Steve Thomas Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 There have been references on several threads about a cable sent on the evening of 11/22 from Fort Sam Houston to Strike Command, McDill AFB in Florida. In the cable, reference was made, to information obtained by Detective Don Stringfellow of the Dallas Police Department. I managed to locate a copy of the cable, which you can find here: https://archive.org/details/nsia-ArmyIntelligenceJFK I think this is in the Weisberg collection. If you can't pull it up, let me know. Before I leave this, I'm sort of thunderstruck by the possibility that the police were looking for the wrong guy - or least a different guy! 1) Note the reference in the cable to Harvey Lee Oswald 2) Earlene Roberts told the WC that when the police came to 1026 N. Beckley, they were trying to find a guy named Harvey Lee Oswald 3) The list of TSBD employees prepared for Gannaway by Westphal and Parks thru Revill on Friday afternoon listed Harvey Lee Oswald at 305 Elsbeth 3) In the cable referenced above, Harvey Lee Oswald was described as 5'10" tall, 165 lbs, with blue eyes 4) The initial description broadcast over the DPD radio was for a suspect 5"10" tall weighing 165 lbs and nobody knows where that description came from 5) I once posed the question, "How did the police first learn of the 1026 N. Beckley address?". Fritz told the WC that some officer (whose name he couldn't remember) stopped him out in the hall before he went in to talk to LHO for the first time, and told him that Oswald lived on Beckley. My conclusion then, was the information came from source in military intelligence. Others have come to the same conclusion. http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=8636.0;wap2 I don't know what this all means. What I am thinking right now is that members of the U.S. Army Reserves (in some capacity, whether it was Crichton's mythical 488th or not) had put together a dossier of a blue-eyed, 5'10" 165 lb Harvey Lee Oswald that they handed over to the Dallas Police Department, They told the police, "This is the guy you're looking for. He lives over on Beckley" Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 Steve - thanks for posting the link to Tannenbaum's presentation at the Wecht conference. I was struck by many things in it. One question - what do you think is the source for Crichton being previously familiar with Oswald? I think you are on to the key connections in the assassination - the colonels, the close ties between the 'mysterious 488th reserve intelligence group and the Dallas Police, the connections between DeMohrenschildt and some of the same characters involved in the early cables about Oswald and about the FPCC - this is a new one to me. Russ Baker did some excellent follow up research to the Continuity of Government (COG) info that Peter Dale Scott unearthed decades previous. Since this all links to the ACSI, who later destroyed their Oswald files, we are not talking about retired or reserve units, but active Army Intelligence. I have no trouble, even without proof, that we are only one step from the Joint Chiefs, who, if JFK could talk, would be his chief suspects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Sawtelle Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 There is no doubt the military at all levels supported the coup. The real question or the most important question is who commanded the military to support the coup? You determine who had the power to get the military behind the coup and you have a major component of the plot to assassinate JFK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 Here's the Colonel to look at - William Bishop. He was Felipe Vidal Santiago's case officer. Hancock says FVS was in Dallas several times in the month before the assassination. Among his Dallas contacts - Edwin Walker. A year previous, Lyman Lemnitzer was removed from the JCS by JFK. Just like with Curtis LeMay, there was extreme enmity between Lemnitzer and JFK. According to David Talbot in Brothers, Lemnitzer wrote to Walker praising his efforts to indoctrinate his troops in Augsburg before Walker was removed. I think it more likely that it was Oswald who appeared at the Alpha 66 safehouse in Dallas than so-called lookalike Masen. Peter Dale Scott's theory that Oswald was working as an informant for one or more intelligence agencies Seems likely. It would explain a lot, for one thing the files reportedly found at the Paine residence in the first post assassination search of her home which subsequently vanished. Alpha 66 would have been a likely organization to spy on. Colonel Bishop was involved with Operation 40, worked with Alpha 66, had close ties with David Atlee Phillips, according to the Spartacus entry on Bishop. It is really a short step between this nest of vipers and colonels to a ground crew in Dallas. LeMay was reportedly at the autopsy at Bethesda. The Air Force One transcripts that we have note the frantic efforts of LeMay's adjutant to contact LeMay while AF1 was en route. Since LeMay did land at Washington National Airport, close to Bethesda and not so close the Andrews Air Base, where the autopsy would have taken place was it not for a change of plans aboard AF1 (in close contact with McGeorge Bundy at the WH situation room) after a heated argument on the plane, it makes sense that LeMay was aware of the assassination and of the change of venue for the autopsy. The main eyewitness to LeMay, seen by him smoking a cigar at the autopsy, says an unidentifiied Army general was in charge of the autopsy. Wonder who that was. I have to add something anecdotal here: I distinctly recall in the weeks following the assassination that early doubters of Oswald being the lone Communist gunman assassin speculated that General Walker and the Minutemen were behind the assassination. I've never had a problem with Walker as a suspect in running the ground crew in Dallas. I just cannot see that as a rogue operation. And it seems very clear to me that if the plan was hatched and overseen from higher up the chain of command in active military the conduits to communicate with Dallas were in place - Walker, reserve military, DPD. Is it a tell that Colonel Bishop later claimed he knew about the assassination beforehand, but put the blame on Jimmy Hoffa? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted February 17, 2017 Author Share Posted February 17, 2017 1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said: Steve - thanks for posting the link to Tannenbaum's presentation at the Wecht conference. I was struck by many things in it. One question - what do you think is the source for Crichton being previously familiar with Oswald? Paul, I can't answer that, but I do know that Roy Truly screwed up when he testified to the WC. Who's the first person in authority that Truly spoke to about Oswald being "missing"? Colonel, George Lumpkin, Deputy Chief of the DPD, who also happened to be a Colonel in the Reserves. Truly told the WC: So I picked the phone up then and called Mr. Aiken, at the warehouse, and got the boy's name and general description and telephone number and address at Irving. Mr. BELIN. Now, would that be the address and the description as shown on this application, Exhibit 496? Mr. TRULY. Yes, sir. Mr. TRULY. Chief Lumpkin of the Dallas Police Department was standing a few feet from me. I told Chief Lumpkin that I had a boy missing over here "I don't know whether it amounts to anything or not." And I gave him his description. Representative FORD. In your description of Oswald to Captain Fritz, did you describe the kind of clothes that Oswald had on that day?Mr. TRULY. I don't know, sir. No, sir; I just told him his name and where he lived and his telephone number and his age, as 23, and I said 5 feet, 9, about 150 pounds, light brown hair--whatever I picked up off the description there. I did not try to depend on my memory to describe him. I just put down what was on this application blank. That's the reason I called Mr. Aiken, because I did not want to mislead anybody as to a description. I might call a man brown-haired, and he might be blonde. The problem is, that his job application doesn't say anything about Oswald's hair color. CE 496 Oswald's TSBD job application https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1134#relPageId=236&tab=page Look at page 2 of that cable I referenced. Harvey Lee is described as having "light brown hair." That's not the hair color of the guy that got arrested at the Texas Theater. Oswald's mug shot https://www.google.com/search?q=Oswald+"mugshot"&client=opera&hs=yI&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKooDR35fSAhVl64MKHSm_AZ8QsAQIHg&biw=1600&bih=791 http://www.mugshots.org/criminals/lee-harvey-oswald.html They always tell you when you get on the witness stand, don't volunteer anything. Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James DiEugenio Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 Isn't a good question to ask, how did they get the Elsbeth address? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 Yes it is fair. Is it, as Mr. Graves keeps asking, the Webster-like description he calls Popov's mole? And is that a clue as to its author or authors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted February 17, 2017 Author Share Posted February 17, 2017 1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said: Isn't a good question to ask, how did they get the Elsbeth address? Jim, I personally think they got it off his Dallas library card. I think he was stopped at the front door by Lt. Kaminski and Kaminski asked him for some ID. The library card was the only thing he had on him with an address on it. I think Kaminski read it wrong and wrote down 605 instead of 602. Revill wrote a letter to Sorrells and told him that he (Revill) got it from Carroll, who read it off the library card in the car on the way back downtown from the Texas Theater, but I don't think that's true. Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Hancock Posted February 17, 2017 Share Posted February 17, 2017 Steve, if you have not done so you might want to check into the messages that the 112th were sending to DPD from San Antonio. Certainly along with the Hidell/Oswald info that originated in NO they were sending other info from their files - although most of it was from being copied by the FBI. I don't remember who else might have copied them but it would be worth a check, its just possible that description for a Harvey Lee came from them. Also, the series of confusing pre-assassination cables from MC were copied to a variety of agencies and I think Harvey Lee was in some of them, with a bogus physical description. Might be worth who was copied, meaning who in Dallas might have had that in their files that day. Having said all that, my guess is that you have got it right and it came off a door stop that day....later nobody might want to have admitted they just let the assassin walk out the front door. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Graves Posted February 18, 2017 Share Posted February 18, 2017 (edited) 12 hours ago, Paul Brancato said: [...] Is it, as Mr. Graves keeps asking, the Webster-like description he calls Popov's mole? And is that a clue as to its author or authors? Paul, We know that FBI special agent John Fain inserted that highly-inaccurate, Robert Webster-like description of LHO into the report of his interview of worried-about-her-son Marguerite Oswald in early 1960, and that Fain cleverly attributed that Webster-like description to Marguerite, herself. The FBI forwarded a copy of Fain's report to CIA, and Bill Bright of the CIA's Soviet Russia/Counter-Espionage division (who later showed up working for Bill Harvey's "Department D"-based HT/LINGUAL program in Mexico City while Oswald or "Oswald" was there) incorporated Fain's bogus description of LHO into the CIA's computerized "Biographics" data base, probably to be used as a "marked card" in the then on-going "Popov's Mole" mole hunt. What I'd like to know is whether or not any of the military intel bases in Texas were privy to that old, purposefully-inaccurate description of LHO in 1963. If so, they (or someone privy to what they had) may have been fooled by it themselves, and that might explain why DPD Officer Herbert Sawyer was given an inaccurate description of the scapegoated Lee Harvey Oswald. Which, in turn, might point a guilty finger to a military intel "mole" who was unaware that the description of Oswald was incorrect. -- Tommy Edited February 18, 2017 by Thomas Graves Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted February 18, 2017 Share Posted February 18, 2017 Larry - are you saying the bogus physical description that Graves mentions was accompanied by the reversal of Lee and Harvey? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Graves Posted February 18, 2017 Share Posted February 18, 2017 (edited) 7 hours ago, Paul Brancato said: Larry - are you saying the bogus physical description that Graves mentions was accompanied by the reversal of Lee and Harvey? Dear Paul, Huh? -- Tommy Edit: Never mind, Paul. I see where you're coming from -- whether or not the "marked card" info might have been intentionally or unintentionally "embellished" in Texas. Good question. Edited February 18, 2017 by Thomas Graves Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted February 18, 2017 Author Share Posted February 18, 2017 10 hours ago, Larry Hancock said: Also, the series of confusing pre-assassination cables from MC were copied to a variety of agencies and I think Harvey Lee was in some of them, with a bogus physical description. Might be worth who was copied, meaning who in Dallas might have had that in their files that day. Having said all that, my guess is that you have got it right and it came off a door stop that day....later nobody might want to have admitted they just let the assassin walk out the front door. Larry, I have not researched the following question, so I'm just asking; but didn't Sylvia Duran talk about interviewing a blond-headed LHO down in Mexico City? Did she provide a height and weight description too? I've never really looked into the cables coming out of Mexico City, so maybe someone else who has researched this can chime in. It would be interesting to learn if the Harvey Lee Oswald was described as 5'10" weighing 165 lbs. Greg Parker pointed out to me that the FBI reports coming out of New Orleans in August, '63 were describing LHO as 5'9" weighing 140 lbs and having "light-brown" hair. As far as the door stop, Thomas Kelley wrote in his Oswald interrogation report of November 24th that's in Appendix XI of the WR, that Oswald supposedly said that he had been stopped at the front door by a policeman and his (Oswald's) boss. Since I seriously doubt that Oswald talked to one of his fellow employees after he left the TSBD, there is no way he could have known about a policeman and Truly being together at the front door unless he had actually seen them there. Which means that he didn't "immediately flee the scene" as we've been led to believe. If you believe Lumpkin, he wrote in his after-action report, that he posted Lt. Kaminski at the front door taking names and addresses, and Truly was verifying employment, after he (Lumpkin) arrived on the scene, which wasn't until 12:49 at the earliest. Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted February 18, 2017 Author Share Posted February 18, 2017 9 hours ago, Thomas Graves said: What I'd like to know is whether or not any of the military intel bases in Texas were privy to that old, purposefully-inaccurate description of LHO in 1963. If so, they (or someone privy to what they had) may have been fooled by it themselves, and that might explain why DPD Officer Herbert Sawyer was given an inaccurate description of the scapegoated Lee Harvey Oswald. Which, in turn, might point a guilty finger to a military intel "mole" who was unaware that the description of Oswald was incorrect. -- Tommy Thomas, I'm sure that the Active Army Counter Intelligence Corps would have been privy to that description of "someone". You called it a "purposefully-inaccurate description of LHO". I haven't worked this out in my own mind yet, so please forgive me if my logic is way off, but I'm wondering if someone, either the CIA or military intelligence, or both, wasn't compiling a dossier on a 5'10" 165 lb LHO. Was that who got sent down to Mexico City? We know that Hoover said the tape recordings of the Mexico City intercepts were not the voice of the man the police had in custody, and we know that the CIA provided bogus photographs of the man outside the embassy, so who was the man that got sent down there? You wrote: "that might explain why DPD Officer Herbert Sawyer was given an inaccurate description of the scapegoated Lee Harvey Oswald." What if Sawyer was given an accurate description of a "scapegoat", a "patsy", but the patsy wasn't LHO? What if they were setting up this 5'10" 165 lb "light-brown haired Harvey Lee Oswald as the patsy? Is it possible that the 5'9" 140 lb guy that got arrested in the Texas Theater got swept up in the efforts to impersonate him (like the Sports Drome shooting range and the car test driving and the "Mrs Whitworth, Furniture Mart trying to get a gun repaired" incidents? But when Tippit got shot, and the real LHO got arrested, it gummed up the whole works. They had to make the Harvey Lee guy scarce. You couldn't have the real LHO and his doppelganger on the scene at the same time, even if the doppleganger was the patsy initially. Like I said, my logic may be way off. Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Graves Posted February 18, 2017 Share Posted February 18, 2017 (edited) 1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said: Thomas, I'm sure that the Active Army Counter Intelligence Corps would have been privy to that description of "someone". You called it a "purposefully-inaccurate description of LHO". I haven't worked this out in my own mind yet, so please forgive me if my logic is way off, but I'm wondering if someone, either the CIA or military intelligence, or both, wasn't compiling a dossier on a 5'10" 165 lb LHO. Was that who got sent down to Mexico City? We know that Hoover said the tape recordings of the Mexico City intercepts were not the voice of the man the police had in custody, and we know that the CIA provided bogus photographs of the man outside the embassy, so who was the man that got sent down there? You wrote: "that might explain why DPD Officer Herbert Sawyer was given an inaccurate description of the scapegoated Lee Harvey Oswald." What if Sawyer was given an accurate description of a "scapegoat", a "patsy", but the patsy wasn't LHO? What if they were setting up this 5'10" 165 lb "light-brown haired Harvey Lee Oswald as the patsy? Is it possible that the 5'9" 140 lb guy that got arrested in the Texas Theater got swept up in the efforts to impersonate him (like the Sports Drome shooting range and the car test driving and the "Mrs Whitworth, Furniture Mart trying to get a gun repaired" incidents? But when Tippit got shot, and the real LHO got arrested, it gummed up the whole works. They had to make the Harvey Lee guy scarce. You couldn't have the real LHO and his doppelganger on the scene at the same time, even if the doppleganger was the patsy initially. Like I said, my logic may be way off. Steve Thomas Steve, You ask who was sent down there to impersonate LHO (basically by saying over the phone on October 2(?) that his name was "Oswald')? Well, we do know that Bill Bright (the Soviet Russia/Counter Espionage Division guy who, in 1960, had put into CIA's computerized "Biographics Registry" the Webster-like biometrics which had already been glommed onto LHO by FBI special agent Fain in Ft. Worth) had recently been attached to the M.C. Station as a rather mysterious all-around M.C. Station trouble-shooter and Spanish-speaking helper-outer for Bill Harvey's "Department D" HT/Lingual phone tapping program. Now, I don't know if Bright (or if not him, whoever was "sent down there" to impersonate Oswald) was 5' 10", 160 lbs (going from memory here), but I don't think it really matters much because, as we now know, the M.C. Station later claimed, truthfully or otherwise, that their camera was "broken" or "out of service" at that time, anyway, and let us also bear in mind that neither Sylvia Duran nor Ascue at the Cuban Consulate said that the "Oswald" they dealt with resembled someone with those physical measurements. Also -- You seem to be positing that LHO was arrested in a case of semi-mistaken quasi-identity. Sorry, but that sounds overly complicated to me. Regardless, when you say "Harvey Lee Oswald," above, can I logically infer from that that you subscribe to the "Harvey and Lee" theory, at least in part, or am I just getting all paranoid, again? (lol) Question: Have you read "State Secret" by Bill Simpich? Minor point: LHO weighed only 131 lbs at autopsy. -- Tommy Edited February 18, 2017 by Thomas Graves Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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