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Jim Braden was taken into custody as a suspicous person at Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination.

A suspicious elevator operator in the Dal Tex building called him to the attention of Sheriff Deputy Lummie Lewis, who took Braden in and took a statement from him before releasing him.

Years later, California TV producer Peter Noyes read Braden's statement in the Warren Commission records, and tried to locate him through the California motor vehicle records. Noyes discovered that Eugene Hale Brading had officially changed his name to Jim Braden and obtained a new drivers license under that name a few weeks before the assassination, and was known as a money courier for the mob. He had served time, had been accused of bilking rich widows and was once thrown out of Dallas by Sheriff Bill Decker for being a vagrant while living at the Turtle Creek home of the widow of the President of Magnolia Oil Company.

Braden said he was in the oil business, and while registered at the Cabana Hotel with two other oil men who had visited the Hunt Oil offices on the day of the assassination, he was in the federal parole office at the same time, and after leaving there, saw the motorcade from the federal office steps. He then walked to the Dal Tex building where he tried to phone his mother from a pay phone on an upper floor, and took the elevator down. The elevator operator, thought him suspicious.

From Dallas, Braden went to New Orleans where he lived the previous summer, operating out of the offices of Vernon Main, Jr., on the 17th floor of the Pierre Marquette building, just down the hall from attorney G. Ray Gill.

Jim Braden testified for two days in executive sesssion, behind closed doors before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, but the testimony was sealed until the JFK Act released the transcript of his tesimony.

Does anyone know if Braden's HSCA testimony is available on line?

Does anyone know if Jim Braden is still alive - he would be in his 80s - and if so, where he is today?

Bill Kelly

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VOLUNTARY STATEMENT. Not Under Arrest Form No. 86

SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT

COUNTY OF DALLAS, TEXAS

Before me, the undersigned authority, on this the 22 day of November A.D. 1963 personally appeared Jim Braden, Address 621 S. Barrington Drive Apt 6 Los Angeles Calf. Office 215 S. La Cienega Blvd. Beverly Hills, California, Age 49 , Phone No. 4725301 Home

Deposes and says:

I am here on business (oil business) and was walking down Elm Street trying to get a cab and there wasn't any. I heard people talking saying "My God the President has been shot." Police cars were passing me coming down toward the triple underpass and I walked up among many other people all watching them. I moved on up to the building across the street from the building that was surrounded and I ask [sic] one of the girls if there was a telephone that I could use and she said "Yes, there is one on the third floor of the building where I work". I walked through a passage to the elevator they were all getting on (freight elevator) and I got off on the third floor with all the other people and there was a lady using the pay telephone and I ask [sic] her if I could use it when she hung up and she said it was out of order and I tried to use it but with no success. I ask [sic] her how I can get out of this building and she said that there is an exit right there and then she said wait a minute here is the elevator now. I got on the elevator and returned to the ground floor and the colored man who ran the elevator said you are a stranger in this building and I am was [sic] notsuppose [sic] to let you up and he ran outside to an officer and said to the officer that he [sic] had just taken me up and down in the elevator and the officer said for me to identify myself and I presented him with a credit card and he said well we have to check out everything and took me to his superior and said for me to wait and we will check it out. I was then taken to the Sheriffs office and interrogated.

/s/ Jim Braden

Subscribed and sworn to before me on this the 22nd day of Nov A. D. 1963

/s/ Evelyn Cox

Notary Public, Dallas County, Texas

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Home .. Alphabetical list of witnesses

Bookfile: http://jfkassassination.net/russ/wit.htm#n

Edited by Ed O'Hagan
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Guest Stephen Turner

Braden's proximity to RFK on the night of his assassination (less than a mile away) Has always seemed mighty suspicious to me. I mean really, whats the chances.

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Braden's proximity to RFK on the night of his assassination (less than a mile away) Has always seemed mighty suspicious to me. I mean really, whats the chances.

Braden was investigated by the LAPD on that and at the time of RFK's assassination at the Ambassador Braden said he was in bed with his wife at another hotel in LA.

Noyes wrote a book about Braden, "Legacy of Doubt," a pulp paperback in 1976, which Richard Sprague made required reading for his investigative staff of the HSCA.

Braden testified before the HSCA that the book wrecked his life, got him kicked out of the Lacosta Country Club, though he was a founding member, and he disputed that he was involved in any conspiracy.

It is absurd, as some suggest, that Braden was a "shooter," since he has no violent background, though he does have a long rap sheet.

BK

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Guest Stephen Turner

Braden's proximity to RFK on the night of his assassination (less than a mile away) Has always seemed mighty suspicious to me. I mean really, whats the chances.

It is absurd, as some suggest, that Braden was a "shooter," since he has no violent background, though he does have a long rap sheet.

BK

Agreed Bill, I just think its awfully coinsidental to be in such close proximity to BOTH assassinations.

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Braden's proximity to RFK on the night of his assassination (less than a mile away) Has always seemed mighty suspicious to me. I mean really, whats the chances.

Braden was investigated by the LAPD on that and at the time of RFK's assassination at the Ambassador Braden said he was in bed with his wife at another hotel in LA.

Noyes wrote a book about Braden, "Legacy of Doubt," a pulp paperback in 1976, which Richard Sprague made required reading for his investigative staff of the HSCA.

Braden testified before the HSCA that the book wrecked his life, got him kicked out of the Lacosta Country Club, though he was a founding member, and he disputed that he was involved in any conspiracy.

It is absurd, as some suggest, that Braden was a "shooter," since he has no violent background, though he does have a long rap sheet.

BK

Bill

Lacosta Country Club. Isn't that the infamous organized crime hangout

where Richard Nixon spent alot of time?

Bill C

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Jim Braden was taken into custody as a suspicous person at Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination. A suspicious elevator operator in the Dal Tex building called him to the attention of Sheriff Deputy Lummie Lewis, who took Braden in and took a statement from him before releasing him. ....
By "suspicious elevator operator," you mean "an elevator operator who was suspicious of Jim Braden" as opposed to "a suspicious person who was an elevator operator?"
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Guest John Gillespie

Braden's proximity to RFK on the night of his assassination (less than a mile away) Has always seemed mighty suspicious to me. I mean really, whats the chances.

Agreed Bill, I just think its awfully coinsidental to be in such close proximity to BOTH assassinations.

Stephen,

I Agree wholeheartedly. If it walks like a duck and leaves its webprints in enough places then there is the likelihood that there IS something there. Certainly in Braden's case he was drowning in suspicion.

Organized crime had a lot of fingerprints on this deed and Braden was ubiquitous to these Kennedy assassinations like that duck in the AFLAC commericals. I wasn't aware of Noyes' book, so thank you BK. Now, I want to get it.

Regards,

John Gillespie

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Braden's proximity to RFK on the night of his assassination (less than a mile away) Has always seemed mighty suspicious to me. I mean really, whats the chances.

BK

Bill

Lacosta Country Club. Isn't that the infamous organized crime hangout

where Richard Nixon spent alot of time?

Bill C

Yep.

Lacosta was built by Cleveland Purple Gang vet and Las Vegas Citizen of the Year Moe Dalitz, with money from the Teamster's Pension Fund.

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I have Noyes' book. It's pretty hard to find and is usually way-over-priced. Most of its pertinent info is repeated in other, more widely available, sources.

One thing that is intriguing, however, is that Braden's connection to organized crime was not so much a connection to the Mafia, as it was to the syndicate--which includes the Cleveland mob and the Lansky organization. (In other words...the Jewish mob.) If Braden was involved, it would certainly seem that Lansky was involved or at least knowledgeable. This flies in the face of what most assume--that Trafficante, Marcello, and perhaps Giancana...and maybe maybe Hoffa...were the only ones in the loop. This raises the possibility that the assassination was performed on behalf of the syndicate, and not one of these men acting alone. Such a possibility is indeed un-nerving. I mean, how could they hope to get away with such a thing? Well, when one considers that Johnson had been linked to Marcello, Bobby Baker had been linked to Hoffa, Hoover had been friendly with Costello and others at the Hotel Del Charro, Nixon had been linked to Lansky, Kennedy himself had been linked to Giancana, etc. the possibility exists that just about everyone in Washington wanted the investigation to disappear, for fear of their own behinds... Was this level of corruption unthinkable? I no longer think so.

Edited by Pat Speer
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"There was the door to which I found no key..

There was a veil through which I might not see."

****Omar Khayam.

For instance:

Eugene Hale Brading alias Jim Braden, true identity not being known till 1969......was an ex-convict ,and was on parole.. he had been given permission by his parole officer to attend to business in Dallas....He was an associate of Joseph Milteer, the ultra right winger leader of numerous racist groups.. who had been in touch with informant for the FBI, William Somersett, in Florida, and stated he had knowledge of the upcoming assassination..of President John F Kennedy..some say Milteer was photographed on Main St. during the motorcade, some dispute..

Braden had been staying at the Cabana Hotel in Dallas with an associate Morgan H.Brown who was also associated with the mob..and Carlos Marcello with connections to Nofio Pecora and James Dolan..

Braden was arrested on the third floor of the Dal Tex building..along with James Powell ,an army intelligence officer who had taken a photo of the TSBD at the time of the assassination...Powell has never been accused of participating in the murder but what he was doing in the Dal Tex along with Braden as it was closed off has never been explained.. (1).

There is said by some, to be as many as 26 suspect individuals in Dealey Plaza on Nov.22/63..the alternate assassin might have been Eugene Hale Brading..here is a hypothesis...

The first bullet that some believed to have been shot hit the curb on Elm St. richocheting and hitting a spectator, James Tague, with a fragment of concrete..he was injured and reported this to the police. (2.)..( While some believe the first shot hit the President in the throat, as seen in the Altgens photgraph)..(There are witnesses who did state that with the first "noise" the President and First Lady seemed to hesitate and look towards each other.)

Col.Fletcher Prouty ,military advisor to the President and author.

" The members of the Warren Commission agreed that a fragment had struck Tague and that Tague's injury was the result of a "near miss"..It said nothing about where Tague was standing .Most readers of the Warren Report assume that Tague was standing close to where the President's car passed on Elm Street...That was not the case,however ,and therein lies another key factor in the ingenious plot to kill the President...Tague was standing on a curb on Main Street, not Elm. One full block away from the President's car. ( If you ) draw a line from the point of impact on that curbstone back to a within a circle with an eighteen inch diameter around the President's head and shoulders ..If we project that line back to some firing point, we have placed that gunman in a window on the second floor the Dal-Tex Building behind the President's car.On the other hand, if we draw a line from that same point of contact with the curbstone back to the alleged lone assassin's lair on the sixth floor of the Book Depository building, we discover that the bullet would have traveled about twenty-two feet above the President's car and as much as thirty-three feet to it's right .Obviously this bullet is hardly a "near miss"..The Path of the Tague bullet reveals that the true location of at least one gunman in Dealey Plaza was in a second floor window of the Dal-Tex building.....The Dal-Tex window is a ideal sniper's location.".(3).

"An assassination researcher ,Howard Donohue, looked carefully at the path taken by the bullet that coursed through Kennedy's brain. His angle suggested it could not possibly have come from Oswald's location ,but was much more likely to have come from directly behind the President : either from the trunk of his car, the Records Building or the Dal-Tex Building ."(4)

The scientific acoustic evidence presented to the HSCA shows also that some of the shots May have come from the Dal-Tex building where Brading was arrested. (5)

Eugene Hale Brading ,who was an ex-con with 33 arrests, was arrested (he was not arrested) found and taken from the third floor of the Dal-Tex within a few minutes of the assassination.....for questioning.. lied to the police about his identity, and was released a short time later....by the DPD..(also (5)

As earlier mentioned, Brading had ties to the right-wing Minutemen ,Earl Schieb and James Milteer were members ,he was also friends with the son of Earl Schieb .Schieb was called by Barney Baker (Teamsters) shortly after the assassination .Baker was a Hoffa goon..and was deeply involved within Mob ativities...and had been released from prison recently...Jack Ruby had also called him, a few weeks before the murder of the President . Therefore, Brading becomes tied in with the Teamsters, the Mob,and also the right-wing Minutemen,

as having connections..and also a third party tie in with Ruby.

The night before the assassination, there was an Army Intelligence Officer Ralph Meyers, who was also checked in at the Cabana Hotel as well as Braden and Brown.....Meyers had a crypto-clearance and had been stationed at a top secret base in Turkey...that makes two Army Intelligence figures, appearing with Brading, one being Powell..the other Meyers, staying in the same Hotel as Braden..and now with two circumstantial linkages do we have Braden linked with Ruby, Minutemen, Mob and Military Intelligence...??? (6)

Braden had an office in New Orleans, that was next to David Ferrie's .A TV Investigative reporter Daniel Schorr put an "Agent X" on CBS...darkened and in silhouette ....the man said he had fought in the hills with Frank Sturgis and Loran Hall...Stating that Hall was in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22/63 and was part of the assassination that was Directed by Eugene Hale Brading. (7)

Now Brading has also been linked to the anti Castro-Cubans,with Schorr's anonymous informant..

"Prior to the President's murder,H.L.Hunt had publicly announced that the President and his staff should be shot since there was "..."no way to get those traitors out of government except by shooting them out"". Similarly,Hunt's son, Nelson Bunker Hunt ,partially paid for a full page black-bordered advetisement in the Dallas Morning News attacking the President as a pro-communist traitor. The ad appeared on the day of Kennedy's murder and was viewed by many as a "Dallas Greeting".

Beginning as early as the 1950's H.L.Hunt was known to have continuing gambling contacts with Jack Ruby .More importantly, on the day before the assassination Ruby actually went to the Hunt Oil Company building (purportedly to help a young girl obtain a job interview with the Hunts.) The same day in the same Hunt Oil Company building, convicted California

felon James Braden and "three associates"paid a visit to H.L.Hunt's sons, Lamar and Nelson."(8)

Now, do we have Braden connected to the right-wing "big oil" people..?.and do we have him connected in some way to..the Mob ? through the Teamsters and Barney Baker...Carlos Marcello, and Nofio Pecora (and in other text it is said to have had contacts with two mobsters in Dallas, Moceri and Nicoletti. Plus Chauncey Holt who confessed his involvement in the assassination, had ties to the CIA and Mafia...and it is said that Holt had known Eugene Brading )..(9)...James Files who has also confessed to the crime has stated that on the morning on Nov.22 when he met Johnny Roselli ,and Nicoletti in Dallas, that Eugene Hale Brading was also present ..(10)

Braden fits in a right wing plot through H.L.Hunt, Earl Shieb and the Minutemen, yet finds times to connect to anti-Castro Cubans through David Ferrie and Frank Sturgis..

To make matters more confusing Brading links up also with Richard Nixon ...FBI agent John Anderson spoke to Brading in Los Angeles..

"Brading was a charter member of the La Costa Club,located twenty miles south of San Clemente. Financed by the Teamsters and owned by Meyer Lansky's front man, Moe Dalitz . La Costa was frequented by many organized crime figures as well as Nixon's close friend Murray Chotiner. La Costa Club was also where Nixon's aides John Dean ,John Ehrlichman and H.R Haldeman met to get their stories about the Watergate cover-up synchronized"..(11)

"And if desired, Brading can connect to President Johnson as well through H.L.Hunt .Hunt was a very close and personal friend of LBJ's and a major supporter of his bid for the Presidency "..(12) and keep in mind also, the party at the Murchison's that Madeleine Brown attended the evening before the assassination, at which LBJ appeared late, and told her "After tomorrow ,that's the last time those goddamned Kennedy's will embarrass me again."There are now, witnesses to this party information ..a cook, whom a seamstress and a chauffer passed along information to.....plus four independant sources corroborating that the Murchison's party did occurr...(13)

"We have incredible associations ,phenomenal opportunities for guilt by association ,But No Proof of Anything..(14)

"We are lead once again,back to where we started."

"We are in a classic double-bind situation .snip.... there is little evidence to indict or convict anyone for the century's greatest crime..This drama is deeply frustrating ,almost as if it unfolded according to a plan that inherently generates the mystery that foils all attempts to solve it."(15)

IMO: This is where the conspiracy is still being manipulated and controlled..and unfolding according to that plan....

1: Groden & Livingstone: "High Treason."p: 188

2: Moore:"Conspiracy of One".p: 199

3: Prouty: "JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F.Kennedy." pp: 299-300

4: Menninger: "Mortal Error" p: 78

5: Summers: "Conspiracy" p: 21

6: Kroth: "Conspiracy In Camelot" p: 201

7: Weberman & Canfield:"Coup D'Etat in America".p: 62

8: Zerbel: "The Texas Connection"p: 214

9: Craig & Rogers: "The Man on the Grassy Knoll".pp:193-94

10: West Joe: producer: videotape:"Confessions of an Assassin".MPI

11: Weberman & Canfield: "Coup D'Etat in America".pp:61-2

12: Kroth: "Conspiracy in Camelot" p: 204

13: Jones Penn: "Forgive my Grief 1V"

13: Brown Madeleine: "Texas In the Morning"

13: Turner Nigel:"TMWKK: The Guilty Men"..video tape

13: Harrison,Livingstone: "Killing the Truth"p:486

13:&14: LBJ appointed Warren Com.member John J.McCloy ,also at the party..see www.assassinationweb.com/shack3g.htm.

15: Kroth: "Conspiracy In Camelot" P:199

B.. B)

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Braden's proximity to RFK on the night of his assassination (less than a mile away) Has always seemed mighty suspicious to me. I mean really, whats the chances.

BK

Bill

Lacosta Country Club. Isn't that the infamous organized crime hangout

where Richard Nixon spent alot of time?

Bill C

Yep.

Lacosta was built by Cleveland Purple Gang vet and Las Vegas Citizen of the Year Moe Dalitz, with money from the Teamster's Pension Fund.

___________________________________________

It's La Costa rather than Lacosta.

FWIW, Thomas

___________________________________________

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One of the guys in Braden's past who really needs to be looked at is a shifty character by the name of Victor Emanuel Pereira. Pereira was the one in 1952 who conned some $40,000 from Gertrude Joyce who was the widow of the President of the Magnolia Petroleum Company. Braden was engaged to Joyce's daughter but was busted by the FBI when attempting to scam another Texas millionaire.

Pereira claimed that he lost the money, along with the proceeds of other scams at a Juarez gambling house in Mexico.

It's Periera's connections to organized crime a decade later that is of great interest. So far only fragments have emerged. Getting information is very difficult indeed.

Braden on the left below, Pereira on the right.

James

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To make matters more confusing Brading links up also with Richard Nixon ...FBI agent John Anderson spoke to Brading in Los Angeles..

"Brading was a charter member of the La Costa Club,located twenty miles south of San Clemente. Financed by the Teamsters and owned by Meyer Lansky's front man, Moe Dalitz . La Costa was frequented by many organized crime figures as well as Nixon's close friend Murray Chotiner. La Costa Club was also where Nixon's aides John Dean ,John Ehrlichman and H.R Haldeman met to get their stories about the Watergate cover-up synchronized"..(11)

"And if desired, Brading can connect to President Johnson as well through H.L.Hunt .Hunt was a very close and personal friend of LBJ's and a major supporter of his bid for the Presidency "..(12) and keep in mind also, the party at the Murchison's that Madeleine Brown attended the evening before the assassination, at which LBJ appeared late, and told her "After tomorrow ,that's the last time those goddamned Kennedy's will embarrass me again."There are now, witnesses to this party information ..a cook, whom a seamstress and a chauffer passed along information to.....plus four independant sources corroborating that the Murchison's party did occurr...(13)

"We have incredible associations ,phenomenal opportunities for guilt by association ,But No Proof of Anything..(14)

"We are lead once again,back to where we started."

"We are in a classic double-bind situation .snip.... there is little evidence to indict or convict anyone for the century's greatest crime..This drama is deeply frustrating ,almost as if it unfolded according to a plan that inherently generates the mystery that foils all attempts to solve it."(15)

IMO: This is where the conspiracy is still being manipulated and controlled..and unfolding according to that plan....

B.. B)

If one wants to go even further, one might note that Chotiner also had ties to Earl Warren.

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