Larry Hancock

Yes Pat, in general I think this, like all the discussion of Greer's "reaction" is largely a non-issue. You might want to check the WC work itself though because one entire section pertains to a study by the SS itself its own procedures and what revisions might be required based on the experience in Dallas. Also I would heartily endorse reading all of Vince Palamara's work on this including interviews with agents and managers from the period in question. There are some relevant issues including the apparently endemic drinking problem a good deal of the WHD had developed not to mention the cover-up of the late hours the night before. We have interviewed the club manager who says that without a doubt serious drinking was going on and that most of the agents left far later than they admitted. The club was also visited by an SS agent a few weeks later...apparently the one who went back to talk with the Parkland Doctors...who pleaded with the club personnel not to talk with the press about the drinking that evening. There are also a few things that are suspicious about the motorcade including the lack of a camera vehicle ahead of the limo and the movement of a couple of motorcycles with orders coming from a man from the VP's car at Love field. It's also important to recall that the Texas trip, following on the heals of several other trips, had placed a lot of strain on the WHD. Certainly you should read Lawson's report...and note that some arrangements such as freezing train traffic also appeared not to have worked in DP (which nobody ever really investigated). Personally I think there is much more to be gained by looking at the details of the cover-up as supported by a few SS personnel afterwards...in particular there are some very interesting quotes from the SS agent who went back to Dallas, something about "it was too bad people had to die but" (very rough paraphrase). It freightened the interviewer....makes one wonder exactly what story was given to some of the individuals engaging in the cover-up. -- Larry

Pat, the SS procedures manual and issues like motorcade speed, turn radius, closure of windows, building security have been discussed for ages. One of the problems is that the last I heard nobody has turned up an actual copy of the SS procedures manual circa 1963. At one point I seem to recall that McAdams claimed to have a copy but no scanned pages or other concrete references turned up to justify that claim so it was greeting with some skepticism (perhaps someone is more current on this than I am though). I know that Vince P. looked diligently for this withoug locating it. And of course SS procedures and training were dramatically revised after the assassination so reference to anyting after 1963 is pretty meaningless. Interestingly two sources have claimed to know a great deal about Presidential motorcade security. Fletcher Prouter gave that impression however in his ARRB interview that totally came apart and he backed off it; however David Phillips notes in his book that he was in Mexico City for JFK's visit and became quite familiar with all elements of Presidential security (given that his job was totally unrelated one wonders why, also why he would bring such a thing up in his book...hmmm). I would say however, based on Vince's work and numerous photos of Presidential motorcades its pretty obvious that the motorcades did not always travel at a minimum of 20 miles an hour on city streets. And of course maintaining a speed like that going around the Elm/Houston turn would have been impossible. No doubt they would have tried to make up time heading up onto the freeway but the turn certainly slowed the limo even without crowds rushing into the street (which often happened to JFK and is seen in many photos). Bottom line, anyone knowing about the motorcade route two days in advance would have redily seen that the car was going to be very slow coming out of that turn.....and could have also picked a few other places were crowds and turns would have slowed the vehicle substantially (any 90 degree turn on a downtown street would do it....say Main to Houston). And we know that there were a number of apparent Oswald impersonations at locations in downtown Dallas including a couple on Main street (one right across from Ruby's club). Sorry for the rambling, Larry

Great news Terry, I'm glad you are planning on coming! Please share with John that I've been trying to reach him; I know his presentation topic but sometime in the next couple of months I will be finalizing the actual speakers schedule and will need to know if he has any preferences as well as provide him with some other background material including the final schedule (well as final as it gets until everyone actually appears in Dallas...grin). John Ritchson and I have been going over formulating plans for making the trip down there this past year, and hopefully making a side trip to Austin to hook up with Dawn and Erick, depending on my cash flow and time allotted. My new equipment won't be up and running until December or January, so I don't have to worry about leaving for applications classes until after the holidays. It'll be great meeting up with everyone! I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Ter <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

John, although its probably pretty clear that I don't agree with either the Soviet or Cuban scenario, we do have some indication that there was a very high level of concern (although no significant military or national security response) as soon as the Oswald/Kostikov connection surfaced. Take a look at the Lancer site and read Newman's analysis of the Mexico City to D.C. cable traffic. It gets so tense that CIA HQ tells them to put all cables in clear language and not standard shorthand because the risk of a mistake in interpretation is too great. Those folks were tense. And its clear that at Mann's level the take was that the Soviets were very likely behind Oswald and they were extremely bitter that LBJ and RFK suppressed the inquiry across all agencies there. Plus, because of unavalable National Security transcripts, apparently missing AF1 traffic and other holes in the record, we don't really know how strong a response their may have been. I'm hoping that is going to be the topic of a presentation in November, let's just say the military response shows signs of being stronger than was later represented. However, none of this has to mean more than that the bad guys were fully aware of how hot an item Oswald would be as a patsy. Of course that's only for that short crisis period before you begin asking yourself who would be so stupid as to sponsor somebody like Oswald who would leave an obvious trail to Cuban and or Soviet sponsorship....probably not either party. Sort of like Johnson relying on Mack Wallace to go into the TSBD and shoot the President, its just not a good odds thing. -- Larry

I wanted to give everyone a bit of an update on speakers and content; we have added several new speakers since my intial post on the conference. John Ritchson will present on the physical evidence and if you know John from his posts you can anticipate this will be a real treat. Combined with John Hunt's work on physical evidence handling by the FBI and the work done by Stuart Wexler and Tom Pinkston, this is definitely going to be an interesting conference for those of you interested in physical and ballistics evidence. (note to John, I'm having difficulty reaching you so would you please drop me a note via email larryjoe@westok.net or via the forum so that I can maintain contact). Ian Griggs will be presenting on his research into Kathy Kay and her history with remarks on husband number two Harry Olsen and the relationship between Jack Ruby and both of them. We missed Ian last year and are really happy to have hi and a other British researchers return to Dallas in 2005. John Simkin will be presenting on a panel which I hope to expand to deal with several aspects of the Kennedy family (and their friends) response to the assassination. Ben Rogers, Archivist for the Penn Jones Jr. Collection at Baylor will be present and demonstrating this new research resource. This collection is going online and should be of great interest to everyone. With further luck we may also have the archivist from Hood College and the Weisburg collection, pending his travel schedule. We have also invited the group of Dallas reporters including Bob Huffaker and George Phenix to speak on their personal experiences as detailed in their new book "When The News Went Live." In addition, we have also issued an invitation and have tentative acceptance from both Peter Dale Scott and Vince Palamara (schedule and travel permitting)... keep your fingers crossed. I think we can promise that even expererienced researchers are going to encounter some fascinating new research at this year's conference.

Simone, I think you have picked an excellant topic. There is a wealth of material on this in documents released through the JFK records act as well as in U.S. State Department documents. Unfortunately it seems to have received very little recognition within the realm of professional history..... it's a bit sad when the best article and most document references you find are in Cigar Afficianado (sp) Magazine (no kidding, really). However in your research, I would also suggest that you look no only at the dialogs between Castro and Kennedy (dialogs initiated by Castro at the time of the BOP prisoner release) but at the issues relating to the settlement of the missile crisis. Much has been written about this settlement and Kennedy's non-invasion pledge. Much has not been written about the fact that a key element (on site inspection by the U.N.) of the settlement was totally rejected by Castro, in a move that put Castro at odds with the U.N., the Soviets and the U.S. It would be interesting to evaluate that action as a counter/caution to Castro's approach to Kennedy. All of which is going to focus you on a lot of internal Kennedy administration and State Department documents I suspect.

There have been some good articles written on Katzenbach's letter and the issue of the legal response to the assassination. They were generally published in journals. I would recommend Donald Gibson's article "The First 72 Hours" in PROBE Nov-Dec 1999. Also North's book Act of Treason has some very good detail material on the actions of various parties. One thing is very clear from the Johnson tapes and that is LBJ was not at all happy with this Katzenbach/Justice Department initiative because it was going on when he was trying to ensure that the matter would be officially addressed by a Texas Court of Inquiry reviewing an FBI report. Clearly it was not a matter of all parties working from a shared script.

Mark, it is clear from his calls, diary and in particular his dialogs with Fortas (who was serving as Baker's lawer and whom Johnson shifted into being his personal representative to the Texas AG on the investigation) that Johnson wanted a Texas "state" level Court of Inquiry....which I think translates into Hoover giving a report to a set of lawyers (pretty much named by Fortas and Johnson) in Texas and having them rubber stamp the Oswald lone nut conclusion. He clearly was not interested in having a real criminal investigation in Dallas as he had Hoover essentially force that closed and suppressed any internal dialog in Dallas about conspiracy (reference Carter's calls to Dallas and the Texas AG the night of Nov. 22 at Johnson's behest). However in testing the waters with his pet media folks it quickly became really clear that a Texas Court of inquiry was going to meet with national skepticism, heck even Alsop warned him about that and tried briefly to challenge the idea until Johnson rolled over him. After about 48 hours of this Johnson was smart enough to get together with Fortas and come up with a new plan, the names for the WC commission were largely generated between the two of them. On a side note, you will note that Johnson was very unhappy with Justice department folks and the idea of federal investigative panel; Johnson did not like that idea at all until he was forced to bow to the fact that he could not sandbag the whole thing to a group of Texas lawyers). Note: Johnson was very likely relying on his influence in Texas and given the Kinser and Marshall affairs there is some justification for confidence. I think it is clear that Johnson was suppressing discussion of conspiracy and driving a cover up from a time shortly after Oswald was arrested. As to the reason for that, he could have been given early signs that foreign parties were behind it or he could have been "gotten to" before the assassination. As I outline in my book, I tend to suspect the latter - I think he was blackmailed over the Baker scandal (not that he was totally unhappy about it - anyone reading Caro's books would have an insight into his blind need for power to consider that). However that is simply a working hypothesis, although I do think his behavior on the plane and his infamous "wink" is suggestive. Lady Bird's big smile during the swearing in has always bothered me a bit as well... -- Larry

I'm going to weigh in with Pat on this one. Having invested a good deal of "skull sweat" and research on the details of the cover up I presented a case in my book that one can isolate LBJ as the single driving force behind the all the key elements of the cover up, including medical via Burkley, the FBI's evidence management via Hoover and the quashing of objections like those raised by Mann. According to Mann himself LBJ was supported (for whatever reason) in this by RFK who also used his influence to quash pursuit of conspiracy immediately following the assassination. Beyond that other elements were covered up for security and CYA reasons within the agencies involved - e.g. intelligence contact with Oswald covered up by both FBI and CIA, Ruby's crime connections and extensive associations in site the DPD covered up by DPD senior officers etc. SS negligence covered up by the service itself, think of the effect of the late night drinking session on national news. And we know directly from the Johnson tapes how he alone drove the legal cover-up, the formation of the WC and the manipulation of the press. So after written about all this minutia in boring detail I'd be happy to discuss it with anyone who managed to wade through it....grin. -- Larry

Good work Steve, actually my DPUK presentation last week was about Kirknewton, the Guerini brothers, the Mondoloni network which went into the east coast via Miami and increasingly through Texas via both Loredo and Houston. Big busts in from this network were made in Loredo, Houston and interestingly enough at Fort Benning during the period of 63-65. For anyone serously wanting to follow this line of research I would definitely recommend The Strength of the Wolf, the secret history of America's war on drugs by Douglas Valentine. Published by Verso in London last year. In a chapter on the JFK assassination he speculates that the Mondoloni network might have been used to support the conspiracy. And as I pointed out last weekend, a great number of the pre-assassination leaks can be tracked to people who could well have been on the periphery of that network. -- Larry

Charlie, I would love to see a response to your question from an expert on Constitutional or Federal law. As Commander In Chief I have a hard time understanding how the President would not have the power to request or even give himself clearance for any particular piece of information. However as Ron points out, first he had to know about something to even make an inquiry and its pretty clear that information is often very much "controlled" by those who hold it. Its probably also not impossible that those in control at certain points might not even trust a certain President not to leak secure information or try to "use" it - that's happened a lot and certainly discourages "sharing". Certainly the same is true in regard to revealing information to Congress who can't seem to keep much of anything to themselves without eventually trying to use it in some fashion. And to make it worse, the President might have to have some pretty detailed information to retrieve a really closely held piece of information compartimentalized within an organization - its possible for military commanders not to have either knowledge or access to compartimentalized information within parts of their command. So just asking an Agency chief or commander might not be enough... security and deniability often cover-up more than might even have been intended. I'm currently researching some pre-BOP Castro assassinations projects that clearly were known to only a few people way, way down the Agency food chain and certainly not at any Executive levels. .... However I remain very much confused about the ongoing story that Nixon asked for the CIA IG report on the BOP and it was denied to him. I don't understand how that could stick legally if the President really wanted it? -- Larry

James, do you have the Fort Benning graduation date handy? It is pretty clear that most of not all the exiles that were being trained in 1963 were likely going to end up "seconded" one way or the other to the SNG/Artime project. In Rodriguez case that would have made a huge amount of sense as his family had been well to do and old school establishment in Cuba. Exactly the sort of credentials one would want for a new post-Castro political leadership. In fact, that sort of profiling was very throughly done by Morales in recruiting and setting up his groups before the BOP - which included individuals who were to become part of the interim government as well as the infrastructure for the new intelligence community which would support the post-Castro government. This Morales information will be in my second edition and comes from the CIA internal investigation following the BOP fiasco. For what its worth Morales was the only individual to receive unreserved praise for his work - in fact it appears that he was about the only one on the team who was perceived to totally have had his act together. So much so that nobody objected to him personally retaining independent control over the personnel he had trained and prepared - after those individuals showed up back in Florida (most never made it onto the beach although a couple were killed and others captured - just as Rubin described Morales remarks to him).

Given the origin of this thread I thought a couple of personal observations might be in line. First, as John mentioned, I did bring up Felix R. in my presentation - however I was trying to use him as an illustration/profile of the types of individuals that David Morales trained and mentored among the different groups (AMMOT, AMFAST and AMCHEER) of exiles that he prepared for operations into Cuba before and after the BOP. Although we do not have specific lists of those individuals, both Rodriquez and Victor Hernandez fit the profiles and operations described in a recently available document on Morales trainees. The actual point of all of this was to illustrate how much more significant (and capable) that Morales was than has been realized by those who simply consider him a lone wolf covert operator. We know absolutely nothing of Rodriquez activities in 1963 (he avoids that period as well as comment on Kennedy or the assassination in his own book) and I have seen nothing that would tie him to the operation against JFK. What he may or may not have done that year is pure speculation - less someone has some information to contribute. The same is true of Victor Hernandez. There is however, plenty of data to characterize Rodriquez's later activities in Latin America, especially in Contra operations. Rodriquez is a passionate anti-Castroite and a passionate anti-Communist....was in the 60's and remains so. However at this point there is nothing that suggests that he participated in the sorts of "terrorist" activities that Posada, Bosch and other exiles appear to have turned to in the years following the BOP. That's not a defense of him, its simply the most accurate profile I've seen in all my own readings on him. As always I'm more than open to further education on the subject.

Tim, as far as I know Mertz was not a "mob guy" in the general sense but rather a drug smuggler for a couple of brothers who ran one of the larger herion distribution networks out of Marseille. I would refer you to a book called the Herion Trail for details on him and Soutre as well. In addition to that he had been a resistance fighter and served as an active agent for French counter counter intelligence for a number of years. I don't think he fits the "hit man" paradigm although he certainly was capable of violence in his wartime and intelligence duties. -- Larry

Pat, you are certainly right on with those items; a couple of additional points are that the French military belived that the OAS had received either intelligence or some other tacit support in their actions for Algerian independence as part of a hard line reaction of anything resembling compromise with revolutionary movements. Also, there is concrete evidence that the OAS and Soutre in particular were pitching the story that DeGaule's government was widely infiltrated with Soviet supporters and communists. As usual Angleton bought into this and personally became very involved in trying to determine how wide much of a risk this posed - Angleton could never pass up suspicions of Soviet moles. Because of this French intelligence absolutely knew that at last some in in a high level at CIA was talking with the OAS. -- Larry

I'm afraid this is an amazingly convoluted subject - a reading of the FBI and CIA files in which the names Mertz and Soutre are constantly intermingled illustrates that certainly the FBI was equally confused. I wish I could contribute something solid but at this point I can only offer the observation that a number of pre-assassination leaks suggest that Cuban exiles perhipherally associated with elements of the the crime scene (in particular drug and arms smuggling networks) in the southern U.S. were aware of a plan to strike at the President. These leaks seem to have been picked up by certain French individuals who were involved with feeding drugs from Marseille into these networks....Mertz is probably a leading candidate for knowing about the plot. And Mertz was also someone totally dedicated to penetrating anything that might present a threat against DeGaulle. It is highly speculative but not impossible that Mertz may have been in Dallas to further investigate the rumored threat and any individuals whom he suspected might be associated with it. It is clear that in 1964 there was a "bidding" war going on between the OAS and French government for the attentions and support of the CIA - there was widespread suspicion in France that the CIA or other elements of the U.S. including its military had supported various OAS efforts against De Gaulle. Concrete knowledge of the plot could have been a significant negotiating tool as it would have proved the value of either party. It is also clear that CIA and FBI might both have been eager to get either Mertz or Soutre out of the country based on their general undesirability (drugs in Mertz case and being a violent revolutionary in Soutre's) - given that they could ever track them down. Catching up with either one of them in Texas could have resulted in a quick and very low key expulsion unrelated to the assassination. ....Larry Larry Hancock provided some very interesting details on this case during his seminar in Canterbury on Sunday. Hopefully he will post this information when he gets back to his computer. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And without some details on the actual failure its hard to say more. It would be relatively easy to isolate commercial traffic at least for a time by taking out or seizing long distance relay (long lines) facilities. Of course that becomes a bit of a trick to cover up afterwards. But if you want to actually take control of local calls within an exchange or local calls among DC exchanges it calls for a lot more visibility. I'm afraid this one is like some of the other frequently discussed incidents (the LBJ leaflets in Miami for example) that gets widely repeated without much source info or background on the incident itself. But if anybody can dig up some detail I'd sure love to see it. -- Larry Larry, The failure of the DC phone system seems like another one of those coincidences. From my reading of your post and the earlier post of Robert Charles-Dunne, I gather that there are two possibilities: 1. It was accidental, coincidental or 2. It was contrived. (I'm a genius) If it was the latter, the military is most likely the party responsible. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well OK, having worked with electromechanical and computerized phone switches and taught switching systems and traffic / load engineering for a few years, a couple of thoughts occur to me. First, you tie up individual building switches (PABX's), or individual office switches (key systems) or local telco exchanges or local or long distance trunks. You can shut them down of course but that's not all that easy and there is no on/off switch -you would have to do a lot of manual work or more likely just shut down the power to the system(s) in question. And that would be at lots of local exchanges and trunk/transmission facilities. Everyone who has read Seven Days in May will require that the bad guys were training a whole strike force just to take over communications in D.C.....and much of that was going to happen by taking over long distance relay facilities. The problem is that as far as a given number of users are concerned, you would have the same appearance (the phone system is down) if their individual PABX, Key System, Local Exchange, or destination trunk facilities were busy. The net result of all of it is either no dial tone or most likely a fast busy. There are a couple of fairly easy "saturation" things that can happen, for example everyone around the country could start placing calls to destinations in D.C. that are served by a couple of exchanges - at the same time a fair number of folks in those exchanges try to call each other or call out (gets worse with lots of folks calling and nobody answering because they are tied up with the news). At that point in time most of the switching equipment was mechanical and some of it actually used the same relays to place and hold the call. Not that hard to tie it up with a spike in calls being placed or received for that matter. Even today with computerized switching that has much better loading capability, its still possible to run into fast busys during a major event - and it only gets better when enough people tire out and stop trying to place calls. Bottom line, an observation like the saying DC System telephone system went down requires a lot more detail - a person in one of the Bell switching control centers could say that because they would be monitoring switches, trunks and traffic. Or individuals might say it if they they simply encountered busy signals. The key would be knowing who, when and where felt the system was down. And by the way, if it truly were down due to some planned action, there should be a number of telephone traffic people not only in D.C. but in other regional control centers who would have observed how and when it went down - and came back for that matter.

Greg mentioned Gordon McLendon and since McLendon is not that often discussed I thought I'm mention a couple of things, keeping in mind that although Ruby was apparently trying to contact him he was doing it in a very transparent manner indicating that if McLendon was truly some sort of backchennel it wasn't one that was set up very effectively before hand. One of the more interesting things about McLendon is that he seems to have been very well acquainted with David Phillips and (like Mrs. Pawley) supported the retired intelligence officer group largely organized by Phillips after his early retirement (and according to Phillips himself, with the goal of countering charges of illegal actions by former CIA employees), especially media charges. I don't know that anyone has really brought out when the two men became acquainted but at one point after Phillip's retirement the two worked together on a project of McLendon's that would have fielded a TV series about the CIA very similar to the highly successful FBI series. It would be very interesting to know more about the personal relationship and contacts (not to mention any shared political views) of Phillips and McLendon. McLendon himself appears to have been a fascinating and highly successful individual, some quick google searches on him will demonstrate that. Not the sort of fellow you would imagine hanging out at Jack's club though.

Tim, circa 1964 a great number of people were spending a lot of time not facing up to many things about Jack Ruby. The DPD was busy avoiding his extensive associations with its officers and personnel. The WC went so far as to abandon its only two field investigators, who were assigned to Dallas and had become immensely suspicious of Ruby. They were forced out and upon departing extracted a promise to be called and present once Ruby was formally interviewed by the WC, that didn't happen. It's been demonstrated at great length that Ruby's crime connections and probable connections to gun dealing were avoided. You will find lots of that in my book and in prior works like Kantors. I also go though the box of evidence that was turned over to DPD, seen by multiple officers and acknowledged by the DA prosecuting the Ruby case....who simply said that all the material contained in it connecting Ruby to Oswald and a conspiracy would not have helped him with his case so he wasn't interested. Given that sort of context, does it really surprise you that the WC expressed no interest in Ruby's defense? And will we come up with corroboration of all this much less definitive proof....after 40 plus years, not very likely.

Tim, I am acquainted with one lawyer who has been researching Belli for several years and who hopes to publish a book which would include his long term relationships with organized crime figures. It's my understanding that he has been seeking access to the sort of records which would trace a paper trail for the money - with no success given that the folks who hold what remains of Belli's papers and records are not exactly happy with this train of inquiry. And as you can imagine, you would not expect any response other than denials from the Ruby family. I haven't gotten an update on his progress lately, he gave us an initial presentation a couple of years ago at a Lancer conference - it involved many examples of Belli associate with organized crime elements and essentially being a syndicate "groupie." Of couse if you are going to make a living off defending those types of clients I suppose you would be accused of being a "mob lawyer" at some point in time in any event. As to why the HSCA did not investigate this - simple - the information only surfaced in a book that was published in 1981. It wasn't something that was brought to the attention of any official investigation; just as Roselli's remarks to his own lawyer were known only to that individual's law partner until an interview conducted only a few years ago. That lawyer, although a former Justice Department organized crime prosecutor, also apparently failed to bring the remarks before any official body.

Stan, I'm going to define "immediately before" as all the way back to the afternoon of November 22. First, we know that immediately following the assassination, certainly following the arrest of Oswald, a worker in Jack's club reported that Jack received a number of calls from the same individual who refused to identify himself. Upon being informed of the calls Jack became very nervous and gave the indication that he who had been calling and didn't want to discuss it. Although we do not know who the caller was, we do know that the only long distance call on record that Ruby himself made to anyone other than relatives was to Al Gruber in L.A. This would be the same Al Gruber that went to Dallas to visit Ruby in mid November after having no contact with him for ten years prior. When asked the reason Gruber stated he dropped in to visit Ruby because he was in the neighborhood - on a trip to Arkansas. Ruby had called Gruber on Nov. 17 and folowing that call was reportedly sighted in Las Vegas - there are a number of reports to that effect but none solid enough for the WC to put him there. Beyond that we don't know who he may have been in touch with on Saturday because Ruby was far to smart to use his personal or club phones for calls which would have created a record. We also don't know who Ruby may have been in contact with inside the DPD prior to the assassination although Kantor gives us a detailed record of his appearances in and around the DPD building where Oswald was being held. We can deduce he had at least one good source though because we know that he knew that a transfer of Oswald was planned and then called off on Saturday afternoon. Beyond the Gruber contact its all speculation but combining the Gruber (L.A.) contacts before the assassination and immediately following the assassination with the reported call from Vegas which recruited Belli to defend Ruby - using his brother as the cover for the payment - it certainly looks like Ruby's chain was being pulled by someone with contacts on the L.A./Vegas nexus. For myself, as those who have read my book know, I speculate that would be Roselli.

A few observations. First, somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but were not those 64 FBI interviews very tightly structured with specific questions. Basically they were looking for anybody who might have seen Oswald, specifically at the time of the shooting. I think this is the interview series that missed Oswald being seen in the lunchroom around 12:15. It was not an open ended investigation by this point in time. Second, it certainly is not a Friday afternoon DPD interview where she would have opened up with what her son describes.... by the time of the FBI interview caution may have set in? Beyond that I keep thinking about the fact that Bowers didn't even mention his notification of the police about the tramps in the RR car no anything about their capture.... in any of his interviews. Having said that though, I hope her son is willing to engage in an in depth dialog so all the issues about what she did or didn't say when can be fully explored.

Greg, a great post and I couldn't agree more - I'd like to know why Kantor really didn't pursue this item too far although then again I'm not sure how to do so. It's interesting that this incident was apparently of interest to the FBI and that it occured prior to Ruby becoming an official FBI informant. It makes a person wonder if something related to it was used to leverage Ruby into serving as an informant? Several very funny things about it, first the location of Aztech just makes no sense at all in regard to drug running, especially minor drug running. A few decades later private planes were used to bring large stashes into isolated places in New Mexico and Arizona but if that was the case in this one then Ruby was really out there on the edge of major drug running. Most of the traffic at the date in question was simply across the border in south Texas. Second, why is Ruby renting a car and where did he rent it, if he rented a car rather than used his own and drove all the way from Dallas to Aztech in it (and possibly other places) its a real break from his normal behavor. Just like his getting a safe deposit box when he became an informant....or his buying a safe for his office in 63 when he was having major money problems. All in all, it's probably a really important clue to Ruby and my guess is Kantor couldn't figure out what to do with it other than mention it. If anybody has a clue on how to pursue it I'd sure love to hear their ideas.

Mark, Seth Kantor's The Ruby Cover-Up is the place to start; its really required reading to get into Ruby during the assassination period. Ruby's bank manager saw him with a large amount of cash, a fairly substantial amount (especially in 1963 dollars) was found in his car as well. Ruby had also had a safe installed in his office not long before - pretty unusual for a guy who normally kept what he had in his trunk and who could not scrape up enough to even pay off a negotiatiated amount on his back taxes. -- Larry