Bill Simpich

David, my belief is that the 10/10/63 memos were a ploy to smoke out the Oswald imposters of 9/28 and 10/1. It's not impossible that these memos are part of an ongoing hunt for a Soviet bloc mole as well - but I would need evidence of that - which I haven't seen.

Paul and Jean, I do have an update on LITAMIL-3. New releases show that LITAMIL-3 is 201-290894, and that 201-290894 is Ricardo Vidal Dominguez. We have created a pseudonym page for him at MFF. He was an informant within the Cuban diplomatic corps. Jean, I am moving more towards the belief that Oswald was at least trying to get himself in the FBI's orbit in the last three months of his life. I can't get over the .way he sought out FBI agent John Quigley after his New Orleans arrest of 8/9/63 and put himself out there as a source of information. Oswald then seemed to pick up on Jim Hosty's 9/10/63 report about Oswald's long-distance mail relationship with the CPUSA and the FPCC, and then the Oswald figure shows up in the Cuban consulate later that month brandishing membership cards in both the CPUSA and the FPCC. I believe that Oswald himself wrote the Nov. 9 letter to the Soviet embassy complaining about the FBI (and knowing the FBI would intercept it!) and appeared at the Dallas FBI office in mid-November with a note complaining about Jim Hosty "bothering his wife". Matt, I agree that Fedora and Golitsyn are very important personages - Mary Ferrell created a decent index on Fedora and we created a good page on Golitsyn based on his cryptonyms DS-2137 and AELADLE - but I haven't seen any indication that Fedora or Golitsyn were involved in the Mexico City events of Sept-Oct. 1963.

Following up on my previous post...Here's my take on why Oswald was taken off the security watch list the day before the 10/10/63 memos went out. From Chapter 5 of State Secret: The day before the 10/10 twin memos were created, Gheesling took Oswald off the security watch list after talking with Lambert Anderson. Both Gheesling and Anderson had signed off on a watch list document placed in Oswald’s file on August 13 after Oswald was arrested in New Orleans for breach of the peace while leafleting for the FPCC. Gheesling wrote that once he learned that Oswald was arrested, he told Anderson that Oswald should be taken off the security watch list because he had inadvertently forgot to remove his name after Oswald’s return from the Soviet Union.[ 38 ] Anderson confirmed that someone had told him that the security flash had been removed because it was no longer necessary once Oswald had returned to the United States. One immediate problem with both of their stories is that their boss Bill Branigan wrote on 11/22/63 that the very reason Oswald was put on the watch list was to ensure that “any subsequent arrest in the U.S. was brought to our attention”. So why take him off the list after he was arrested? An even more intriguing problem, with Gheesling’s story in particular, is that he wrote that he removed Oswald’s name from the security watch list on October 9 right after he learned about Oswald’s arrest. Gheesling’s explanation flies in the face of the aforementioned watch list document showing that both Gheesling and Anderson knew about Oswald’s arrest around August 13. Gheesling’s name and initials “wmg” are also on other memos discussing Oswald and his arrest dated August 21 and August 23. The probable solution is that Anderson got wind of a tip. On October 8 Anderson received a Sept. 24 report of Oswald’s arrest, which revealed Oswald’s request to speak with an FBI agent and share quite a bit of information while in jail.[ 39 ] My conclusion is that on the 9th the two men came to some kind of mutual understanding that Oswald was helpful to the FBI, and saw no reason to keep him on the security watch list. “Anderson” of “Nat. Int.” is written on the watch list file, underneath the date of October 10. As a result, no alarms went off at the FBI when the 10/8/63 memo about Oswald being in Mexico City and trying to contact Kostikov arrived on the 10th. Any alarm that might have sounded about Oswald being a security risk appears to have been deliberately turned off by Gheesling and Anderson. The intriguing question is whether Gheesling and Anderson took Oswald off the security watch list based solely on the report about Oswald's cooperation with the FBI, or whether they had also been tipped off that a molehunt was about to begin with Oswald's file. It's not impossible that both factors may have been in play - but my current thinking is that FBI men Gheesling and Anderson didn't know about the CIA's molehunt.

Jean and Gerry, take a look at what happened when the security flash was still on in September, 1963... Hosty’s observations about Oswald in Dallas turned into membership cards in Mexico City "Keep in mind that (FBI agent Jim Hosty, in charge of Oswald's file) told (Lambert Anderson of the FBI's Nationalities Intelligence division) on September 13 that Oswald had a subscription to the newspaper of the Communist Party, USA, and that he had a background of leafleting on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. We see the follow-up three days later, on September 16, when John Tilton of the CIA’s Cuban operations at JMWAVE in Miami asked Anderson to put together a joint agency operation designed to “plant deceptive information which might embarrass the (FPCC) in areas where it does have some support”.[ 3 ] We will see that Oswald planted some deceptive information in Mexico City - he showed both his authentic FPCC membership card and his fake Communist Party card to Cuban consulate secretary Silvia Duran. On the 16th, FBI records indicate that Oswald’s security flash file with the FBI's Identification Division was reviewed, with Anderson’s name written alongside.[ 4 ] On the 16th, Anderson’s name is written on Oswald’s security flash – although no document entered the file, it appears to be related to Tilton’s request for help that same day. Tilton had been involved with the DRE just days earlier and may have heard from Anderson about Oswald’s arrest. On the 26th, Anderson confirmed that the anti-FPCC project was going forward, with plans to distribute “propaganda in the name of the committee”. This joint agency operation was launched right during the Cuba division’s project to recruit Cuban consul Azcue in Mexico City. As Azcue seemed sympathetic to Cuban exiles, he seemed like he might be ripe for recruitment. The problem was that Azcue was due to return to Cuba in a matter of days." What happened the next day, on Sept. 27, is that the "Oswald figure" appeared before Azcue and tried to get him to bend the rules to give him an "instant visa" to Cuba, similar to his successful attempt at getting an "instant visa" from consul Richard Snyder at the American embassy in Moscow back in 1959. I believe that the "Oswald figure" showed his FPCC credentials to Azcue in an effort to provoke Azcue to see how he would respond - keep in mind that LITAMIL-3, an American agent, had just tried days earlier to convince Azcue to defect to the Americans. I believe one objective was to get the Cubans to talk over their phone lines and in their offices that were bugged by the Americans. The bigger objective may have been to assist Tilton and Anderson in their "joint agency operation designed to “plant deceptive information which might embarrass the (FPCC) in areas where it does have some support”. Or maybe someone got wind of the anti-FPCC operation and piggy-backed a new operation on top of it that included the impersonation of Oswald. What "areas" did the FPCC have "some support"? Here, among the Cubans in Mexico. The Oswald figure's provocative behavior with Azcue, which got him thrown out of the office, had to give the FPCC a black eye in the eyes of the employees at the Cuban consulate. The Oswald figure was an attractive prospect – he represented a very rare re-defector, hoping to go to Cuba and then return once again to the Soviet Union. His activities and contacts were a counterintelligence bonanza. So Tilton and Anderson have got a deceptive anti-FPCC operation going, which appears to have been piggy-backed on top of the events that brought the Oswald figure down to Mexico. Doesn't it make sense that if Tilton and Anderson wanted to keep their deceptive anti-FPCC operation going, they may have wanted to dim the attention on Oswald? Gheesling was a major supervisor, one of a handful that answered directly to Hoover. Gheesling had the power to turn off the flash, which he OK'd with Anderson on October 9. Gheesling was suspended by Hoover after 11/22 for turning off the flash. But why did he do it? I will offer my thinking in the next post.

Matt, I appreciate you engaging me on the topic, but I have to ask - have you read my book State Secret? Chapter 5 centers on what I call the Mexico City molehunt of 1963, chapters 3 and 4 set the context, and the last two chapters touch on the aftermath. I would ask you to at least read Chapters 3-5. I do want feedback! If you've read it, great, but I don't think there's anything "oblique" about what I wrote. Also, I'm very sensitive to not taking over other people's threads. Jean and Sandy's instincts are good about setting up a new thread on the setting up and removal of the FBI flash, which arguably is related to the molehunt but deserves its own analysis. McCord also deserves his own thread. John Newman has not finished his analysis of McCord, has written almost nothing on the subject, and I think it's best not to speculate on his views until he weighs in on the topic.

I should add that the molehunt was conducted after Oswald was impersonated on 9/28 and 10/1. Silvia Duran was also impersonated on 9/28 in the same taped phone conversation as "Oswald", which supposedly happened at the Cuban consulate, which was closed on Saturday, 9/28. Duran made it clear that she never saw Oswald after 9/27. There would naturally be a big reaction after the impersonation of Oswald and Duran. Note the absence of any notes about Oswald until October 8 and then the twin messages of 10/10, both filled with different descriptions of Oswald guaranteed to get people talking. What happened in the interim between 9/28 and 10/8? Once the station found out that the man who made the 9/28 call and the 10/1 calls identified himself as Lee Oswald, Phillips needed to know about it. The station would not want to leave a paper trail regarding this sensitive penetration matter that might be read by a CIA penetrator. On the night of October 1, a pouch was sent to Phillips at Headquarters. The CIA procedure at the time was that these pouched transmittals left no paper trail, other than to say that the items had been sent from point A to point B. The pouch probably contained a transcript of the October 1 calls from the man calling himself Oswald. You have to wonder if it also contained a copy of the tape. Many years later, Phillips told a very elaborate lie, claiming that he was in Mexico City working with the Soviet desk in preparing the draft of a response to the October 1 phone calls. He also claimed that the Soviet desk officer was lazy. That didn’t happen – even Goodpasture said Phillips’ story was not true. It is well-documented that Phillips was away from the Mexico City station at CIA HQ in Washington and then JMWAVE station in Miami between September 30 to October 9. On October 7, Phillips consulted with key people from the CIA's forward base on Cuba office like John Tilton, who triggered this whole situation as the architect of a joint agency anti-FPCC operation aimed at Mexico in September 1963. The molehunt was a direct result of the impersonation of Oswald and Duran. The CIA needed to see if it could smoke out how these fake phone calls were set up. When this documentation was brought to light, Phillips was forced to backtrack and fall back to a weak excuse that his memory was mistaken, and that he had not played any role in preparing this draft memo that was issued on October 8. The October 8 memo set the stage for the October 10 twin memos.

The whole point was to create a paper trail entangling CIA, FBI, ONI, and State Dept with a lot of knowledge about Oswald shortly before 11/22. Then, after the assassination, the employees of these agencies would go into a reflexive cover-up to protect their agencies, their careers, and the paycheck that takes care of their families. How much of the actual Mexico City documents made it to the Warren Commission? Very few of them. What they got were paraphrases. The actual documents were not made public until after the JFK Records Act forced them out in the 90s - and the JFK Records Act would never have passed without Oliver Stone's movie JFK!

Greg Doudna wrote: "In that interpretation that Givens was a real witness to a 6th floor shooter at the time of the shots, at 12:30 pm, how and when in that interpretation does Givens make his exit from the TSBD without anyone seeing him? At the point the building was sealed by officers minutes later Givens is not in the building." Greg, look at TSBD employee Edward Shields' testimony to the Warren Commission: "Did you see the motorcade?" "I sure did." "Where were you when you saw it?" "I was just standing right around there at Mullendorf's Cafe." "At what address?" "At Record and Main." "Who was with you?" "Givens". "Did you hear the shots?" "Yes, I heard the shots." Shields said that Givens had been there with him since about noon time that day. Givens' story matched with Shields.

Richard, Thayer Waldo is an extremely strong case about a journalist who was driven out of the USA - you ignored his case because you wanted to tout your case about Eddie Piper and the girl on the stairs, an important story that belongs on another thread. Even though you wrote that you agreed with me about Charles Givens, you used this thread to make your case about Eddie Piper. I was reluctant to join this thread because I wanted to avoid hijacking this thread. William is protective of his thread and I understand that. I suggest that we treat each other with respect and agree to disagree.

William, My apologies if I came across the wrong way, let alone giving Pat the plaudits instead of you. No one has ever accused me of being sagacious, and I don't like anyone who acts like a big shot. I didn't want to hijack your thread, and almost started my own. I am a big fan of Belzer, and I was avoiding being critical of his book or your thread. My thinking is that it is best to lead with 5-10 strong and illustrative cases. Most of us cannot track more than 10 stories. I agree with what Pat said at the beginning of this thread - citing a few strong cases is far better than stringing together a lot of uncertain ones. I would put George deM's "suicide" in the uncertain category as well as many of the cases in Belzer's book even though most of them appeal to me emotionally. I think the manner of the journalist deaths between 1963-1965 offers strong evidence. Similarly, I think the Giancana and Rosselli deaths are strong evidence because of the manner of their deaths and the events surrounding it. My two cents: If we analyzed the other 40 cases in Belzer's book on this thread, we would sink into a sea of uncertainty simply because of the weight of the details. Each of these cases has to be analyzed on its own merits, and that takes a long time. Reasonable people disagree on the weight of evidence. I suggest a path that reduces the number of ambiguities. If you want to convince someone, lead with your strongest approach.

I think the journalists like Koethe, Hunter, Waldo, Kilgallen and Smith who were effectively "taken out" of this case deserve the highest level of scrutiny. Disagreeing about the importance of witnesses is inevitable, and this is where Belzer's book "Hit LIst" encounters the greatest difficulty - in achieving even a rough consensus about the important witnesses that were taken out of the JFK case. Besides the focus on journalists, Belzer's list offers a second valuable thread when it focuses on witnesses who were violently killed when they were about to testify - as Pat Speer pointed out at the beginning of this thread, people like Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli. I would add Gary Underhill and Bill Sullivan to this list - I don't think anyone ever looked at the killing of Sullivan hard enough - it would be interesting to interview the young boy who shot Sullivan at this late date if he is still alive. Pat mentioned that he heard Senator Gary Hart "speak on the assassination.... he stressed the point that the members of the Church Committee were on the fence as to whether JFK's death was a conspiracy until their witnesses started dying. And then they knew. So, in short, a mysterious deaths list is interesting, and potentially valuable, but only to the extent it's been edited." These two threads - journalists that have been "taken out" of the JFK case, and witnesses who die violent deaths at the verge of providing testimony - appear to be the most valuable paths to make a major priority.

Richard - all the African American witnesses such as Charles Givens and Eddie Piper were treated brutally by the authorities and leaned on to change their stories. And, yes, Waldo's story does refer to a "Negro janitor", a minor nit in a sea of disinformation thrust upon him by Mike and Pat Howard. But there's no question that the story told to Thayer Waldo was designed to incriminate Givens, who had a history of gambling and problems with the law - so much os that there was an APB out for Givens an hour after the assassination. Other than the words "Negro janitor", what did Piper have to do with the story? Nothing. Piper never claimed that Oswald was on the sixth floor during the lunch hour. Only Givens did. Go back and read the history. The entire saga of Thayer Waldo and the Howard brothers revolved around Charles Givens. Not Piper. Givens' November aiibi for Oswald had to be reversed. After the February story broke, Givens buckled and changed his story. And the Warren Commission adopted it as key evidence incriminating Oswald. Givens wasn't even allowed to testify before the Warren Commission. And rest assured that the Howard brothers never did, even though the Warren Commission knew all about their story and knew that Waldo was furious at them. Don't rely on a tiny item like "Negro janitor" in a made-up story that ruined Waldo's career. Look at the rich detail provided by Don Thomas in the previous post.

Richard, Yes, but the focus was on a particular "Negro" who had been picked up previously for gambling - Charles Givens, the only man alleged to have seen Oswald on the sixth floor during lunch hour. Let Don Thomas set the stage, and a long look at Roy Truly, Charles Givens and Mike Howard in particular. I have highlighted in bold below the most important phrases for the busy reader: To place this incident in proper perspective it is necessary to understand that there were two lunchrooms in the Book Depository. Texas was a part of the deep south and even the Mayor of Dallas acknowledged that the city had a reputation as the “Hate capitol of Dixie.” (WR41) The building superintendent, Roy Truly, told writer William Manchester (Manchester, pp. 132-133), "Except for my niggers the boys are conservative, like me -- like most Texans." The domino room. (Click to enlarge) Truly further stated that he disliked John F. Kennedy because he was a “race-mixer” (Manchester, pp. 49, 132-133). The main lunch room on the second floor had soft drink and snack machines. The first floor lunch room was used by the minority employees: blacks, Mexican-Americans, a mentally handicapped man, and the depository’s one Marxist, Lee Harvey Oswald. Along with unionization, the civil rights movement was a major issue for the American Communist Party in the 1960’s. Because he ate there regularly and because there were only a handful of minority employees in the Book Depository, it would have been easy for Oswald to guess who had eaten lunch there. But on the other hand it would also have been easy for the Warren Commission to determine who actually had or had not eaten their lunch in the Domino room that day and by the process of elimination test Oswald’s alibi. But the Warren Commission knew that such a test was problematic for the official version. That is because another black employee, Charles L. Givens, had seen Oswald eating his lunch there. In a statement given to the FBI a few hours after the assassination, Givens recounted that he had seen Oswald eating his lunch by himself, reading a newspaper, in the first floor lunchroom (CD 5, p. 329 - see also Meagher [1971] for discussion). Among the false claims made by Bugliosi in his effort to convince us that Oswald shot Kennedy is that he was the only employee to “flee” the Texas School Book Depository following the shooting. The truth is that several employees left the building (affidavits in CE 1381), including the aforementioned Charles Givens. In fact, the Dallas police put out an APB to have Givens picked up for questioning about the shooting. Givens was the Warren Commission’s star witness. He alone, among all of the witnesses, is supposed to have seen Oswald on the sixth floor of the Book Depository during the lunch hour. But the truth is, contrary to Bugliosi’s account, Givens never testified to the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission flew ninety-four Dallas witnesses to Washington D.C. to testify before them. Yet, Givens, the only witness who could positively identify Oswald and place him at the scene of the crime at or near the time of the shooting, was not among them. Givens was deposed in private in Dallas by a single Warren Commission lawyer. The problem with Givens’ deposition was spelled out in an article published in the Texas Observer by researcher Sylvia Meagher (Meagher in Texas Observer, 13 August 1971. The issue also contains a rebuttal of sorts by David Belin). Givens did indeed state in April 1964 that he had seen Oswald on the sixth floor at lunchtime on the day of the assassination. Hence, Givens gave two accounts of Oswald’s whereabouts, one in November that tended to corroborate Oswald’s alibi, and a second in April that tended to incriminate him. Yet his statement in November contained no mention of Oswald on the sixth floor, while the statement in April contains a denial that he had seen Oswald elsewhere. It is in that light that the special handling of Givens by the Warren Commission staff is seen as manipulative; that and the fact that the Warren Report contains no mention of Givens’ statement to the FBI. Meagher thus concluded that Givens’ April deposition was false, to which Bugliosi retorts, “But why would Givens make up such a story? What would be in it for him? The conspiracy theorists don’t expressly say.” But of course they do expressly say. Meagher pointed out that because of his troubles with the law, reportedly charges of gambling and drug use, Givens, an ex-convict, a black man in a southern town, was vulnerable to pressure from the authorities to support, or at least not contradict, the official line. Moreover, police Lieutenant Jack Revill told the FBI that Givens would change his story for money (CD 735, pp. 296-297). (Note: See Mike Howard's story about the unknown African American man, who had been picked up for gambling.) Bugliosi (Reclaiming History, pp. 822-823) dismisses the account in the FBI report as one that Givens “supposedly” told, implying that the FBI agents report was false. But why would the FBI make up such a story? What could be in it for them? Bugliosi doesn’t expressly say, only arguing that their account must have been “garbled.” But it is Bugliosi’s account of events that is garbled. To contradict the FBI report Bugliosi states, “Indeed, we can virtually be certain that he [Givens] did not tell the FBI that he saw Oswald around 11:50 a.m. in the domino room on the first floor, or if he did he was incorrect. His testimony to the Warren Commission that he saw Oswald on the fifth floor around that very time is supported by three other witnesses, -- Arce, Lovelady and Williams.” Aside from the fact that Givens never gave any testimony to the Warren Commission is the fact that Givens stated in his deposition that the encounter with Oswald on the fifth floor took place around 11:30 (CD 5 p. 329), not 11:50. Thus, there is no time contradiction among the accounts, only to Bugliosi’s version of events. Bugliosi exploits the differing time estimates to garble the accounts when it is the sequence of events that is important. In Givens’ accounts, he saw Oswald three separate times over a span of about 25 minutes. Junior Jarman, Oswald’s direct supervisor, told the FBI that he saw Oswald leave the first floor, boarding one of the freight elevators with his order pad in hand, presumably to fill an order for books, at approximately 11:30 (CD 5, p. 334). Charles Givens was part of a four (not six) man work crew that was laying plywood flooring on the sixth floor that morning. The crew broke for lunch early because the President’s motorcade was expected to pass the building during the noon hour. Although the four varied widely in their guesstimates as to the actual time that they broke for lunch, all four men recounted seeing Oswald on the fifth floor on their way down in the freight elevators, some recalling that Oswald had shouted to them to send one of the elevators back up. This was the last undisputed sighting of Oswald prior to the assassination. The estimated time of this event differed among the work crew from close to 11:30 to close to 12:00, but all agreed that it was before noon. Junior Jarman recalled that the four man crew arrived on the first floor for lunch at 11:45 (police report reprinted in Bonner, p. 286). Bugliosi estimates 11:50. The front entrance of the Book Depository where Carolyn Arnold reported seeing Oswald minutes before the assassination. (Click for larger view) The obvious question is, did Oswald then go up to the sixth floor in accordance with the official mythology, or did he go down to the first floor to eat lunch in accordance with his alibi. Givens was only one of four witnesses who stated that they saw Oswald on the first floor during lunchtime. William Shelley, the supervisor of the floor laying crew testified "I do remember seeing him when I came down to eat lunch about 10 to 12." (6WH328), as did the building's janitor Eddie Piper who said he saw Oswald "just at 12 o'clock." Bugliosi dismisses their accounts by saying that they may have seen Oswald on the first floor but it was probably earlier in the day, ignoring Piper’s statement that he had actually spoken to Oswald about eating lunch (6WH383)! Another important witness was Carolyn Arnold who told the FBI on November 26 that she left the building around 12:15 to go out to lunch with some of the other secretaries. Arriving on the sidewalk in front of the building they found a crowd gathering to await the President. The secretaries decided to join the crowd. While awaiting the President’s passage, Arnold recounted that she looked back through the glass door of the building and saw Oswald. This would have been around five or ten minutes before the assassination. When asked if she was absolutely certain that it was Oswald, she could only respond that she felt it was (CD 5, p. 41) [2]. Subsequently however, Arnold would claim that the FBI had misquoted her and that she had actually seen Oswald on the second floor, not the first (Summers, p.60). It seems more likely that time had eroded her memory and it was she not the FBI agents who had mis-remembered. Psychological studies on eyewitness accounts demonstrate that they become less reliable over time and that witnesses will often revise their accounts to bring them in accord with the accounts of others as if it were their own memories [3]. Hence, the accounts closest to the event before a witness can compare their memories to others that are the most reliable.... ... The Warren Commission could not allow Williams to admit that he was in the snipers nest and still use Givens' deposition to place Oswald at the scene of the crime, and there is a further problem. How did Williams and Givens fail to run into one another, and to the assassin whoever he was, during their time on the sixth floor if the Warren Commission’s version is true - and when exactly was Givens on the sixth floor? Central to this issue is Givens' concept of time. In the interview with FBI agents Griffen and Odum on the late afternoon of the assassination Givens maintained that the work crew left the sixth floor at about 11:30 to go to lunch (CD 5, p. 329). The other work crew members estimated the time as much later: Lovelady said 11:50; (CD 5, p. 332) Arce thought "5 to twelve;" (6WH364). Williams testified that the crew normally knocked off for lunch about five minutes before noon but on this day because of the motorcade they left about 5 to 10 minutes earlier than usual (3WH167). What is at issue is the time of Givens' return to the sixth floor. Givens' testified, "Well, I would say it was about 5 minutes to 12, then because it was --" (6WH351) Commission counsel David Belin cut Given's off before he could explain why he thought it was 5 minutes to 12. Givens claimed that he ate his lunch on the sidewalk out in front of the Book Depository along with Junior Jarman and the other work crew members. Givens said, "When did I eat lunch? I ate lunch after. Let's see, no; I ate lunch before I went up there, because I stood outside and ate my sandwich standing out there...standing in front of the building." (6WH351) Furthermore, Givens also testified that before lunch he visited the restroom. If Givens ate his lunch out front before he went up to the sixth floor, then it would seem to have been much later than 11:55 when he went back up into the building. This reconstruction receives corroboration in the statements made to the police by Junior Jarman. "At about 11:45 a.m. all of the employees who were working on the 6th floor came downstairs and we were all out on the street at about 12:00 o'clock noon. These employees were: Bill Shelley, Charles Givens, Billy Lovelady, Bonnie Ray (last name not known) and a Spanish boy (his name I cannot remember)." (Jarman police report reprinted in Bonner, p. 286) The Spanish boy was Danny Arce and he also testified that Givens was with them on the sidewalk out front at noontime. (6WH365) It is further significant that the other black employees, Jarman and Norman, on finishing their lunches decided that they would have a better view of the motorcade from the upper floors of the building and went up to the fifth floor. Was this when Givens also went upstairs, going to the sixth floor to retrieve his cigarettes? In any event, the weight of the evidence is that it was some time after noon that Givens went up to the sixth floor. It is in this context that one must consider the APB for Givens and the resulting questioning by the police and FBI. The Dallas Police had learned within about an hour of the shooting that Charles Givens had seen the assassin. Inspector Herbert Sawyer put out the APB and is heard to say over the police radio at 1:46 PM, "We have a man that we would like to have you pass this on to CID to see if we can pick this man up. Charles Douglas Givens, G-I-V-E-N-S. He is a colored male, 37, 6'3", 165 pounds, I.D. # Sheriff Department 37954. He is a porter that worked on this floor up here. He has a police record and he left." (CE 1974, pp. 83-84) In his testimony, Inspector Sawyer explained the reason for the APB thusly, "He is the one that had a previous record in the narcotics, and he was supposed to have been a witness to the man being on that floor. He was supposed to have been a witness to Oswald being there...somebody told me that. Somebody came to me with the information. And, again, that particular party, whoever it was, I don't know. I remember that a deputy sheriff came up to me who had been over taking affidavits, that I sent them over there, and he came over from the sheriff's office with a picture and a description of this colored boy and he said that he was supposed to have worked at the Texas Book Depository, and he was the one employee who was missing, or that he was missing from the building. He wasn't accounted for, and that he was suppose to have some information about the man that did the shooting." (6WH321-322) The "sniper's nest" in the southeast corner of the sixth floor. (Click to enlarge) Sawyer’s testimony contains a glaring contradiction. Did the mystery witness really tell Sawyer that Givens had seen Oswald on the floor, or did the witness only say that Givens had seen the assassin? Sawyer's testimony that someone had told him that Givens had seen "Oswald" on the floor is an anachronism if it is supposed to refer to Givens seeing Oswald puttering around on the sixth floor at noon or any other time. Oswald’s job required him to fetch books from the storage on the sixth floor and thus his presence there around noon would not be a cause for suspicion – certainly not justification for Givens to infer that Oswald was the shooter. At the time of Sawyer's broadcast Oswald was not yet connected to the shooting and therefore the fact that someone had seen him on the sixth floor was not yet of significance, as far as anyone knew. Sawyer's inclusion of Oswald's name in his statement renders his testimony as totally inconsistent with the time frame of the radio call. Because of this inconsistency, respected researcher Sylvia Meagher concluded that Sawyer was just plain lying. Oswald became a suspect in the assassination when he was captured at the Texas Movie Theatre at 1:50 p.m. and subsequently identified as an employee of the Book Depository. None of this was established until considerably after Sawyer's radio call, and of course, Sawyer must have been told about Givens some time considerably before he made the APB. But the contradiction disappears if one simply assumes that by the time Sawyer gave his testimony in 1964 he undoubtedly believed that Oswald and the assassin were one and the same, and therefore was speaking the truth as he knew it. But the question remains – did Givens see the assassin, as the mystery witness reported, and if so was it Oswald? When Givens was subsequently questioned by the police he apparently told them that he did see the assassin. According to the testimony of Lt. Jack Revill, "I asked him if he had been on the sixth floor...he said, yes, that he had observed Mr. Lee, over by this window...so I turned this Givens individual over to one of our Negro detectives and told him to take him to Captain Fritz for interrogation." (5WH35-36) Did Givens actually say it was "Mr. Lee" at the window, or like Sawyer, did Revill confound Givens' statement? What exactly did Givens say to the police? A witness to Given’s statement was a secret service agent named Mike Howard. Howard related his account to Fort Worth Star Telegram reporter, Thayer Waldo, on 9 February 1964, apparently unaware that Waldo was a newsman. According to Waldo, "Mike Howard then explained that the negro witness had been arrested in the past by the Special Services office of the Dallas Police for gambling; and, since he was familiar with that branch of the Dallas Police, he immediately gave himself up to that branch. Mr. Howard alleged that he had visited the negro witness while he was in custody of the Special Services in the Dallas Jail." Waldo quotes Agent Howard as saying, "Wait till that old black boy gets up in front of the Warren Commission and tells his story. That will settle everything. Yes, sir. He was right there on the same floor, looking out the next window; and, after the first shot, he looked and saw Oswald, and then he ran. I saw him in the Dallas Police station. He was still the scaredest n I ever seen. I heard him tell the officer, "Man you don't know how fast fast is, because you didn't see me run that day." He said he ran and hid behind the boxes because he was afraid that Oswald would shoot him." (CE 2516) None of this may be a problem for Mr. Bugliosi, but for those of us who insist on a reliable account of the events that day, the implications are horrendous. If Charles Givens saw Lee Harvey Oswald shoot the president, then why on earth would he not tell the FBI and the Warren Commission? Or if he did not see Lee Harvey Oswald shoot the President why did he claim that he did? Was Givens a pathological liar? If so, then none of his statements should be used as evidence. Alternatively, were Inspector Sawyer, Lt. Revill and Agent Howard lying? In May 1964 the FBI interviewed Agent Howard (CE 2578) who adamantly denied that he had ever told Waldo that Givens had seen the assassin. The FBI then interviewed Waldo (CE 2579) who was equally adamant that Howard had said exactly that. Mark Lane, on retainer with the Oswald family, complained in a letter to the Secret Service that Howard had made up the story and planted it with the press in order to falsely incriminate his client’s son. The larger concern is not that any of these officers were lying – but that they might have been telling the truth. The problem is that Waldo’s version of Howard’s story meshes with the accounts by Revill and Sawyer. Givens’ deposition is full of holes. He states that after retrieving his jacket he left the building and walked to a parking lot at the corner of Main and Record and was there when the President went by. He further states that he was walking in front of the Record Building when he heard gunfire [6 WCH 351]. At some point he decided to return to work and tried to reenter the book depository but was refused entry by the DPD who by this time had locked down the building. Meanwhile, inside the building the occupants were lined up and questioned by police until, according to Junior Jarman, "somewhere between two and two-thirty when they turned us loose and told us to go home," (3WH208) If Givens’ account as given in the deposition is true, then who among the buildings occupants knew that Givens had witnessed anything - and informed Inspector Sawyer of such before 1:46 p.m., the time of the APB? Inspector Sawyer’s testimony that he was told that Givens had seen the assassin is supported by the physical evidence – the radio tapes. The account by Police Lt. Revill further strongly suggests that Givens did claim to have seen the assassin. One does not have to assume, as did Sylvia Meagher, that Sawyer, Howard and Revill were outright lying. In their minds Oswald and the assassin were one and the same. Thus, when Givens told the FBI that he had seen Oswald in the first floor lunch room and not on the sixth floor, there was no contradiction. Did Givens also tell the FBI that he saw the assassin shooting at the President, but that it wasn’t Oswald – and did the FBI then leave the latter assertion out of their report – just as they left Rowland’s assertion about the black man in the window out of those reports? Or if it was in their report, it would not have been the only instance where the Warren Commission redacted an FBI report before publishing it in their exhibits. The manner in which the Warren Commission’s staff handled the issue is troubling. Givens was deposed in private in an apparent effort to control the record. No effort was made to identify the mystery witness who reported to Sawyer even though it was almost certainly one of the book depository employees and most probably one of Givens’ friends (Bonnie Ray ?). Secret Service Agent Mike Howard was never called to testify. Thayer Waldo did testify to the commission but was not asked about his conversation with Howard. Police detective Marvin Johnson leaving the TSBD carrying the cigarette package, Dr. Pepper bottle and sack with remains of Bonnie Ray Williams' lunch. (Click to enlarge) One further important evidentiary detail is noteworthy. Charles Givens testified that his reason for returning to the sixth floor was to retrieve his cigarettes. Reporters recall that Captain Fritz announced to the press on the night of the assassination that along with the chicken bones and soda bottle, there was a cigarette package next to the sniper's nest window (Sauvage, p. 35; Meagher, p. 39). The report is corroborated by photographs of police Detective Marvin Johnson leaving the Book Depository carrying the lunch bag, the Dr. Pepper Bottle and, a cigarette package [5]. Lee Harvey Oswald did not smoke (9WH244) [6].

Technically, you are right. But they described a "Negro" that clearly appeared to be Givens. And Givens changed his story after Waldo's story came out.

Let me address the journalist death cases that are not as strong as Koethe-Hunter-Kilgallen but had a big impact on journalists and many other people. (I may follow up with a separate thread on journalists and their impact on the JFK case - I believe that at least one journalist was in on the cover-up and a possible perpetrator) Florence Pritchett Smith, mentioned earlier as the journalist who aided Dorothy Kilgallen as the safekeeper of her JFK notes after meeting her on What's My Line: Even back in the early 40s, Pritchett Smith was the fashion editor of New York Journal American, a journal owned by William Randolph Hearst and one of the biggest papers in New York City. On Pritchett Smith's cause of death at age 45 allegedly due to leukemia complications, one writer offers an analysis that deserves further research: It is alleged that Smith died of a cerebellar hemorrhage a few weeks after suffering from leukemia. This is highly unlikely, since it is quite rare (0.5%) of cases of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). If Smith had another type of leukemia other than that of AML, then the chances of her dying from a cerebral hemorrhage would have even been less than 0.5% chance. Yet another questionable death of a journalist is the fate of Gary Underhill, who died on 5/8/64, found in bed with a bullet wound behind his left ear. Jim D. stated in Destiny Betrayed that Underhill was right-handed. Nonetheless, sources have always quarreled about whether it was suicide or murder. Wikipedia: "For five years he was a military correspondent for Life magazine and helped to make their Foreign News Department one of the most knowledgeable centers of military intelligence in the world." The CIA always said: "He's not our guy." John Simkin provides this quote: Underhill told his friend, Charlene Fitsimmons, that he was convinced that he had been killed by members of the CIA. He also said: "Oswald is a patsy. They set him up. It's too much. The bastards have done something outrageous. They've killed the President! I've been listening and hearing things. I couldn't believe they'd get away with it, but they did!" Underhill believed there was a connection between Executive Action, Fidel Castro and the death of Kennedy: "They tried it in Cuba and they couldn't get away with it. Right after the Bay of Pigs. But Kennedy wouldn't let them do it. And now he'd gotten wind of this and he was really going to blow the whistle on them. And they killed him!" Underhill told friends that he feared for his life: "I know who they are. That's the problem. They know I know. That's why I'm here. I can't stay in New York." Ron, I'm with you - I can't ignore Karyn Kupcinet was killed on 11/30/63. I generally don't like speculative theories, especially about such a gruesome death, but Karyn's immediate family is now deceased. She was strangled while naked and defenseless. The Dallas journalist Jim Koethe died in the same fashion a few months later when stepping out of the shower - some say he was strangled as well. One message emerges from a strangulation death: Don't talk. And there was a very simple second message to Karyn's father Irv, who had the biggest audience in Chicago with his decades-long Sun-Times column packed with celebrities, nightlife, and gossip. As the man with the megaphone - I'm sure he got the very simple message loud and clear by the timing of Karyn's death and the inevitable rumors that it was tied to the death of JFK - don't talk about Jack Ruby and his pals in Chicago. Irv did know Ruby from his time in Chicago in the 40s.

Matt, Here's one analysis of the Soviets' concern of a right-wing takeover, from none other than Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as recently as 2017: While the FBI was investigating possible involvement of the Soviet Union in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Soviet authorities were voicing suspicions that U.S. right-wing groups -- and even Kennedy's own vice president -- were behind the killing, newly released documents show. The Soviet KGB claimed it had information tying Lyndon B. Johnson, who became president as a result of the assassination, to the killing, according to a 1966 letter to a presidential assistant from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that was released for the first time late on October 26. The letter is among 2,800 previously classified Kennedy assassination documents that were released this week following an order by U.S. President Donald Trump. According to White House officials, Trump said in a memorandum that he had "no choice" but to keep some files secret because of national security concerns raised by the FBI and CIA. The documents capture the frantic days after the November 22, 1963, assassination, during which federal agents madly chased after tips and sifted through leads worldwide. But Kennedy scholars say the thousands of documents do not appear to contain any bombshell revelations about the killing that shocked the world. The claim was contained in instructions from Moscow to the KGB residency in New York "to develop information" on Johnson, Hoover said in the letter, which cited an "FBI source" that had "furnished reliable information in the past." Johnson has long been a focus of some conspiracy theorists, but no credible information has ever linked him to the assassination. The documents show that the FBI's own chief suspect right after the assassination was the Soviet Union, with much attention given to assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's contact with "a member of the Soviet KGB Assassination Department" at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico, documents showed. But Moscow believed Oswald was a "neurotic maniac" whose goal was to further a right-wing conspiracy trying to poison U.S.-Soviet relations, according to a just-released U.S. intelligence report issued days after the assassination. Later, in May 1964, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev met influential Washington newspaper columnist Drew Pearson in Cairo, Egypt, and told him that he thought a right-wing conspiracy was behind the killing, according to another intelligence report. Khrushchev told Pearson he could not believe the conclusion investigators had reached at that time: that both Oswald and Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who fatally shot Oswald, had acted alone. "He did not believe that the American security services were this inept," according to a CIA report of the discussion. Pearson "got the impression that Chairman Khrushchev had some dark thoughts about the American right-wing being behind this conspiracy" and rejected all arguments to the contrary, the report said.

Finally, here's John Simkin on Dorothy Kilgallen's "aide" Florence Pritchett Smith - it turns out she was one of JFK's most passionate lovers and the wife of Cuban ambassador Earl Smith who was involved with the machinations that put Castro in power! Furthermore - Kilgallen entrusted her notes to Florence Pritchett Smith because of what happened to Koethe and Hunter! Florence Pritchett was born in 1920. After leaving school she worked as a model for John Robert Powers and appeared in Life Magazine. In 1940 she met and married Richard Canning. Soon afterwards she became fashion editor of New York Journal American, a journal owned by William Randolph Hearst. In 1943 Florence divorced Canning. The following year she met John F. Kennedy. The couple spent a lot of time together. Betty Spalding said that for Kennedy, "Over a long period of time, it was probably the closest relationship with a woman I know of." However, because Kennedy was a Roman Catholic, marriage was out of the question. In 1947 Florence married Earl E. T. Smith, member of the New York Stock Exchange. The couple had three children. In June, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Smith as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Cuba. FBI files reveal that over the next two years John F. Kennedy made more than a dozen visits to Cuba in order to meet Florence. Florence also met Kennedy in Miami and Palm Beach, where their homes were conveniently adjoined. According to one account: "JFK would elude the Secret Service on occasion in order to have trysts with women. He did this in Palm Beach when he hopped a fence to swim with Flo Smith. The Secret Service agents couldn't find him and called in the FBI. They finally turned to Palm Beach Police Chief Homer Large, a trusted Kennedy family associate. The Police Chief knew exactly where to find Jack - next door in Earl E. T. Smith's swimming pool. Jack and Flo were alone, and as Homer put it, "They weren't doing the Australian crawl." John Kennedy and Florence Pritchett at the Stork Club (Feburary 1944) Earl E. T. Smith remained Ambassador to Cuba until 20th January, 1959. Afterwards he wrote about his experiences in his book, The Fourth Floor (1962). This included an account of the Fidel Castro revolution in Cuba. Florence continued working as a journalist. She also became a television personality and appeared on programmes such as What's My Line? It was during this time she became friendly with the journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. Florence Pritchett In 1965 Dorothy Kilgallen managed to obtain a private interview with Jack Ruby. She told friends that she had information that would "break the case wide open". Aware of what had happened to Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe, Kilgallen handed her interview notes to Florence Smith. She told friends that she had obtained information that Ruby and J. D. Tippit were friends and that David Ferrie was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. On 8th November, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen, was found dead in her New York apartment. She was fully dressed and sitting upright in her bed. The police reported that she had died from taking a cocktail of alcohol and barbiturates. The notes of her interview with Jack Ruby and the article she was writing on the case had disappeared. Florence Smith, died two days later of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her son, Earl Smith III, said that she had been suffering from leukemia.

So my suggestion is that we focus on the deaths and injuries heaped on the journalists - Dorothy Kilgallen and her aide Florence Smith, Jim Koethe, Bill Hunter, Thayer Waldo (whose career was sabotage, not killed) - and other investigators who were initially trying to solve the JFK case, like Jim Garrison, whose career as a DA was sabotaged by the government repeatedly between 1967-1973. What happened to early truth-tellers like the authors Joachim Joesten and Thomas Buchanan? I know that Joesten feared for his life. I think there is a powerful story to be told about the people who tried to solve this case in the first few years of the case, especially the first couple of years. Even Jim Garrison came to the case pretty late, after his initial decision not to pursue it in late November-December 1963.

And here's some sources on the murder of Jim Koethe, including new information about an Ed Johnson working with Koethe and Waldo - obtained at https://jfk.boards.net/thread/121/erasing-past-protect-fairytale?page=22&scrollTo=2039 The body of the young Dallas reporter was found swathed in a blanket on the floor of his bachelor apartment on September 21, 1964. Police said the cause of death was asphyxiation from a broken bone at the base of the neck - apparently the result of a karate chop. Robbery appeared to be the motive, although Koethe's parents believe he was killed for other reasons. Whoever ransacked his apartment, they point out, was careful to remove his notes for a book he was preparing, in collaboration with two other journalists, on the Kennedy assassination. (David Welsh, Ramparts November, 1966) KOETHE, JAMES F., suspicious death; staff writer, Dallas Times Herald. Along with two other reporters, Koethe attended a meeting in Ruby's apartment with Ruby roommate George Senator during the evening of November 24. All three of the journalists died soon after the meeting. Koethe was murdered in his Dallas apartment on September 21, 1964, reportedly just as he had stepped out of the shower. According to A. L. Goodhart in the Law Quarterly Review (January 1967), " ... Koethe was a beer-drinking bully who liked to hang out with thugs; he had been strangled, not 'karate chopped,' (as some reports have said) and police suggested that homosexuality may have been a motive." (Who's who in the JFK assassination) There is another strange coincidence. Ruby's roommate, George Senator, when he heard Ruby had shot Oswald, immediately went to see an attorney friend, James Martin. Martin turns up again as Marina Oswald's manager, chosen for her by the Secret Service. In a city of one million people, we are to believe that a friend of Ruby is accidentally picked by the Secret Service to aid the wife of Ruby's victim*. Martin didn't act as Ruby's lawyer. The first man who took that job was Constine Alfred Droby, President of the Criminal Bar Association of Dallas who was interviewed by Jean Campbell for the London Evening Standard of October 7, 1964: "I said I would defend Jack," he told me . . . "but I had to give it up before I really started, as my wife's life was threatened by anonymous phone calls and we were told our house was to be blown up by dynamite." However Droby told me that as Ruby's attorney he had rushed around to Ruby's apartment soon after the shooting with Jim Koethe, a Dallas news reporter. "The place was in chaos. I think we were the first people to see it." "You remember anything especially?" I said. "No, just chaos and newspapers," Droby answered. "I wonder if Jim Koethe saw anything?" I asked. Mr. Droby folded his hands and leaned forward: "Koethe's murdered," he said. "He was choked to death the Monday before last." (Joachim Joesten, Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy, 1964) * Joesten here mixes up two different James / Jim Martin's. The lawyer is Wilford James Martin. The Marina-manager is James Herbert Martin. (Thank you Gerald Campeau for clearing this up.) Both of them are not to be confused with Guy Banister-associate Jack Martin or General Walker-associate John 'Jack' Martin. (More on John Martin: click HERE) Waldo told the Warren Commission that he had an important informant in the Dallas Police. His name was Lieutenant George Butler. According to Michael Benson, Butler was an associate of Haroldson L. Hunt. Butler was also the man in charge of Oswald's transfer when he was killed by Jack Ruby. (Spartacus Education) Also since Vol. I, we have discovered that Jim Koethe, a Dallas Times Herald reporter, was working on a book about the assassination in conjunction with two other writers. In view of what happened to his two associates, we now feel that his specific assignment on the book was at the root of his murder. Koethe's associates on the book were Thayer Waldo and Ed Johnson, both men working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at that time. All three men covered the Presidential visit for their papers, and all three covered the assassination and the Ruby trial. Koethe's task for the book was an in depth study of the leaders in Dallas. This, in our opinion, was what caused his murder. Thayer Waldo, a newsman o f 23 years experience, was the first of the three to find himself in trouble. Although he was not fired by the StarTelegram, it was convenient for him to seek employment elsewhere after his big scoop turned out to be false. At the request of Mark Lane, Waldo had accompanied Mrs. Marguerite Oswald and two officers, Pat and Mike Howard, to Love Field. Mrs. Oswald had requested of Lane that she have someone in addition to the officers escort her to the airport. Mrs. Oswald was going to Washington to testify before the Warren Commission, and of course, to say that her son was innocent. Mike Howard was a Secret Service Agent, while his brother was a Tarrant County Deputy Sheriff. After the trio saw Mrs. Oswald on her plane, the two officers and the reporter went for a cup of coffee. Both officers told newsman Waldo that they felt pity for Mrs. Oswald, but said there was a prisoner in jail who saw her son kill President Kennedy. If such was the case and the story was printed, Mrs. Oswald's testimony w o u I d be completely buried by the new development. At the conclusion of their story, however, the lawmen added: "But we are not supposed to talk about the prisoner." On the way back to Fort Worth, the lawmen repeated their report of the prisoner, but again added the information was top secret. Waldo begged to be allowed to use the news without giving the source of the information. This was agreed to by the brothers Howard. Why repeat such a tale to a newsman twice, if you do not want him to use it? Waldo reported the news to his editor and the circumstances surrounding it. The editors and the top brass of the Star-Telegram had a conference and decided to run the news which became an 8 column banner on page one. Next day, however, things were different. The Dallas District Attorney denied the story. The Sheriff and Police Chief and the FBI denied that there was such a prisoner. Only the Secret Service remained quiet - of course they had not been involved. In print, anyway. The pressure on Thayer Waldo for his false lead continued and he soon found a job with the University of the Americas in Mexico City. Ed Johnson also left the Fort Worth paper for a better position with the Carpenter News Agency of Washington, D.C. which is owned by Leslie Carpenter of Texas-the husband of Elizabeth Carpenter, who is Press Secretary to Mrs. Lyndon Johnson. (Penn Jones, Forgive my Grief II) Within a week a 22-year-old ex-con from Alabama named Larry Earl Reno was picked up selling Koethe's personal effects and held on suspicion of murder. Reno's lawyers were Mike Barclay and the ubiquitous Jim Martin, both friends of Ruby roomie George Senator. Martin and Senator, one recalls, were with Koethe at that enigmatic meeting on November 24, 1963. When the Reno case came before the grand jury, District Attorney Henry Wade secretly instructed the jurors not to indict - an extraordinary move for a chief prosecuting officer with as strong a case as he had. The grand jury returned a no-bill. Reno, however, remained in jail on a previous charge. When they finally sprang him, in January 1965, he was re-arrested within a month for the robbery of a hotel. This time the prosecution, led by a one-time law partner of Martin's had no qualms about getting an indictment, and a conviction. Reno was sentenced to life for the hotel robbery. At the trial his lawyers called no witnesses in his defense. (David Welsh, Ramparts, November, 1966)

Here's Jim D. on the Kilgallen case Prior to Shaw’s book, there had been three major sources about Kilgallen’s life and (quite) puzzling death. The first was Lee Israel’s biography titled Kilgallen. Published in hardcover in 1979, it went on to be a New York Times bestseller in paperback. As we shall later see, although Israel raised some questions about Kilgallen’s death in regards to the JFK case, she held back on some important details she discovered. In 2007, Sara Jordan wrote a long, fascinating essay for the publication Midwest Today Magazine. Entitled “Who Killed Dorothy Kilgallen?”, Jordan built upon some of Israel’s work, but was much more explicit about certain sources, and much more descriptive about the very odd crime scene. For instance, the autopsy report on Kilgallen says she died of acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication. But it also says that the circumstances of that intoxication were “undetermined”. Jordan appropriately adds, “for some reason the police never bothered to determine them. They closed the case without talking to crucial witnesses.” (Jordan, p. 22) A year later, in the fall of 2008, prolific author and journalist Paul Alexander had his book on the subject optioned for film rights. The manuscript was entitled Good Night, Dorothy Kilgallen. Reportedly, one focus of Alexander’s volume was how the JFK details Kilgallen wrote about in her upcoming book, Murder One, were cut from the version posthumously published by Random House. Neither Alexander’s book, nor the film, has yet to be produced. Which is a shame, since the available facts would produce an intriguing film. (Jim DiEugenio, Was Dorothy Kilgallen Murdered over the JFK Case?, 30 January 2017)

I think it is really important to look at people who were trying to solve the JFK case from the very beginning. Let's focus - for a minute - on the journalists studying the JFK assassination and who died within a couple years after 11/22/63. For a number of reasons, most journalists steered away from trying to solve the case. Journalists have little control over their lives. Their main function is to follow the story and move on. But four journalists tried to solve the case in 1964. I believe the fate of these journalists chilled other Dallas reporters from taking a hard look at the evidence. Most of them were content to go along. Three of those journalists in Dallas were Jim Koethe, Bill Hunter and Thayer Waldo. I went through Marguerite Oswald's files last week at TCU in Fort Worth - and found out that Waldo was working with Koethe and Hunter. I did not know that before, and I had been studying all three of these men for years. Thayer Waldo was in the police basement on 11/24 and identified Lt. George Butler (unlike other sources) as the man who was really in charge of security at the time of Oswald's transfer. He observed how nervous Butler was in the final moments before Oswald was shot. Penn Jones reported that Butler was the head of the KKK in Dallas, many of the Dallas police were Klan members - he even tried to recruit Penn Jones into the Klan Butler was H.L. Hunt's driver. To this day, the Dallas Police Administration building is named after George Butler. You can find it right outside the Lorenzo Hotel in Dallas. Waldo testified to the Warren Commission in 1964. He was the victim of a dirty trick by Secret Service man Mike Howard and his local police brother Pat Howard. Mike was the local SS man - assigned to Jackie Kennedy - he escorted the Kennedys to their rooms In Fort Worth the night of 11/21/63. The Howard brothers told Waldo that Charles Givens - the African American janitor who had provided alibi evidence stating that LHO was not on the sixth floor at noon - had actually seen Oswald shooting at JFK from the sixth floor window. Waldo printed the story in the Dallas Morning News. This caused Givens to change his story - now saying that he didn't see LHO shooting but that he did remember LHO staying up at the sixth floor at noon. Givens was used as the principal witness against Oswald even though he had changed his story. I believe Don Thomas writes about this in his book Hear No Evil, and I have researched it myself. Mark Lane got Waldo to tell him that his source was the Howard brothers. Lane immediately outed the Howard brothers at Waldo's source in the National Guardian during May 1964. Unfortunately, it was a one-minute scandal. The Howard brothers were questioned - they said that Waldo and Lane were lying - and that was the end of any official investigation of the Howard brothers. But the Givens story was used by the Warren Commission and others to seal the tale of Oswald's guilt. Waldo's career in Texas was destroyed. He returned to working in Latin America, where he continued to study the case and aided Garrison during 1967. Koethe and Hunter returned to working on their book. In late 1964, Koethe was killed in his home by someone, allegedly with a karate chop as he was exiting from the shower. All of his notes to the book were missing. The District Attorney Henry Wade actually indicted a local bad-guy named Larry Reno for the killing of Koethe. Long-time Dallas researcher Betty Windsor has been working on this case for the last 60 years. What got her involved was that she and her husband were good friends with Jim Koethe. She told me that the reason Wade indicted Reno was because the uproar in the journalism communities was so great that "he had to pick up somebody". In a very unusual circumstance, the grand jury refused to indict Reno. In 99.9999% of all cases, the prosecutor can get the jury to indict a ham sandwich. Why didn't it happen here. Betty told me why. She said that she interviewed one of the grand jurors after the dismissal. She said the grand juror told her that Henry Wade told the grand jury after the completion of the presentation of the evidence and told them not to indict the defendant Larry Reno. He told them that it was his belief that Larry Reno had nothing to do with it. Betty told me that she agreed with Wade - that Reno had nothing to do with it. The DA had to pick up somebody. They picked up Reno. Reno was arrested a few months later for another burglary, and did significant time. Reno was just a fall guy, to get the journalistic community to back away. Bill Hunter moved to Long Beach, California. A few months later, two cope were horsing around with their weapons while Hunter was conducting an interview in the police station.. One of them had an "accidental" misfire that killed Hunter. The officer had a brother in the Dallas Police Department. The offending officers got a slap on the wrist. I don't know if Hunter had any notes left to steal. One other journalist comes to mind - Dorothy Kilgallen of New York City. She had exclusive interviews with Jack Ruby. She was working hard on the case and believed that she had cracked it. The circumstances of her death are so suspicious as to border on the absurd - Mark Shaw has written good books on the subject. No one could find her notes, either. The notes were believed to be in the possession of her colleague Mrs. Earl Smith. Smith died two days after Dorothy.

Thanks to all who weighed in - here is the last section of the Cover-Up chapter - all comments appreciated. November 24: The cover-up goes into high gear after Oswald is killed The CIA’s Cuba division said it had no duty to conduct an investigation The next day, November 24, Angleton learned from Win Scott that Cubela had met with Kostikov at the Soviet consulate back in late 1962.[ 92 ] Angleton said that FitzGerald would only provide Cubela’s 201 biographical file. FitzGerald relied on his divison’s autonomy and refused to provide the Cubela operational file to Angleton’s staff or to the Warren Commission. The story is that FitzGerald did not want to be subjected to an Angleton molehunt.[ 93 ] With all the interest that both the FBI and the CIA had in Cubela over the years, Angleton’s claim that he did not know about Cubela’s background is not credible.[ 94 ] Equally incredible is Helms’ and FitzGerald’s testimony that they did not “ask” Cubela to assassinate Castro.[ 95 ] FitzGerald knew that Cubela was insecure, and that he had a problem. From the moment of the assassination, FitzGerald was concerned that the assassin came from the ranks of the anti-Castro Cubans. FitzGerald was close to JFK, and wept when Oswald was killed, saying, “Now we’ll never know.”[ 96 ] FitzGerald died in 1967. His executive officer testified that the Headquarters Cuban desk was not asked to conduct any investigation into the Kennedy assassination. Shackley did not feel he had any duty to investigate the assassination. "I was just told to watch the island." said Ted Shackley. "The mainland was the FBI's territory." [ 97 ] Similarly, no one from Shackley’s JMWAVE station in Miami conducted any serious investigation on the assassination. Individuals who allegedly gave orders to do some investigating were JMWAVE C/FI Warren Frank, Tony Sforza, and the former LIENVOY chief Charles Anderson III. Anderson was told by Sforza that he had received specific instructions from Shackley about how the AMOT service was to go about aiding in the investigation. Anderson said that the CIA had limitations on its “right to conduct investigations of persons residing in the USA, whether they were alien residents or US citizens.”[ 98 ] I am unaware of any documents created as a result of these probes. Another officer said that when he spoke to his agents in meetings in Miami, Tampa, Nassau and Mexico City about the murder of JFK, his briefing was strictly oral and contained no written questions.[ 99 ] JMWAVE said little on the subject other than that the Cuban exiles were in grief despite their policy differences with JFK.[ 100 ] When Angleton was asked about it many years later, he explained that the WAVE materials were under Western Hemisphere chief J. C. King, that the Headquarters materials were under FitzGerald, and that CI did not have access to their information “as far as it related to the Kennedy assassination or to the leads on the Cubans.” The FBI’s Nationalities Intelligence conducted no investigation Hoover had his own derelictions to hide. There was no good reason to Hoover to abruptly pull Nationalities Intelligence off the case after their avid work on the FPCC and Oswald. Hoover did not want the record to reflect the depth of the anti-Castro exiles’ anger at JFK. Nor did Hoover want to know what Nationalities Intelligence chief Ray Wannall knew about the FPCC and Oswald before November 22. The FBI men in Dallas certainly did not want Hoover or the public to know that Oswald had worked at the Jaggars photographic firm and had assisted the Army Mapping Service, an agency that was analyzing maps of Cuba obtained by U-2 flights during the height of the Cuban missile crisis.[ 101 ] Ann Egerter claimed months later that she had no way of knowing whether Oswald had ever worked for the Jaggars firm. In the first days after 11/22, Ray Wannall, repeatedly provided the FBI with essential background on Oswald, including but not limited to letters that Oswald had written to the FPCC in New York City and turned over to the FBI by agent T-3245-S*, who was almost certainly FPCC staffer Victor Vicente. Vicente was the same man that Anita Potocki and the joint CIA-FBI team had inserted into Cuba in the AMSANTA operation during the summer of 1963. Wannall and his Nationalities Intelligence division were cut out of the assassination investigation.[ 102 ] A flow chart details those in charge of the espionage aspects of Oswald’s case involved the espionage chief Bill Branigan of the Domestic Intelligence Division and his men: Burt Turner, Lambert L. Anderson, Marvin Gheesling, and Charles Brennan. The department not included on this flow chart is Ray Wannall’s Nationalities Intelligence Division, and its Cuban section.[ 103 ] This is no accident. The FBI’s approach to the Oswald file was to label it as a “dual-captioned” matter prior to the assassination. Oswald’s defection and his ongoing contacts with the Soviets had been the terrain of Bill Branigan’s Espionage Section since 1959, while the Cuban side of the Oswald file was handled by Ray Wannall and Nationalities Intelligence.[ 104 ] Ray Wannall testified to the Church Committee that Nationalities Intelligence was within the Counter-intelligence Branch and handled matters relating to countries other than the Soviet Union, Soviet Bloc, and Communist China.[ 105 ] Ray Wannall's deposition is absolutely devastating. Just about the first question is: "Do you know Vince Nasca?" Wannall had known Nasca well, and since 1951.[ 106 ] Wannall then stated who were the FBI’s top experts on Cuba during 1963: "Anti-Castro would be Vince Nasca, and pro-Castro I guess would be Ray Mullens, not certain. Coordinated by Richard Cotter, unit chief, most outgoing flowed thru him, not ingoing. As section chief, I had pretty good knowledge of this material."[ 107 ] Nasca received copies of Oswald’s exploits right after his defection to the Soviet Union – he signed for these documents with his initials VHN. Nasca and Wannall were kept in the loop on discussions about assassinating Castro even after JFK’s death. Nasca, who was the FBI’s absolute expert on the Cuban exiles, told the Church Committee during the 70s that he was given no investigative tasks regarding the JFK assassination. If they kept a heavy hitter like Nasca away from the investigation, it’s a sure thing that Hoover had zero concern that Castro was involved in killing Kennedy. But that’s not all. Wannall admitted that his entire Nationalities Intelligence division was kept out of the JFK investigation. "(T)he investigation of the assassination was not in the Division and I wasn't privy to any of the discussions." "Were you at any time tasked with any requirements in that investigation or any people under you tasked?" "I can't recall that we were, because even the phases of it that spilled over into our Division were handled in another section." "Which section was that?" "That was the Espionage Section." "Was that Branigan's section?" "Yes".[ 108 ] Richard Cotter, who was Wannall’s #1 man between 1962 to 1965, described Branigan's section as "the Soviet section". Cotter is very clear that "if the Bureau was involved in exploring a Cuban involvement in the assassination, it almost certainly would have been run out of our section, yes." He agreed that Nasca, Wannall and himself was the go-to guys on Cuba. He agreed with Wannall that there were never even any discussions about whether any Cubans were involved in the JFK assassination. Cotter admitted that the obviousness of such a possibility "looks like two and two today, but apparently it didn't look like two and two then". Unlike Wannall, who looks like a straight shooter until you review his interview, Cotter comes across as a truth teller. Cotter told with some pride the aforementioned story about a COINTELPRO action that successfully turned FPCC leaders Richard Gibson and Berta Green against each other, and said that he got mail about Oswald visiting both the Soviet and Cuban consulates before the assassination. The Cuban angle was the reason the Oswald case came to his desk. Going back to Cotter's boss, Wannall admits over and over again that he was cut out of the investigation of JFK's murder and did nothing, although his section housed the experts on the subject. Wannall finally speculates that maybe his section questioned informants, only to be confronted with a memo saying such a practice was "Not desirable. Would serve to promote rumors." signed by Cotter. Finally, in utter frustration, the interrogator Paul Wallach – the most thorough of all the attorneys in this case - let Wannall have it: "What I'm getting at very frankly, Mr. Wannall, is that we have an investigation where a heck of a lot of Bureau evidence, your agents did thousands of man-hours of work tracing down every possible piece of physical evidence, every possible ramification in certain areas, whereas in the Cuban area it seems very frankly that almost nothing was done, and what I'm trying to get a grasp on, what the Senators are concerned about, is why?" Since Wannall had no answer, he went off into an anecdote. Wallach, undaunted, went at it again: "it appears to me as a layman that we have this huge counterintelligence machinery that was never called into play in the Cuban area...” Again, Wannall did not deny it. Wallach ended by confronting Wannall with a story about Johnny Roselli’s lawyer, Edward P. Morgan. Morgan recounted how Castro was ready to retaliate about the assassination attempts on his life, that the FBI was notified in an "eyes only" memo that Morgan knew where Castro's purported JFK assassins were living in New Jersey, and that the FBI did no follow-up. Wannall had nothing to say. Wannall’s boss William Sullivan made it clear that Hoover should not have brushed Morgan’s revelation aside.[ 109 ] It seems plain that Hoover did not want to know who killed JFK, whether the assassins came from the left or the right. The FBI’s Soviet experts didn’t want to know about the Cuban evidence A veteran agent, Kenneth Raupauch, revealed that the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division kept the evidence regarding the "so-called Cuban faction" strictly to themselves. The FBI’s Soviet experts Gheesling, Turner, Brennan, and Lambert L. Anderson kept close control of any information involving Cuba. Turner was the one who held the assignment card for Oswald prior to the assassination. The focus for these men was "Oswald and security". Turner was considered the most brilliant by everyone, but he was not top dog. Turner answered to supervisors Branigan, Lenihan, John Stokes, Leonard Linton, and Gheesling. Lenihan's responsibility was New Orleans and Oswald generally. This came directly from Hoover, and included Oswald's FPCC contacts in New York. Stokes was Mexico City. Gheesling was Dallas. Lenihan is very careful to say any Cuban leads would be for "Cuban section of our division", without saying who that is. It was Lambert Anderson. Lambert L. Anderson was an intriguing character, as he was with Nationalities Intelligence, had the FPCC file, and he was "the new guy" at the Cuban desk. He answered to Branigan and Robert Lenihan, who were the case supervisors of the Domestic Intelligence Division.[ 110 ] He only served with the Cuban section for a short period of time, for a few months in 1963. FBI supervisor Richard Cotter said Anderson was “fairly new…I wouldn’t consider him an expert on Cuba, but he did have this case.” [ 111 ] Hoover’s reaction to Oswald’s death was to focus on him as the lone assassin Right after Oswald was murdered on November 24, Hoover told White House aide Walter Jenkins in a phone call “the thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”[ 112 ] At 4 pm that afternoon, Al Belmont called Shanklin to say that he was sending two of his investigators, Richard Rogge and Fletcher Thompson, down to Dallas to essentially wrap the case up. This memo is written with absolute authority, by a man who had been the head of counterintelligence for the FBI over the years and was clearly more in command than Hoover himself. This is hours after the shocking murder of Oswald that made most people in America sit up and wonder how many people were involved in the JFK assassination. Belmont calmly remarked, “We will set forth the items of evidence which make it clear that Oswald is the man who killed the President.”[ 113 ] On the next day, November 25, assistant attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach wrote a devastating memo to LBJ aide Bill Moyers stating that “the public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”[ 114 ] Curiously, Katzenbach said shortly before he died that “I’d almost bet on the (anti-Castro) Cubans” as being in on the assassination – probably because he was no longer worried about triggering a war with the Soviets.[ 115 ] Also on November 25, Lyndon Johnson let columnist Joe Alsop know that he thought that Texas officials should resolve the case with the aid of the FBI, which would avoid any suggestions of “carpet-baggers”. Alsop pushed for non-Texan jurists to aid a national scope to the effort, but LBJ was wary of Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department people “lobbying them against the President”.[ 116 ] LBJ, like most politicans, wanted an investigation that he could control. On November 26, Belmont emphasized that it was important for the FBI to get out its report on the assassination as fast as possible. The emphasis was to ensure the public that they got the right man, and to get out their insight on Oswald’s background. Again, there was no concern about the shocking manner of Oswald’s death. “This report is to settle the dust…” I believe Belmont wanted everyone to go back to sleep, now that JFK was buried. Belmont emerges during this time as a key decision-maker, maybe even more than Hoover himself. Nov 23: Alan Belmont, the FBI's #3 man, had a big to-do list on the Oswald case Nov 24: As the country reeled in shock after Oswald's shooting, Belmont calmly wrote "we will set forth the items of evidence which make it clear that Oswald is the man who killed the President." Nov 26: Belmont explained that an FBI report would be promptly completed in the next week "to settle the dust…” David Phillips and other provocateurs convinced Johnson that a blue-ribbon commission was necessary to avoid the threat of war Other forces still wanted to whip the nation into the mood for war. Months later, when David Slawson met with Win Scott in Mexico City, Slawson made a point of citing the provocations of three men during the first two weeks after the assassination: Nicaraguan double agent Gilberto Alvarado, pre-Castro’s Cuba military intelligence chief Salvador Diaz Verson, and credit agency inspector Oscar Gutierrez Valencia.[ 117 ] Because of space limitations, I will only briefly discuss the Alvarado provocations, and will write a separate article about them in the future that is in greater depth. (Also see Rex Bradford’s articles on the subject at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website). I believe that these provocations were done in coordination with intelligence operatives aimed at sabotaging the investigation, and that much of it is the work of covert action chief David Phillips. HSCA counsel Dan Hardaway was convinced that Phillips was in charge of the disinformation passed on during the cover-up phase.[ 118 ] I believe that Phillips had to improvise the provocations on the spot, which is why, for example, the Alvarado story did not succeed in putting the US on a war footing against Castro. It played a big role, however, in forcing LBJ to form the Warren Commission. On November 26, CIA officer John Whitten sent a cable saying that he and Mexico City CIA station director Win Scott had uncovered evidence that Castro had paid Oswald to assassinate Kennedy. This was the information that came from the Nicaraguan agent Gilbert Alvarado, who also appears to have been working for US intelligence as he pointed the finger at the Cuban government as the cause of the assassination. Scott had told the Mexican president the previous day that he suspected Cuban involvement. On November 27, a conversation between CI/SIG chief Birch O'Neal and FBI liaison Sam Papich reveals that further analysis of Department 13 led them to believe that Kostikov is probably not a modern-day Antichrist. O’Neal said that he will call “Pete.”[ 119 ] This phone call was transcribed, and O’Neal wrote his own memo summarizing the call.[ 120 ] Pete Bagley, chief of counterintelligence for the Soviet Russia station, modified his claim of four days earlier. Bagley now admitted that although Kostikov was KGB, the claim that he was with Department 13 was based solely on Kostikov’s involvement with TUMBLEWEED.[ 121 ] LBJ told his mentor Richard Russell that a relucant Earl Warren was finally convinced to head the Commission when "I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City..." Over the days from the 25th to the 29th, the phony Alvarado and Kostikov evidence forced President Lyndon Johnson to change his mind about Texans leading the assassination investigation. Johnson knew that Alvarado’s information was explosive and could send the US into a war with Cuba, which could drag in the USSR. The Kostikov evidence, shaky as it was, could also mean war with the Soviet Union. Reversing course, Johnson announced the formation of a blue-ribbon panel now known as the “Warren Commission” on November 29. With no advance notice to Johnson’s friend Senator Dick Russell, LBJ announced that Russell would be one of the commissioners. Always the dealmaker, LBJ reassured Russell that “all you’ll do is evaluate the Hoover report he has already made.”[ 122 ] For weeks after the assassination, the agencies were buried with phony evidence tying Oswald to a Soviet assassination team and Red Cuban plots. Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy probably knew little about the tapes, but acquiesced to the cover-up rather than run the risk of a war on Cuba which might include the USSR. This story explains why LBJ was so insistent that Chief Justice Earl Warren chair the investigating commission and prevent the possibility of "40 million dead Americans", and why the Warren Commission was denied access to the investigators, witnesses and documents needed to solve the case. To win over Warren, LBJ said that “I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City.” Immediately after this panel of chieftains was chosen, the Alvarado story was revealed to be a hoax. As seen above, it would take longer for the Kostikov story to be completely discredited. However, now the story of the assassination would be carefully massaged by men who knew how to work with evidence. After Hoover released CD 1, Whitten was stunned when he reviewed it After the FBI had the opportunity to review the Dallas crime evidence for 72 hours, they sent it back to Dallas. After the Dallas police created a belated inventory on 11/26/63, the evidence was provided to the FBI for a second time. This time, the evidence went to Wally Heitman, the Spanish-speaking Dallas FBI agent. Other writers have said that this sifting exercise was done to enable the FBI to review troublesome evidence such as Oswald’s wallets, as well as suppress problematic evidence such as Oswald’s Minox camera which was better known as a spy camera. In my mind, that’s right. Any other conclusion would require someone coming up with a full inventory for November 22. On November 26, Belmont gave the go-ahead to Dallas chief Shanklin to send this material to Washington, DC, acting as though they were seeing all of it for the first time. In the days ahead, Hoover was furious at Curry, refusing to work with the Dallas police for years afterwards. I think it was either because of Curry’s admission that the evidence was originally sent to Washington on the night of the assassination, or Curry’s continual refusal to agree that the assassination was caused by Oswald acting alone. In any case, Hoover followed Belmont’s advice – he bore down and produced a mammoth report on December 1 that claimed to address all the major issues of the assassination. As the report was based on the assumption that Oswald was the assassin and acted alone, the conclusion was predictable. This document is now known as Commission Document 1, or CD 1, and became the foundation for the Warren Report. Hoover promptly leaked it to the press to ensure everyone heard the FBI’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone and unaided. When Whitten got a look at CD 1 on or about December 6, he discovered “details of Oswald’s political activity in the United States; the pro-Cuban activity; …and so on.” Whitten said that the possible involvement of the Miami station did not emerge until he read CD 1 and learned more about Oswald’s pro-Castro activities in the US. The “basic source materials” can be seen in the carefully drafted packages put together during Whitten's short tenure by supervisors Manning Clements, Warren de Brueys, and Robert Gemberling. These were men that knew how to put together reports that eliminated most of the evidence that the Bureau didn’t want to hear about. Whitten emphasized that “I did not know anything about the CIA’s assassination plans against Castro. If I had, my investigation would have been entirely different. We would have had the Miami station kick off the full investigation.” Whitten also felt that the Cubela story was an “absolutely vital factor in analyzing the facts around the Kennedy assassination.” Unfortunately, most people did not know about the CIA’s plans to assassinate Castro until about 1975, despite the best efforts of journalists like Jack Anderson and a handful of others. At the same time, Whitten was apparently willing to go along with a plan to keep any information about the Mexico City tapes out of the general discussion, as shown below. After getting a look at CD 1 on December 6, Whitten wrote a memo to CIA Director McCone and other higher-ups stating, “There was absolutely no mention of the CIA in the report.”[ 123 ] Wittingly or unwittingly, Whitten’s action let anyone who knew the truth know that the Oswald imposter story – which is probably what the Mexico City station was referring to years later as “the Identity Case” – was not currently in consideration by the FBI and that it was probably safe to omit it from the investigation.[ 124 ] Meanwhile, Whitten couldn’t understand why the FPCC revelations in the report had been held back from him for two weeks, especially since Oswald’s FPCC ties were all over the newspapers. Whitten mentioned that “Oswald’s correspondence with American communists and with the Fair Play for Cuba committee is recorded in original letters.” The only thing that seemed to surprise him was Marina’s story that Oswald shot at General Edwin Walker. Marina was in a tough spot. It was reported that she said she would cooperate with the FBI if they could give her “some concrete assurances” that she could stay in the U.S. On that same day, someone at the CIA completed his own preliminary biographical study of Oswald.[ 125 ] The study has nothing about the incident with General Walker, but several references to Oswald’s FPCC activities in 1963.[ 126 ] Whitten’s report was not yet completed. Helms reassures Whitten that he can hold on to the investigation Whitten wrote a memo to Helms on 12/11/63 stating what his plans were for the investigation. Helms initialed his responses to each paragraph, including agreement to give Whitten leave from his present job as WH/3, which Whitten described to Helms as “a branch with 45 people in headquarters and well over 100 in seven Central American countries”.[ 127 ] Whitten never made any waves about the tapes or the difficulty the witnesses had in identifying Oswald in Mexico City, but he did flag the concern that CD 1 might reveal the phone tap operations in Mexico “because the Soviets would see that the FBI had advance information on the reason for Oswald’s visit to the Soviet Embassy”.[ 128 ] What Whitten meant in this passage illustrates the importance of being able to interview key witnesses while they are still alive. What did the FBI know about why Oswald was going to visit the Soviet Embassy? It sure looks like FBI supervisors knew that Oswald was wittingly or unwittingly part of an intelligence operation – such as the Tilton-Anderson anti-FPCC operation. It’s clear why Whitten cared if the Soviets would see that the FBI knew in advance that Oswald wanted a visa – because it might reveal the Mexico City wiretap operations. As Whitten was mulling over the next stage for the investigation, the new Warren Commission members and counsel were not impressed by the FBI’s work in the preparation of CD 1. CD 1 simply placed all the blame on Oswald, and displayed little investigative zeal other than placing a lot of raw reports between two covers. Sullivan told the Church Committee that Hoover then leaked the contents of CD 1 to the press in order to “deliberately pre-empt the Warren Commission’s findings”. On December 16, Chief Justice Earl Warren and chief counsel J. Lee Rankin discussed the problem and decided that they would need “some investigative staff” of their own when they reach a “tender spot” because they had no reports from the CIA or the State Department and “the (FBI) report has so many holes in it…it just doesn’t seem like they’re looking for things that this Commission has to look for.”[ 129 ] Whitten proceeded to expand an earlier 11/24 memo, entitled “We Discover Lee Oswald in Mexico City”.[ 130 ] Right about the same time, Whitten’s supervisor J.C. King wrote him a memo about the investigation to date, saying that matters have focused on Mexico City because of the Station’s superb job. He adds that “your analyses were major factors in the quick clarification of the case, blanking out the really ominous spectre of foreign backing.”[ 131 ] On about December 17, Whitten circulated this “Lee Oswald” memo and asks for corrections from Birch O’Neal and other CIA counterintelligence officers. Whitten’s memo ignored the role of the twin 10/10/63 cables, but it did suggest that the tapes survived the assassination. Angleton makes his move right before Christmas Whitten claimed that he had no idea about Oswald’s FPCC escapades and the rest until just hours before a major meeting with Helms about Whitten’s report in December. Whitten wrote that this initial draft would change when he obtained new information from the FBI, and sent it to McCone, Helms, Angleton, O’Neal and Murphy.[ 132 ] A note on a still-partially redacted routing slip indicates that SR/CI was to play a role in editing this initial draft of his report on Lee Oswald.[ 133 ] By December 20, Whitten had expanded his first draft into a second draft. The new draft says “our Mexico City station was given full background information on Oswald in a cable”.[ 134 ] It seems to me that Whitten had bought the faulty description of Oswald, even though it had his name as “Lee Henry Oswald” and no photograph. I don’t think Whitten was hiding any guilty knowledge. At the 12/24 meeting, Whitten said that “Angleton started to criticize my report terribly - without pointing out any inaccuracies, it was so full of wrong things, we could not possibly send it to the Bureau, and I just sat there and did not say a word. This was a typical Angleton performance. I had invited him to comment on the report and he had withheld all of his comments until he got to the meeting whereupon Helms turned the operation, the investigation, over to Angleton’s staff.”[ 135 ] Helms turned the case over at Angleton’s request, based on its counterintelligence ramifications. Whitten said that he went along and “suggested that it be turned over because of the Soviet angle that had now been discovered, (because of) the disclosure about his biographic information about his stay in Soviet Russia, which was obviously very important.”[ 136 ] Whitten felt that “Helms wanted someone to conduct the investigation who was in bed with the FBI, and I was not and Angleton was.” After the meeting, Whitten circulated a memo asking for feedback because of its “inaccuracies and policy errors”. Whitten describes what he has done as a “working paper for those who prepare the final report”.[ 137 ] A note on the memo states: “On January 8 or 9, I discussed Whitten’s draft with him, told him Mr. Rocca was to write the report I was and he would be called upon for verification of statements in it no doubt and I did not have time to edit or comment on the treatment of various aspects. He said he would be in contact with Mr. Rocca, and I later learned he was.” [ 138 ] Ray Rocca, Angleton’s Chief of Research and Analysis (CIRA) became the liaison between the CIA and the Warren Commission. Rocca’s version places the date of the shift from Whitten to himself on 1/12/64.[ 139 ] Rocca, however, gave a pass to the CIA’s Miami station during the Warren Commission’s investigation. As Angleton testified, Rocca was “the point of contact except on matters pertaining to WAVE…If WAVE has thousands of operations going on, I’m not going to use my liaison people doing their business when they could have direct contract (sic) with the Bureau.”[ 140 ] Whitten on Bill Harvey: "He was too young to have killed McKinley and Lincoln." In attempting to justify Angleton’s takeover of the investigation, Angleton’s successor George Kalaris inadvertently made a startling admission. Kalaris mused that CI Staff was the most logical candidate to lead the investigation, as they were the CI liaison with the FBI and the Secret Service, as well as a source of information related to the protection apparatus for senior US officials.[ 141 ] The implications of this revelation will be discussed further in the final chapter. Years later, Whitten said that “I didn’t know about the assassination plans of the CIA against Castro. This was not disclosed to me. Had I known that, my investigation would have been entirely different.” Whitten said that he would have started the investigation in Miami. When asked about why Bill Harvey asked his wife to burn all of his papers, Whitten’s response was that “He was too young to have killed McKinley and Lincoln. It could have been anything…I think Harvey was a man who did great damage to the Agency. I told the Senate Committee – I went out of my way to tell them in my emphasis that assassinations and things like that are something really abhorrent to all the rank and file of Agency officers. It is unthinkable.” The deepest reason Jack Whitten was taken off the Oswald case I believe that the deepest reason Whitten was taken off the case can be found in a Whitten memo, DIR 89366 - this is a priority memo to Mexico City dated 12/16/63, seeking an immediate response. Whitten asked “For our analysis of this case, can MEXI shed light on who Aparicio is, whether he has that number (author’s note: The phone number 14-12-99, quoted by Duran in a passing reference to Aparicio at the beginning of the 9/28 call), and what this might have to do with our case...please have monitors make every effort to identify voices of various Soviets to whom Oswald spoke on the telephone or who dealt with his case with Sylvia Duran". Whitten took pains to write that his request was being made pursuant to "direction of Helms”. Whitten labeled it as a priority memo. We saw in Chapter 3 Aparicio’s fascinating history as the case officer for double agent AMKNOB-1. I believe that Raul Aparicio was not only the Cuban embassy’s cultural attache and main press contact, but he was also a double agent working on behalf of the United States. The reference to Aparicio in the September 28 call was not only a signal to the Mexico City station that LIENVOY was compromised. It was also a signal that the operation with Aparicio was compromised. It looks like Aparicio may have had some kind of relationship with Spanish-speaking CIA agent Daniel Flores. His stepmother was born in Mexico. Flores was approved to work on a special project by a CIA sigint (signals intelligence) officer. A sigint matter would indicate that Flores was working with Staff D. When HSCA counsel Ed Lopez went to Mexico City in 1978, he conducted an interview with “Daniel Flores aka Luis Aparicio”. Many baseball fans will remember the famous Chicago White Sox shortstop Luis Aparicio during the 1960s. Lopez asked Duran during her interview if she saw “Luis Aparicio” at a twist party in Mexico City. Was “Luis Aparicio” a momentary lapse by Lopez, did “Luis” have a relationship with Raul Aparicio, or did the CIA have a real live CIA officer inside the Cuban embassy? I have the feeling that this won’t take too much longer to figure out. Whitten’s December 16 request may have been the deepest reason that Whitten was taken off the JFK case as lead investigator. It may explain why Angleton invented a fight at Whitten on December 24, and Helms asked for Whitten to step down the same day. The problems raised by Whitten’s December 16 memo are legion. Most importantly, by asking the monitors to compare voices of people that spoke with Oswald or Duran during his visit, Whitten is assuming at this late date that the tapes were still in existence, just as he did many years later when questioned by the HSCA. Another problem was his query about Raul Aparicio. If Whitten’s questions had been fully answered, it would have focused attention on the 9/28 memo, that Aparicio's line 14-12-99 was tapped, and that Aparicio was at the Cuban Consulate during the Oswald visit. Scott did not want any additional scrutiny about this 9/28 call. Scott also wanted to avoid Whitten's other questions - Can MEXI shed light on who Aparicio is? Is 14-12-99 his phone number? Is it relevant to our case? Scott knew who Aparicio was, and that David Phillips knew the details. This memo, received on the 16th, went from Scott to White to Goodpasture to Phillips to back to Scott. Scott scribbled a note on the memo, saying, "That's Raul Aparicio, Cuban embassy official, get Dave to give details...he was on lienvoy 9 dec...close to ambassador...” After four days without a response to his priority memo, Whitten must have sensed that Scott was disturbed. Whitten thought he knew what the problem was. Whitten wrote a follow-up memo to Scott, providing him with the assurance that “our present plan in passing info to Warren Commission is to eliminate mention to telephone taps in order protect your continuing ops.” Unwittingly, Whitten then put his foot in it. “Exact detailed info from REDACTED (two names) on just what Silvia Duran and other officials said about Oswald’s visits and his dealings would be valuable and usable corroborative evidence. Request you requestion them carefully on these points, attempting get as much authentic data as possible, without mixing in what they knew from newspapers. Pls cable summaries and pouch detailed statements.” It’s obvious Whitten wanted Scott to quiz the CIA’s informants at the embassy and “requestion them carefully”. A review of the file shows that is precisely what needed to happen. But it never did. By the 24th, Angleton and Helms took the case away from Whitten, and never followed up on this memo. Only on December 27, after Whitten had been deposed as the chief of the JFK investigation, did Scott come up with any kind of response. It was another lie. "141299 is home number of Raul Aparicio Nogales, cultural attache of embassy. Doubt any connection with GPFLOOR (the Oswald investigation) as Aparicio was on sick leave during significant period...no further info because tapes have been erased.”[ 142 ] Goodpasture suppressed any mention of this detailed request in her chronology. Scott had told a whopping lie to Whitten. Whether or not Aparicio was on sick leave (which I doubt due to lack of evidence, although we have indications he was a diabetic), the CIA’s own log shows that Aparicio was at the Cuban Embassy at 9:25 am on Sept 30. That date was certainly within the significant period of the Oswald visit. September 30 is included within the “significant period” surrounding the Sept 28 call where Aparicio’s name is mentioned! Once Angleton had control of the investigation, he decided to “wait out the commission”, while he chased every Soviet angle in sight. Angleton had Rocca write the aforementioned key memo linking the September 28 phone call with the “assassin” Kostikov. Meanwhile, Helms prevented the Warren Commission from seeing the actual October 10 documents and others – only provides paraphrased documents. See David Wise’s article from back in 1968, that shows how frustrating this situation was. When staffer David Slawson got persistent about wanting to go deeper into the Mexico City matter, Scott and White actually played the tapes for Slawson and his colleague William Coleman on April 9, while swearing them to secrecy.[ 143 ] Now there was no more risk of the story of the tapes being blown. The Warren Report was hurried out the door by late September, ostensibly to avoid influencing the 1964 presidential election. The findings relied heavily on the FBI’s initial product pushed out the door in early December – Oswald was the assassin and acted alone. In the final chapter, we will review who might have been in on the assassination itself, and I will offer some thoughts on how to approach resolution and justice in the JFK case. At this point in the story, did the government have any concern that the impersonation might have been done by the Soviets or the Cubans? Apparently not on the part of the CIA. A CIA memo states that “following a thorough review and study of all available material, the Agency was unable to prove that Oswald had been acting under direction of the KGB”. The same finding was made regarding Cuba. We will take a look at the domestic front.

Paul, I think Newman is going in the right direction. I don't see him as moving towards a Soviet plot to kill JFK. I think he is right that Solie was a mole. I am not an expert on Bagley, and I have been cautious about him in the past, but he appears to me at this point as one of the good guys. He concluded, among other things, that LHO was a "witting" defector in the USSR. I think McCord is now in Newman's sights. Let's see where it goes.

I don't know why no one picked up on Gil's work here - here are my notes supporting him for the most part. Gil's work would explain why most researchers believe that officer with call number #279 still has not been identified. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=16237#relPageId=24&search=griffin - Sylvia Meagher figured out 40-50 years ago that 279 is J. T. Griffin Lawrence Ex 2 - Copy of personnel assignments for the Presidential motorcade made by Perdue W. Lawrence, dated November ... Personnel assignments confirm this - Purdue Lawrence https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1137#relPageId=510&search=%22j._t.%20griffin%22 https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=217812#relPageId=401&search=%22j._t.%20griffin%22 A good question I haven't resolved here is whether J. R. Mackey should also be considered, who allegedly also used the #279 radio call sign. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=16253#relPageId=14&search=279_and%20griffin 1. The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond, pg 88 (1976) Found in: JFK Books The Warren Commission did none of those things, although it is easy enough, simply by studying its own exhibits, to determine that No. 279 was J. T. Griffin of the second platoon, Traffic Division, Dallas Police. (Lawrence Exhibit 2, p. 2; Batchelor Exhibit 5002, p. 14) The second platoon consists of 12 three-wheel motorcycle officers, including J. T. Griffin.

Michael - the phrase "that was not true, either" was to emphasize that Oswald was neither the Mystery Man or the 5 foot 10/165 pound man. The analysis of memos 74673 and 74830 is a centerpiece of the book. The 74673 memo describing LHO as the stocky "Mystery Man" was disseminated to "your representatives in Mexico City". The 74830 memo describing LHO as the 5'10/165 pound man was disseminated to the national headquarters of the agencies. That resulted in the "Egerter-created clash between the agencies' headquarters and the local agencies' offices." When that kind of clash occurs, people get to talking - loose lips lead to people having information they should not have - and that can fuel a molehunt. Again, I appreciate the civil discourse with Sandy and Jim. I am aghast, however, that they continue to critique a book that they have not read and that MIGHT challenge their belief systems. Sandy and Jim have been very up front in saying they didn't read my book because they didn't agree with its premise. My response: 1. Jim thought I didn't consider the possibility that Oswald was a spy. But I did. You didn't know that because you didn't read the book. If you had read the book, you would see that I said that it is more useful to first assume that Oswald was a "wannabe spy" or a "useful idiot" before automatically assuming that he was a spy. That does not mean that I don't think that Oswald was a spy - I do, at least at certain times, and for certain agencies. What I think and I can 100% prove, however, are two different things. It's useful to begin a premise by pointing to what you can prove without speculation. 2. When you read an analysis that challenges your premise - you may learn something that supports your premise. That's why it's important to read analyses from a variety of viewpoints. 3. One of the best things any of us can do is to read material that challenges our assumptions. It is the failure to do so - and the refusal to do so - that has led the USA to its sorry state today.