What Are the Correct Questions to Ask About the JFK Assassination?

[Jon G. Tidd]

Did Sawyer's description contribute to the DPD's apprehension of Oswald at the Texas Theater?

[Paul Brancato]

It was the description that went out in the apb to patrol cars about 15 minutes after the assassination.

[Thomas Graves]

Did Sawyer's description contribute to the DPD's apprehension of Oswald at the Texas Theater?

Jon,

Not really. Maybe the " white male and 5'10" " parts, but not the "165 lbs. and thirty years old" parts. LOL It's amazing they caught Oswald with Sawyer's description. They must have already known who they were looking for.

Officer Tippit presumably received Sawyer's description on his radio. Then he supposedly stopped and questioned twenty-four year old, 5'9", 131 lb. Oswald who was supposedly walking fast in Oak Cliff. Then Oswald supposedly killed Tippit and left his wallet with both Oswald and Hidell id's at the scene. Then shoe store manager Johnny Brewer supposedly saw Oswald acting suspiciously and darting into the theater without a ticket...

If Tippit really did stop Oswald, then it seems as though he already knew who he was looking for and disregarded the Webster-like biometrics broadcast by Sawyer.

But many researchers think that Tippit was not shot by Oswald.

As researchers and students of the assassination, we are actually fortunate that Sawyer broadcast those particular biometrics because we now know that those same inaccurate numbers appeared much earlier in several Intelligence documents on Oswald.

--Tommy

Edited January 27, 2015 by Thomas Graves

[Jon G. Tidd]

Thomas Graves,

If the DPD had no reason to look for Oswald, why did DPD officers zero-in on Oswald in the Texas Theater?

How did the DPD go from a mis-identification that was misleading to a perfect ID in the theater?

[Thomas Graves]

Thomas Graves,

If the DPD had no reason to look for Oswald, why did DPD officers zero-in on Oswald in the Texas Theater?

How did the DPD go from a mis-identification that was misleading to a perfect ID in the theater?

Jon,

Johnny Brewer, the manager of a shoe store next to the Texas Theater, claimed that he saw Oswald hiding from passing police cars in the outside "foyer" of the shoe store, and that he then saw Oswald enter the theater without buying a ticket. Then either Brewer or the ticket-taker, Julia Postal, (I can't remember which right now) called the police and Brewer pointed Oswald out to the police inside the theater. That's the official story.

(Remember that the police claimed to have found Oswald's wallet, allegedly containing both Oswald's ID and that of "A. J. Hidell", conveniently left behind by Oswald at the scene of the Tippit murder. That didn't have anything to do with their zeroing-in on Oswald at the theater, but it did help tie Oswald to the Mannlicher-Carcano which was allegedly found on the sixth floor of Oswald's workplace.)

The point I was trying to make in my earlier posts is that Sawyer's mis-identification of Oswald over the radio had very little, if anything, to do with his (possibly) being stopped by Tippit, and nothing to do with his arrest in the theater, but the mis-identification should be considered a valuable lead by assassination researchers because that incorrect description of Oswald probably came from one or another Intelligence document on Oswald in which his identity had intentionally mixed up with that of another false defector, Robert E. Webster.

We know that Ann Egerter of CIA's CI/SIG and John Fain of the Dallas FBI wrote documents like that on Oswald.

Bill Simpich believes Egerter and Fain collaborated on a "mole hunt" with these documents, and that Bill Bright of CIA's SR/6 was probably "in on the mole hunt", too, because he went to great lengths to have Fain's bogus information on Oswald incorporated into the CIA's Records Integration File.

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/State_Secret_Chapter6

Ironically, Bright, who had monitored Oswald for SR/6 while Oswald was in Russia, spoke Spanish and was working as an "independent agent" for the CIA in Mexico City when Oswald was allegedly there. Bright was probably sent there to try to recruit the Russian propagandist, Bakulin, to help recruit the Cuban Consul, Azque, and to double-check the accuracy of the Spanish-language transcripts the corrupt DFS monitors were providing for the CIA phone-tapping program there.

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/State_Secret_Chapter3

--Tommy

Edited January 30, 2015 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Brancato]

Good stuff Thomas. Could you flesh out what Egerter and co. were looking for with their molehunt?

[Thomas Graves]

Good stuff Thomas. Could you flesh out what Egerter and co. were looking for with their molehunt?

Thanks, Paul.

I wish I could.

I don't think which mole the "Oswald marked cards" were used against is integral to JFK assassination research, but knowing which departments of which Intelligence agencies the "Oswald marked cards" went to might be of some use to us in finding out who the perhaps-intentionally nondescript man was who told Dallas Police Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer fifteen minutes after the assassination that the white male assassin looked like he was 30 years old, 5' 10" tall, and 165 pounds.

I think it's possible that a lot of incorrect information was intentionally put into Oswald's Intelligence files to make him essentially untraceable in some future operation. In other words, Oswald's being described as 5' 10", 165 lbs, etc. in Fain and Egerter's documents might have been part of an elaborate "sheep dipping" process.

I also suspect that the "Oswald marked cards" that Egerter and Fain collaborated on after Oswsald "defected" to Russia might have had something to do with trying to flush out what was perceived by Angleton at the time to have been "Popov's mole." (In retrospect it seems that Popov's arrest was due to careless trade craft rather than a Soviet spy in U.S. intelligence, but Angleton either didn't know that or chose not to believe it.) They also could have been used to see what the Soviet response would be to the attempt to flush out "Popov's mole." Then there was that drunken Russian colonel, too, whom Popov himself claimed to hear say, before Oswald arrived in Moscow, that the Russian military already knew all about the U-2.

Maybe Oswald was sent to Russia as a "dangle" to see if the KGB was interested in an "unstable" former Marine who claimed to have information on radar and other devices used to monitor the U-2., and help to flush out any "moles" in the process. Maybe Oswald's job was to help determine how "stable" a false defector with radar and U-2 information had to appear to be to the KGB in order for them to accept whatever he had to say. One would think that if the KGB was desperately trying to get information on U.S. radar, height-finding devices, etc, they would have accepted even an "unstable" defector like Oswald.

I'm guessing that there might also have been some real concern at the time as to whether or not Robert Webster was a true defector to Russia. He was, after all, a former Navy man who was working in the security-sensitive plastics industry and who had recently renounced his citizenship in Russia whereas Oswald later only stated his intention to do so

I think Ergeter's and Fain's mixing of the identities of "defectors" Webster and Oswald could have served the purpose of a "marked card" which might help the U.S. find Popov's mole, to uncover the mole or intelligence leak the drunken Russian colonel had alluded to Popov himself, to determine whether or not Webster was a true defector (or perhaps a false defector gone "rogue"), and / or cause confusion and its attendant debate for the KGB.

FWIW, Ann Egerter was also said to have been keeping an eye on SR/6's Bill Bright (pseudonym: Orville Horsefall) at the time.

In closing, I highly suggest reading Bill Simpich's State Secret , P.D. Scott's Oswald and the Search for Popov's Mole, and John Newman's Oswald and the CIA over again, and again, and again.

I am.

--Tommy

Edited January 29, 2015 by Thomas Graves

[Jon G. Tidd]

QUESTION: Assuming JFK was killed by conspirators who set up Oswald, how could the conspirators be sure the damage done by gunfire in Dealey Plaza would match in the Official Story with shots all from behind?

Seems to me they had to ensure the facts undeniably pointed toward some shots having been fired from behind.

QUESTION: Is there reason to believe JBC was shot deliberately, in order to establish a shooter from the rear?

[Thomas Graves]

Thomas Graves,

If the DPD had no reason to look for Oswald, why did DPD officers zero-in on Oswald in the Texas Theater?

How did the DPD go from a mis-identification that was misleading to a perfect ID in the theater?

Jon,

Johnny Brewer, the manager of a shoe store next to the Texas Theater, claimed that he saw Oswald hiding from passing police cars in the outside "foyer" of the shoe store, and that he then saw Oswald enter the theater without buying a ticket. Then either Brewer or the ticket-taker, Julia Postal, (I can't remember which right now) called the police and Brewer pointed Oswald out to the police inside the theater. That's the official story.

(Remember that the police claimed to have found Oswald's wallet, allegedly containing both Oswald's ID and that of "A. J. Hidell", conveniently left behind by Oswald at the scene of the Tippit murder. That didn't have anything to do with their zeroing-in on Oswald at the theater, but it did help tie Oswald to the Mannlicher-Carcano which was allegedly found on the sixth floor of Oswald's workplace.)

The point I was trying to make in my earlier posts is that Sawyer's mis-identification of Oswald over the radio had very little, if anything, to do with his (possibly) being stopped by Tippit, and nothing to do with his arrest in the theater, but the mis-identification should be considered a valuable lead by assassination researchers because that incorrect description of Oswald probably came from one or another Intelligence document on Oswald in which his identity had intentionally mixed up with that of another false defector, Robert E. Webster.

We know that Ann Egerter of CIA's CI/SIG and John Fain of the Dallas FBI wrote documents like that on Oswald.

Bill Simpich believes Egerter and Fain collaborated on a "mole hunt" with these documents, and that Bill Bright of CIA's SR/6 was probably "in on the mole hunt", too, because he went to great lengths to have Fain's bogus information on Oswald incorporated into the CIA's Records Integration File.

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/State_Secret_Chapter6

Ironically, Bright, who had monitored Oswald for SR/6 while Oswald was in Russia, spoke Spanish and was working as an "independent agent" for the CIA in Mexico City when Oswald was allegedly there. Bright was probably sent there to try to recruit the Russian propagandist, Bakulin, to help recruit the Cuban Consul, Azque, and to double-check the accuracy of the Spanish-language transcripts the corrupt DFS monitors were providing for the CIA phone-tapping program there.

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/State_Secret_Chapter3

--Tommy

Bumped for Jon G. Tidd.

--Tommy

Edited January 30, 2015 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Brancato]

Thomas - I agree completely that Newman, Simpich, and Scott are the authors whose books are most revealing. I am having trouble locating a link to Oswald and the search for popov's mole, though I may have read it at some point. Any idea where to find it?

[Thomas Graves]

Thomas - I agree completely that Newman, Simpich, and Scott are the authors whose books are most revealing. I am having trouble locating a link to Oswald and the Search for Popov's Mole, though I may have read it at some point. Any idea where to find it?

Paul,

My bad. It's titled Oswald and the Hunt for Popov's Mole.

I found a link to it in Simpich's State Secret, Chapter I: The Double Dangle.

To read "Popov's Mole," click on "snapshot"

The writer Peter Dale Scott offers us an early 1961 snapshot of this ex-Marine, just turned 21, identified as someone who might have been impersonated by J. Edgar Hoover himself: “(Oswald now had) a legend with an ambiguous U.S.-Soviet background, whose citizenship and whose ideological alignment were now both in question...The documentary record on Oswald, beginning with the UPI story on the weekend of his defection, was salted with references to his interest in going to Cuba...in 1963 the products of the Oswald (marked card) operation were used to double for a propaganda operation whose purpose was to neutralize the Fair Play for Cuba Committee."[ 28 ]

That propaganda operation will eventually take us to Mexico City just two months before the assassination, where Oswald was impersonated when he tried once again to get an instant visa – this time, to go to Cuba as well as the Soviet Union.

First, however, we should take a look at how Bill Harvey’s people tried to take over the Oswald case in 1961, before realizing that Egerter controlled the Oswald file. After that, they continued to monitor it.

https://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/State_Secret_Chapter1#ftn10

Enjoy,

--Tommy

Edited January 31, 2015 by Thomas Graves

[Mark Knight]

Tommy,

I also noticed in the newspaper article that the US Embassy advised Oswald on exactly how to NOT "officially" renounce his US citizenship. In 1959, that meant little; when 1961 rolls around, that was a VERY important detail in Oswald's ability to return to the US.

[Thomas Graves]

Tommy,

I also noticed in the newspaper article that the US Embassy advised Oswald on exactly how to NOT "officially" renounce his US citizenship. In 1959, that meant little; when 1961 rolls around, that was a VERY important detail in Oswald's ability to return to the US.

Mark,

Yes, indeed. Nice of them to do that. But I'm not so sure that they did. According to Newman in Oswald and the CIA, after Snyder finished typing some other documents, he and Oswald started talking and a few minutes later Snyder, noticing that Oswald's address had been scratched out in his passport, started stalling Oswald by telling him that in order for his Renunciation of Citizenship papers to be typed up, he'd first need to know some basic information like his address and the address of his closest living relative, which Oswald didn't want to give to Snyder. Then they did some verbal fencing for several more minutes until Oswald threatened to give the Russians some military secrets once he became a Soviet citizen, at which time Snyder told him that since it was now after 12 o'clock, the embassy, unfortunately, was closed and Oswald would have to come back another day to complete the process. Newman doesn't say anything about Snyder's advising Oswald to hold off on renouncing his citizenship until he'd received his Soviet citizenship, but I'm not surprised that the newspaper article claimed that he had.

Of course, Oswald didn't go back. I'm thinking he didn't go back because he didn't want to renounce his citizenship in the first place and he was afraid he would be arrested, for having verbally threatened (for the benefit if the KGB listening devices) to commit espionage, if he did return. Interestingly, although Oswald was still a U.S. citizen, he left his passport with Snyder when he dramatically stormed out of the embassy. I'm thinking he did that to impress the Russians, too, and knew that he would get it back eventually.

I'm inclined to think that Oswald scratched out his address in his passport and entered the embassy a little after 11:00 on a Saturday morning (Oswald later wrote, lamely and possibly for "plausible deniability," that it was 12:30) so that the above scenario could happen and so that he could return to the U.S. some day after completing whatever intelligence mission he was on. Supporting this theory is the fact that, instead of feeling frustrated at not being able to renounce his citizenship that Saturday morning, he is actually "elated" with the results of his "showdown" with Snyder and is, as he wrote a couple of years later in his Historic Diary, "sure [the] Russians will except [sic] me after this sign of my faith in them," .

--Tommy

Edited January 31, 2015 by Thomas Graves

[Jon G. Tidd]

Thomas Graves,

What "intelligence mission" did Oswald have in "defecting" to the USSR, in your opinion?

[Thomas Graves]

Thomas Graves,

What "intelligence mission" did Oswald have in "defecting" to the USSR, in your opinion?

Jon Tidd,

I'm working on it. It could take a few more years, so don't hold your breath.

For now we'll go with your template -- That Oswald was just an Odd Duck (wannabe spy?, the first marine "hippie"?, just plain nuts?) who happened to attract the attention of the CIA and FBI, etc (but heaven knows- NOT the KGB because, well, he didn't have any radar or U-2 secrets to give them and they somehow already knew that he didn't have any), and that he (or was it "Harvey"?) was somehow manipulated into being the perfect JFK Assassination Patsy.

As regards your question, Jon, Oswald's exact "mission" in Helsinki (yes I know Finland was a neutral country and not part of the U.S.S.R. but I thought I'd throw that in there) or Russia probably doesn't matter, anyway, as regards the JFK assassination, because the important thing is that so many "marked cards" (false bits of information about him) were intentionally placed in his CIA and FBI and MI files from late 1959 on, ostensibly for a "mole hunt," as to make him practically untraceable and easy to attach a useful "legend" to.

On a philosophical level, I would imagine that it's almost impossible to "prove" any past intelligence mission which an Intelligence agency or agencies may have taken great efforts to hide and obsfuscate (because said "mission" somehow tied in with the assassination) through: prevarications, redactions, "lost" documents, more redactions, more "lost" documents, even more redactions, "eliminations," "routinely destroyed" documents, prevarications, and oh yes I almost forgot-- "withheld-in full-for-50-plus-years-in-the-interest-of-national-security" barriers.

Now I have a few questions for you, Jon:

Is it reasonable to assume that the U.S. had "false defector" programs into the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War?

If so, is it possible that at least one of those false defectors might not have known the real reason he was sent and / or was sent precisely because he appeared to be an "Odd Duck" who just might know some military secrets?

What do we know about the "missions" that any of the U.S. false defectors were on (if there were any U.S. false defectors)?

Separate Question: Would you agree with former Senator Richard Schweiker of the Church Committee that "Oswald had the fingerprints of Intelligence all over him"?

--Tommy

PS I forgot one: Illegibility.

It's hard to spot any possible "marked cards" in an illegible document, even when the illegibility is unintentional.

Take this 1965 FBI document on soldier (with "secret" clearance) at U.S. Army 513th MI Group (Frankfurt, Germany) and apparent re-defector to "U.S.S.R." --Vladimir Sloboda --, for example. He defected to Russia on August 2, 1960, while Oswald was still in Minsk and Robert Webster was still in Leningrad. FWIW, The document says "Army records indicate Sloboda was an officer in Polish Intelligence prior to his defection to the West."

https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=91165&relPageId=2

I don't know if Oswald or Webster had any "connections" to Sloboda, but it sure would be nice to be able to read all of this document in order to determine whether or not any "marked cards" were put in it (and by the same token, whether or not any "marked cards" were put in the Intelligence documents any other U.S. "defectors," as well), with the goal of finding out if Oswald was the only "defector" whose CIA and FBI and MI documents were selectively laced with bits of misinformation.

Edited February 1, 2015 by Thomas Graves