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The Tippit Case in the New Millenium


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On ‎5‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 7:22 PM, James DiEugenio said:

More questions from Armstrong:

1.     How is it possible that Westbrook allegedly discovered the jacket, and said he did not recall who gave it to him,  and then showed the wallet to Barrett, and he does not know where that came from either?

2.     Why did Croy never say anything about giving the wallet to Westbrook?

3.     Postal thought the man was in the balcony not on the ground floor. That is where Sheriff Courson thought he was also.  And there are police reports of the arrest in the balcony.

4.     Who was taken out tbe back, the guy Bernard Haire saw?  And does this connect with the the Mather story later exposed by reporter Wes Wise.

5.      If Oswald was at the station, who did T. F. White see in the Mather car?

6.     Agreeing with Simpich, John says there was not a Hidell ID in the Bentley wallet. Where did that come from then? Westbrook?

7.     How is it possible that neither Westbrook nor Croy could name the other officers at the scene for the WC?

8.     Why was the alleged revolver taken to Westbrook's office by Hill?  This was so wrong headed that Westbrook apologized for it before the WC. Chalked it up as Hill’s error.

Remarkable how close Armstrong, Simpich and McBride are on these key questions.  Really sad that it took  so long to focus on them. To me, they take the TIppit case to a new plateau.

Regarding number six again.  I've been reading the account's of Bently and Hill (along with Westbrook's) in Larry Sneed's No More Silence.  Both Bently and Hill say two ID's in the wallet on the way back to the DPD, one said Hidell.  I respect and admire the research of both Mr. Simpich and Armstrong.  I'm just a reader and interpreter (though I've been to DP and some other relevant points several times, even asked Dr. McClelland a couple of questions once).  I digress.  If they concur, no Hidell ID in the Bentley wallet, I defer.  This would mean the story of finding the Hidell ID in the Bentley wallet was concocted after they got back to the DPD.  As a result of finding it in the Westbrook wallet?

BTW the "stories" of all three are almost laughable at points if not for the subject.  

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After Ms. Serrano initially told her story about the girl in the polka dot dress - but was then intimidated/badgered by the LAPD - Inspector John Powers told reporters "they had established that no such person ever existed but was the product of a young Kennedy worker's hysteria after the assassination." Serrano retracted her story, and quit her job as a keypunch operator and fled back to her parents' home in Ohio to escape further harassment. In mid-July 1968, the LAPD interviewed her friend, Greg Abbott. Sandy told him she had cooperated with investigators but had been unfairly treated. She still stuck to her story about seeing the girl in the polka-dot dress. A month later, Sergeant Hernandez was promoted to lieutenant. Three days after the LAPD investigation files were finally released to the public (in April 1988, twenty years after the murder) Serrano surfaced to tell radio interviewer Jack Thomas:

"There was a lot of badgering that was going on. I was just twenty years old and I became unglued ... I said what they wanted me to say." 

Many authors have noted that what made Serrano’s experience even more incriminating is that she told NBC newsman Sander Vanocur about it on national television. Serrano did not just witness the girl and one companion fleeing down the stairs after the assassination; she saw the girl also enter the hotel from that same entrance prior to the shooting; except at that time, there was a second male companion with the girl; a man who she later said resembled Sirhan (see Jim DiEugenio's 10/24/16 article in Kennedys and King, "Fernando Faura, The Polka Dot File on the RFK Killing").  In 1988 after the LAPD files were made public, Serrano had one more comment. In a brief radio interview, she said simply:

“I don’t ever want to have to go through that again, that sort of everyday harassment, being put in a room for hours with polka dot dress all around you. It was a bad scene and one that as a young person I was totally unprepared to handle. I was just twenty years old and I became unglued. I said what they wanted me to say.”

It is should be mentioned that Serrano was not the only witness intimidated and harassed by these two LARD officers.  A great many of the witnesses which LAPD discounted were rejected based on interviews with Sgt. Hernandez. One of the most significant was Larry Arnot and his description of Sirhan in company of other men when he purchased the ammunition for his weapon. Hernandez’s polygraph test was used to reject Arnot’s version of the incident and was  introduced in court when Arnot again tried to tell his story of the incident under oath. The prosecution attorney stopped Arnot, reminded him of the polygraph, and abruptly ceased his questioning. He presented Arnot's "confusion" as a fact proved by Hernandez' polygraph. However, polygraph specialists confirm that polygraph charts show no such thing as “confusion”; they would simply reflect inconsistent results. Author Phillip Melanson found tapes of the interrogation of Sandy Serrano - tapes that showed strong intimidation until Serrano eventually backed down and denied everything and disappeared from the scene for many years.

Gene

 

 

 

 

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Regarding Pena and the JFK assassination.  FBI agent Jeunesse said in 68 (?) Pena worked as a contract agent for the CIA 10 years prior.  He was investigating gun running for Dodd's committee in 63?  He then traced Oswald's (supposed) rifle, scope to California after the assassination (Why???).  Documentation?

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Ron

Richard Bartholomew and Walter Graff, in their article "The Gun That Didn't Smoke" (Part 3) connect Manny Pena to Sen. Thomas Dodd's Senate Subcommittee investigating the sale of firearms through the mail (see December 2007 EF thread on Pena begun by John Simkin)

Gene

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Ron

There are many dots to connect here.  Also see the 1996 article in Probe magazine "Thomas J. Dodd & Son: Corruption of Blood" authored by Lisa Pease. Dodd was a Democrat, but no fan or supporter of JFK. This is laid out and addressed in a March 2016 EF thread begun by Jim DiEugenio.  Notably, Robert K. Tanenbaum, the short-lived Deputy Chief Counsel to the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) wrote a 1996 fictional account entitled "Corruption of Blood" that points towards Senator Thomas Dodd's complicity, as well as his son Chris who suspiciously influenced the conduct and makeup of the HSCA. 

In August 1963, after two years of investigation by the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and three months before JFK's assassination, Senator Thomas J. Dodd introduced legislation to amend the Federal Firearms Act of 1938. The bill addressed the ease with which juveniles and criminals could anonymously purchase mail-order guns and thus circumvent state laws regarding the sale of firearms. Thomas Dodd had a most interesting set of witnesses appear before his committees, including Manny Pena  and the man who would later tell the HSCA where to find George DeMohrenschildt (the phony Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans). Some of Dodd's witnesses turned out to be CIA assets, and he was sponsored by the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, a group which included such characters as Clare Booth Luce and Admiral Arleigh Burke.

Tanenbaum was an experienced homicide investigator who paints a convincing picture that Thomas Dodd was a conspirator who possibly committed treason. The fact that the younger Dodd is tainted with the metaphorical "stain" or corruption of blood takes its meaning from old English criminal law, and the concept of attainder.  This arose from being condemned for a serious capital crime (e.g. treason), without judicial trial ... it entailed losing not only one's life, property and hereditary titles, but typically also the right to pass them on to one's heirs … which is what Tanenbaum explores in the book and implies should have happened to Thomas Dodd's family, for his actions against JFK and the country. 

Medieval and Renaissance English kings and queens typically used attainders against political enemies and those who posed potential threats to the king's position and security... and reversed their attainders in return for promises of loyalty. The US Constitution prohibits corruption of blood as a punishment for treason, and attainder has since been abolished in England. Other countries (e.g. North Korea, Iran) still practice forms of this punishment.  The application of attainder would also mean that there would otherwise be no investigation ... everyone within the accused's family would be subject to the sanctions.  Chris Dodd was therefore "tainted" with his Father's corruption of blood.  In Tanenbaum's book, he states:

"Assassinating the president is not treason… even a coup is not treason. Treason shall consist in levying war against the United States and giving aid and comfort to its enemies. It’s in the Constitution, the only crime defined in the Constitution... so forget treason. Conspiracy to commit murder, interfering with an investigation, tampering with and withholding evidence - that’s different, and we may have found evidence of all of that. It’s enough.’”

Gene

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Ron:

Also see “For the Record (FTR) #158: The Life and Times of Senator Thomas Dodd” posted by Dave Emory on June 6, 1999. This is a fascinating read, and another link to the Pena connection to Dodd. The modern-day controversy of gun control has its roots in the assassination of President Kennedy and Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut who had been a member of the U.S. prosecutorial staff at Nuremberg, and a former FBI agent close to the American Security Council (ASC), a domestic fascist group with links to the former World Anti-Communist League. Quoting from the article, the ASC was created by former FBI agents disgruntled at the demise of Senator Joseph McCarthy's "investigations". Counting among its ranks some of the most prominent names on the far right, the organization kept track of people it considered "subversive," sharing political intelligence with prospective employers (particularly defense contractors). The ASC detested  Kennedy and it is not, therefore,  surprising that Dodd helped to disseminate the disinformation that Oswald had been trained in assassination by the KGB. With CIA assistance, Dodd inserted this disinformation into a Senate Subcommittee report and - with roots in the same WACL milieu as the ASC - led liberals to cover-up the assassination out of fear that public perception that a communist killed the President would lead to a Third World War.

 Dodd's role in this affair is all the more interesting when one considers the possibility that Oswald may have ordered his weapons while working for Dodd's Subcommittee. Investigating the mail-order firearms business, the Dodd committee focused on the two firms from which Oswald allegedly purchased his weapons. Oswald was apparently interested in mail-order guns, a strange way for a prospective assassin to acquire weaponry. In 1963, he could have purchased his guns over the counter, with no trace of the transaction. In Emory's article, he describes Manuel Pena as an intelligence-connected Los Angeles Police officer involved with the "investigation" of Robert Kennedy's assassination, who also worked with the Dodd Subcommittee.  Emory states that Pena helped to trace Oswald's mail order gun purchases. Dodd's 1968 gun control legislation that borrowed from the Nazi weapons control act of 1938. The assassinations of the Kennedys and Dr. King generated legislative support for gun control. Dodd also had close relationship with the Julius Klein public relations firm and, through it, key German corporations. When Senate investigations of Klein's connections to those German corporations threatened that relationship, Dodd traveled to Germany in a vain attempt to convince Klein's German clients that the Senate investigation should not stand in the way of their relationship to Klein (Klein was an unregistered foreign agent).

Gene

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Ron:

 

I would hope that Bill would straighten that evidentiary point out about the Hidell ID in the Bentley wallet.  He pops in every now and then.

Gene:

Tom Dodd was a conservative Democrat who opposed Kennedy's foreign policy e.g. in the Congo.  From my article, Dodd and Dulles vs Kennedy in Africa: 

At this point, another figure emerged in opposition to Kennedy and his Congo policy. Clearly, Kennedy's new Congo policy had been a break from Eisenhower's. It ran contra to the covert policy that Dulles and Devlin had fashioned. To replace the Eisenhower-Nixon political line, the Belgian government, through the offices of public relations man Michael Struelens, created a new political counterweight to Kennedy. He was Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut. As Mahoney notes, Dodd began to schedule hearings in the senate on the "loss" of the Congo to communism, a preposterous notion considering who was really running the Congo in 1961. Dodd also wrote to Kennedy's United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson that the State Department's "blind ambition" to back the UN in Katanga could only end in tragedy. He then released the letter to the press before Stevenson ever got it.

Click bait to my cheesy web site.  https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/dodd-and-dulles-vs-kennedy-in-africa

All Wardian sarcasm aside, I always thought the above article was one of the most important pieces Probe Magazine ever ran. We did not include it in The Assassinations since it was really more about Kennedy's foreign policy.  But its a good example of how Dodd opposed JFK.  And BTW, Chris Dodd, his son, was in charge of the search committee that somehow plucked Bob Blakey to be the head of the HSCA after Sprague left.  That meeting of the HSCA where Dodd presented his findings, which he had narrowed down to two candidates--one of them Blakey-- was recently declassified.

 

 

Edited by James DiEugenio
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19 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Dan,

 

Maybe I missed it, but I don't find Pena listed in Batchelor's Exhibit 5002,

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Batchelor_Ex_5002.pdf

or in the DPD Archives.

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/index.html

 

Steve Thomas

Steve,

 I mistakenly inferred that Pena was with the DPD when he traced the telescopic sight.    Sorry, but all these rabbit holes get confusing.

Dan

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3 hours ago, Dan Doyle said:

Steve,

 I mistakenly inferred that Pena was with the DPD when he traced the telescopic sight.    Sorry, but all these rabbit holes get confusing.

Dan

Dan,

 

That's ok. This is a complex case, and you're right.

Rabbit holes abound.

*smile*

 

Steve Thomas

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On 5/10/2018 at 6:28 PM, Gene Kelly said:

Paul

It was Manuel Pena who traced Oswald's telescopic sight to a California gun shop.  After the assassination, Senator Dodd helped a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee publish a story that Oswald had been trained at a KGB assassination school in Minsk.  At the time, Dodd was on the payroll of the American Security Council, a group campaigning to use U.S. military force to oust Castro from Cuba and to escalate the war in Vietnam.

Gene

Gene - I’ve been reading your posts on this thread with much interest. I’m familiar with most of the material on Pena, and I’ve heard the horrifying recording of the lie detector interview you reference with the lady who witnessed the Polka dot dress woman. 

I have a question and an observation. The question is where is the documentation showing that Pena was involved with the investigation of Oswald’s gun purchases? 

The observation has to do with Dodd and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. I can’t find details on their investigations of mail order gun purchases, though I’ve read that before, I think first in Peter Dale Scott’s work. I was not aware of the links between the Committee and the American Security Council, a group that needs more investigation. If I recall, Robert Morris was for a while the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee chief council. This holdover group from McCarthy was also involved in the Bayo Pawley affair. And they were the group that Otto Otepka went to when he found the discrepancies in the CIA files relating to Oswald’s defection. So it seems to me that proving their use of Pena as an investigator into mail order guns is important, especially if Oswald was actually part of that investigation. 

If you know, where can I research this connection? 

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On ‎5‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 8:13 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Regarding number six again.  I've been reading the account's of Bently and Hill (along with Westbrook's) in Larry Sneed's No More Silence.  Both Bently and Hill say two ID's in the wallet on the way back to the DPD, one said Hidell.  I respect and admire the research of both Mr. Simpich and Armstrong.  I'm just a reader and interpreter (though I've been to DP and some other relevant points several times, even asked Dr. McClelland a couple of questions once).  I digress.  If they concur, no Hidell ID in the Bentley wallet, I defer.  This would mean the story of finding the Hidell ID in the Bentley wallet was concocted after they got back to the DPD.  As a result of finding it in the Westbrook wallet?

BTW the "stories" of all three are almost laughable at points if not for the subject.  

One comment by Hill in particular in No More Silence caught my attention as I'd never read it.  "Back in 1959 J D worked for me in the Oak Cliff area".  Tippit worked for Hill in 59, so they weren't just familiar but had a superior - subordinate relationship, at one time at least.  In Oak Cliff.  So Tippit wasn't just familiar with Oak Cliff, working out of his assigned area on 11/22/63.  He had worked IT before and knew it well.  

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On 5/15/2018 at 4:05 AM, Gene Kelly said:

“I don’t ever want to have to go through that again, that sort of everyday harassment,

Thanks again for this. Not unrelated (I hope) is  the attached video. (note 4 hrs later: It is unrelated enough to take off, but I don't know how to do it)

In my book, this is someone with a little more experienced, and a camera, but he still gets the SANDY SERRANO AWARD, given to those whose instinct tells them to resist tyranny. 
 
(note: If you do watch-- 3 different paid law enforcers participate in "the investigation" plus another shows up with a dog; 3 have cameras - video and still,  and use them in a cam-warfare with the citizen--who is already identified by a current license plate. Taxpayers pay for this: one is each associated with an auto, guns, training, pension, health insurance. Lawfare prevails.
 

 

 

Edited by Robert Harper
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Jim

I read your February 1999 article with much fascination.  History is not my forte, being a scientist and engineer, but I've always thought that the key to understanding what happened to John Kennedy lies within the backdrop of world events swirling at the time (Cuba, France, Middle East, Congo and of course the Cold War).  The article lays out an interesting context about Kennedy's Congo effort. The larger issues in question were Third World nationalism, Marxism, European colonialism, and the domestic opposition to JFK's policies ... the "face" of JFK's opposition notably included Senator Thomas Dodd and Allen Dulles.  In reading this account, it becomes obvious that JFK himself was at political war with his own country and its conservative elements.  Politics, it seems, is akin to war. The article does a nice job of explaining the foreign policy ideas that Kennedy had been developing since his 1951 trip to Saigon. Kennedy challenged Nixon and Dulles for not urging France into a non-military solution in Indochina. JFK's targets were considerable: Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, Acheson and Nixon (who called it "a brashly political" move to embarrass the administration").  That's also quite a list or formidable political enemies to accumulate. 

What happened in the Congo parallels what happened in Cuba ... and it exposes the Dulles game plan.  The Soviets helped Lumumba by flying in food and medical supplies, followed by a request for planes, pilots, and technicians to use against Katanga ... which then sealed Lumumba's fate.  The CIA station chief in Leopoldville threw the well-worn "Communist effort to subjugate the government" flag, setting in motion assassination plots, and superseding State Department policy-making (sounds all too familiar).  Lumumba was then killed three days before JFK's inauguration (hardly coincidental). Its  troubling that Douglas Dillon was a co-investor with Nelson Rockefeller in properties inside the Belgian Congo (i.e. conflict of  interest).  More troubling is the related death of Dag Hammarskjold.  It appears that what happened to Lumumba (and was attempted with DeGaulle) is also what inevitably happened to Kennedy.

Also quite interesting to understand where Dodd comes in, and what replaced the Eisenhower-Nixon political line ... a new "political counterweight to Kennedy" in Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut. who started theatric hearings in the senate on the "loss" of the Congo to communism.  Dodd ended up precipitating a war in the Congo - Tshombe, Katanga - and later forged an alliance with Goldwater. LBJ then reverses Kennedy's policies in 1964, and Mobutu installs himself as military dictator. And like Suharto in Indonesia, he opens his country to outside investment - mined by huge western corporations, whose owners grew wealthy - while Mobutu's subjects live in abject poverty.  Mobutu stifled political dissent and, like Suharto, grew into one of the richest men in the world. And (again like Suharto) Mobutu fell after three decades of a corrupt dictatorship, leaving an anarchic, post-colonial state similar.  What a case study in  the evils of colonialism and a failure of Democracy.  Then there is the condescending and arrogant William F. Buckley, who ostensibly "left" the CIA to start the rightwing journal National Review and his Young Americans for Freedom.  As a college student, I remember Buckley's odd affect, his disdain for "liberals" and  his idiosyncratic way of speaking:

"High Church (patrician) accent, and polysyllabic vocabulary ... a voice so preposterously mellifluous that it seemed that, even as he was speaking, he had some brandy in the back of his mouth that he needed to evaluate before swallowing it.  An aristocratic drawl, quasi-British pronunciations, and fondness for Latin. A British style of speech was thought to characterize upper-class New Englanders as a whole".

Perhaps the best insight from your article is how it illuminates why the son of a multimillionaire ended up on the side of African black nationalism abroad and integration at home. His quote alluding to the subjugation of Ireland by the British (while talking to Nehru on the subject of colonialism) - a colonization that has now lasted for 800 years - is worth repeating here:  

I grew up in a community where the people were hardly a generation away from colonial rule. And I can claim the company of many historians in saying that the colonialism to which my immediate ancestors were subject was more sterile, oppressive and even cruel than that of India.

I agree with the premise that Kennedy's sensitivity to such countries, and their leaders' precarious position, led to his own demise. Thanks for sharing the history lesson.

Gene

 

 

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This is getting way off the subject of Tippit but since Jim and Gene mention the Congo as part of a bigger picture here goes (I didn't want to loose a interesting link I'd found).  Gene mentioned Dillon and Rockefeller in relation to their financial investments in the Congo.  I.E. Uranium, highest grade/most concentrated deposits in the world.  The bankers made money off of the money they invested in the infrastructure created to mine and the mine itself.  So, did the murder of Lumumba and thus thwarting of JFK's plans amount to for them, Keep Your Hands Off MY Uranium.

While this article is not about Lumumba or JFK per se it does relate to how the situation involving them came about.  In particular in the third form last paragraph.  Lumumba, "Belgium doesn't produce any uranium."  Maybe this subject is worth another thread.

https://theconversation.com/how-a-rich-uranium-mine-thrust-the-congo-into-the-centre-of-the-cold-war-64761

Edited by Ron Bulman
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