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HSCA Chief Investigator Cliff Fenton


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Does anybody know if former NYC homicide detective and HSCA Chief Investigator Cliff Fenton is still around? If so, I'd like to get in touch with him. If anyone has any information at all, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

Zach

attachicon.gifJack Moriarty, Jim Kelly and Cliff Fenton.jpg

Zach, who are the guys in the photo? HSCA investigators?

Thanks,

BK

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Does anybody know if former NYC homicide detective and HSCA Chief Investigator Cliff Fenton is still around? If so, I'd like to get in touch with him. If anyone has any information at all, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

Zach

attachicon.gifJack Moriarty, Jim Kelly and Cliff Fenton.jpg

Zach, who are the guys in the photo? HSCA investigators?

Thanks,

BK

Hi Bill,

The guys in the photo are from the HSCA: from left to right - Jack Moriarty, Jim Kelly and Cliff Fenton.

From The Last Investigation by Gaeton Fonzi:

Chief Investigator Cliff Fenton

, once a top-ranked New York homicide detective, had a tough time keeping up the morale of his staff investigators. After being told he would be given the freedom to conduct a wide-ranging probe after the required “restricted issues” were handled for report purposes, almost all his staff was fired in a sudden “budget crisis.” In photo with Fenton are two of his top men” Jack Moriarty and Jim Kelly

. Kelly, with contacts into the intelligence community, slipped Fonzi the “Highly Sensitive” document naming key Agency operatives.

The document was marked “HIGHLY SENSITIVE.” It was two pages of single-spaced typing and it contained eleven names, with a paragraph or a few sentences about each one. The list was prefaced with this:

In September of 1975 [sic] an ex-ambassador from Chile named Letilier [sic] was assassinated in Washington, D.C. The hit was accomplished by use of a bomb placed in the car in which he was riding. The press (i.e., Jack Anderson 9/8/77) has announced that it was done by Cubans who were graduates of the Bay of Pigs, 2506 Brigade. There is a group of current and/or “retired” CIA types who were involved…

One particular paragraph caught Fonzi's attention:

DAVID MORALES aka “Pancho.” During the 1950s and 1960s MORALES was Chief of Station for various South American countries, including Nicaragua. He runs with Wilson and Sforza. He is now “retired” and living in New Mexico. He is an alcoholic and possible “weak link.”

Zach

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Hi, B K.

Fenton and an assistant visited me in the 1970s while I yet lived in Alhambra, California,

Nothing came of it though.

Harry

Tanenbaum, Fenton, Morarity, - they all lost their power when Sprague was fired, but hung around and tried to do something.

Lopez, Hardway and others were young, Cornell students Blakey brought in with him after he took over HSCA from Sprague.

I don't know Kelly, but I did track down Morarity and talked with him on the phone some time ago. I've also read a lot of his reports and he seems to be a real good street investigator. He said he signed a security agreement not to talk, and wanted to keep his pension, but he told me that he didn't know anything about what was going on anywhere else, and just ran down leads that he was given and reported what he found. Morarity said that only Blakey knew everything that was going on.

Fenton came in early on with Tanenbaum, who was recruited by Sprague, the original chief counsel to HSCA, as detailed in tanenbaum's "Corruption of Blood," which is labeled "fiction" but is accurate in most respects - such as the documents referred to, and it seems that the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Edited by William Kelly
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  • 2 weeks later...

Is Gaeton Fonzi still around? Not much heard or published from him, after the Last Investigation. Former Philly guy... but not active in the research or internet community apparently.

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Is Gaeton Fonzi still around? Not much heard or published from him, after the Last Investigation. Former Philly guy... but not active in the research or internet community apparently.

Died in the last 12 months, or close to that time. Fine book he wrote, one of the best of its time and worth revisiting for original research and experience.

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I have index my blog posts by subject

and this is what I have done on Fonzi -

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Thanks for those links, Bill.

Zach, Robert K. Tannenbaum, Esquire, will be speaking at the Passing the Torch - Dr. Cyril Wecht conference on October 18, 2013 at Duquesne University. Perhaps he can help with Cliff Fenton information.

By the way, that conference looks really good with great speakers (way to go, Bill Kelly).

- Steve

http://www.duq.edu/events/jfk

Edited by Steve Rosen
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Thanks for those links, Bill.

Zach, Robert K. Tannenbaum, Esquire, will be speaking at the Passing the Torch - Dr. Cyril Wecht conference on October 18, 2013 at Duquesne University. Perhaps he can help with Cliff Fenton information.

By the way, that conference looks really good with great speakers (way to go, Bill Kelly).

- Steve

http://www.duq.edu/events/jfk

Yeah, it should be interesting. I'm going to discuss the medical evidence, but am also hoping to meet some of the other speakers.

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  • 1 month later...

So I wanted to follow up on this thread for the any of the many of you out there keeping track of it. I was chasing down a lead following a document. I found Cliff Fenton and spoke to him on the phone. He is a great guy, getting up there in age.

The document in question was from Larry Hancock’s excellent book, NEXUS. Larry is a prominent member of this forum and maybe he can comment here if he sees fit.

Anyway, the HSCA document was an interview of Stavis Ellis of the DPD. Ellis served in the military during WWII and was in the military section of the DPD. He was the motorcycle officer who was in charge of escorting the motorcade on 11/22. I would encourage readers to research Stavis Ellis to see what kind of person he was.

The document cited in Larry’s book are Ellis’ interview notes to the HSCA. There is a handwritten note in the margin that reads simply:

“MARTINO (MARINO) HIRED THE SHOOTER. ASK CAPT. FRITZ-”

Why this hasn’t been really mentioned anywhere else is beyond me. Ellis also describes the shooting sequence.

So I wanted to find who was in Dallas for the HSCA to do that interview. It was Jack Moriarty (photo above) and the three paged typed memo ends with the following:

“ELLIS RECOMMENDS CHECKING ‘MARTINO’ OR ‘MARINO.’ THE SECOND IN COMMAND OF THE TEXAS SCHOOL BOOK DEPOSITORY WAS A MAN OF CUBAN DECENT WHO ACTUALLY HIRED LEE HARVEY OSWALD.

ELLIS SUGGESTED THAT RETIRED SGT. D.V. HARKNESS SHOULD ALSO BE INTERVIEWED ABOUT OSWALD PASSING OUT LEAFLETS IN DALLAS. HARKNESS INVESTIGATED THIS COMPLAINT.”

Anybody have any idea on who this Cuban might be?

Does anyone remember Oswald handing out leaflets in Dallas?

Zach

Edited by Zach Robertson
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Zach, I wish I could offer something substantive on the note you mentioned, just thinking about it gives me a headache. I hope you have some luck tracking down the interview, its a really serious loose end.

I'm afraid at present the note leads off into a very shadowy world of rumors and gossip. Anyone who is been in this long enough will have picked up on a variety of rumors out of Dallas including the fact that Fritz and and a couple of senior DPD people know a good deal more about a conspiracy than they would ever publicly admit, one reason being how dramatically they had been shut down by and then bad mouthed by Hoover. This particular remark reminds me of the witness report of the individual taken into a police car at the rear of the Texas Theatre and driven away for questioning - and the Cuban supposedly waiting in the Texas Theatre - and the fact that DPD took a full list of names for everyone in the Texas Theatre which never showed up in the official record. Sort of like the missing report of men seen with a rifle a few days before the assassination behind the fence in the parking lot - which was in a 112th mil intel file but no original DPD file copy ever showed up, much like the Frazier polygraph we only know about from the FBI. One might be led to believe there really is important information missing from the DPD files.

When I think of Sean's current research I'm reminded of a couple of early researchers who sort of came and went but who wrote about Truly becoming highly stressed and paranoid in the years following the shooting, about him being intimidated by surveillance on him and a set of things regarding to the TSBD after the assassination that don't get discussed any more. The same sort of stress apparently suffered by Danny Arce, Its all mysterious, speculative and annoyingly persistent.

So, I really can't help in any real way on the note but in regard to another comment above, I will be dealing a good deal with David Morales in the forthcoming Shadow Warfare book, including his activities in the Southern Cone and his influence on the emergence of the Condor project which resulted not only in the bombing you mentioned but in a series of other plans to attack American citizens - its a far nastier story than generally realized.

-- Larry

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The implications of just having Martino's name written as a notation means someone said it, most likely Oswald and that is earth shattering.

If a conspiratorial name is going to be mentioned that Oswald would know, then Martino makes perfect sense. He ties to all levels of the actual conspiracy from David Morales down to the Cuban exile shooters.

I agree with Larry, Fitz and Co. knew more about the conspiracy than they publically admitted and that information would have come from Oswald, including the name John Martino.

I believe more attention should be given to what Ellis said. Zach's post above is a vital one with serious implications.

post-624-0-35668000-1383083487_thumb.jpg

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