Should FBI Agent James Hosty be solely blamed for the murder of John F. Kennedy

[James DiEugenio]

Here it is, if you have not read it.  The magnificent Edwin Black essay on the plot to kill JFK in Chicago.

In my view, it might be the best essay on the JFK case published in the seventies.  It is certainly one of the most important of that decade.

http://thechicagoplot.com/The Chicago Plot.pdf

The other side hates this article.  And its easy to see why. Some apparatus was hunting JFK in the fall of 1963.  And it appears that Oswald may have been the informant on it.

[Ron Bulman]

I think it's possible Hosty was following orders.  I'm under the impression FBI agents work on what they are told to.  Not whatever they feel like on any given day.  By the same token if they were told to ignore certain observations or persons, they would imo.

I've wondered for a while if the note to Hosty wasn't disinformation.  I realize record of the note wasn't discovered until 1975.  But if Hosty was told to tear up and flush the note from his file (only?) what other record was evidence was found of it.  Why would anything on it be kept if he was instructed to destroy the first hand evidence?  Didn't this first come up through the Church committee?  I don't remember exactly how the came about the information.  

Then doesn't threatening a FBI agent, two weeks before the assassination, make Oswald look kind of like a lone nut?  But the Agent, or agency doesn't take the threat seriously enough to investigate ?

[David Andrews]

15 hours ago, John Kozlowski said:

I 100% believe he was an informant gathering info on exile groups for the FBI and the CIA. They used him and he didn't realize it until it was too late. The expression he makes when the reporter tell him he's been charged with killing the president says it all 

Also that quaver in his voice where he was struggling not to burst into tears.  Man felt all bad about being misunderstood over something.  We'll never know.

See "...nobody has said that to me yet..." and "..when the newspaper reporters in the hall..." c. 0:46 to 0.54, for heartbreak.

 

Edited February 27, 2019 by David Andrews

[James DiEugenio]

What did that BS artist Rather say at the beginning?

That the press or the police was using all resources to solve the crime? 

[Derek Thibeault]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Here it is, if you have not read it.  The magnificent Edwin Black essay on the plot to kill JFK in Chicago.

In my view, it might be the best essay on the JFK case published in the seventies.  It is certainly one of the most important of that decade.

http://thechicagoplot.com/The Chicago Plot.pdf

The other side hates this article.  And its easy to see why. Some apparatus was hunting JFK in the fall of 1963.  And it appears that Oswald may have been the informant on it.

Great article, I mean these other plots, would seem to credit the Dallas conspiracy. It's probably the greatest evidence for a conspiracy in Dallas.

[James DiEugenio]

I agree and that is why Bugliosi tried to toss off Black's essay and discourage anyone from reading it.

 

BTW, Black went on to become a quite illustrious author of several distinguished books.

[Joseph McBride]

Black's book IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST: THE STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

BETWEEN NAZI GERMANY AND AMERICA'S MOST POWERFUL CORPORATION

is startling, an eye-opening and thoroughly documented look at a little-known and shameful aspect of Holocaust history.

Edited February 27, 2019 by Joseph McBride

[Pamela Brown]

On 2/26/2019 at 8:41 PM, John Kozlowski said:

I 100% believe he was an informant gathering info on exile groups for the FBI and the CIA. They used him and he didnt realize it until it was too late. The expression he makes when the reporter tell him he's been charged with killing the president says it all 

I'm not persuaded that LHO was an informant, but I completely agree with you about the expression on his face. He knew he had been set up. 

[Joseph McBride]

Detective James Leavelle confirmed to me that Oswald was telling the

truth when he said during his midnight press conference that he had not been told by the police that he had been charged

with murdering the president. From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE:

 

. . .  So we can see that the “proof” Oswald shot Tippit was indeed crucial to the federal and local authorities in shoring up their dubious case that he shot Kennedy.

And the uncertainty over whether they could pin the assassination on Oswald would help explain his otherwise baffling behavior at his midnight press showing when he was asked if he had killed the president. As has previously been mentioned, Oswald made this key statement in response: “No. I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall [voice quavering], uh, axed [sic] me that question.” Some have argued that Oswald did not make a full stop after “No,” when asked if he had killed the president, but instead said, “No, I have not been charged with that.” The evidence on the television tape is ambiguous. If he made a full stop (as the transcript in the Warren Report, for what it’s worth, has him doing), he was denying killing Kennedy from this very prominent public podium, which was consistent with his other statements to reporters as he was being hustled through the hall (which had also been heard on television, including his assertions “I didn’t shoot anyone!” and “I’m just a patsy!”) and his reported statements behind closed doors to the police. If Oswald was only denying being “charged with that,” he might have been expressing genuine bafflement about why not.

Another possibility is that this could have been very real shock on his part about hearing about that charge first from reporters at the midnight press conference -- even though that contradicts everything we have been told by the Dallas police about his interrogation sessions.

I asked Detective Leavelle what Oswald had been told, by the time of that midnight press conference, about the charges that were to be filed against him in the murder of the president. Leavelle replied,

"He’d been told it, but see, he hadn’t been charged with it, so he answered it truthfully. He knew he was a suspect, but he hadn’t been charged with it. Now, that was the difference in the Tippit deal. Because we went ahead that evening and we had [Deputy District Attorney] Bill Alexander there, who accepted the case for the district attorney’s office. And once the district attorney’s office accept the charges, then he’s officially charged, see? So he was answering the question truthfully -- he hadn’t been charged with it [the presidential assassination]. We had charged him with the Tippit thing."

But since Oswald’s interrogation sessions were not recorded, we have only the word of the DPD to go on for what was said by Oswald in them, which means that their reports are dubious at best. Oswald’s statement at the press conference about having just heard the charge -- a sentence uttered with what seems like authentic shock -- may reveal something more about why the Tippit killing was being treated as such a key charge to pin on Oswald, and why Belin considered it “the Rosetta Stone.” Wade told me the midnight event was not intended to be a press conference but only a showing to demonstrate that Oswald, despite having a cut on his face from the arrest and shouting at the theater about “police brutality,” was not being mistreated by the police. Wade said Police Chief Jesse E. Curry asked his advice, and “I said let ‘em look at him, but there wasn’t any questioning of him.” In fact, the press naturally asked some questions, and the anxiety of the police to get Oswald out of there when he started giving answers that did not seem to fit the emerging official story is telling.

If the authorities were uncertain about whether they could pin the Kennedy killing on Oswald, as well they should have been given the paucity of actual evidence, were they trying to do an end-run by nailing him first as a cop-killer and then expanding the case from that unproven supposition, as Bugliosi, a respected prosecutor, would be found doing many years later in his book, long after Oswald was supposedly convicted by the Warren Commission in the court of history as the lone-nut killer of Kennedy? If Bugliosi, like many others, was grasping at the Tippit killing to help buttress the widely disbelieved and discredited case against Oswald as Kennedy’s killer, that would be another key indicator of how flimsy the “so-called evidence” against Oswald actually seems to the beleaguered and blinkered, if not actively dishonest, defenders of the official line.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one.  I always thought that was the case.

 

Talk about Kafka.

[Joseph McBride]

And Oswald was never arraigned on the charge of killing Kennedy, only on the charge of killing Tippit.

[Micah Mileto]

On 2/26/2019 at 7:46 AM, David Von Pein said:

The number of people that you conspiracists are willing to accuse of crimes is stunning. Not just ordinary people but JFK's closest friends."

 

-- Steve M. Galbraith

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.assassination.jfk/8dcckSI7ntI/nAzODCzOBQAJ

 

What about Dr. Burkley saying how he thought there could have been two head shots but never elaborating on what he meant? That's JFK's personal doctor talking.

Or when Attorney General Ramsey Clark lied about the autopsy photographs? Or when the HSCA tried to coerce Humes into changing his story on the head wounds? We know these cover-ups existed, but those basically happened because they wanted to discourage conspiracy theorists, in turn creating their own conspiracy and cover-up. There are plenty of reasons for somebody to frame the accused while also believing the accused is guilty.

Edited February 28, 2019 by Micah Mileto

[Derek Thibeault]

8 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

Detective James Leavelle confirmed to me that Oswald was telling the

truth when he said during his midnight press conference that he had not been told by the police that he had been charged

with murdering the president. From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE:

 

. . .  So we can see that the “proof” Oswald shot Tippit was indeed crucial to the federal and local authorities in shoring up their dubious case that he shot Kennedy.

And the uncertainty over whether they could pin the assassination on Oswald would help explain his otherwise baffling behavior at his midnight press showing when he was asked if he had killed the president. As has previously been mentioned, Oswald made this key statement in response: “No. I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall [voice quavering], uh, axed [sic] me that question.” Some have argued that Oswald did not make a full stop after “No,” when asked if he had killed the president, but instead said, “No, I have not been charged with that.” The evidence on the television tape is ambiguous. If he made a full stop (as the transcript in the Warren Report, for what it’s worth, has him doing), he was denying killing Kennedy from this very prominent public podium, which was consistent with his other statements to reporters as he was being hustled through the hall (which had also been heard on television, including his assertions “I didn’t shoot anyone!” and “I’m just a patsy!”) and his reported statements behind closed doors to the police. If Oswald was only denying being “charged with that,” he might have been expressing genuine bafflement about why not.

Another possibility is that this could have been very real shock on his part about hearing about that charge first from reporters at the midnight press conference -- even though that contradicts everything we have been told by the Dallas police about his interrogation sessions.

I asked Detective Leavelle what Oswald had been told, by the time of that midnight press conference, about the charges that were to be filed against him in the murder of the president. Leavelle replied,

"He’d been told it, but see, he hadn’t been charged with it, so he answered it truthfully. He knew he was a suspect, but he hadn’t been charged with it. Now, that was the difference in the Tippit deal. Because we went ahead that evening and we had [Deputy District Attorney] Bill Alexander there, who accepted the case for the district attorney’s office. And once the district attorney’s office accept the charges, then he’s officially charged, see? So he was answering the question truthfully -- he hadn’t been charged with it [the presidential assassination]. We had charged him with the Tippit thing."

But since Oswald’s interrogation sessions were not recorded, we have only the word of the DPD to go on for what was said by Oswald in them, which means that their reports are dubious at best. Oswald’s statement at the press conference about having just heard the charge -- a sentence uttered with what seems like authentic shock -- may reveal something more about why the Tippit killing was being treated as such a key charge to pin on Oswald, and why Belin considered it “the Rosetta Stone.” Wade told me the midnight event was not intended to be a press conference but only a showing to demonstrate that Oswald, despite having a cut on his face from the arrest and shouting at the theater about “police brutality,” was not being mistreated by the police. Wade said Police Chief Jesse E. Curry asked his advice, and “I said let ‘em look at him, but there wasn’t any questioning of him.” In fact, the press naturally asked some questions, and the anxiety of the police to get Oswald out of there when he started giving answers that did not seem to fit the emerging official story is telling.

If the authorities were uncertain about whether they could pin the Kennedy killing on Oswald, as well they should have been given the paucity of actual evidence, were they trying to do an end-run by nailing him first as a cop-killer and then expanding the case from that unproven supposition, as Bugliosi, a respected prosecutor, would be found doing many years later in his book, long after Oswald was supposedly convicted by the Warren Commission in the court of history as the lone-nut killer of Kennedy? If Bugliosi, like many others, was grasping at the Tippit killing to help buttress the widely disbelieved and discredited case against Oswald as Kennedy’s killer, that would be another key indicator of how flimsy the “so-called evidence” against Oswald actually seems to the beleaguered and blinkered, if not actively dishonest, defenders of the official line.

 

Good stuff, I need to read your book, just need to find it at a good price. Thanks for your work on the Tippet case sounds like the definitive info.

[Steve Thomas]

6 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

And Oswald was never arraigned on the charge of killing Kennedy, only on the charge of killing Tippit.

Joe,

 

I don't know about the timing, but I had been under the impression that Lee Harvey Oswald was arraigned for the murder of JFK around 1:30 in the morning of November 23rd.

However, I read in Anthony Summer's book, "Conspiracy", that he says that LHO was NOT arraigned for this crime.

Sure enough, in CD 5, page 400 there is an undated FBI document that says, "No arraignment on the charges in connection with the death of President Kennedy was held inasmuch as such arraignment was not necessary in view of the previous charges filed against Oswald and for which he was arraigned."

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...p;relPageId=405

And in CD 1084, page 11 is a letter from Hoover dated June 10, 1964 with attachments that reads, "Assistant DA Alexander...authorized the filing of a complaint...however, arraignment on this latter charge was not deemed necessary in view of the previous charges against Oswald and the prior arraignment." (for Tippit's murder).

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=15

So, was he arraigned or not, and if not, what the hell was taking place around 1:30 on the morning of November 23rd?

It's interesting that even though both CD 5 and the synopsis that Hoover provided with his letter in CD 1084 are both undated; in the memo that comprises CD 5, it says that the "following information was obtained by Hosty from the office of Will Fritz on November 25th.

That's two days after the fact.

The locals (Fritz, Curry, Wade, Johnston) are saying Oswald was arraigned. The federals are saying he was not.

 

Steve Thomas

[David Andrews]

If you feel Oswald answered the question using a comma instead of a period, ("No, I have not been charged with that..."), his meaning remains the same as if he used the period, falling in line with the legalistic way he expressed himself on the issue of being a Communist in his New Orleans TV and radio interviews.  He tended to deny a supposed fact by denying the terms it was put to him in: "The first thing I heard about it was when..."  People describe LHO as unemotional, when he seems to have been trained to be something of a politician.

Edited March 1, 2019 by David Andrews