David Andrews

Visual FX breakdown reel from the movie Jackie linked below. "Warning: Contents are graphic." And debatable.

(Re: the article link posted by Doug Caddy above:) Was Roy Cohn a "genuine anticommunist." or an opportunist? Could he have been blackmailed into the anticommunist crusade through the same type sexuality-based extortion that Cohn/Rothstein described? Not that Cohn deserves any excuses.

I would say that a dozen years later Walker couldn't get arrested in Dallas, but...

Once upon a time, I admired The Man who Knew Too Much very much, and dreamed of buying the option so I could write and pitch a screenplay. (A thankless and unprofitable task in the Mockingbird universe ruled by Bob Baer.) I still give the book the benefit of the doubt, as I do Richard Case Nagell, his obfuscations notwithstanding. However, the portrayal of Oswald in the book is infuriatingly vague, and at odds with some of the later scholarship on Oswald in Mexico City, Oswald contra Kostikov, etc. That's a timeline and a set of intentions that needs to be aligned with later research. Dick Russell: Who was Oswald? Did Nagell really confer with Raul and Fidel in Cuba because of him?

Delete, please - posted incorrectly.

As Bob Dylan might say: "How many rogues must a man walk down Before he discovers a plan? How man rogues does it take till he knows Not to blame it on the Ku Klux Klan? How many rogues will it take till he sees That it's CIA to the last man?" The answer, my friend....

As Christopher Walken might say, "You...you got a lotta rogues here, fella. I mean -- a lotta rogues."

There were a few rogues at CIA who worked in a plot to kill JFK. There were a few rogues in Army Intelligence who worked in a plot to kill JFK. There were a few rogues in the Mob who worked in a plot to kill JFK. As Al Pacino might say, "You got a LOTTA ROGUES, FELLA! We are UP TO OUR @#% IN ROGUES, HERE!"

Wait - were LBJ, Cord Meyer, and William Harvey civilians? My remark was to qualify a possible explanation: Sturgis spoke (if it happened this way) for Morales to give Morales deniability. Who the hell would give the world to Frank Sturgis? Only notoriety saved him from a hole in the head.

Detectives Rothstein and Rosenthal appear quite frequently in the past threads on Sturgis on this Forum.

I believe that Hunt's confession admits that he was involved in Dallas, but totally denies the actual circumstances and drags in a combination of plausible villains, some of whom were involved in ways misrepresented by Hunt. I think the line of descent here is: Dulles - Helms/Harvey - Hunt/Morales.

One would think that Sturgis would be subordinate to Hunt, as in the past, and not empowered to offer deals to a CIA officer. An explanation is that Sturgis is now Morales's operative, and Morales left the room so that Sturgis could communicate the offer, giving Morales deniability. Apparently alliances with Sturgis would have been fluid, and Sturgis would again be Hunt's soldier in the Watergate break-in period. A more plausible explanation would be that this incident did not occur, or did not happen as reported, and that Hunt went to work on the Dallas 1963 project under Dick Helms' authority.

Being on the payroll implies conditional ownership. Ask Alex Rorke. However, an agent is - by the CIA book - strictly a foreign national. Because, of course, CIA does not operate domestically. I prefer the word operative. I don't know what the Company prefers.

Frank Sturgis was a gun for hire. Anti-communism paid the best, and he absorbed the Ideology. Why do you think Sturgis fought beside Castro? Because the CIA backed Castro over Batista until Castro rejected us for the Soviets. Where's Gerry Hemming's paperwork? Roy Hargraves'? Bill Seymour's? Nonetheless -- all paymastered by...the company. Like I said, Fiorini was no CIA officer. He didn't need no stinkin' paperwork.

I was speaking generally, Doug. I understand that the ops at the hotel were arrested much later, after police and press investigation. I am not knocking Marita's deposition per se, only asking Jim Hargrove what he makes of the "Oswald" described on the Miami-Dallas car trip, the dates of which Marita is conspicuously vague about.

Paul: Sturgis is arrested at the Watergate with Howard Hunt and James McCord, plus Cuban CIA flunkies. Of course Sturgis/Fiorini isn't a CIA officer, but how is he not "company"?

So, an "Oswald" who drove up from Miami and stayed in a motel with Lorenz, Pedro Diaz Lanz, Orlando Bosch and Frank Sturgis. Jim Hargrove?

Try The Last Investigation instead.

Why isn't David Talbot out there like these guys? His book is more recent.

I dunno. We're still in James Ellroy country with that sensationalistic chapter from Colossus. I had thought it was Officer Hargis who caught the blood spray and not Martin, and there is dispute as to whether Jayne Mansfield was actually decapitated in her accident. Little errors in tangential matters can show tendencies in a writer. I was thinking of whether anyone had dug up Liggett-related news items from his arrest, but I suppose that those would be uncertainly dependable in their own way.

Can anybody find out about the later murder-arson arrest?

It was what it was, buddy. I enjoyed the parts what was worthwhile.

Actually, I do agree somewhat with Joe. Before its last three, notorious episodes, TMWKK was a nice, atmospheric compendium of footage on different theories of the assassination, but you had to have the knowledge to separate the useful stuff from the stuff that was merely entertaining and provocative. I understand, though, your complaint about mixing reliable experts with unreliable "witnesses." At the time of release (which was when Bill O'Reilly was arguably a liberal and an investigative journalist), those original episodes seemed above any other JFK reporting on TV. TMWKK brought Gordon Arnold out of the shadows so that everybody could judge his story, and exposed people to Tom Wilson's graphics analysis. If I'm not mistaken, TMWKK was the show that got Dr. Evalea Glanges to go on camera about seeing the frontal bullet hole in the windshield. However, it was lightweight in CIA, JSOC, and the anti-Castro Cubans. At least (as far as I remember) it didn't stoop to rubbing James Files and his outlandish cast of characters in our faces - or am I remembering incorrectly? If I'm wrong, and Files and Dankbaar and Chauncey Holt were skulking around the project, then TMWKK slips another few notches. We could also credit TMWKK with providing high-visibility support to Oliver Stone's JFK, in the years when most US assassination documentaries were intent on tearing Stone down a la Garrison.

I'm thinking of his taking the McWatters bus, getting off when delayed (and ahead of apprehension, since that bus was headed back into Dealey Plaza), then taking the taxi to Oak Cliff, and the report that he got out past the rooming house and doubled back on foot. Plus his reported looking for contacts at the theater. Is the dollar bill half substantiated among his effects?

I would add: No serious interest in Marxist activities in US after defection, yet association with US intel-friendly figures such as George DeMohrenschildt, Michael Paine, Ruth Paine, Guy Banister, David Ferrie. Tradecraft-like behavior after leaving Dealey Plaza and while in the Texas Theater. Surely Jim's list could be doubled