decades prior to Mahoney, there was Roger Hilsman’s book To Move A Nation, which was astute on Kennedy’s foreign policy ideas, particularly about Indonesia. About the 1965 Indonesian upheaval, there is Bradley Simpson’s book Economists with Guns. Simpson says in that 2010 book, as he did for Oliver Stone in JFK: Destiny Betrayed, the epochal overthrow of Sukarno would not have happened if Kennedy had lived. Greg Poulgrain says the same thing in his book, JFK vs Allen Dulles:Battleground Indonesia, which was published in 2020.
As far as Indochina goes, it is just as bad for Buzzanco. Since the film JFK came out, there have been books by Howard Jones, David Kaiser, James Blight, and Gordon Goldstein which all agree with the views of that film: that Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam at the time of his death. There is also John Newman’s second edition of his milestone work JFK and VIetnam. In my view, that version is even better than the 1992 edition. There is also Richard Parker’s biographical work on John K. Galbraith. Galbraith was one of the strongest influences advising Kennedy on this issue, and the president took his advice to begin his withdrawal plan. (Click here for details)
Considering all this new scholarship, what is hard to understand is this: Why is Buzzanco still abiding by Noam Chomsky’s badly dated and intellectually shabby 1993 book? Because in the face of over 800 pages of new information declassified by the ARRB, no one else is. Need I add that since Chomsky’s book came out, both Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy (posthumously) published scholarly tomes in which they said the same thing: Kennedy was not going into Vietnam. Just how much evidence, how many witnesses, and how many scholars does one need in this regard?
Like the late Alexander Cockburn, Buzzanco wants us to think that somehow President Kennedy was involved in the Ramadan Revolution of February 1963. This was the overthrow of the Iraq leader Karim Qasim and his (temporary) replacement by the Baath party. Since I found Cockburn about as convincing as Chomsky on the issue of Kennedy’s foreign policy, I did some research on this. I read three works on the issue—one book and two Ph. D. dissertations—and none of them agreed with either Cockburn or later the work of Vincent Bevins on this score. All three writers stated that, unlike Eisenhower, the Kennedy administration was not all that interested in Qasim. For instance, the interagency committee Eisenhower had on Iraq was more or less dropped under Kennedy. And by late 1961, Qasim had turned on the communists, so there was no Cold War motive to dethroning him.
Where Qasim got into trouble was with the British and the Kurds. The former was over an oil rights dispute, the latter was over a territorial rebellion in the north. After the Kurds inflicted some defeats on the army, the Baath Party infiltrated the military and negotiated with the Kurds. And that is what set the stage for the overthrow in February of 1963. There is no credible evidence that the CIA or State Department commandeered the plot. (Peter Hahn, Missions Accomplished? p. 48) And unlike what Cockburn tried to imply, Saddam Hussein was not even in the country at that time. (For a longer treatment click here and scroll to part 6)
Buzzanco also brought up the overthrow in Brazil. It is true that Kennedy was worried about Brazil, but this is due to the horrible advice he was getting from Lincoln Gordon, who he should never have approved as ambassador. But it’s also true that he sent Bobby Kennedy to Brazil to advise Joao Goulart to moderate his government to avoid any conflict. Gordon had actually told JFK that Brazil was in danger of becoming a new Red China. (See Merco Press, April 8, 2022) We do not know what Kennedy would have eventually done in Brazil, but it was President Johnson and Warren Commissioner John McCloy who actually arranged for the overthrow in 1964. The Brazilian military was given aid by Vernon Walthers of the CIA. Operation Brother Sam was done hand-in-glove with the Rockefeller interests in Brazil, which is why McCloy was the front man for it. (The Chairman, by Kai Bird, pp. 550–53) I would like to add that, in reference to Latin America, Kennedy did not recognize rightwing takeovers in either Dominican Republic or Honduras. Also, unlike what Buzzanco said, the American embargo of Cuba did not start under Kennedy. Its initial stages began first in 1958, under Eisenhower. Ike extended it in 1960 to include most exports. Kennedy expanded it again in 1962. It’s quite surprising that a history professor could be inaccurate about something as simple as this.
My last point would be about the concept of what Rakove called “engagement.” This was his word for how Kennedy approached the concept of neutrality. Kennedy felt that if a country wanted to remain neutral in the Cold War, that was their decision. We could still send them aid and, in fact, we should send them as much as possible in order to keep them away from the communists. As Rakove notes, this was a large jump from John Foster Dulles, who did not want to deal with the concept of neutrality at all. With him, there was no neutral ground in the Cold War: you were either for the USA or against the USA. (See Rakove, pp. 6–11). A good example of this would be Kennedy’s attitude toward Nasser in Egypt versus Foster Dulles’ and, later, Johnson’s stance toward the charismatic pan-Arab leader. Any history scholar should be able to discern this wide difference. Nasser certainly did, as did most of the leaders in Africa. (Muehlenbeck, pp 227–228) For Buzzanco to say I agreed with him on this issue shows a combination of political spin and his lack of knowledge on who Foster Dulles was.
I would like to append one last point about how leftist ideology clouds the picture of who Kennedy was. Peter Scott wrote an essay for the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers back in 1971. That essay was one of the earliest efforts to detect that Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam at the time of his death. The editors of that series were Chomsky and Howard Zinn. They did not want to print that essay, because to them it would indicate that whoever is president makes a difference. I do not know any clearer way of showing that Chomsky’s concept amounts to writing history according to ideology. And to me, that is not writing history. Its polemics.
John F. Kennedy was not a perfect president. We have never had a perfect president and there never will be one, but the best brief characterization of Kennedy was made by Richard Mahoney. He used Edward Gibbon’s description of the Byzantine general Belisarius as a point of comparison: “His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his virtues were his own.”
Part of the official JFK assassination lore is that, on the night of April 10, 1963, accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald took a bus close to the Dallas Turtle Creek neighborhood of General Edwin A. Walker, then a nationally prominent right-wing political activist and armed himself with his Mannlicher-Carano rifle. Oswald then walked to behind the Walker residence, on a service road, a type of back-alley. Walker was seated motionless behind a desk inside his home and facing a large first-floor window. Resting his rifle on a latticed fence about 30 yards away, Oswald took a potshot at his target at 9 pm.
And missed. Entirely. The shot went over and wide of Walker’s head and into a wall. Walker, on surveying the latticed fence afterwards that evening with a lieutenant from the Dallas Police Department (DPD), remarked that the unknown would-be assassin was a “lousy shot.”
A police officer reviewing the layout and shooting that night replied, “He couldn’t have missed you.”
Official Version
The above official version then posits that Oswald, after shooting and missing Walker, then “buried” his rifle somewhere and rode a bus back home, where he nervously related to his wife Marina details of his expedition.
Importantly, also entered into the lore was that Oswald would have struck Walker, save for a windowpane that deflected his shot.
This legend reached something of a zenith in the federally-funded Smithsonian magazine article on 2013. That article not only casually assumed Oswald’s guilt in the assassination of President Kennedy, but then described the shot that missed Walker thusly:
Drawing a tight bead on Walker’s head, he (Oswald) pulls the trigger. An explosion hurtles through the night, a thunder that echoes to the alley, to the creek, to the church and the surrounding houses. Walker flinches instinctively at the loud blast and the sound of a wicked crack over his scalp—right inside his hair.[1]
Thus, in the recounted mythology, the shot that missed Walker actually passed through the hair on the general’s head.
The Dallas Morning News chimed-in in 2013 with a similar story—it was the 50th anniversary year of the JFK murder—that also blithely assumes Oswald’s guilt in both the Kennedy and Walker shootings and adds, “The bullet (fired at Walker) first hit the screen and then the wood frame between the upper and lower windowpanes. Its original path deflected, it passed just above Walker’s scalp.”[2]
In other words, only a windowpane deflected the Oswald bullet and saved Walker’s life.
In most regards, the popular-media version of the Walker shooting is actually the opposite of what really happened that night and is, perhaps unsurprisingly, another mythology regarding the JFK murder.
The Real Story
There are many reasons not to convict Oswald of either the Kennedy or Walker shootings in 1963. But first, let’s dispose of the dramatic media treatment of that night at General Walker’s and his close brush with death.
First, Walker, a military veteran who had commanded special forces in combat in World War II, far from feeling a bullet through his scalp, actually initially told investigating officers from the Dallas Police Department that he thought neighborhood kids had tossed a firecracker into to his den through an open window.
If that! For in a supplementary report filed on April 10, it was written that Walker “stated that when he heard the noise, he thought it was some sort of fireworks.” [3] Fireworks? Hearing fireworks is a far cry from the sensation of a bullet passing through one’s scalp. In truth, only after discovering and examining a bullet hole in the wall behind him, did Walker conclude he actually had been shot at—and so he related to the DPD.
Secondly, a review of Dallas Police Department documents from the night of April 10 reveals whoever shot at Walker that night would have missed even more widely, save for the deflection downwards of the windowpane.
Here is a photo of the Walker windowpane and the damage caused by the passing bullet. Obviously, the damage is on the lower edge of the crossbar of the wind plane and likely would have deflected the bullet lower.
And that is how the Dallas Police Department (DPD) saw it.
“Officers observed a bullet of unknown caliber, steel jacket, had been shot through the window, piercing the frame of the window and going into the wall above comp’s (Walker’s) head,” according to DPD report filed on April 10 (italics added).
The report continues, “The bullet struck the window frame near center locking device. From the point where the bullet hit the window frame to the point where it struck the wall is a downward trajectory.”
It is hard to escape the conclusion that whoever shot at Walker would have missed by even more, except for the deflection. The shooter missed Walker from a distance of about 30 yards, likely armed with a rifle resting on a fence for support.
In addition, careful readers will also note that that the DPD found a “steel jacket” slug at the scene of the Walker shooting. Assassination researchers know, of course, that Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano used copper-jacketed ammo, from the Western Cartridge Company.
One thing about police officers is that they tend to know guns and ammo and one might assume that the DPD assigned some of its better detectives to the Walker shooting, given his national prominence in 1963.
But after the Kennedy murder, the DPD sent the steel-jacketed bullet—stated in police reports to be a 30.06 calibre—to the FBI. The federal agents said the mangled Walker slug was actually a 6.5 projectile from the Western Cartridge Company and copper-jacketed. In other words, a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet.
In a more-innocent era, one might assume the DPD made a mistake—after all, mistakes happen. And the Walker bullet, in fact, was badly distorted after striking the windowpane and passing through a wall in the Walker residence.
But since the 1960s, the profoundly dismaying history of CE 399, the “Magic Bullet,” has been revealed: the famed nearly pristine dome-headed slug was almost certainly introduced into the evidentiary record within the FBI facilities in Washington. The curious “pointy head” slug found on the Parkland hospital hallway floor Nov. 22 has disappeared and almost certainly had nothing to do with the JFK murder anyway.[4]
So, with the true story of the Magic Bullet revealed, one reasonable concern is that the FBI also fabricated evidence in the Walker shooting, replacing a steel-jacketed projectile from Dallas with a copper-jacketed Winchester Cartridge 6.5 slug.
Unfortunately, the records do not reveal why the DPD detective had concluded the Walker slug was steel-jacketed. If the detective had placed the slug on his desk next to a magnet, perhaps he would have noticed the Walker bullet wiggle. (Worth noting, steel-jacketed bullets can be copper coated, the softer metal copper applied to decrease wear-and-tear on gun barrels). In any event, the Walker projectile was originally logged as a steel-jacketed 30.06 slug.
There is much more to that evening in April 1963; for example, outside Walker’s home at least two vehicles sped from the scene in the wake of the gunfire, as seen by multiple witnesses.
Two Cars Leave the Scene
Though hardly dispositive, an additional curiosity is that two automobiles were seen swiftly leaving the scene of the Walker shooting on April 10, in the immediate aftermath of gunfire.
Hearing the Walker gunshot, a youth named Kirk Coleman immediately thereafter peered over a fence and “saw a man getting into a 1949 or 1950 Ford, light green or light blue and take off,” according to DPD report filed on April 11.
“This was in the parking lot of the Church next to General Walker’s home. Also, on further down the parking lot was another car, unknown make or model and a man was in it. He had the dome light on and Kirk could see him bend over the front seat as if he was putting something in the back floorboard,” continued the report.
General Walker also told the Warren Commission he saw a car suddenly leave the area, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Of course, Oswald is thought not to have had driving skills and certainly did not own a car. To be sure, the two cars could have left the Walker shooting scene suddenly as the sound of gunfire is disconcerting. But one might expect ordinary citizens hearing gunfire to report as much to police, yet the men in the vehicles have simply disappeared into that night, and evidently forever. No one has ever come forward and said they were innocent bystanders who drove away quickly on the night of the Walker shooting.
So, perhaps the departing vehicles held Oswald and compatriots.
The Dog That Did Not Bark
A Walker neighbor’s dog, known as an active barker, was conveniently ill and silenced that evening.
“The neighbor’s dog to the east of the Walker property is a fanatical barker, but on this incidence did not make a sound,” according to an April 12 DPD report.
Concerning the dog, a neighbor told the DPD that, “Dr. Ruth Jackson, who lives next door to the General, has a dog that barks at everybody and everything. The night that this offense occurred Dr. Jackson’s dog did not bark at suspects. Investigating officers received further information…that Dr. Jackson’s dog was very sick yesterday [the date of shooting] and is also sick today. Reason for this illness is unknown at this time.” (emphasis added)
Again, the report of conveniently sick dog is hardly dispositive. But if the dog was intentionally poisoned, it suggests an operation involving more than a lone nut who did not own a car.[5]
The Walker Backyard Photo and Other Evidence
And of course, one of the curiosities of the JFKA is the backyard black-and-white photo of Walker’s house, purportedly found in Oswald’s possessions after the JFK murder, featuring the infamous two-tone 1957 Chevrolet with its license plate mysteriously cut out.
If the photo was truly in Oswald’s possession, it is certainly suggestive.
In addition, Oswald’s wife, Marina, recounted discussions with her husband regarding the Walker shooting, although her testimony in the wake of the JFK assassination was regarded as unreliable, even by Warren Commission staff. In fact, Marina’s statements and testimony on nearly every topic, made under great duress, vacillated wildly on a daily basis.
Finally, there is also the “Walker letter,” an unsigned page written in pencil and in the Russian language. The undated letter gives instructions to Marina concerning paying bills, a post office box, disposition of Oswald’s personal belongings, and where Oswald could be located in the event of his arrest. The letter is said to have been written shortly before the Walker shooting, though its origins are disputed.
None of the above evidence is enough to convict Oswald, even if it is “real” and not fabricated. But assuming the evidence in Oswald’s possession is not planted, there is a strong suggestion that Oswald participated in the Walker shooting.
An Explanation of the Walker Shooting
The Warren Commission presented the Walker shooting as another version of Oswald as the leftie-loser-loner nut acting out a demented fantasy. Even the House Select Committee on Assassinations did little with the topic.[6]
But for the purpose of this article, the Warren Commission treatment of Walker shooting is the interesting part.
In truth, whoever shot at Walker either—
Was a lousy shot, to put it mildly
Intended to miss
Had faulty firearms
Possibly had compatriots
None of above surfaces in the Warren Commission treatment of the Walker shooting.
Indeed, the version that the “windowpane deflection likely saved Walker” is allowed to survive unchallenged in the Warren Commission version of events and grew in mass media literature over the years, as seen in the above quotes from the Smithsonian and Dallas Morning News.
A Better Explanation
My own interpretation is that Oswald was possibly the gunman who fired in the direction of Walker in April 1963, but that he had accomplices (hence the cars racing from the scene), he did not use a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (hence the steel-jacketed bullet), and missed intentionally.
But why such an exercise?
Based on the research of scholar John Newman and HSCA investigator Dan Hardway, Oswald was an asset of sorts for US intelligence agencies, not exactly rare in the early 1960s, when the CIA literally had thousands of such individuals in the US or nearby as part of expansive anti-Fidel Castro efforts.
Oswald, contend Hardway and Newman, was being primed for something, possibly for the JFK assassination or another event that could be blamed on Castro or pro-Castro types.
It is my speculation that the Walker escapade was part of an Oswald biography-building exercise and to practice and test Oswald’s nerve for an intentionally unsuccessful assassination attempt of a prominent figure—such as President Kennedy—an attempt that could then be blamed on Castro.
If Oswald could be made the patsy in such an event, such as the JFKA, the fallout could justify a major operation against the Cuban leader.
If the Walker shooting was a test of Oswald, then evidently he passed.
Here is what I can tell you. Please read most carefully and do not misquote me or even unintentionally misrepresent any of this information. Be most precise, I implore you.
On September 18, 1997, I reviewed the payment records from both the TSBD and the USMC to Oswald, within the earnings records of the Social Security Administration. Roy Truly was not on the SSA name list of persons paid by the TSBD during the fourth quarter of 1963 (Oct-Dec 63). (I have no idea who was paying Truly; but clearly, on the day of the assassination, he was still acting as LHO’s supervisor, per his encounter of LHO with cop Marion Baker on the TSBD second floor.)
The Marine Corps did NOT pay Oswald during the third quarter of 1959 (July 1–Sept 11, 1959). The specialist at the SSA told me that while Lee Harvey Oswald was IN the Marine Corps during the third quarter of 1959 (until September 11th, his discharge date), they definitely did not PAY HIM during the third quarter. I reviewed the printed records of the earnings he received from the USMC for that year—which had been stored on microfilm—and it was ZERO for the third quarter, whereas they did pay him for the first and second quarters of 1959. The ARRB’s contact at SSA said there was “no possibility of a mistake” in their records. I printed all of the microfilm records I reviewed on paper and took them back to the ARRB as assassination records.
Now, as you know, Blakey wrote the draft JFK Act legislation. In it, he exempted both the autopsy materials (“All Deed of Gift” materials donated to the Archives) and “tax information” from the disclosure requirements of the Act. The IRS actually wanted all tax information on Oswald to be subject to the Act and to be released; Congress, erring on the side of privacy (like Blakey), refused to allow this in the Act. That is most unfortunate, because at this juncture, these detailed records that I reviewed can only be released if Section 6103 of the IRS Code is amended to permit their release.
The Oswald earnings records I reviewed are covered by RIFs 137-10005-10060 through10089, inclusive. They are redacted unless or until Section 6103 of the IRS code is amended by Congress to permit all “tax information” (which definition includes not only tax returns, but also earnings records) to be released.
I published a memo about all this on September 23, 1998, and all tax information and earnings records issues I was aware of are discussed therein. Its title was: “Questions Raised by John Armstrong and Carol Hewitt About Lee Harvey Oswald’s Tax and Earnings Records.” In that memo, all specifics about the microfilm records of LHO’s earnings that I reviewed on September 18, 1997, are REDACTED. The redactions cannot be unredacted unless or until Section 6103 of the IRS Code is amended by Congress to allow release of all “tax information” on LHO, Jack Ruby, and others identified by ARRB RIFs. (We looked at “tax information” for others besides LHO and they are all identified by RIFs, and all the details are redacted).
Now, listen to this: in a Feb 3, 1964, letter to J. Lee Rankin from HEW, the Warren Commission was told that there were NO EARNINGS REPORTED for Oswald for the third quarter of 1959. This was initially withheld from the public for the standard privacy reasons surrounding “tax information,” but in 1965, the confidentiality classification for this information was removed by the USG. (See enclosure 13 to my long memo) That information passed to the Warren Commission in Feb 1964 is in CD 353 (the cover letter) and 353a (the specifics about when he earned money and from whom).
Thus, when reviewing Oswald’s earnings records from the Marine Corps in September of 1997, I was simply confirming (by viewing the dollars and cents details) what the Warren Commission had been told by HEW in the Feb 3, 1964, letter, and for which the confidentiality had been removed in 1965. This means that in my oral statements in the documentary, I am simply confirming information that the WC learned about in Feb 1964, and which became open information in 1965 when the USG lifted its confidentiality.
To obtain the unredacted version of my long research memo, and to get the RIFs about Oswald’s earnings opened up, Section 6103 of the IRS Code would have to be amended. I do not today have the paper copies of the earnings records. Only the Archives has those, as identified above by RIF numbers.
Now, some of Oswald’s “tax information” is already open information, including his 1959 tax return, which shows his total earnings for 1959 to be $996.31 for that year. This would seem to indicate that SOMEONE paid him during the third quarter (because his earnings for quarters 1 and 2 are not that much money), but whichever entity paid him did not pay him very much, at all. SPECULATION: Perhaps it was what would have been his normal USMC salary, IN CASH???
The Review Board recommended in its Final Report “…that Congress enact legislation exempting Lee Harvey Oswald’s tax return information, Oswald’s employment information obtained by the Social Security Administration, and other tax or IRS related information in the files of the Warren Commission and HSCA from the protection afforded by the Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, and that such legislation direct that these records be released to the public in the JFK Collection.”
That is all I am willing, or able, to say about this.
In summary, I simply confirmed in my interview for your documentary that what the Warren Commission was told in Feb 1964—that Oswald had no reported earnings in the third quarter of 1959—was confirmed by me through careful examination of the microfilmed paper earnings records at SSA. For someone to actually view and review those records identified by RIF number above, the IRS Code would have to be amended.
Dave O’Brien wrote a book in 2017 entitled Through the Oswald Window. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I missed that book and have not read it, but O’Brien brings up some of the points that he likely made in that book in his new effort entitled JFK: Case Not Closed. Four chapters of his new book were written by Johnny Cairns, who I consider one of the best of the new generation of JFK researchers.
Early in this book, O’Brien brings up one of the points he likely made in his earlier book—and it’s a cogent one. Dave was once allowed access to the infamous “sniper’s window” at the Texas School Book Depository. Reflecting back on that visit, he asks two questions. If Oswald had really been at that window, why did he not shoot Kennedy as the president came down Houston Street? (p. 21) That was an unobstructed shot with the target right below him.
He then goes onto a second issue. That particular window is at the southeast corner of the sixth floor. If we are to believe that Oswald was the lone assassin, was on that floor, and committed a premeditated murder, then there is another question that should be asked by anyone was has been on that floor. Why didn’t Oswald use the southwest window, at the opposite end. This would have solved more than one problem for the alleged killer:
The oak tree would be removed as an obstruction.
Kennedy would have been right below him.
He would have had clear access to the target the whole time.
He had a more direct and quicker escape from that floor.
If one buys into the Warren Report, the alleged murderer had days to plan his crime. But he never figured on any of these circumstances? In spite of all these mitigating factors, as O’Brien writes:
Yet, he chose the southeast corner window and allowed the left-hand turn onto Elm Street knowing that the fully-blossomed Oak Tree protected his target for valuable seconds, and that once clear of the foliage, his target was mere seconds from safety under the bridge just yards away. Why? (p. 21)
As O’Brien writes, it is inexplicable that the Warren Commission never even considered this as part of their inquiry into Kennedy’s assassination. But any new formal inquiry should do so. Because it strongly indicates that Oswald was not what the Warren Report said he was. The idea of a reopening of the Kennedy case is a strong theme featured in the book. (p. 22)
II
From here, O’Brien notes another oddity. At Zapruder frame 312, right before the fatal headshot, JFK’s head is right next to Jackie’s. In fact, in the photo he shows on page 42, she is leaning so far over to his side of the seat that their heads are almost touching. But as the author notes, in the next split second, three things will happen that seriously undermine the official story which says Oswald shot Kennedy from behind. First, Kennedy’s head and body go backward, crashing off the back seat. Second, Jackie Kennedy reaches onto the trunk of the car attempting to retrieve a part of her husband’s skull, which is visible there. Third, motorcycle officer Billy Hargis, riding to the left and behind Kennedy’s limousine, is splattered with blood and tissue—and with such force that he momentarily thought he was hit. (pp. 42–45; 187–93). How could all three of these events occur in that short of an interval if the official story was correct? Do they not all betray a shot from the front? (And in arguing for a front shot, O’Brien mounts one more telling argument against the so-called neuromuscular reaction, see p. 46)
Chapters 4–7 of the book were composed by Johnny Cairns. As anyone who has been exposed to his writing will automatically understand, they are first-class. They strike the Warren Report at the points where it is supposed to be strongest: the physical evidence against Oswald.
In taking up the case of Oswald ordering the rifle, Johnny asks: if the FBI was monitoring the publications Oswald was getting through the post office—and they were—how could they not know he was also in receipt of a rifle and handgun? (pp. 60–66) Also, how could Oswald have sent a money order to Chicago on March 12th by 10:30am when his timecards from his place of employment say he was at work? And he did not have a lunch break until almost two hours later. (p. 67) He also brings up this point: if Oswald knew he was going to order a murder weapon delivered to a post office box, why utilize a box which he had signed for? Why not take out a box in the name of the alias he used to order the rifle, namely Hidell? (pp. 72–73)
Johnny then goes through all the mechanical problems that the authorities had with the particular rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. They had to fit the weapon with two shims, since the sighting was off both in elevation and azimuth. Then there was a difficulty in opening the bolt, plus the trigger was a two stage operation: at first it was easy, then it required more an exertion of pressure to pull. (p. 76) Any of these, of course, would have pretty much eliminated that rifle as the murder weapon. What makes it worse is that the men who worked with the rifle once the Warren Commission got it were far more skilled with weapons than Oswald. These were FBI agents and master marksmen from the military. Johnny bases this evidence on the testimony of FBI expert Robert Frazier and weapons evaluation expert Ronald Simmons of the army. In addition, Frazier admitted that the actual scope mechanism was off. As they fired consecutive shots, the impact point got further and further away from the target. (p. 77; see also Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 420; Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, p. 127)
From here, Cairns goes on to the question of assembling the rifle. As most of us know, even if we grant the Commission’s thesis that Oswald carried the rifle to work that day in a bag, that particular bag was too short to accommodate a fully assembled Mannlicher Carcano 6.5 mm rifle. There was no screwdriver found on the sixth floor of the depository. The FBI said that they could assemble the rifle with a coin in six minutes. The late British police inspector Ian Griggs said this was poppycock. He said, in a hopeless endeavor, he ended up with blood blisters and a cut on his right thumb before he gave up. In his opinion, one had to use a screwdriver and with that it would take about two minutes. A screwdriver was needed for the simple reason that there are 16 parts to the rifle and the Warren Commission tried to conceal this with their pictorial Commission Exhibit 1304. (Click here for how)
All this leaves this important question: When and where did Oswald assemble the rifle?
Cairns asks the logical questions about the ammunition: Why could the FBI find no evidence that Oswald purchased it? (p. 87) Also, using as his authority Henry Hurt, Cairns shows that Oswald’s Marine buddies thought he was a joke as a marksman. And Hurt talked to fifty servicemen who knew Oswald. (pp. 93–94) Further, using sniper Craig Roberts as his correspondent, the great Carlos Hathcock said that his SWAT team—replicating the true conditions in Dealey Plaza—could not duplicate what Oswald did, and they tried more than once. To this reviewer that, in and of itself, would eliminate Oswald as a suspect, because Hathcock was the greatest American sniper of the Vietnam War. (p. 96) And contrary to what some Commission zealots say, to this day, Roberts stands by what he wrote about Hathcock.
In this same rigorous and systematic manner, Cairns then proceeds through the fingerprint evidence, the case that the alleged bag Oswald carried was fabricated after the assassination, the dubious police line ups Oswald was picked out of, the horrendous chain of custody for the shells found on the sixth floor—including the evidence that one of them could not have been fired that day—and probably the biggest liability in the entire Warren Report, namely the sorry, sorry case of Commission Exhibit 399, the infamous Magic Bullet. Cairns does a convincing and praiseworthy job on all of these topics and more, for example the PSE examination done on Oswald by author George O’Toole in his valuable book The Assassination Tapes.
III
Like Josiah Thompson in Last Second in Dallas, O’Brien writes that the pathologists did not know about Kennedy’s anterior neck wound the night of the autopsy. (p. 202) As the film JFK Revisited shows through nurse Audrey Bell, this is not accurate. But due to some nice detective work by Rob Couteau, we know this is false from Dr. Malcolm Perry himself. (Click here for details)
O’Brien is on more solid ground when he writes that Dr. Jim Humes burned his notes (he could have added the first draft of his autopsy report also). And this perhaps allowed him to move up the posterior back wound, which at autopsy was determined to come in about six inches below the collar and not exited. Now, through some manufactured evidence, the Warren Report made it negotiable with what was depicted as an exit wound through the throat. (p. 203) But that was not all. As forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht notes in JFK Revisited, by the spring of 1964, attorney Arlen Specter had now enlivened that wound track to include five wounds in Governor John Connally also.
O’Brien notes that medical illustrator Harold Rydberg was the artist who illustrated Commission Exhibit 385. Rydberg was essentially snookered by Humes and Dr. Boswell into drawing a trajectory through Kennedy’s body that would fit this alteration. (p. 208) And here, the book brings in a telling piece of testimony. Secret Service agent Clint Hill did not just see the rear skull wound in Kennedy. He also testified to Commissioner Hale Boggs, “I saw an opening in the back about six inches below the neckline to the right hand side of the spinal column.” (p. 209) Hill’s testimony corresponded with the holes in Kennedy’s shirt and jacket. As Vince Palamara shows with pictures from the front of Kennedy’s suit jacket, the jacket was likely not bunched up, since the bullet exit inside the back of the jacket matches up with the bullet entrance on the outside. (Palamara, Honest Answers, p. 21) This evidence corresponds to what was the likely first conclusion by the pathologists: the back wound did not transit Kennedy’s body.
O’Brien makes another controversial statement in Chapter 11. He says that if the Altgens photo is located at Zapruder film 225–230, then Kennedy could not have been hit by that time. He did an experiment which showed that the projectile would have had to have been fired through the branches of the oak tree. (O’Brien, p. 220) This may or may not be true. But it would seem to disagree with the pictures in the Warren Report which show the line of sight through the tree and how it is completely clear of the branches by frame 225. (WR, p. 103) This issue is also touched upon by Josiah Thompson in his first book on the Kennedy case, Six Seconds in Dallas. (p. 35) I wish O’Brien had made reference to these seemingly contradictory views and attempted to reconcile them.
In Chapters 12–14, O’Brien returns to the subject of Kennedy’s autopsy. He again notes that Humes did not call Parkland during the night. (p. 234) And he also notes how the Sibert/O’Neill report differs from the official autopsy report. For instance, the FBI report does not have the back wound transiting the body. (p. 239)
He next deals with the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) medical report which covered up the evidence for a baseball sized hole in the back of Kennedy’s head. He further notes that this evidence—largely from the witnesses at Bethesda, but matching many of the witnesses from Parkland—appears to have been concealed from the experts on the HSCA medical panel, for example Cyril Wecht and Michael Baden. Those two men both denied looking at such reports when confronted with this declassified evidence by Dr. Gary Aguilar. (p. 258) This evidence matches what the earliest witnesses, like Clint Hill, said he saw about the hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull. (p. 263)
IV
O’Brien makes a telling observation about Harold Rydberg and Ida Dox. Dox was the professional illustrator for the HSCA. She was largely guided by Dr. Michael Baden in what she was drawing, which roughly parallels what Humes and Boswell did with Rydberg. (p. 271) Consequently, the Dox drawings fail to show the blow out to the back of the skull that over 40 witnesses saw in Dallas and at Bethesda. But not only that, Dox was told by Baden to exaggerate the cratering effect at the cowlick area of Kennedy’s skull in order to make it look more like a wound of entry. This partly allowed the HSCA to raise the fatal head wound form low to high in the rear skull. Baden actually left declassified notes about this which were discovered by Dr. Randy Robertson. (pp. 274–75). There will be much more about this illicit relationship between Dox and Baden in Tim Smith’s upcoming book about the HSCA.
O’Brien closes out the book by pointing out some of the familiar problems with the Commission’s chief witness to Oswald being on the sixth floor, namely Howard Brennan. And he opposes that sighting with witnesses like Carolyn Arnold who said she saw Oswald on the first floor mere minutes before the assassination. (p. 281) Twenty-one police officers heard shots from in front of the limousine. Several saw smoke arising from the knoll area. He then notes how the FBI and the Commission cajoled witnesses they considered helpful to their case and argued with those they considered problematic to their verdict. Carolyn Walther and Ruby Henderson were two witnesses who said they saw two men on one of the upper floors of the Depository, and one of them was armed. (p. 285) Neither of these witnesses testified before the Commission. In fact, Walther said:
The FBI tried to make me think that what I saw were boxes. They were going to set out to prove me a liar and I had no intention of arguing with them and being harassed. (p. 285)
The book ends with the hope for how new technology can open up areas of the Kennedy case that have been closed before. O’Brien discusses the optical densitometry readings of Dr. David Mantik and their use in showing the problems with Kennedy’s x-rays. He also suggests full body CT scans. (p. 315) He concludes with the long awaited 3D imaging attempts of John Orr and Larry Schnapf, which I understand are finally getting close to fruition. (pp. 318–19)
The last part of the book includes an appendix in which well respected writers on the case suggest ways that it could be reinvestigated, for example Robert Kennedy Jr., Pat Speer, and Cyril Wecht. Some methods brought forth are by using a special prosecutor or a large panel of forensic experts or an ARRB type panel except with investigative powers.
I could point out other areas of disagreement—as with Geraldine Reid—but all in all, Doug and Johnny have written a creditable book that is worth reading.
Dulles was held responsible by JFK for the bungled Bay of Pigs invasion and was fired afterwards. Dulles never forgot or forgave JFK for the humiliation suffered. Kennedy decided to return West Irian to Indonesia from Dutch colonial rule. What Kennedy did not know, but Allen Dulles did, was that West Irian was a region extremely rich in minerals, even richer than Katanga. In the 1920s and 1930s, Allen Dulles was a lawyer at the giant corporate law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. He represented the Rockefellers there and he knew that Indonesia had huge mineral and oil potential. One of the oilfields in Sumatra exploited by Caltex was the size of similar oilfields in Saudi Arabia. In 1936, a joint Dutch and American expedition—including explorer/geologist Jean Jacques Dozy—was organized by Allen Dulles through Sullivan and Cromwell. That expedition discovered two enormous mineral deposits in West Irian. The American firms that financed the expedition were two divisions of Standard Oil. One of the two colossal deposits was called the Ertsberg and the other the Grasberg. Both were extravagantly rich in gold, silver, and copper. Just the gold content was much larger than the wealthiest gold mine in the world, then located in South Africa. Allen Dulles was close to the DeMohrenschildt family and transferred George DeMohrenschildt to West Irian to work on Standard Oil’s drilling, since the region had one of the largest oil deposits in Indonesia. Dulles lied to Kennedy on several occasions regarding the Sino-Soviet split. He told him it was not real, but a Cold war ploy to fool America. It was real and Dulles was using Indonesia as a wedge to further the split between China and the Soviet Union. From 1958, his first attempt to overthrow Sukarno, Dulles was planning on regime change. That would have allowed his clients to control the oil, gold, copper, and silver reserves of Indonesia rather than go to the citizenry of Indonesia, as Kennedy and Sukarno had planned. The policy of wedge against China and the Soviet Union would have been disrupted. Dulles had used religious organizations like the Unitarians to create humanitarian front organizations in order to conceal OSS and later CIA covert operations to destabilize Eastern Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia.
James Jesus Angleton
(Chief of CIA Counterintelligence)
Angleton’s obsession and mission was to catch a Soviet mole that allegedly had infiltrated the Agency. His secretive mole hunt unit, the Special Investigations Group (SIG), held a 201 file on Oswald prior to the assassination. John Newman thought that Oswald was an off-the-books agent for Angleton. In 1960, he used Oswald in a mole hunt to find out who had betrayed the U-2 secrets that led to its shoot down. Angleton did not find any mole, but he used the mole hunt as an alibi to cover his role in the U-2 incident, which resulted in the Paris Peace Summit cancellation. Similarly, he used the Oswald legend and an imposter to catch a mole had betrayed the CIA operations against Cuba in Mexico, even contacting the head of KGB assassinations before he himself tried to get to Cuba. Angleton had the excuse to manipulate information and to lower Oswald’s profile in a way that it would not raise suspicion until after November 22. Angleton, who John Neman believes was privy to the conspiracy to assassinate the President, had to design a fool-proof plot. The idea was to make it appear that the Cubans and Soviets manipulated Oswald in Mexico City in such a way to use him in the assassination of Kennedy. Angleton knew that the exposure of this plot would plant a WWIII virus in Oswald’s files that would halt any real investigation, in order to prevent a possible nuclear war. To achieve that, Oswald’s profile had to be lowered for the six weeks before the assassination. Angleton had to come up with a cover story, so no one would ever question his role in the plot. Again, Angleton would fail to catch a mole, but he had used the mole hunt to cover his true role that resulted in the murder of a U.S. President.
David Atlee Phillips
(CIA Covert Action/SAS Counterintelligence)
David Phillips was the Chief of Cuban Operations and Covert Actions in Mexico CIA station and also worked for the SAS/CI. He and James McCord first targeted the FPCC back in 1961. He dangled an American student, Court Wood, into the FPCC by pretending to be pro-Castro interesting in starting a new FPCC chapter, something that Oswald tried to emulate two years later both in New Orleans and Mexico. Prime suspect for handling Oswald and the Mexico City incident involving Oswald’s visits to the Cuban and Soviet Consulates. Lied far too many times about the events that took place to the HSCA investigators. On October 1, 1963, a diplomatic pouch was sent to CIA HQ addressed to a Michael Choaden. This was an alias for Phillips, that way he controlled all the materials in both Mexico and Washington. His assets like Alvarado tried to implicate Oswald in the assassination as a Cuban agent. In New Orleans he met with Banister, Ed Butler, and Sergio Arcacha Smith.
E. Howard Hunt
(Propaganda expert and an Officer of CIA’s Domestic Operations Division in 1962 under Tracey Barnes)
Bagley revealed to Malcolm Blunt that E. Howard Hunt was in the Soviet Division in 1962. There was no sign he ever worked in Soviet Russia Division. Blunt discovered that as part of a mole hunt, Bruce Solie of the Office of Security/Security Research Staff handed over Security and Personnel files to the FBI on various suspected moles. One of these was CIA staffer Peter Karlow. Those files contained information that Hunt was attending parties with the Karlows. Blunt is of the opinion that Hunt was spying on his own colleagues and that this would explain his sudden appearance in the Soviet Division. He also suspects that Hunt could only have been there under the instructions of Angleton, although Angleton always denied any relationship with Hunt. Later, Angleton revealed to author J. Trento that Hunt was in Dallas on the day of the assassination and that Hunt “had possibly been 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. Hunt was the founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) that was so prominent in Oswald’s contacts in New Orleans. In 1968, Hunt employed Cubans from the Trafficante drug trafficking network to eliminate French smugglers and the old French Connection by redirecting the heroin trade from Marseille to Southeast Asia and Mexico to supply the US.
William K. Harvey
(CIA Chief of Foreign Intelligence Division D)
Head of the CIA’s executive action ZR/RIFLE assassination program. On his notes wrote that “Corsicans recommended Sicilians lead to Mafia.”
He also had security clearance for “Project Rock” a codename for the U-2 plane. According to a CIA document, they re-evaluated Harvey’s file in respect for approval to get security clearance to “Project Rock.” Mark Wyatt, Harvey’s Deputy in Rome, revealed that Harvey was in Dallas in November 1963. According to Wyatt, he had bumped into Harvey on a plane to Dallas sometime before the assassination. When he asked Harvey what was doing in Dallas, he replied vaguely, “I am here to see what’s happening. To be fair to Harvey, he was not in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Wyatt said that they were both attending a Gladio meeting in Sardinia, Italy, when they heard about the assassination. Later that afternoon, Wyatt found Harvey collapsed in his bed after drinking martinis. Malcolm Blunt revealed that in August 1963, Harvey wanted to meet with Clare Boothe Luce, some months prior to the assassination.
Tennet H. Bagley
(CIA Chief of Soviet Russia/Counter Intelligence)
Told researcher Malcolm Blunt that Oswald was a witting false defector. Bagley had nothing to say about Kostikov’s role as KGB assassination officer. Yet on November 23, 1963, submitted a memo describing Kostikov as “an identified KGB officer…in an operation which is evidently sponsored by the KGB’s 13th department responsible of assassinations.” It is worth mentioning that Bagley was transferred in 1963 from the Bern station in Switzerland to Langley and promoted as Chief of SR/CI, just in time for the suppression of Kostikov’s KGB role.
William Larson
(CIA Chief of the Information Management Staff)
Revealed to HSCA researcher Betsy Wolf that the Office of Security did not open 201 files and that a 201 file should be opened whenever a subject accumulates at least five documents. Oswald’s file had 12 items and yet a 201 file was not open. Larson also revealed that the Office of Security worked closely with Angleton’s Counter Intelligence staff.
Richard M. Bissel
(CIA Deputy Director of Plans)
Involved in the development of U-2 & A-12 spy planes, CORONA satellites, CIA Liaison with Air Force and Defence industry. Brought Helliwell back from the Far East to organize a similar network of drug trafficking and bank laundering to finance the war against Castro. One of the architects of the Bay of Pigs invasion
Robert Gambino
(CIA Office of Security Chief)
Revealed to HSCA researcher Betsy Wolf that the CIA Mail Logistics responsible for incoming documents bypassed the General Filing System and sent all the Oswald information to the CIA Office of Security instead of the Soviet Russia division
Raymond Rocca
(Angleton’s Deputy in CIA Counter Intelligence)
Cabled Luis Echeverria on November 23rd concerning the relationship between Oswald and Sylvia Duran who took over the Mexico investigation from the FBI and the WC, before Helms had assigned Angleton his liaison duties with the Commission. the day after the assassination, a CIA agent escorted Elena Garro de Paz to the Vermont Hotel. In other words, within 24 hours, Angleton and Rocca are controlling Duran, a prime witness to Oswald not being in Mexico City, and Elena Garro, a witness who would eventually say that Oswald was having an affair with Duran.
Ann Egerter
(Counter Intelligence/Special Investigations Group Officer)
Worked under Birch O’Neil and his Deputy Scotty Miller. She opened a 201 file on Oswald in 1960 after a State Department request about US defectors to the USSR. She wrote Oswald’s middle name Henry, not Harvey, and the slot that is labeled Source Document is filled in with the acronym CI/SIG, which is not a document. Finally, in the notes below Dottie Lynch is still waiting for the file. She works in the SR division where the file should have been placed originally.
Edward G. Lansdale
(Air Force Major General and CIA affiliated, member of the American Security Council)
Malcolm Blunt believes that although Lansdale was a military man, he was working mainly for the CIA. Blunt mentioned that Lansdale resigned or retired temporarily from the army in October 1963. A short time later he returned to the army and he was promoted. The man who was pushing for his promotion was none other than Allen Dulles himself. Not only that but Lansdale headed the first mission in Saigon in 1954 and this mission was a CIA creation. John Newman found out that after his retirement, Lansdale visited his friend Sam Williams in Denton, Texas, which was near Dallas around the time of the assassination. He was Nelson Rockefeller’s clandestine associate in Southeast Asian propaganda activities. Lansdale was an adviser to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund/Special Studies Project and was appointed head of new counterinsurgency office at the Pentagon after the Bay of Pigs. William K. Harvey disliked Lansdale, thought of him as a security risk and could not work with him. If any of the two was part of the assassination planning certainly did not involve the other.
Paul Helliwell
Helliwell was a member of the OSS and later of the CIA in the Far East; he was one of the most prominent members of the China Lobby. He was the originator of the CIA’s off-the-books accounting system and nicknamed Mister Black Bag. His mission was to assist Chang Kai-Shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) army in Burma to invade China. This army managed and controlled the opium traffic in the region. Helliwell created two front companies to help KMT to carry out its war and the drug trade. One was Sea Supply in Bangkok and the other was CAT Inc., later Air America in Taiwan. Helliwell had organized a drug trafficking network supported by banks to launder CIA’s drug profits in the Far East. Helliwell’s main objective was to cement the CIA’s relationship with organized crime. Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante were both planning to invest in the Far East by bringing heroin back to the States. Helliwell established banks in Florida and became the owner of the Bank of Perrine in Key West, “a two-time laundromat for the Lansky mob and the CIA”, and its sister Bank of Cutler Ridge. Lansky would deposit money into the Bank of Perrine, reaching the US from the Bank of World Commerce in the Bahamas. Lansky also used the small Miami National Bank, where Helliwell was a legal counsel, to launder money from abroad and from his Las Vegas casinos. Peter Scott claimed that Helliwell worked with E. Howard Hunt, Mitch WerBell and Lucien Conein on developing relationships with drug dealing Cuban veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and became CIA paymaster for JM/WAVE to finance Chief of Station Ted Shackley’s operations against Cuba.
Anne Goodpasture
Anne Goodpasture was a CIA officer from Staff D posted to the Mexico CIA station. She tried to disguise her role in retrieving photos each day. But Lopez and Hardway found out the man she named in this function only did the legwork for Goodpasture. They finally discovered that Goodpasture was responsible for photographic and electronic surveillance. The translating team said that they did not review all photographs from the Soviet Embassy, only what Goodpasture would allow them to see, and all such photographs were under her control. They also revealed that, although Goodpasture was an assistant to station chief Win Scott, she was a closer assistant to David Phillips. She provided the photographs of the mystery man in Mexico. When Goodpasture was questioned about it, she replied that it was the only photograph of a non-Latin person taken on October 1, 1963. But Lopez and Hardway discovered that the photo was taken on October 2, 1963. Dan Hardway described her as ‘’a lying, conniving bitch. And if there was any justice in this world, she would be in jail.’’
David Sanchez Morales
Morales was also known as ‘’El Indio’’ was the chief of operations at the CIA’s JM/WAVE station in Miami, operations involving training paramilitary teams to infiltrate and invade Cuba. His haunting words to his friend ‘’we took care of that S.O.B.’’ have convinced may researchers that Morales was involved in the assassination. Bill Simpich believes that had used his Cuban intelligence forces, called AMOTs, to impersonate Oswald and Duran. It is unlikely that Morales would have been able to manipulate the Oswald files and foresee all the subsequent events that led to the assassination. . It is more likely that Morales would have also taken orders from Angleton and not the other way around.
Dorothe Matlack
Assistant Chief of Staff of Intelligence (ACSI)
The CIA and Army Intelligence worked together to form the Caribbean Action Center (CAC) for collecting intelligence from Cuban refugees. One of the major participants in this group was Dorothe Matlack, Assistant Chief of Staff of Intelligence (ACSI) for Army Intelligence and Liaison to the CIA. Matlack had joined the Interagency Defector Committee (IDC) in 1953. This involved State, DIA, Army, Navy, Air Force, FBI, and CIA. She also cooperated with Tony Czajkowski of the CIA’s Domestic Contacts Division and CIA Defector Coordinator George Aurell and worked with the CIA in analyzing reports made by notorious defectors such as Anatoly Golitsyn. On May 7, 1963, Matlack and Czajkowski met with George de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne.
CIA Operations (may include Cuban Exiles and the Mafia)
CIA DOD and Air Proprietaries
The DOD would recruit anti-Castro Cuban exiles with the purpose of breaking into foreign embassies and United Nations missions that were suspected of being friendly and sympathetic to Castro’s regime. Another important aspect of the DOD was his affiliation with the CIA proprietary organizations. The most infamous and most important CIA proprietary company was the Pacific Corporation Holdings, located in Washington D.C., that was incorporated in Dover, Delaware, a State with a friendly tax law that allowed companies formed in Delaware but not operating there to not pay state corporate tax.
Pacific Corporation was the parent company of the CIA air proprietaries, Civil Air Transport Co., Ltd., CAT Inc., later renamed Air America Inc.; Air Asia Co., Ltd.; the Pacific Engineering Company; and the Thai Pacific Services Co., Ltd. Air America took over all the operations in South East Asia, while Air Asia operated from Taiwan.
Another air proprietary linked to Pacific Corporation was Southern Air Transport (SAT), incorporated in Miami and operated in both the Far East and Latin America. Most importantly, the air proprietaries like CAT/Air America not only provided their services to facilitate the opium trade in the Golden Triangle, which included Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand, but also were involved in the replacement of elected governments in Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Air America did not only operate for the CIA, but they were doing contract work for large oil companies in the Southeast Asia
Trafficante, Lansky, Anti-Castro Cubans and drug trafficking
Santo Trafficante’s main areas of influence were Florida and the Caribbean, operating casinos in Cuba. After 1959, large numbers of anti-Castro Cubans moved to Florida and Trafficante used them to take control over Florida’s bolita lottery, a Cuban numbers game. This worked as a cover, since these Cubans became Trafficante’s new group of heroin couriers and distributors, who were unknown to American law enforcement agencies. They used drug smuggling to finance their operations—trafficking cocaine from Latin America and later heroin from Marseille. Manuel Artime, E. Howard Hunt’s protégé and head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) in Miami, was involved in drug trafficking to finance his war. The DOD under Barnes and Hunt would protect the Cuban drug network and Angleton was aware of it. Another CRC member of New Orleans, Sergio Arcacha Smith, who was associated with Hunt, Phillips, and Banister, was involved in contraband operations from Florida to Texas, specializing in drugs, guns, and prostitution.
In 1968, Trafficante visited Hong Kong and Southeast Asia to examine the possibilities of importing heroin from those regions to the US via Mexico and Latin America
DOD & Angleton’s CI operations
Orchestrated the Mexico charade and a mole hunt when Oswald defected in the USSR.
Angleton’s Counter Intelligence was obliged to ask the FBI to assist tracking Soviet illegals, moles, and spies entering the US. But with the creation of the new division, he could conduct his operations with the DOD without having to inform Hoover about it. Malcom Blunt believes that “DOD would have been ripe for exploitation purposes. And of keen interest to Angleton for positive counterintelligence usage. DOD was somewhere other agency elements could drop personnel into and thus be a vehicle for disguised operations: such as Howard Hunt’s PCS/DOD in 1962 when he turned up in the Soviet Russia Division.
CIA Counter Intelligence & Police Training
The CIA’s Counter Intelligence Staff was responsible for the Police Group (CI/PG). This CI/PG would be in constant liaison with the OPS of USAID and its training facility, the International Police Academy (IPA) in Washington. The CI/PG would exchange daily information with USAID on training programs with IPA and tours for foreign police/security representatives sponsored by the CIA’s Area Divisions. James Angleton wrote a memo explaining how USAID cooperated with CIA in law enforcement training and operations. CIA’s 1947 chapter forbade any “Police or Subpoena power” and only the FBI had the right to legitimately train the domestic Police forces. Phillip Melanson acquired documents showing that the CIA provided training to Metropolitan Police. This ranged from seminars, briefings, workshops in bugging, clandestine action, disguise techniques, lock picking, equipment loaning, and explosives detection. One of the documents revealed that CIA agents posed as cops and had received police badges and ID cards as early as 1960 to pursue “foreign intelligence targets”, as the CIA claimed. The CIA would also contact “friendly” police departments to ask for discreet handling of CIA personnel when in trouble and also to check on CIA employees and other people. Some of the police departments having received training and equipment were New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Miami, San Diego, and Minnesota. Dallas was not in those documents, but the name of some police departments was blanked out and Melanson believed that one of them was Dallas. He reasoned that Dallas would have not refused the CIA’s generous offer of training., especially when Mayor Earle Cabell was a CIA asset and his brother was a CIA Deputy Director and the force was full of right wingers and anti-Communists, who were always eager to unmask subversives and spies.
New Orleans
Guy Bannister
Banister’s office was located in the Balter building in New Orleans. In the same building were located the offices of a Cuban exile organization, the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC), and Sergio Arcacha Smith was the New Orleans representative. When Banister moved to 544 Camp Street, Arcacha Smith rented an office for CRC in the same building. It was CIA officer E. Howard Hunt who had helped create this organization. Gordon Novel has said that he met Arcacha Smith in 1961 at Banister’s office upon Ed Butler’s recommendation and, at that meeting, was a person who fit the description of David Phillips. When Oswald moved to New Orleans, it is possible that his job there was related to industrial security in search for subversives. He was employed by the Reily Coffee Company, but he also worked covertly for Guy Banister. William Monaghan, an ex-FBI agent, was the company’s Vice President and specialized in industrial security. Alfred Claude, the man who hired Oswald, left Reily and went to work in Chrysler’s aerospace division, which was based in NASA’s New Orleans facilities. Emmett Barbee, Oswald’s supervisor, and two other Reily employees, Dante Marachini and John Branyon, went on also to work for NASA, more likely in the industrial security division. Oswald was frequenting a New Orleans’s garage and had revealed to its owner, Adrian Alba, that he was going to work for NASA. Bill Nitschke, a Banister associate, confessed that Banister had given an offer to NASA to get a contract for industrial security in NASA’s New Orleans facilities.
That Banister’s investigating agency was doing industrial security work can be indicated by the testimony of former Banister associate, Joseph Oster. He told L.J. Delsa, an HSCA investigator, that Banister was using two sources to seek out subversives and Communists, FIDELAFAX and the American Security Council.
David Ferrie
When Oswald was in New Orleans, he was in contact with Guy Banister, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw. When Oswald was fifteen, he met David Ferrie in the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), where Ferrie was a Captain. In 1961, Ferrie and an exiled Cuban, Sergio Arcacha Smith, were part of the CIA’s training and preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Jim Garrison was the first official to present witnesses that had seen Oswald in the company of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw in the areas of Clinton and Jackson, ninety miles north of New Orleans, Oswald and his two companions went to the neighboring village of Clinton to register. It happened to be the day when a drive to register black voters—organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)—was on. When the Cadillac appeared, most voters thought it might be the FBI, so they noticed the car and its occupants. Several witnesses, from simple voters, to the Registrar, and the local Sheriff, testified that they identified the three people as Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw. The Sheriff even approached the car and asked the tall grey haired driver for his license. It turned out to be Clay Shaw of the International Trade Mart of New Orleans. Why did Shaw and Ferrie take Oswald to Jackson to seek a job at the hospital and register as a voter?
Clay Shaw
Garrison was contacted by a witness who revealed to him that a Mr. “White” of Freeport Sulphur company had contacted him to discuss a possible Castro assassination plan. The same witness had heard Clay Shaw or David Ferrie talking about some nickel mines in Cuba. Another witness, Jules Ricco Kimble, told Garrison’s office that a Mr. “White” along with Shaw and David Ferrie had flown in a plane to Cuba to make a deal regarding some nickel mines. It could be a coincidence, but Johnny Roselli testified that he “represented himself to the Cuban contacts as an agent of some business interests of Wall Street that had nickel interests and properties around in Cuba and I was getting financial assistance from them.” This, of course, was when Roselli was associated with the CIA and trying to arrange the murder of Fidel Castro. It would have been interesting if Roselli had named those nickel interests in Cuba, but it may be more than an assumption that he was talking about the same nickel mines involving Freeport Sulphur. regarding Clay Shaw’s contacts with the Domestic Contact Service (DCS). One of these documents stated Clay Shaw had been granted covert security approval for project QK/ENCHANT. Newly discovered documents revealed that the CIA was examining the prospect of using Banister’s agency as a cover company for project QK/ENCHANT. Based on ARRB investigation, QK/ENCHANT was a cryptonym for “permission to approach” and utilization for cleared contact purposes. These probably indicated the use of individuals and companies as contact cover for CIA proprietary organizations. Author Bill Davy showed the above document to former CIA officer Victor Marchetti and, after examining it, he said to Davy, “That’s interesting…he was doing something there.” He added that Shaw would not need a covert security clearance for DCS.
Ed Butler
Ed Butler, the founder of INCA, the Information Council of the Americas. Oswald’s appearance on Bill Stuckey’s New Orleans radio show “Carte Blanche”. There, he talked about his political views and debated with Ed Butler and Carlos Bringuier. The result of this interview was a record production by Dr. Alton Ochsner’s INCA, an album with the title, “Oswald: Self-Portrait in Red.” On the front cover was a drawing of Oswald’s face and on the back of the album was the headline “I am a Marxist” with the date of August 21, 1963, at the bottom were photographs of Congressman Hale Boggs, psy war specialist and Ochsner employee Ed Butler, and Dr. Alton Ochsner himself. Ed Butler did not only have connections to the previously discussed American Security Council, but he was also in contact with General Edward Lansdale and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell. After Kennedy’s assassination, Jim Garrison learned about Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and his contacts with Butler and INCA. Butler got so scared that he packed all the INCA files and parts of Banister’s files and moved to Los Angeles, where he found employment with Patrick J. Frawley, a prominent member of the American Security Council
Alton Ochsner
(Esteemed Surgeon Doctor in New Orleans)
Malcolm Blunt revealed that Ochsner was a cleared CIA source since May of 1955 and the CIA had sources inside Ochsner’s large New Orleans clinic. He had the reputation of an extreme right-winger: anti-welfare, anti-Medicare, and racist. He was the President of the International House (IH) and he was also a member of the International Trade Mart (ITM), where he worked with Clay Shaw, who was once a Managing Director of the International House. He was a member of the exclusive New Orleans Boston Club and he had been invited to the secretive west coast Bohemian Club. During his time at Tulane University, he managed to attract financial support from the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations. Ochsner’s INCA organization was getting financial support from Standard Oil, the Reily Foundation, Mississippi Shipping Company, the Hibernia bank, and ITM.
Various Persons of Interest
Priscilla Johnson
She interviewed Oswald in his hotel in Moscow while he was waiting to be relocated. Next day she had a dinner with McVickar. He wrote a memo where he stated that Priscilla had told him that Oswald would be trained in electronics but Priscilla later denied that she did. When Josef Stalin died, his daughter Svetlana defected to the States and stayed with Priscilla’s father, Stewart Johnson. Priscilla helped Svetlana write her memoirs. Following JFK’s assassination, Priscilla was privileged enough to spend time with Marina Oswald in the summer and fall of 1964. As an important witness to testify for the Warren Commission, Marina was not allowed to come in contact with anyone, living under Secret Service protection. How Priscilla managed to stay with her when nobody else could approach her is a question that has not been answered. Priscilla had one more privilege: to write Marina’s biography. Senator Richard Russell, a member of the Warren Commission, was not convinced that Oswald was guilty or that he had travelled to Mexico, but an unexpected incident helped change his mind. Marina testified that she found a ticket to Mexico inside a magazine while writing her biography with Priscilla. In other words, after numerous searches, the FBI and the Dallas Police could not find it, but Priscilla and Marina did. In 1977 Priscilla published her book titled Marina and Lee. Marina revealed that she did not contribute much to the book; it was Priscilla who had to discover most of the facts and put them in order. Priscilla never stopped trying to convince the public that Oswald was guilty. She appeared before the HSCA, along with her attorney and a written affidavit. The Committee found this odd, since she was not being accused of anything so the affidavit and the lawyer were not necessary.
Yekaterina Furtseva
Yekaterina Furtseva was an interesting character that some believe was the most powerful woman in the Soviet Union and Khrushchev’s lover. She even had authority over KGB’s head, Vladimir Y. Semichastny, threatening to replace him with his deputy whenever he displeased her. She loved everything American and she was primarily concerned about her family’s well being. In 1993, it was revealed that Oswald had a champion in the Politburo, and it was none other than Furtseva. In The Man who Knew too Much Russell reported that “Furtseva urged that the young ex-Marine be allowed to stay on … and sought to keep KGB chief Semichastny from recruiting Oswald.” Later Semichastny concluded that Furtseva was running her own shop.
Johnny Roselli
John Martino’s claimed that the “Anti-Castro Cubans put Oswald together.” Larry Hancock in his recent e-book “Tipping Point” presents a case where CIA Cuban exile teams in JM/WAVE were trained to kill Castro, but later shifted their focus to Kennedy after they learned that JFK was secretly negotiating to restore relations with Castro. To them, this constituted the ultimate betrayal. It is likely that such information would have been passed down from William Harvey to Johnny Roselli. Therefore, in this scenario, those most likely involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy were Roselli, Harvey, David Morales, Rip Robertson, Felipe Vidal Santiago, Roy Hargraves, John Martino, CIA paramilitary officer Carl Jenkins, and Cubans like Chi Chi Quintero, Felix Rodriquez, Carlos Hernandez, Nestor Izquierdo, and Segundo Borgas.
Pawley-Bayo mission (CIA crypt Operation TILT). This was a sea voyage into Cuba. It was allegedly designed to exfiltrate Soviet scientists who wanted to defect and testify before Senator James Eastland’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. That testimony was to state that the Russians still had missiles present in Cuba.
Apart from millionaire William Pawley and Cuban exile Eddie Bayo, others that took part in the operation were John Martino, Eugenio Martinez, and CIA agent Rip Robertson. Pawley had asked CIA Deputy Director Pat Carter and Ted Shackley of JM/WAVE to help him with the mission. Pawley would have used his private yacht, while David Morales supervised the mission. Operation TILT failed, since the exile Cubans disappeared on their way to Cuba and were never heard from again.
Peter Dale Scott has written that the real purpose of the mission was to assassinate Castro. Jack Anderson reported the Johnny Roselli story that the assassination team was captured in Cuba and Castro “turned them” and sent them to Dallas to assassinate Kennedy instead. At one point, Bayo had asked for help from a wealthy Kennedy supporter, Theodore Racoosin, who later reported that someone from within the White House—possibly Robert Kennedy—had authorized him to organize meetings with Cuban exiles and learn details of CIA Cuban operations. Scott believes that this operation was used to blackmail the Attorney General, so he would not investigate his brother’s assassination.
John Martino
John Martino was an exiled Cuban who worked in a Havana Casino owned by Santo Trafficante Jr. back in 1956. He was imprisoned in Cuba between 1959 and 1962. When he returned to the States, he became involved in the anti-Castro cause. He took part in the notorious Operation Tilt, he had both Mob and CIA connections. Later in life, he admitted to his business partner Fred Claasen that the anti-Castro Cubans put Oswald together and tried to frame him as a Castro assassin in a plot to murder President Kennedy. Those Cubans posed as Castro agents and it is more likely that Oswald played along to reveal their agenda as part of his mission to smoke out subversives and pro-Cubans. The plan was to fly him out of the country and kill him en route, possibly on his way to Cuba, in such a way that would prove Castro and Cuba were pulling Oswald’s strings. John Martino’s claimed that the “Anti-Castro Cubans put Oswald together.” On November 26, the CIA and Mafia-affiliated Frank Sturgis said to the Sun-Sentinel newspaper that Oswald had connections to the Cuban Government and that he had made a call to the Cuban Intelligence. The same day John Martino, another CIA and Santo Trafficante Jr. ally, stated in an interview that he had contacted Cuban G-2 in Mexico City and had distributed FPCC leaflets in Miami. Martino also revealed that Castro killed Kennedy to retaliate for a plot devised by Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev to replace Castro with Huber Matos, who was in a Cuban jail.
Dallas
Max Clark
Max Clark was a retired Air Force Colonel and he used to work at General Dynamics as industrial security officer. Clark had also received covert security clearance from the CIA for “Project Rock” while working for General Dynamics. A CIA document had linked “Project Rock” to Project Oarfish, a code for the manufacturing of the U-2 airplane. Max Clark was working closely with I.B. Hale, a former FBI agent and later head of General Dynamics industrial security. It was Virginia, wife of I.B. Hale, that had helped Oswald to get a job at Leslie Whiting on July 1962. George DeMohrenschildt was encouraged by Max Clark and J. Walton Moore of the CIA to befriend Oswald and become his mentor. It was George DeMohrenschildt who helped Oswald get a new job at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall (JCS) after he quit his job at Leslie Welding. JCS was doing contract work for the U.S. Army Map Service and that work was related to U-2 flights over Cuba. Oswald got the job four days before President Kennedy was shown pictures of missiles in Cuban taken by the U-2.
Dallas Police officers
Reserve officer Kenneth Croy was near Main Street and asked a policeman outside the Courthouse if he was needed assistance with the investigation of the President’s murder. Croy claimed that the policeman replied that he was not needed; so he decided to go home. He heard on the radio that an unidentified officer was shot at 10th and Patton. He went there and ”discovered” a wallet allegedly given to him by a civilian. Strangely enough, he never filed a report and never asked the name of the witness he talked to or the name of the person that gave him the wallet.
Captain Westbrook, the Chief of the Police Personnel Department, was at the TSBD when he heard on the radio that a police officer had been shot in the Oak Cliff area. He decided to go there to investigate a murder; which was odd since he was a personnel officer and not a homicide detective. FBI agent Hosty said that his colleague, FBI Agent Bob Barrett, who was present at Tippit’s murder scene, told him that Captain Westbrook asked him: “Have you ever heard of a guy named Lee Harvey Oswald?” Barrett said no. Westbrook then asked him, “How about Alek Hidell?” Then Barrett said that he saw Westbrook holding and searching a wallet, which was supposed to be Oswald’s wallet. This wallet would link Oswald to Hidell and to the weapons that killed both Tippit and Kennedy. However, the Warren Commission gave a different version concerning the wallet: that it was found on Oswald after he was arrested at the Texas Theater. Westbrook’s “personnel” work was not over, since he heard on the radio that a suspect was seen entering the Texas Theater looking suspicious, without paying a ticket. So the personnel officer went there and witnessed the arrest of Oswald. He then gave the order to drive the suspect to the police station. So, the Chief of Personnel had managed to be present at the three major crime scenes: Dealey Plaza, 10th and Patton, and the Texas Theater. It was a remarkable work of sleuthing for a Personnel Officer.
Sergeant Gerald Hill was the man who first reported on a radio call at 13:40 that the shells found at the Tippit crime scene were fired from a 38 automatic, not a 38 special. Later when testifying for the Warren Commission, he denied under oath that he made such a call; but twenty years later he admitted to Dale Myers that he made the call after all. When Hill returned from the Texas Theater, he sat down to write a report regarding Oswald’s arrest. Captain Westbrook informed him that Oswald was not just the suspect in Tippit’s murder, but also for President Kennedy’s assassination.
Senator Thomas Dodd
Senator Thomas Dodd was one of the major forces who opposed Kennedy’s Congo policy. He initiated hearings in the senate on the “loss” of Congo to Communism. Senator Thomas Dodd, another member of the powerful American Security Council. Dodd was the Chairman of the Senate Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee trying to legislate the use of interstate mail orders for weapons. Dodd’s subcommittee started its hearings two days after Hidell ordered the Smith & Wesson gun and the Manlicher–Carcano was also one of the weapons investigated. Senator Dodd was also member of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee—headed by the racist, right-wing Senator James Eastland of Mississippi—which was investigating the FPCC. Dodd called the FPCC “the chief public relations instrument of the Castro network in the United States” and believed that both the Socialist party and the Communist Party had infiltrated the committee. It might have been possible that Oswald, as a member of a private investigating firm, was contacted by Dodd’s committee to infiltrate these three organizations. The son of one of Senator Dodd’s friends, who had been hired as an investigator to do work for the subcommittee, was involved in a strange incident in Mexico, causing a disturbance in a strip club. He was arrested by Mexican police for having a gun and posing as a police officer. The same man was arrested for carrying three weapons and ammunition in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, on a weekend that President Kennedy was there. After the assassination Dodd promoted the false information that Oswald had been trained at a KGB assassination school in Minsk.
Michael and Ruth Paine
Michael Paine was related to the Forbes and Cabot families. Michael’s mother, Ruth Forbes, was a very good friend of Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles former lover Michael’s stepfather was Arthur Young, a famous inventor and one of the creators of Bell Helicopter. That connection helped his step-son Michael Paine get a high tech/high security clearance to work at Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth. Ruth Paine’s father, William Avery Hyde, and his wife Carol were prominent members of the Ohio Unitarians. An employee of theTexas Employment Commission wanted to inform Oswald that they had found him a job at Trans Texas Airport. Ruth Paine answered that he was not home and so they called back the next day to hear that Oswald had taken a job elsewhere. Ruth never informed Oswald about this job, even though it paid about $100 more per month than the TSBD one. The backyard photographs of Oswald posing with a rifle were found by the police at the Paines’ home. But a week later, another piece of evidence turned up out of the blue— on November 30. It was a note found inside a book incriminating Oswald in the attempted murder of General Walker, which is bizarre since Oswald, for seven months, had never been considered a suspect in that case. Ruth Paine also provided other evidence: a betting guide and a English-Spanish dictionary that allegedly proved that Oswald had visited Mexico. Ruth was also responsible for discovering the well-known “Kostin letter“ allegedly written by Oswald saying that he met Comrade Kostin (meaning Kostikov) in Mexico City. some of these items were discovered after the Dallas Police searched the Paine home and garage—twice! A good example would be the Imperial Reflex camera which was allegedly used to take the backyard photographs. That camera was not on the original Dallas Police inventory list. It was found by Ruth two weeks after the assassination.
Criminal Intelligence Section (CIS)
This unit was also involved in Presidential protection by helping to identify and neutralize potential dangerous local threats. The CIS had compiled a list of twelve TSBD employees who were unaccounted for but the CIS list had put on top the name of Harvey Lee Oswald. Melanson believed that a common CIA practice was to keep two files on certain individuals, an overt file and a covert file that usually had the first two names transposed. It was L. D. Stringfellow, a CIS officer who provided the 112th MIG the incriminating information that Oswald had defected to Cuba in 1959 and was a card-carrying member of Communist Party. CIS was not only aware of Jack Ruby’s gun running activities, but withheld this information. They also investigated Ruby’s shooting of Oswald and found nothing sinister. In 1963, it was one of the three sections of Police’s Special Services Bureau, along with Vice and narcotics, and their offices were not located at the City Hall, but at the Dallas Fair Grounds, where Jack Crichton’s underground Emergency Command and Communications bunker was located. In the force were officers George Lumpkin, Jack Revill, Stringfellow, and W. P. Gunnaway. Colonel Jack Crichton, was the head of the 488th Army Reserve Intelligence unit in Dallas. According to Russ Baker, Crichton revealed “in a little-noticed oral history in 2001, there were about hundred men in that unit and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department.” Crichton was the man who, through Lumpkin, arranged for his friend Ilya Mamantov to translate Marina’s testimony and, as we have shown earlier, to falsely connect Oswald to a dark and scopeless rifle. Researcher Bill Kelly believes that Crichton’s 488th Army Reserve Intelligence unit was connected to ACSI-Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army Reserves and that Captain Lumpkin and Army Reserve Colonel Whitmeyer were ACSI officers.
Eastern Establishment
Percival Brundage
Brundage was a major Unitarian Church officer from 1942-1954 when the Unitarian Church was cooperating with, first, the OSS, and later the CIA. He was also president of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) from 1952-1955 and president of the American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College from 1953-1958, the College in Switzerland were Oswald was supposed to visit and study. Most importantly, Brundage became the most prominent member of the Bureau of Budget (BOB) during the Eisenhower presidency. Brundage was responsible as the head of BOB for drafting the congressional legislation for the creation of NASA. Through his BOB activities he was involved with the U-2, the satellite programs, the Pentagon and the CIA. Brundage and one of his associates, E. Perkins McGuire, were asked to hold the majority of a new airline stock “in name only.” They both agreed to act on behalf of the CIA. The airline was none other than Southern Air Transport, which was used in paramilitary missions in the Congo, the Caribbean and Indochina.
Frederick Osborn Jr.
Frederick Henry Osborn Sr. was a trustee of Princeton University and a member of the Rockefeller Institute and the Carnegie Corporation. Osborn was a Director of the Population Association of America, the American Eugenics Society, and of the Association for Research in Human Heredity. He was also an associate of Dean Acheson. John D. Rockefeller III appointed Osborn the Population Council’s first Director Osborn, along with Wickliffe Preston Draper, founded the Pioneer Fund; the purpose was to advance pro-eugenic research and propaganda. In 1937, Osborn stated that the Nazi’s racial sterilization program was “the most important social program which has ever been tried.” His son Frederick Osborn Jr. and his wife Nancy who provided character references for Ruth and Michael Paine, when the FBI was investigating them for their close relationship to Marina and Lee Oswald.
Henry Luce
Owner of the Time, Life, Fortune empire. Henry Luce was the man who invented the term “American Century,” which involved global American dominance projected by American businesses leading a worldwide economy. Anti-Communist and member of the American Security Council.
C. D. Jackson
He was an expert in wartime propaganda, public relations, advertising, publishing, psychological warfare, black ops, and he was an opinion maker. During the Eisenhower Presidency, he was the Special Assistant to the President for International Affairs and he had been an editor-in-Chief of Henry Luce’s Time, Life, and Fortune magazines. He bought the Zapruder film for Time Inc. When Jackson viewed the film he withhold it from public viewing. On 29 November 1963, Life published a special issue on the assassination that included only thirty-one selected frames, which did not allow the readers to understand the sequence and direction of the shots, especially the fatal head shot. Marina Oswald was isolated at the Inn of the Six Flags by the Secret Service. James Herbert Martin was the manager and later became Marina’s agent,also arranged for Marina to pen a book. That was arranged from C. D. Jackson and Life’s Edward K. Thompson, through their Dallas representative Isaac Don Levine. It was Allen Dulles who had urged C. D. Jackson to have Marina’s story written by Levine, but that book never materialized. C. D. Jackson was indirectly connected to the Pawley-Bayo mission (CIA crypt Operation TILT).
Joe Alsop
Joseph Alsop of the New York Herald Tribune called LBJ and suggested to him the need for a presidential commission, but the President argued that it would ruin the Texas and FBI investigations. Alsop tried to convince Johnson otherwise and offered the information that Dean Acheson, the former Secretary of State, was also in favor. Alsop was indirectly admitting that he was acting in collusion with Acheson. Alsop inflated a minor incident in Laos involving north Vietnamese invaders. Alsop arrived in Laos in time to report about a “massive new attack in Laos” by “at least three and perhaps five new battalions of enemy troops from North Vietnam.” Later he wrote of “aggression, as naked, as flagrant as a Soviet-East German attack on West Germany.”
Dean Acheson
He was an American Statesman and lawyer. On December 4, 1963, Dean Acheson praised LBJ for appointing the Warren Commission and LBJ replied that “we did the best we could and I think we’ve got Hoover pretty well in line.” It was McCloy, Lovett, and Acheson that later advised LBJ on Vietnam and recommended escalation of the war.
Eugene Rostow
Dean of the Yale Law School, called Bill Moyers at the White House on November 24, 1963, to suggest the possibility of a Presidential Commission which would include distinguished citizens. It should be noted that Rostow told Moyers there was someone else in the room when he called, but he did not say who it was. Rostow told Moyers that he had already spoken to Katzenbach about three times, but he was speaking directly to Moyers because Katzenbach “sounded too groggy so I thought I’d pass this thought along to you.” Katzenbach wrote his memo as a result of his conversations with Rostow.
Rockefeller Business Interests World Wide
The Rockefeller brothers made huge profits from the Vietnam war since they had ownership and shares in big defense contractors like Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Boeing, and General Motors. That last company gained more than $1.3 billion in military contracts in 1968. But these were short-term profits for the Rockefellers. The real deal was in reconstructing the infrastructure after the war had ended and financing would be needed to achieve that. Under this mistaken assumption, in 1965, Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank opened a branch in Saigon—a huge fortress with no windows but thick glass blocks and stone walls that could withstand mortar attacks. A major force behind the Vietnam War was the Rockefeller’s Southeast Asia Development Advisory Group (SEADAG). That membership included Rockefeller Brothers Inc., Chase Manhattan Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Standard Oil of Indiana. SEADAG’s Samuel P. Huntington believed that cheap labor created by forced relocation would help Saigon win the conflict. Anthropologist Jules Henry explained that the war would create cheap labor that would be able to compete with the lower productive costs of Chinese and Japanese industry and that “the destruction of the Vietnamese countryside is the first, and necessary, step to the industrialization of Vietnam and nationalization of its agriculture. US corporations had a big stake in Belgium’s monopoly of copper and uranium in Katanga province of Kongo through Tanganyika Concessions Limited: a company in which the Rockefellers were shareholders. The Rockefellers and the Guggenheims held stocks in the Belgian diamond mining operation in Kasai province, Northwest of Katanga. Their investment was $20 million, while their Belgians partners had invested only $2 millions. Kennedy’s Treasury Secretary Douglas C. Dillon also had a stake in Congo. He was an investor in Laurence Rockefeller’s textile mill and also in Laurence’s automobile import company in Congo. Two Rockefeller companies were also doing oil business in Indonesia: Stanvac (jointly held by Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Mobil, Socony being Standard Oil of New York); and Caltex, (jointly held by Standard Oil of California and Texaco.) Freeport Sulphur, a Rockefeller controlled company, would be hugely rewarded by the West Irian mineral mines. Freeport Sulphur subcontracted Bechtel to handle the engineering aspects of the mining. Freeport was later renamed Freeport McMoran. It became one of the two largest mining corporations in the world. The eventual wealth mined from the two deposits topped 100 billion dollars. David Rockefeller opposed JFK’s economic and Foreign policies.
LBJ and friends
LBJ reversed JFK’s foreign policy in Vietnam/Southeast Asia and around the Globe. LBJ’s friends from Texas were to be hugely compensated from the war that the new president was promoting. The Texas located company manufacturing Bell helicopters—where Michael Paine worked—would profit immensely from their use in Vietnam. General Dynamics plane production—located in Fort Worth—would gain huge contracts during that war. Another of LBJ’s friends who profited from the Vietnam War was David Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository. In early November, 1963, Byrd and his investment partner James Ling bought $2 million worth of stock in Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), a defense company they owned. It may have been a coincidence, but the fact is that the navy awarded LTV the first major contract in February 1964 to construct the A7 Corsair fighter plane for operations in Vietnam. Peter Dale Scott calculated that this sum of money was worth $26 Million by 1967. LBJ was a close friend to the Brown Brothers, who owned a construction company named Brown and Root. In 1962, a consortium of private American construction corporations made up of Raymond International and Morrison-Knudsen (RMK) were building Vietnam’s infrastructure. But the construction was limited. The original contract was for $15 million. But in the beginning of 1965, the sum had reached $150 million. RMK could not keep up with the demands of construction. They added to their team two large American companies, Brown and Root and J.A. Jones, to form the largest ever consortium, RMK-BRJ. This consortium took the largest share of all Vietnam construction work, around 90 percent of the total. The US Navy granted RMK-BRJ a cost-plus-fixed-fee to quickly prepare Vietnam for a major U.S. military presence.
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.
