Gene Kelly

With all due respect, I'd like to see the bickering desist, and focus on the substance of this thread.   Jim D. , David Lifton and David Von Pein all make good points.  Let's park the egos, and learn something.  This entire discussion is quite important ... there's no way they went past TSBD by "accident".   Coincidence does not exist, when it comes to this case. 

I'm convinced that the Trade Mart selection is critical, rationale and sensible.  Connally is therefore a person of interest.  Eugene Locke is also. It does seem that motorcades in those days went this same route.  Nonetheless, its an ideal killing zone.  

Going up to 1,000 feet, its way too coincidental (if you don't believe in coincidence, particularly in this case) that the President's motorcade goes thru the L-turn and past the TSBD (with a convenient patsy in place).  Whether that route was "influenced" or not, its just way too coincidental. Joe McBride's finding that Ken O'Donnell influenced this route is an interesting paradigm shift.   In other words, JFK had other liabilities that weren't just Dulles, CIA and the usual suspects.  This route mirrors other assassination strategies (e.g. DeGaulle).  Its a perfect killing zone.   It cannot be just coincidental.

Ron

The "Oswald's window" that you refer to was removed after the assassination - by the building's owner, D. H. Byrd - and mounted in his home!  Byrd was a rich Texas oil and gas entrepreneur who moved in conservative Dallas right-wing circles , an LBJ crony, and co-founder of the Civil Air Patrol.  if you read Joe McBride's book (page 314) he lays out some interesting coincidences.  The TSBD was vacant and unused, until Spring 1963 ... some think it was constructed as a deceptive 'Potemkin Village' (false front) for the assassin's lair.  Peter Dale Scott reported that Byrd profited $50M by buying 132,000 shares of Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) stock in November 1963, just before the JFK assassination. The stock increased in value once LBJ came to power and reversed Kennedy's troop withdrawal in Vietnam ... the first contract the Pentagon subsequently awarded was for a fighter jet to LTV.  Byrd was also close to the infamous Jack Crichton.

Gene 

Joe's book (and interview) with Ms. Witherspoon makes it clear that Tippit had a brief affair with her (over a few months) in late 1963.  She was recently divorced, and the mother of four (plus a daughter later, by another marriage).  She seemed very forthcoming (see pages 283-295) and put flowers on JD's grave (anonymously).  Her first husband was abusive and threatening.  Tippit's marriage seemed to be in trouble, and he apparently was not a faithful husband.  He may have been seeking a divorce just before he was killed. 

And if one were to write a book about Jack Ruby and all of his diverse connections and associates, I'd suggest calling it "Six Degrees of Jack Ruby"  

Jim

The Earl Crater comment comes from Harrison Livingstone's "The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy" as well as a January 5, 2005 post by Dixie Dea in the EF thread "J. D. Tippit ... was he part of the conspiracy?"

Gene

Thank you Joe ... and I enjoyed your book.   Quite a lot of good information to contemplate. I can certainly envision Ruby (and cohorts) purchasing the old DPD cruiser and using it that day (with rogue cops) to stage the ceremonial killing of Tippit. Ruby is a lot like Kevin Bacon (i.e. Six Degrees) and the assumption that anyone involved in the Hollywood film industry can be linked through their film roles to Kevin within six steps.  Ruby seems to have ties to everyone, if you look hard enough. 

Regarding the tiny room in Gladys Johnson's rooming house, i have had the same experience in first visiting Dealey Plaza.   Being from Philadelphia, I was expecting something more expansive, like Fairmount Park, but the plaza is small (and the knoll is so close).  I recall one researcher remarking that it seems like a diorama ...  certainly an ideal ambush site and layout, with plenty of ingress/egress points.  I'm curious as to  why you characterize Oswald's room as "guarded and suspicious" ... is it because of the evil that emanated from it?  Perhaps the reason for such relatively small landmarks (perceiver larger) is the gravity of the story, and JFK's legend ... that makes it all seem bigger than life.

Best,

Gene

Steve:

Ruby's role is understated in the Tippit shooting. Earl Crater of the Pig and Whistle restaurant said that Oswald, Ruby and Tippit had breakfast there on a number of occasions at 7am. Crater said that Oswald never had more than a cup of coffee. In "The Other Murder - The Death of Officer Tippit Revisited", Larry Ray Harris wrote the following:

The widespread public acceptance of Oswald's guilt is such that the Tippit murder has been virtually relegated to a historical footnote. This was borne out by the House Select Committee on Assassinations; whose 1979 final report devoted a scant three paragraphs to the policeman's death -- concurring with the 1964 Warren Report conclusion that Oswald was a cop-killer. The Report also dismisses the rumor that Oswald lived near Jack Ruby, pointing out that their residences were a mile apart. However, the Tippit shooting took place only two blocks from Ruby’s home on Marsalis St..

There are accounts that one of the men observed at the Tippit scene resembled Ruby; other rumors exist that Ruby was in the Texas Theater when Oswald was apprehended. Professor Jerry Rose asserted that Ruby’s role was to assemble a group of ‘witnesses’ to Tippit’s murder (e.g. Warren Reynolds, the Davis sisters) who would testify that Oswald was the murderer. Add DPD officer Harry Olsen to the milieu of Jack Ruby associates: Olsen was fired in December 1963 and moved hastily to California with his girlfriend, Kay Coleman, another Ruby stripper. Joe McBride's book reveals that Olsen and Coleman spent several hours in a parked car with Ruby, egging him on to kill Oswald; Olsen was also responsible for the characterization of Jack Ruby as being distraught over "poor Jacqueline" having to come back to Dallas. Then there is the mysterious Dallas Police car number 107. On April 10th, the day of the Walker shooting, Jack Ruby placed a long-distance phone call from the Carousel Club to one Clarence Rector in Sulphur Springs Texas. A week later, the Dallas Police sold a 1962 Ford patrol car (# 107) to a used-car dealer who also lived in Sulphur Springs.  This same cruiser was cited as the mysterious vehicle parked outside of N. Beckley by Oswald's landlady just after he ostensibly arrived at his boarding house.  The car seen by Earlene Roberts was possibly the same car purchased by Rector, and later seen in the alley of the boarding house ... and tied to Jack Ruby.

Gene

All:

Keeping this thread on topic, there are several subtopics (of the JFK story) that - for me - scream of a treasonous plot.  I often look for alternate words for "conspiracy" as the term has negative connotations; perhaps the word sedition is more appropriate (i.e. incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government).  One of these key subtopics is the Tippit murder, which is certainly not what it seems or officially understood to be.  The other critical subtopic is how the guns were ordered and linked to Oswald.  Either one of these - alone - is sufficient to indict the Warren Commission's version of events.  Together, they represent an insult to the American public.    

I'm curious if anyone picked up on the confidential source (John D. Whitten) who informed the FBI on 12/3 that Oswald and family had been in the Top Ten record Store (twice) on the morning of the assassination.  The allegation is received right around the time that CIA officer John Moss Whitten (the "good spy") was pushed aside by Angleton with Richard Helms' blessing and later took early retirement to Austria.  Perhaps he was trying to tell us what really was going on ... and he later provided significant clues for the HSCA.  In this JFK story, there is no such thing as coincidence.

Gene

I ride on the shoulders of folks like David who do great digging and research ... its why I participate in this Forum, to learn and understand what happened. The "D F Drittal" pseudonym sounds like a spy game play on words (similar to Hidell).  Jack white once pointed out that - if you read "Inside the Company" by Phillip Agee, you get an insight into how CIA constructs its pseudonyms and cryptic code names for operatives.   I suspect that this fictitious name was computer-generated by such an Agency construct.

Paul

For a comprehensive treatment of Oswald's erstwhile revolver, I have found the following references to be excellent: (a) David Josephs' October 2015 work: "The Rifle, The Backyard Photos & The Pistol Part 3: The Pistol" published in Kennedys and King; (b) "Oswald Did NOT Purchase a Pistol from Seaport Traders" by John Armstrong; (c) Jefferson Morley’s January 2013 article “Oswald thinks about buying a gun” in JFK Facts; (d) George Bailey's November 2009 blog Oswald's Mother and “Who Bought the Guns?”; and (e) the May 2006 EF Thread begun by Scott G. Edwards "The J.D. Tippit Shooting Evidence".

The Warren Commission records state that Oswald ordered the pistol (CE 143) from Seaport Traders in Los Angeles, but they have never explained how REA Express delivered the pistol (COD) to Post Office Box 2915 in Dallas.  What is unclear is why anyone would deliver a gun COD to a post office box.  What's even less clear is who paid REA, how were they paid and who signed for the delivery.  The Warren Commission tells us that the package containing the pistol was picked up at the REA office at 515 Houston St. in Dallas on March 20^th; but the evidence upon which they based their conclusion was a copy of a receipt signed by someone named "Paxton” … the Commission relied upon a copy of a receipt signed by an unknown/unidentified (and never interviewed) individual to prove that Oswald picked-up the mail-order pistol that was used to kill Officer Tippit.  Per John Armstrong's research, there is no credible evidence of payment to Seaport Traders; only the wallet identification of Oswald as Hidell, linking the purchaser of the handgun and also the rifle. The .38 revolver is essentially undocumented; there are no receipts found in Oswald’s personal belongings ... no invoices, no postcard alerting the arrival of the shipment, no receipt for paying of COD charges.  Only one receipt is in existence and it is a copy.  Furthermore, Oswald somehow later obtained a leather holster and bullets for this revolver, but again, no receipt.   

This story of the revolver purchase begins on January 27, 1963 - two days before Senator Thomas Dodd's subcommittee began hearings on establishing more restrictive federal legislation to control mail-order traffic in firearms.  Coincidentally, a corresponding purchase in Texas from Seaport Traders was duly noted in the Dodd Subcommittee's sample statistics (see P.D. Scott) .  As we are led to believe, Oswald fills out a printed mail order form for Seaport Traders using a fake name (“A.J. Hidell”) and a real post office box address (P.O. Box 2915, Dallas, Texas).  The date January 27, 1963, therefore becomes the first time Lee Oswald is known to have used name “Hidell” ... he would later use this same name when ordering pro-Castro literature from the FPCC.  This alias is speculated to originate in many ways, and possibly a computer-generated CIA pseudonym for operatives using alternating consonants and vowels (see Agee's "Inside the Company").  Oswald initially selected a pistol, holster and ammunition (then scratched out the last two items) but ostensibly would not mail the form for another six weeks. Jefferson Morley has called attention to the fact that January 1963 is when Oswald's enduring persona as “a pro-Castro gunman” begins to take shape.  George Bailey surmises that Oswald may not have been aware of the setup going on behind his back ... but if he was, he never told a soul. Six weeks later, on March 13, 1963, Seaport Traders allegedly received an order coupon and $10 in cash from A.J. Hidell in Dallas for the purchase of a $29.95 pistol (more expensive than the rifle).  The questionable order coupon - from an unknown magazine source - had an obscure witness (one 'D. F. Drittal') declare that "A.J. Hidell age 28 was not under indictment or a fugitive".  David Josephs demonstrates the revolver’s suspect provenance convincingly, as the item ordered and the item shipped were not one and the same.  The order received was for a .38 ST. W. 2” Bbl” while the pistol sent was described as S & W .38 Special 2 Commando” ... different revolvers.  There is no evidence of Oswald practicing firing a revolver, his proficiency with a handgun is not credible, and the use/whereabouts of this pistol are unknown until November 22nd. The revolver taken from Oswald had been rechambered (slightly enlarged) to accept .38 Special cartridges but are inconsistent with the Tippit cartridges in the National Archives. A Canadian contractor - Empire Wholesale Sporting Goods LTD. of Montreal - also figures into this mystery. This company allegedly exported the revolver into the United States. George Rose & Company was the parent company of the mail-order business “Seaport Trading”, whose business in turn was overseen by a management company (Merchanteers). Seaport was one of the weapons houses Dodd was investigating, and also traded in Mannlicher-Carcano rifles.  Here is a timeline for the revolver's alleged provenance:

• January 3 - George Rose and Co. of Los Angeles receives from Empire Wholesale Sporting Goods (Montreal, Canada) a shipment of 99 handguns including serial # V510210

• January 27 - A.J. Hidell orders a .38 St. W. from Seaport Traders

• March 20 - Serial # V510210 is  sent to Hidell’s PO Box and picked up at an REA office in Dallas. The same day, according to Klein's, C2766 (the rifle) is shipped to the same Hidell

• December 5 - An FBI confidential informant (DALLAS T-1) reports that Empire Wholesale acted "as a sales agent" for International Firearms. The confidential source also furnished a record of the transaction for 400 Smith and Wesson revolvers to George Rose and Company Inc.  The informant later reports information received from Sucher, "President of the International Firearms” who confirms shipment of the 400 revolvers. 

Last but not least, the Italian Military Intelligence - Servizio Informazioni Forze Armate (SIFAR) - also figures in this story.  SIFAR was associated with the secret NATO plan for a Stay-Behind Network (“Gladio”) as well as anti-communist activities in Italy inspired by Ambassador Claire Booth Luce.  We see the fingerprints of none other than William Harvey in a 12/31/63 CIA dispatch from the CIA Section Chief in Rome (Harvey aka Daniel Presland) who informed Langley that an Italian Ministry of Defense report contains an analysis on the background of rifle C2766 ... Harvey's memo suggests “passing copies of it to the Secret Service and the FBI.”   One cant overstate how difficult all of this is to accept ... a true "Shaggy Dog" story.

Gene

Joe/Jim

Several researchers (e.g. Duke lane) have performed detailed analyses of the patrol car movements in and around Oak Cliff, and Mentzel's reported itinerary is suspicious ... his story could be described as "out to lunch" (literally and figuratively).  Nearly every patrol in Oak Cliff was removed or out of action. -except two - when Tippit and Nelson were ostensibly reassigned. One of those two patrols was William D. Mentzel, who normally patrolled the two districts and was allegedly at lunch in the district ... at Luby's on Jefferson Blvd, two blocks from the Top Ten Record Shop.  As the story is told, he went Code 5 (out to eat) - inexplicably within two minutes of the downtown motorcade shooting - and allegedly tried "repeatedly" to reach police headquarters.  Mentzel finally left (a half hour later) without finishing his lunch, remaining inside the cafeteria until after 1:05 pm. By coincidence, we are to believe Mentzel was the only patrol officer in the entire city who was given a lunch break within minutes of the shooting of the President, less than five miles from his patrol district. As soon as he got on the radio, he - and not Tippit - was then purportedly assigned to cover an accident at 10th & Davis, where he remained incommunicado until 1:22, not responding, either verbally or physically, to the Signal 19 "involving a police officer" in his very own district.  This is  abnormal behavior on an unusual day. The killing of a policeman that soon after the assassination would certainly be interpreted by law enforcement as related to Dealey Plaza, which would ensure a large police response to the area. 

What intrigues me about the Top Ten record shop is that the owner, J. W. "Dub" Stark, said that Oswald was waiting at the shop when Stark arrived that morning (7:30 am), bought a ticket to a Dick Clark Bandstand concert, and then left. The shop is located at 338 West Jefferson Blvd. and only a short distance (1-2 blocks) west of the Texas Theater, and within a mile of where the Oswalds lived.  As legend has it, blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughn visited the shop regularly in his youth (see the 1999 article by William Drenas).  An FBI memorandum documents a call from one John D. Whitten (who asked that his name not be revealed as it would "hurt his business") who told the FBI he'd heard that Oswald was in the Top Ten Record Shop twice on the morning of the assassination. The FBI dismissed the account of Oswald's visit to the record shop because Oswald was known to have been at work all morning (more evidence of John Armstong's premise).  On December 3, 1963 one John D. Whitten telephoned the FBI that he had “heard” that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the Top Ten Record Shop on the Morning of November 22, 1963. Oswald bought a ticket of some kind and left ... then, sometime later Oswald returned to the record shop and wanted to buy another ticket. At this time officer Tippit was in the store but it was apparently a coincidence.

More intriguing, the CIA officer initially assigned to the Oswald investigation was John Moss Whitten, a former senior officer in the Western Hemisphere division of the covert operations directorate.   However, amid some controversy (and suspicion), Richard Helms relieved him of his duties and reassigned James Angleton. In 1965 Whitten was moved sideways into an important post reviewing operations. He was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal in 1970, but never received further promotion; he took early retirement and moved to Austria.  In 1978, HSCA congressional investigators found him living in self-imposed exile and interviewed him in secret session.  Whitten told the HSCA that Angleton's involvement in the investigation of the assassination was "improper" but when he complained to Helms, he was removed.  Whitten believed that Angleton's attempts to sabotage the investigation were linked to his relationship with the Mafia and felt their investigation should be left to the FBI.  When Angleton took control of the investigation, Cuba became unimportant and CIA focus was shifted to Oswald's life in the Soviet Union ... whereas Whitten claimed that he would have concentrated his attention on CIA's JM/WAVE station.  "John Scelso" - a cover name for John Whitten – was interviewed by the HSCA in May 1978 but his identity was sensitive and not released until October 2002, when the CIA finally declassified his name (see "The Good Spy" by Jefferson Morley).  Judge John Tunheim, chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, stated that “the so-called ‘Scelso' deposition was perhaps the single most important documents we uncovered.”  According to Bill Simpich's "State Secret" (Chapter 6), Whitten was initially chosen by Richard Helms to coordinate the Agency's assassination investigation because:

The goal was to avoid investigation of the other three circles of intrigue in Mexico City that Whitten knew nothing about: The Tilton-Anderson anti-FPCC operation, the molehunt that was embedded within those very 10/10 memos, and the impersonation of Oswald himself by parties unknown. I think that Helms believed that if Whitten remained ignorant of those three events, he would be an effective advocate of the official story.

I wonder if this Whitten who called the FBI on December 3^rd was one in the same?

Gene

Ron and Paul

The source for the Pena link is found in "The Gun That Didn't Smoke” Part 3 (1997) by Walter F. Graf and Richard R. Bartholomew states the following:

Two of the gun mail-order houses Dodd's subcommittee was investigating were the ones from which Oswald allegedly ordered his Smith and Wesson .38 revolver (Seaport Traders of Los Angeles) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (Klein's of Chicago). Oswald ordered his pistol two days before Dodd's subcommittee began hearings on the matter on January 29, 1963. The subcommittee's sample statistics later showed a purchase in Texas made from Seaport Traders. One of the groups being investigated for firearm purchases was one whose members Oswald had in his address book, the American Nazi Party. One of the investigators looking into interstate firearms sales at this time was Manuel Pena, the Los Angeles police lieutenant who was later one of the pivotal officers investigating Robert Kennedy's assassination. It was Pena who traced Oswald's telescopic sight to a California gun shop.¹⁶³ And one of the primary culprits, robbing domestic manufacturers of profits, was the Mannlicher-Carcano.¹⁶⁴  

Reference 163 is (22H 528) which I believe is a Warren Commission Deposition Exhibit (Stovall Exhibit D)

Gene

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

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

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

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

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

Ron and Robert

The two men who had effective day-to-day control of the RFK investigation in 1968 were Pena and Hernandez. As day watch supervisor, Lieutenant Manuel Pena had to sign off and approve every report and decide who to re-interview and who to dismiss as the case was prepared for trial. This was the same Manny Pena who scrawled across several blank interview summaries relating to Sandra Serrano, "Polka-dot story of Serrano phony".  Pena spent sixteen years of his police career working in Robbery-Homicide, reaching the rank of lieutenant. Author Robert Kaiser recalled his nickname at LAPD was "Shoot 'em up Manny Pena" (he killed several people in the line of duty).  In November 1967, Pena ostensibly retired from the department and was to accept a position with the Agency for International Development (AID), a State Department aid agency that among other roles served as a regular cover identity for CIA operatives abroad (similar to "Pinky" Westbrook). He served as a "public safety adviser" and trained police forces of friendly dictatorships in sophisticated interrogation techniques to use on leftist insurgents and political dissidents. Pena joined the LAPD in 1941 and served in the Pacific with Naval Air Corps during World War II. He spent two years in Verdun as a criminal investigator for the Army during the Korean War, and spoke fluent French and Spanish.  During his two years in France, he worked with the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps and established contacts and friends in the intelligence community. He also built up strong connections with Interpol: a senior official in the Mexican government was his primary connection into Latin America.

FBI agent Roger LaJeunesse had known Pena for years and was the FBI liaison to the LAPD during the RFK case. LaJeunesse said Pena left the LAPD for a "special training unit" at CIA's Camp Peary base in Virginia. After nine weeks' training, he would be posted to Latin America, where he could use his Spanish. Pena had been performing special assignments for the CIA for a decade, mostly under AID cover. Pena's new career didn't last long after he had retired from LAPD. RFK announced that he would run for president on March 16, 1968 and Pena was back in Los Angeles by April.  Investigative reporter Fernando Faura encountered Pena on his return, noticing a familiar figure behind heavy horn-rim glasses and a black handlebar mustache, and telling him "Hey, Manny, I damn near didn't recognize you with that disguise".  Pena explained the AID job wasn't what he expected, so he quit and returned to Los Angeles. When the LAPD subsequently unveiled Special Unit Senator, the man put in charge of preparing the case for trial and supervising the day watch investigators was Manny Pena.  SUS Chief Robert Houghton wrote that Pena had "connections with intelligence agencies in several countries." In 1975, Pena's brother, a school principal, was interviewed for a local television show and, during the commercial break, mentioned how proud he was of his brother's service with the CIA, stating:  "Nobody's supposed to know about that … it's supposed to be secret."

Sergeant Enrique "Hank" Hernandez was Pena's chief interrogator, called on to administer polygraph tests to troublesome witnesses to determine if they were telling the truth. Whenever claims of conspiracy were sent to Hernandez, he bullied witnesses into retractions. Many of these tapes survive, documenting the mockery Hernandez's bullying tactics. Hernandez also led the investigation probing possible conspiracy and oversaw the background checks on Sirhan. The two LAPD officers had backgrounds in training Latin American security forces. SUS’s second-in-command, Hernandez, stated in his own resume that in l963 he had played a key role in the CIA’s “Unified Police Command” training in Latin America. Pena and Hernandez coordinated an investigation which not only threatened and discredited conspiracy witnesses, but by the department’s own admission destroyed 2,410 photographs of assassination evidence before Sirhan’s trial.  Their work with LAPD mirrors the infiltration and manipulation of the DPD five years earlier by the plotters and perpetrators of both Kennedy murders.

Gene

That is the same individual ... Manuel Pena (JFK, RFK).   He and Hernandez intimidated witnesses and controlled the RFK LAPD investigation.

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

Jim

Similar to Westbrook and Hill's roles, one of the names that surfaced (regarding transport of the Oswald revolver records and ballistics) is a fellow named Manuel Pena ... the same notorious LAPD officer (added to the force one month prior) who controlled the police investigation and intimidated witnesses after the RFK murder. 

Two mail-order houses were the center points from which Oswald ordered his Smith and Wesson .38 revolver (Seaport Traders of Los Angeles) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (Klein's of Chicago). Oswald ordered his pistol two days before Senator Christopher Dodd's subcommittee began hearings in January 1963. The subcommittee’s statistics later showed a purchase in Texas made from Seaport Traders. An "investigator" looking into interstate firearms sales at this time was Manuel Pena, who traced Oswald's telescopic sight to a California gun shop. 

Pena was the trusted courier of key evidence being supplied to the FBI ... and he was affiliated with the same mercenaries and cut-outs used by JM Wave  in various operations -- Saigon, El Salvador, Uruguay, Phoenix -- employed by cover with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In 1967, Pena "retired" from the LAPD, leaving to join AID, a cover for political operations in foreign countries.  Roger LeJeunesse, an FBI agent who had been involved in the RFK investigation, told William Turner that Pena had performed special assignments for the CIA for more than ten years.  After his retirement from the LAPD (and a public farewell dinner) in November of 1967, Pena inexplicably returned in April 1968 ...  just in time to head the LAPD group called Special Unit Senator that controlled the RFK investigation two months later. According to Shane O’Sullivan’s work on the RFK murder, Pena had been on detached duty with the CIA in Central and South America. Pena has an odd background; he served in the Navy during WWII and in the Army during the Korean War, and was a Counterintelligence officer in France.  He spoke French and Spanish, and had connections with various intelligence agencies in several countries.

As posted previously, I don't think Pena's involvement is simply coincidence ... the same "game plan" (use of police to control evidence and incriminate) was employed in both murders.

Gene

Paul B.

Not much exists on Westbrook and Hill.  I'd start with the following: "Gerald Hill and the Murder of JD Tippit" by H. Yusuf (2013) and Just Another Day at the Office" by Ian Griggs in The Fourth Decade (1996).  These two DPD officers worked in a Personnel Group which ostensibly performed background investigations of DPD applicants and the investigation of personnel complaints.  Westbrook's role on the day of the assassination was described in "Just Another Day at the Office".  He has a brief one page Warren testimony.

Gene

Good posts, and excellent dialogue:

1. First, I don't recall who, but they pointed out that an extreme police response was prompted by something that was inverse to its level (i.e. a report that someone entered the Theatre without paying).   her reason for the DPD response at that juncture.   Quite interesting.
2. Second, William Westbrook and Gerald HiIl are guilty as sin ... sorry to be judge/jury here, but their background, behavior and influence are way too sinister
3. Third, Ms. Postal was caught in between a rock and a hard spot ... she witnessed the duplicity firs-hand and was likely fearful about it her entire life.   
4. Last, the chain of custody for that jacket (alone) makes the Tippit story incredulous, and is very sloppy/loose ... it would be thrown out of court in a fair trial. It also allegedly had a 4th wallet in it (which may have been placed by Warren Reynolds)  

Gene

PS. my favorite word in the language is 'facetious'

Jim

There were confusing accounts of both the color and size of what came to be CE-162. The references to the jacket that assassination weekend - including the DPD radio transmission announcing its discovery - called it white.  CE 162, the garment given the Warren Commission is officially a "gray zipper jacket." Researcher Larry Ray Harris stated:

"I have held this jacket at the National Archives and it is gray; conceivably someone might call it 'light gray', but no one - least of all trained policemen - would call it white or even off-white."

A white jacket, apparently discarded by the Tippit shooter, was found on a nearby parking lot by a policeman (interestingly, a fourth Oswald wallet was alleged to have been found in the discarded jacket). But a gray jacket was later turned over to the Warren Commission and bore a laundry tag that indicates it was sold at the Philadelphia Strawbridge & Clothier store (a store that I visited many times in my youth).  What follows below is from a November 2008 EF posting by Jack White, who quoted from "The Other Murder - The Death of Officer Tippit Revisited" by Larry Ray Harris. Reports detailing interrogations of Oswald do not mention a jacket; nothing in the official record indicates he was questioned about or confronted with the white jacket by his hosts (as he was confronted with the infamous 'backyard photos' of himself holding a rifle). Only one of six witnesses shown the gray CE 162 stated positively it was the one worn by Tippit's killer; their descriptions of the gunman's jacket varied, and in several instances were significantly inconsistent with the Commission garment. Oswald's landlady could not identify CE 162 as the one he was wearing when he left his room around 1pm.  A commercial laundry tag stapled in the jacket was never traced to Oswald. Unpublished FBI reports disclose an investigation requested by the Warren Commission in which all dry-cleaning firms in the Dallas/Fort Worth and New Orleans areas were contacted, without identifying the one which laundered the garment. The Warren report didn't mention the laundry tag or the unsuccessful effort to trace it.  In retrospect, there appears no credible evidence that CE 162 either belonged to Oswald or was abandoned by him near Tenth & Patton.

Police allegedly found a white jacket laying on a parking lot behind a nearby gas station. The jacket eventually turned over by police to the FBI and Warren Commission was gray. Captain Westbrook is credited with finding Oswald’s questionable Jacket ... yet he cannot remember the name of the officer who pointed the jacket out to him, nor do his initials appear on the jacket. But Westbrook later testified he didn't find it, and there is no report from the "unknown" officer who called the dispatcher to report this discovery. When interviewed in 1978, this officer responded tersely (when asked the color of the jacket):

"That information might be something they don't want given out."

Any serious consideration of the origins and provenance of the jacket lead quickly to Captain William Westbrook and Sargent Gerald Hill, who appear to be controlling the post-assassination evidence closely and ensuring the incrimination of Oswald (very quickly) in the immediate 90 minutes after the murder.  Hill (and friends) appear to be planting evidence along the path from the rooming house to the Texas Theatre, and Westbrook is conveniently stumbling over it all the way, up until Harvey’s capture.  The Warren Report stated that this jacket (Commission Exhibit 162) belonged to Oswald and was discarded by him as he fled the scene of Tippit's death.  However, CE 162 was size 'medium', but all of Oswald's other clothing was size 'small'. Dallas Police bragged all weekend about each new development - however circumstantial or tentative - in the case against Oswald. But they were strangely silent about the jacket, nor is it mentioned anywhere in the many police reports published in the WC’s appendices.  

Gene