Paul Trejo

Larry, as I recall, Marina Oswald said that Lee took all his FPCC newspaper clippings from his August FPCC adventures along with him to Mexico City. What do you make of that? Best regards, --Paul Trejo

John, I don't think Oswald was "stupid" so much as he was hopeful and authoritarian. If Guy Banister told Oswald it was possible to fake his way into Cuba, IMHO there is a good chance that Oswald would go along for the ride. Especially if there was any money involved. With Clay Shaw on the project, we can be assured there was money involved. In my opinion, Guy Banister probably told Lee Harvey Oswald something like this: 1. We have proof that any FPCC officer can get into Cuba through Mexico City with no questions asked. 2. All we have to do is sheep-dip you as an officer of the FPCC. Get you in the newspapers, on the radio even on TV. 3. Then, if you take all those clippings to Mexico City and show it to the Cuban Embassy, they'll roll out the red carpet for you. 4. Once inside Cuba, you'll be introduced to Fidel Castro as an honored officer of his beloved FPCC. Then you can kill him. 5. We will be on hand to rescue you. Once you're back in the USA, you'll get $100,000 reward, plus a parade, and we'll make you a Congressman. Oswald was given pin money for this adventure. Money for an office, for fliers, for trips to Clinton, and so on. But the big reward would be at the other end. I think this was the reason that Oswald moved to New Orleans in the first place. I should add that Guy Banister knew beforehand that this plot would fail miserably. The Cuban Embassy had an official list of FPCC officers, and nobody else could get away with claiming to be an FPCC officer. So, was Oswald stupid? No, but I think he went along with Guy Banister's program to prove he had the right stuff; that he wasn't a coward. There were plenty of angles. (For one, Nagell said he told Oswald he would kill him in Mexico City if he succeeded in getting passage to Cuba. So, Oswald had that on his mind, too.) Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that Lee Harvey Oswald failed to guess in September 1963 that he was being sheep-dipped to make him into the perfect patsy for the Crime of the Century in November 1963. It would dawn on him only in the last 48 hours of his life. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit>

This is close to the way I view Lee Harvey Oswald. He wanted to be a part of the Intelligence community. He wanted a permanent, full-time job with them, and he believed he had the talent for the job. Oswald had ambition and he had gumption. He had talent, but he also had flaws. Yet he was young, so he was hopeful. Maybe somebody would see his potential and offer him some training... To make himself available for a full-time job with the ONI, CIA or FBI, Oswald would do gopher jobs for them -- private detective sorts of information gathering -- what we commonly today call a 'snitch.' This is my opinion. Oswald had a Minox camera for just such occasions. Wasn't there a Western Union clerk in Texas who testified that Lee Harvey Oswald would come to his office to receive small amounts of cash ($10 and $20) on a semi-regular basis? It seems to me that Lee Harvey Oswald would volunteer for every quasi-intelligence job he could think of. He probably was one of the 36-40 young military men chosen to dangle in the USSR, and this boosted his ego tremendously. After that, he never gave up hope. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

It seems to me that JFK researchers should be able to disagree about everything and still remain civil. I personally hope that the new regime will fulfill its mission and keep the Forum alive for decades to come -- at least until 2038 or when all official Lee Harvey Oswald files are finally made public. Because, until all the facts are made public, none of us can claim to know the final answer -- it is like adding up a whole page of twenty digit numbers, where one of the numbers is blanked out -- and we are still expected to arrive at the total sum. The odds of getting it right are virtually impossible. So, we should expect disagreements -- of the most blatant variety. Yet nothing should prevent civil discourse in the interest of free speech. Cantankerous talk actually stifles free speech, so I applaud the new regime (especially with regard to Tom Scully, who seemed to me to be unduly harsh as a moderator). I personally had no complaint against Jim Di Eugenio, but if he was less than civil to somebody, then some warning is clearly warranted. I would want a warning, too, if I ever crossed the line of civility. Thumbs up for the new regime. Finally -- I think that after 50 years of JFK research, we can hope for better insights and a higher quality of methods and theories. Here's to 25 more years of the Forum. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

Upon further consideration it appears to me that the KKK played a subordinate role in the JFK assassination. The key players that have been identified by several JFK researchers that are also convincing to me are the following: (01) General Edwin Walker (02) Guy Gabaldon (03) Loran Hall (04) Larry Howard (05) Harry Dean (06) John Rousselot and the John Birch Society of El Monte (07) H.L. Hunt and the John Birch Society of Dallas (08) Guy Banister (09) David Ferrie (10) Carlos Bringuier (11) Ed Butler (12) Eladio Del Valle (13) Roscoe White (14) Jesse Curry Although some individuals on this list are closely connected with the Southern politics of the racial segregation of US public schools (namely, Banister, Walker, Hunt, Rousselot, White and Curry), the majority of people on this list cared primarily for the defeat of Communism in general, and the defeat of Fidel Castro in particular. Further, Walker was not originally a racist -- he was the school integrator in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was evidently after two long years of targeted indoctrination by the right-wing that Edwin Walker finally changed his mind. Yet what changed Walker's mind was the John Birch Society doctrine that President Eisenhower was a dedicated Communist. In other words, Walker was an Anticommunist, first and foremost, and a racist only secondarily, and only because he had become intellectually (to his level) convinced that the Black American Civil Rights movement was a Communist plot. Otherwise, I have serious doubts that Walkre would have become interested in the Civil Rights question at all. So -- insofar as Guy Banister led the way in this group with his racist politics, and also therefore in his connections to the KKK, and insofar as Banister represents a small part of this list, my theory cannot give the KKK more than a subordinate or supporting role in the JFK assassination. Naturally the KKK would be thankful for the slaughter of "K-K-K" (JFK, RFK, MLK). The first-hand accounts from Terri Williams make perfect sense to me -- e.g. in her county, which was dominated by the KKK, the kids in school celebrated the killing of JFK, and they congratulated the kids of the best KKK sharpshooter in town, on the local presumption that he "must have been" to finally rid the USA of JFK. The school celebration rings true. The KKK was probably hopeful that without "K-K-K" the USA would finally impeach Earl Warren, repeal the Brown decision and go back to the segregation of US public schools. If so, LBJ gave the KKK a surprise. In any case, I believe that even if KKK sharpshooters were hired by Guy Banister (e.g. Roscoe White), they were underlings in a plot with a broader scope. According to Harry Dean, whose theory continues to gain momentum in my own theory, Guy Gabaldon, Loran Hall and Larry Howard were key movers in framing Lee Harvey Oswald. We know that Carlos Bringuier, Ed Butler were also key movers -- yet all of these men were Hispanic Anticommunists obsessed with Cuba -- they didn't care one way or the other about Black Civil Rights. So, I now maintain that the KKK role in the JFK assassination was subordinate. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Gee, Tommy, I wasn't aware that one of the conditions for contributing to your thread was human perfection. When I make a mistake I admit it promptly. That's how I was raised, and that's my criterion for courtesy. If you only accept error-free contributors on your thread, then you should have said so at the start. I sure hope you can live up to your error-free standard. Regards, --Paul Trejo

To the best of my knowledge, the only JFK assassination eye-witness who has named WW2 hero, Guy Gabaldon, in connection with the murder of JFK, is Harry Dean. For the past year and a half I've focused almost entirely on resigned Major General Edwin Walker, and have slanted my research toward his biography. Starting this week, however, I've turned my attention to Guy Gabaldon. Gabaldon's personality is a little bit closer to my own, insofar as he was also a Chicano from East Los Angeles. I've only begun exploring Guy Gabaldon in detail, as I'd previously found very little information about him, aside from Wikipedia and the controversy over whether he was gypped out of a Medal of Honor for single-handedly capturing more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers at Saipan. (Sergeant York was awarded that medal for capturing around 150 German soldiers). Instead, Guy Gabaldon was awarded the SIlver Star, and then some years later that was upgraded to a Navy Cross Medal. In my conversations with Harry Dean over the past year, I've obtained more information about Guy Gabaldon than we find in Harry's 2001 manuscript/book, Crosstrails. For one thing, Harry told me that he was very close friends with Guy "Gabby" Gabaldon since the middle of 1962. They llived fairly close to each other in Southern California. Gabaldon had a house in El Monte at the time, and Harry and his wife would visit Gabby and his wife in El Monte. It was through Gabby that Harry Dean met Loran (Lorenzo) Hall and Larry (Alonzo) Howard, who were major fans of Gabby. They met in the context of the John Birch Society. Gabby was interesting on a number of counts. He was a PFC Marine, and he earned the Navy Cross Medal, and was honored in the live TV show, This is Your Life in 1957. Then, a war movie was made about his life and exploits. The movie is named, Hell to Eternity (1960) and it stars Jeffrey Hunter, David Janssen and Vic Damone. That much was well known. Less well-known perhaps, is the 1998 documentary video about Gabby, entitled, East L.A. Marine. This video features friends and fans of Gabby, his former C.O., and an interview with Gabby himself at 64 years of age. Yet all of that content might be considered predictable. That's why I think the best resource on the life of Guy Gabaldon is probably the book that he himself wrote, entitled, Suicide Island: Saipan, which was modified several times and finally published in 1990, under the title, America Betrayed. There can be no doubt that PFC Guy Gabaldon was a patriotic war hero. Yet it is just as clear that Gabby was not a scholar of political science. He was mostly influenced by the John BIrch Society, and his prejudice against JFK and RFK (and Ted Kennedy) shows through clearly through the pages of his book. Guy Gabaldon mildly (not forcefully) resented the fact that he was given the Silver Star Medal, although Sergeant York was awarded the Medal of Honor for capturing several times fewer enemy soldiers in World War I. Gabby felt sure this was part of the culture of racial segregation of the US Military during World War II, and he didn't talk much about it until some years later when his Silver Star Medal was replaced by the Navy Cross Medal in an official ceremony. This was a higher honor, just under the Medal of Honor. But the publicity and the change did annoy Gabby, and then he did talk about it publicly. (For another thing, he later resented that a tall, white guy had played his part in Hell to Eternity.) Gabby considered himself a die-hard American patriot, anyway, and he devoted all his spare time to the struggle against Communism. Unfortunately, starting in 1954, Southern politicians were so angry about the Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren's Brown decision to racially integrate public schools, that they invented a new strategy -- they claimed that the Civil Rights movement was actually a Communist movement, and that the NAACP was controlled from Moscow. Of course, that was a Big Lie, but it worked to unify the racists of the Deep South with the Anticommunists in the rest of the USA. The right-wing in America became very powerful with this Southern strategy (the final hurrah of the Southern Democrats, before nearly all converted to the Republican Party). One of the many outcomes of this Southern strategy was the wildly successful John Birch Society (JBS). The first and foremost slogan of the JBS was, "Impeach Earl Warren." This was their rallying cry coast to coast, although it was the Southerners who understood this cry the best. I say, unfortunately, because the JBS doctrine became the new orientation of Guy "Gabby" Gabaldon, World War II hero and holder of a Navy Cross Medal. What was pernicious about the JBS was not their Anticommunism, but how they defined Communism -- as a plot run from Washington D.C. In the opinion of the JBS, all US Presidents starting with FDR were Communist traitors. For hundreds of thousands of Americans with little or no advanced education in political science, this doctrine was an ego-boost. Ordinary men could feel superior to their Washington leaders by simply reading one of the JBS pamphlets. Sadly, three key men in 1961 fell for the JBS doctrine, namely, Edwin Walker, Guy Gabaldon and Harry Dean. In the hands of genuine patriots with brilliant military careers, the doctrine that JFK was a Communist traitor would prove fatal. The eventual meeting of Walker-Gabaldon-Hall-Howard-Rousselot-Dean within the context of the JBS, says Harry Dean, would eventually lead to the transformation of Lee Harvey Oswald into the patsy of the JBS plot to rid the USA of JFK. I've found Harry's new information about Guy Gabaldon, Loran Hall, Larry Howard and the Southern California Minutemen regarding the assassination of JFK to be so volumnous and so interesting that I've entered into an agreement with Harry to publish the next edition of Crosstrails. This new edition will be greatly expanded with many more more factual details, and should be ready for publication by the end of this summer. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

Thanks for the clarification, Larry. If I may briefly add two cents here; it seems to me that there was little danger of Oswald sharing U2 secrets with the USSR insofar as Oswald entered the USSR under an ONI program involving from 36 to 40 fake defectors (viz. Marchetti). Oswald was hand-picked, trained, rehearsed, and was trusted to follow his script. The fact of Oswald's later poverty; the fact that he was not offered a regular job in the CIA, ONI, FBI, and so on, is, IMHO, evidence that he did not complete his mission satisfactorily -- possibly just because he married Marina. I accept your opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald held a lower level of Security clearance than Crypto-clearance. It is unlikely that Oswald would have been risked on that ONI mission if he had been that valuable. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Dear Paul, Cryptography? Oswald was "involved with" cryptography?? As far as I can remember, that's the first time I've hurt [sic] that. Could you please freshen my memory? Sincerely, --Tommy Umm, well, I might have to back pedal a little bit on this -- I don't mean Cryptography in the modern sense of the term, but in the more general sense of the term, namely, regarding Oswald's work with Radar codes, Code breaking, Photo images and even Microdots (as postulated by Tom Hume on this Forum). In other words, it is well known that Lee Harvey Oswald had a higher Security Rating than many Officers in the military -- simply because he was working at Atsugi. He had a bright future ahead of him if he could only cooperate and play nice with others. But he had to do things his own way. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

No, Tommy, I find much to doubt in Nagell's testimony, which is sometimes quite valuable. I believe that Richard Case Nagell told us his honest opinions about Lee Harvey Oswald, but I find that Nagell's opinions were twisted and skewed by his double-agent role. For one thing, as Dick Russell reports it, Nagell warned Oswald that the 'gusanos' he was hanging out with were not truly Fidelistas, but were actually right-wing vigilantes. My reaction is that Lee Harvey Oswald never needed to hear this warning -- Oswald knew very well who the DRE, INCA, Alpha 66, CRC and FDC were, there at 544 Camp Street. This was not news to him. What was news to Oswald was that the KGB (via Nagell) was watching him like a hawk. Nagell told Oswald in no uncertain terms, that if he succeeded in obtaining passage to Cuba via Mexico City, that Nagell would shoot Oswald dead. This added much to the pressure Oswald suffered in New Orleans (but notice that he didn't beat Marina in New Orleans -- he only went loco trying to figure out another route to Cuba -- hijacking a plane, for instance). Nagell claimed to be a double-agent -- that is hard to decifer. He was probably more educated in Marxist principles than Oswald was -- Oswald could recite from FPCC brochures, but not much more. Nagell worked for the KGB (they thought) getting data from the CIA (they thought). But Nagell would have killed Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico in a second if he was forced to protect his cover with the KGB. The KGB did not want Lee Harvey Oswald to enter Cuba (suggested Nagell) because without a clear invitation from Fidel Castro, the intentions of Oswald would be suspicious -- especially given the fact that Oswald had been associating with Carlos Bringuier, Ed Butler, Guy Banister and David Ferrie in New Orleans during the summer of 1963. Now -- the puzzle of Nagell (as refracted through Dick Russell) is whether Nagell really thought that Lee Harvey Oswald had been fooled by these Cuban Exile right-wingers into believing they were supportive of his FPCC plea for Fidel Castro. If so, then Nagell falsely believed that the fake FPCC chapter that Oswald had set up was really and truly legitimate. That is possible, but that would make Nagell into a naive little boy. Yet that was the substance of his warning to Oswald. No, my feeling is that Nagell knew that Oswald was faking his FPCC chapter, and he was telling Oswald -- in a sidebar -- that his slip was showing. He was really telling Oswald that every intelligent person can see right through his charade, and that if he pursued this fake FPCC chapter all the way to Mexico City, then Nagell would have simply had to kill him. This tallies with the notion that Nagell thought of Lee Harvey Oswald as a right-wing spy "wannabe" who was so naive that he was transparent as glass. But just because Nagell knew that Oswald had been involved in Cryptography and Radar Secrets since 1958, does not mean that Nagell thought of Oswald as a professional spy. Oswald *wanted* to be a professional spy. And Oswald was still trying to make the grade in New Orleans in 1963. But it was obvious to insiders that Oswald was still on the *outside* trying to get *inside*. Oswald made too many mistakes. George De Mohrenschildt said it best, perhaps, when he told the WC that Oswald's main fault was that he didn't know how to lay low -- he had no patience -- he quit his jobs in the middle with alarming consistency. So De Mohrenschildt exclaimed the "no government would be stupid enough to trust Lee with anything important." The operative word there is "important." Lee would get $10 and $20 jobs here and there, but never any major jobs -- and never any offer of full employment with the CIA, the ONI, the FBI or any legitimate Intelligence Agency. Yet Oswald truly wanted to be a spy very much. So, Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Edwin Walker, Guy Gabaldon, Harry Dean, Loran Hall, Larry Howard and John Rousselot were able to use Oswald's craving to make him into a patsy. All they had to do was pretend they were true agents of the CIA. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

Tommy, the phrase, "low-level spy training mission" comes from Richard Sprague, The Taking of America (1976). I find his scenario compelling. The idea is that these were young men, trained in the military but not seasoned spies. They were young enough so that this would be their first "spy" mission, and so it was "probationary" to borrow a term from private industry. These ~40 young men were carefully observed by both the USA and the USSR, so it was a high-pressure job, no doubt; yet it was still very much a "young man's mission." Now, when I express my opinion that Oswald bungled his training mission in the USSR, I mean that Oswald somehow failed to live up to the full program he was given. I need more information to complete my hypothesis, yet I suspect that his failure had something to do with (1) marrying Marina; or (2) coming back to the USA before he obtained all the information he was ordered to obtain. I need more facts, of course, yet on the surface my theory doesn't suspect that Oswald gave U2 secrets to the USSR. If anybody in the USA truly suspected that scenario, then there is no way that Oswald would have been expedited back to the USA, lent the traveling money, and permitted to bring a Russian wife with him. I suspect, along with Marchetti, that the USA was seeking any information about how the KGB operated (as our technology in 1959 was a fraction of what we have today). I don't think that Oswald botched his mission in any serious way (e.g. treason) but I think he simply quit before his mission was complete, and/or because he decided to get married and start a family and move back to the USA in the middle of his mission. This complicated the mission, and so voided it in the opinion of the controllers, IMHO. As for Oswald's offer of U2 and radar secrets, I strongly suspect that was carefully controlled by Oswald's mission. Remember that the US Embassy officer in the USSR reported that Oswald sounded totally "rehearsed" when he initially sought entry. I believe my opinion is clear to that point. I strongly doubt that Oswald went to the USSR on his own initiative. Again, the puzzle pieces don't fit. Coming back to the USA with a Russian wife, and on the State Department's dime, does not fit the 'bad boy' scenario. No doubt, psychologically speaking, the influence of the TV show, I Led Three Lives, played a role in Oswald's childhood makeup. That is, it seems obvious that Lee Harvey Oswald very much desired to be a professional spy. When he was in New Orleans, his library card usage showed that he checked out a lot of James Bond 007 novels. I gather that Lee Harvey Oswald had no great problems with self-esteem. He thought a lot of his talent -- and we know from CIA documents that the CIA at one point considered "the laying on of interviews" regarding Lee Harvey Oswald. Yet it also seems clear that Lee Harvey Oswald never attained his dream job. Whether those CIA interviews ever actually occurred is unclear. Or whether they occurred, but Oswald performed poorly during the interviews, is also unclear. Often, the most valuable CIA agents would be the best educated -- and it is fairly clear that Lee Harvey Oswald never went to college at all. I suspect that even in 1960 it would be difficult to enter the CIA without a college degree. Finally, as for ex-General Edwin Walker, Jim Root once proposed that Walker helped get Oswald into the USSR, mainly because their dates in Germany match -- it was late in 1959 that they both entered Europe. It's not impossible. Yet it remains purely speculative at this point. I don't (yet) find it to be a compelling scenario. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

To answer your first question, Tommy, former CIA agent Victor Marchetti told Anthony Summers that in 1959, the USA sought to obtain detailed information out of the USSR, and this included "all sorts of activities," including ONI program which involved from 36 to 40 young men who were made to appear disenchanted, poor, American youths who had become turned off by the USA and wanted to see what the USSR was all about. They were sent into the USSR with the specific intention that the Soviets would pick them up and 'track' them if they suspected them of being US agents, or recruit them as KGB agents. So, Marchetti believed that Oswald was one of these ~40 guys in this ONI program. It seems to me that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only one to get married of that group, and he made the newspapers when he returned to the USA with a Russian wife (far easier than ordinary folks would have returned from the USSR with a Russian wife). As for your further questions, Tommy, if Oswald told someone in New Orleans that his "ship had come in," when in fact he was as poor as a church-mouse in New Orleans, then IMHO this meant that Oswald had been promised a fortune in New Orleans for some secret mission. In my opinion, since we have material evidence (e.g. 544 Camp Street) that he was working with Guy Banister and David Ferrie at the time, Oswald must have been deceived into believing that he was on a secret mission for the right-wing, i.e. to KILL FIDEL, and that when this mission was accomplished, he would be given a fortune, a parade, and a shot at high government office. (That could be why Lee told Marina that he was going to be 'Prime Minister' of the USA when they were in New Orleans.) Yet as George De Mohrenschildt told the Warren Commisison, no government would be "so stupid" as to trust Lee Oswald with anything important. Banister and Ferrie deceived Lee Harvey Oswald -- in fact his entire 'fake FPCC credentials' project in New Orleans was a part of the plot to frame Oswald as a Communist activist -- but Oswald was evidently too naive to figure this out. That is what made him the perfect patsy. The money never came in for poor Oswald. He "botched" his Mexico City mission, but actually that was exactly what Guy Banister (and Edwin Walker) had planned. Oswald was now framed. The rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald purchased to kill Edwin Walker on 10 April 1963 would be the same rifle used to frame Oswald in Dallas for killing JFK on 22 November 1963. Only a master of secret warfare like Edwin Walker could have masterminded this entire scenario. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Well, Tommy, we need to seek that point at which Lee Harvey Oswald would finally receive regular employment from the CIA (or FBI or ONI). The trouble I have with your hypothesis is that if Lee Harvey Oswald was successful in his spy-training mission, then why didn't Oswald join Richard Helms, James Jesus Angleton, David Atlee Phillips and all the other guys with fat incomes and single family housing and a new car? That is, why wasn't Oswald given a real job? Obviously that is what he wanted. If he was so successful, then why was he denied? The fact that Oswald lived like a pauper does not suggest success to me. One can work underground and still live comfortably. It seems more likely that the CIA (etc.) rejected Oswald. He botched his mission. If one wishes to explain how a CIA agent could be made into a patsy, this is the most straightforward way; Oswald wasn't really a CIA agent, he was a "wannabe" CIA agent. Thus it would have been relatively easy to make Oswald into a patsy. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Tommy, many thanks for this correction. It was not a "dishonorable discharge" from the Marines that Oswald received, but an "undesirable discharge." That is a significant difference. However, I think my main point still stands, because we still have testimony from attorney Dean Andrews that Lee Harvey Oswald sought legal advice to upgrade his Marine discharge status. And lest somebody suspect that Dean Andrews committed perjury, we also have a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald to the Secretary of the Navy, John Connally (later governor of Texas), requesting help to upgrade his Marine discharge status. In other words, this "undesirable discharge" status does not appear to me to be a reasonable outcome of a successful spy-training mission in Russia. It seems to me that Lee Harvey Oswald botched his training mission somewhere. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Silvia Odio's testimony correlates well with the claims of Harry Dean about Lorenzo and Alonzo (the original Leopoldo and Angel) IMHO. It is interesting that the sworn WC testimony surrounding the Silvia Odio episode includes remarks about ex-General Edwin Walker, as well as the claim that Lee Harvey Oswald addressed right-wing Cubans in Dallas, encouraging them in their efforts. The correlation is not entirely cryptic: 1. We find Loran Hall (Leopoldo) and Larry Howard (Angelo) in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald. 2. We also know that these two, Leopoldo and Angelo, were close companions with Gerry Patrick Hemming and Interpen. 3. We also know that Gerry Patrick Hemming and Interpen were close companions of ex-General Edwin Walker. 4. We know from Jim Garrison interviews that Loran Hall himself visited Edwin Walker himself at his Dallas home. 5. We know from Silvia Odio that Loran Hall characterized Lee Harvey Oswald as a right-wing extremist (i.e. Oswald allegedly said to Hall, "Cubans don't have any guts because they should have killed JFK after the Bay of Pigs." 6. This phrase matches what George De Mohrenschildt says that Lee Harvey Oswald said about the Bay of Pigs in early 1963, which was confirmed by Volkmar Schmidt. It was this sentiment, they said, the guided them to turn Oswald against Edwin Walker by February, 1963. 7. Harry Dean says that Edwin Walker, Guy Gabaldon, Loran Hall and Larry Howard accepted a lot of cash from the John Birch Society *specifically* to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for their plot against JFK. Therefore, we may conclude that Silvia Odio's testimony guides us to the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald had accomplices. As for Harry Dean's claims, since he admits that Oswald was framed, we are guided to the theory that Oswald had associates, who were only accomplices in a manner of speaking -- actually, they had framed him, tricked him, and betrayed him. Nevertheless, in the plot to kill JFK, we can say with confidence (based on these statements) that Oswald did not act alone, either in his shooting at Edwin Walker on 10 April 1963, or in the assassination of JFK on 22 November 1963. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Paul, Are you suggesting that just anyone was selected for the 'false defector program', or are you saying that LHO traveled to Russia, by way of Finland, completely on his own initiative? Michael, I find it complicated that: (1) Oswald was dishonorably discharged from the Marines; and (2) Oswald struggled for a long time to upgrade that status. This suggests a scenario with two options. If Oswald entered a "false defector program" as a low-level spy-training mission, which was also a probationary period, then his performance in this mission would determine its outcome. So, it is plausible that:(I) Oswald failed to perform as well as hoped -- perhaps because of taking a Russian wife or another unexpected behavior; or (ii) Oswald successfully completed his training mission, and was invited to continue another mission even deeper under-cover, which would entail a dishonorable discharge from the Marines, and a fake struggle to upgrade that status. I find that option (ii) lacks the ring of realism. If Oswald passed the training mission, and was invited to continue another mission, it is more likely that he would have been hired as a full-time CIA (or FBI or ONI) employee. Evidently he was not hired full-time. So, the better likelihood is that Oswald failed to complete his "Russian defector" mission satisfactorily, and he broke his probationary period. He was not hired as a full-time Intelligence agent, and he was invited to try again some other time -- when he got his act together. But struggle as he might, Lee Harvey Oswald never got his act together. That's how it appears to me, Michael. Furthermore, as I've noted in the past, the fact that Oswald preferred double-agent scenarios made him more vulnerable, rather than more valuable, for Intelligence operations. Hemming, Nagell and Dean all had pasts on both sides of the Cold War (quasi-double-agents) and all three of them feared that they were subject to scape-goating by one agency or another. It seems that double-agents were doubly at risk to become patsies in Intelligence skullduggery. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

So, I think the conclusion here is that Oswald, far from being an "Intelligence Agent," was a low-level stool pigeon for the FBI, CIA and/or ONI. He had no regular job with them. At best he performed "piece work" of $10 and $20 jobs for them, taking photographs as needed. Thus, Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to be a CIA agent, but he never made the grade. Further, Oswald, in trying to please better paid CIA stool pigeons like George De Mohrenschildt, found himself acting out dangerous scenarios like trying to assassinate ex-General Edwin Walker. When this was found out by George De Mohrenschildt, who told the Voshinins, who told the FBI, Lee Harvey Oswald lost every chance he ever had of being a full-fledged employee of the US Intelligence Community. Further, Lee Harvey Oswald became easy to frame at a that. We can trace excetly how Oswald was framed by tracing his interaction with Carlos Bringuier during the summer of 1963 in New Orleans. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Terri Williams, who has a separate thread on this Forum, has testified that Guy Banister visited her home town in Mississippi during the summer of 1963, recruiting sharpshooters for some "patriotic" project. Since we know that Guy Banister was also sheep-dipping Lee Harvey Oswald during the summer of 1963, we will want to identify links between these three elements: Guy Banister -- the KKK -- Lee Harvey Oswald. The missing link appears to be Roscoe White, whose son Rickey White came forward about 15 years ago with the claim that his father, Roscoe White, was JFK's killer. The link here is that Roscoe White knew Lee Harvey Oswald from his days as a Marine at Atsugi Air Force Base, and Roscoe White also had a copy of Lee Harvey Oswald's "Backyard Photograph", though in a pose that nobody else seemed to possess. Furthermore, we have evidence that links Roscoe White to the KKK, to the Minutemen and to White Citizens' Councils. Finally, writer Ron Lewis, who claims to have been Lee Oswald's friends in New Orleans during the summer of 1963, also claims that Lee Harvey Oswald spoke often of Roscoe White -- especially in the context of the JFK assassination. According to Ron Lewis, Roscoe White was an extraordinary sharpshooter, and he received money from Guy Banister for services rendered in New Orleans, and then, at the end of summer 1963, Roscoe White applied to be a policeman in the Dallas Police Force. In October 1963 Roscoe became a trainee in the DPD, and he was immediately placed on the street with firearms, as though he was in full duty. Was Roscoe White JFK's shooter? Or was Terri Williams' neighbor, another KKK member and another friend of Guy Banister, JFK's shooter? We don't know this answer today -- but we do seem to have increasing evidence that the KKK was favored for their commitment to the cause of killing JFK, and for their rich supply of superb marksmen. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Getting back to Guy 'Gabby' Gabaldon, whom Harry Dean names as second to Edwin Walker as leader of the ground crew in the Dallas team to transform Lee Harvey Oswald into the patsy for the assassination of JFK: Guy Gabaldon was an honorable man -- he was awarded the Navy Cross Medal -- the Navy's second highest honor -- for single-handedly capturing 1,500 Japanese soldiers in the Pacific theater of World War Two. (That's ten times the number of prisoners captured by Sergeant York, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor.) Gabaldon was yet a simple man; a truthful man, although not an educated man. When he discovered the John Birch Society, he, like the resigned Major General Edwin Walker, reached his highest pinnacle of intellectual achievement. This was most unfortunate for the USA, because this placed an honorable, hard-working, dedicated and fearless soldier in the hands of the treasonous doctrines of Robert Welch, who preached that FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and JFK were all Communist traitors. Guy Gabaldon was a family man -- a regular guy, and a war hero. He had not been twisted by a lifetime of "living in the closet," the way Edwin Walker had been twisted. Yet Guy Gabaldon was a "true believer" in the radical right-wing doctrines of the John Birch Society. For such a man of action, it can be deadly to convince him of a false doctrine. Guy Gabaldon believed with all his heart that any Communist traitor must die, and since Robert Welch "proved" that JFK was a Communist traitor, then clearly JFK must die. It was patriotism, as far as Guy Gabaldon was concerned. As one of the few East Los Angeles Chicano soldiers who was also a World War Two holder of the Navy Cross Medal, Guy Gabaldon was looked upon as a hero by two other Chicano soldiers from East L.A., namely, Loran Hall and Larry Howard. According to Harry Dean, Loran Hall and Larry Howard would do anything that Guy Gabaldon wanted done. Both Hall and Howard had served courageously in the US military, and were, in 1962-1963, now serving many groups that tried to KILL FIDEL CASTRO. This included Interpen, run by Gerry Patrick Hemming. (Naturally, then, they would be quite friendly towards Minutemen.) I can vouch for the fact that Harry Dean is an articulate and friendly fellow, and he also loved Southern California, his new home in 1960. As a member of the John Birch Society (and the Minutemen) Harry Dean was delighted to make friends with Guy Gabaldon, Loran (Lorenzo) Hall and Larry (Alonzo) Howard. It is based on Harry's friendship with these men that Harry was allowed into the inner circle, the exclusive and secret "RID" organization of the John Birch Society, and told about the plot to kill JFK and make Lee Harvey Oswald into the scapegoat for the crime. Harry had heard a lot of talk about killing JFK from the Minutemen training camps he'd attended. It was the most common topic of conversation there. Harry was also a close and personal friend of Guy Gabaldon -- an honorable man -- and at first Harry thought this was a splendid idea. To pursue Harry's account of the JFK assassination -- which is in my opinion the most important account by a living witness today -- I recommend that the reader view a 1998 video entitled "EAST L.A. MARINE", which includes interviews of Guy Gabaldon himself. Also, for a quick look at the man, here is footage on YouTube showing Guy Gabaldon being awarded the Navy Cross Medal: youtube.com/watch?v=MVKEdyt_mvo Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

Well, I think the time is finally right to revisit the theory of Edwin Walker's homosexuality. There's a lot of speculative writing about this topic, but IMHO the most important writing was begun by Jim Root within the context of this Forum thread. Jim said that he traveled to Edwin Walker's home town, Center Point, Texas, to interview the neighbors among whom Edwin Walker had grown up. Those neighbors told Jim Root that Edwin Walker was already known as a boy for his struggles with homosexuality. There was talk in Edwin Walker's neighborhood that his father sent him off to military school at a young age in order to address the so-called "problem" of his homosexual tendencies. Having entered the miltary at a very young age, it is interesting that Walker remained in the military until he was 52 years old. During that entire time, there is no record (not even amongst his personal papers) to suggest that he was ever engaged to be married, or that he ever had one girl friend. (Even on this Forum, there was (or remains) a male member who met Edwin Walker personally, and he admitted that Edwin Walker made a pass at him.) Now -- the 1960's were suppressive times for gay rights -- but generally they were also very naive times. FBI DIrector J. Edgar Hoover, for example, was also a bachelor past 50 years, and this was simply ignored because of his great accomplishments in national law enforcement. Jim Garrison liked to point out that there were many homosexuals involved in the plot to kill JFK. We might include, besides Edwin Walker, also Jack Ruby, Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, Eladio Del Valle, Dean Andrews, Ewan McDuff, Warren Reynolds and Perry Russo, without exhausting everybody on Jim Garrison's list. At one point Jim Garrison had a theory that the JFK assassination was a "homosexual thrill killing." The early 1960's were not only a naive time, they were also a time of sexual suppression for many people, including homosexuals, and Jim Garrison was quick to exploit that. It is said that Garrison would often use homosexual informers in the underworld to investigate New Orleans crimes. Yet Garrison was wrong to imagine that homosexuality was naturally associated with underground activity -- rather, it is sociologically more precise to say that closeted homosexuality could be associated with underground activity. (This is because any behavior that was hidden would quickly encounter others who were hiding their behavior, and thus formed part of the "underground.") Yet in the early 1960's, virtually every homosexual in the USA was "underground" or "in the closet." That was normal life for homosexuals in the USA. It was a pathetic fate, a clear form of persecution based on gender preference. Neverthless it was a fact of life in the early 20th century, and especially in the US Army and military in general. I think this should be a major factor in the research of ex-General Edwin Walker -- because Walker was clearly obliged to be a homosexual-in-the-closet from 1930 to 1961, when he served in uniform. Walker's problem, of course, was that it was a court-martial offense to be homosexual in the US Army in those years. So Jim Root's research suggests that Edwin Walker was living a double life inside the US Army for over 30 years. This is important psychological information vis-a-vis JFK research, in my opinion, because it suggests that Edwin Walker's real problem was his conflict with the USA over his sexual preferences, and his obsessive conflict with JFK was only a symptom of that mental stress. Writers usually say that JFK fired Walker from the Army in April 1961 because of he taught his troops in Germany to read John Birch Society materials. That is false on several grounds. First JFK never fired Walker -- he transferred him to Hawaii, to a better job. Secondly, there is no truth to the notion that Walker's Pro-Blue program was patterned after the John Birch Society. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Walker resigned his US Army commission (and gave up his pension as the only US General in the 20th century to do such a thing) not only in November 1961, but he also submitted his resignation to the US Army in October of 1959, when Eisenhower was President. Here is a URL from Walker's personal papers to illustrate this point: http://www.pet880.co...esignations.JPG It's hard to imagine that any West Point graduate would fall for the unpatriotic lies of the John Birch Society which claimed that FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and JFK had all been Communist traitors. So, I'm searching for psychological explanations. In my current hypothesis, hiding his homosexuality was becoming harder and harder for Edwin Walker (despite decades of practice) the more he was promoted and visible to the public. The strain was too great. He had to hide his homosexuality with all his strength. But he couldn't even speak about it (the times were so different then). Walker was ready to call it quits in 1959, when he submitted his first resignation, but when the Eisenhower administration denied that first resignation, Walker angrily took his job in Germany, and set up a rightist indoctrination program for his 10,000 troops, and told them that President Truman was "definitely pink." In other words -- Walker hit the ground screeching. He didn't want the job in the first place. As strong evidence, here is a letter from Edwin (Ted) Walker to his brother, Frank Walker, dated 1 January 1960, only one month after Edwin Walker arrived in Germany. It is easy to see how much Walker hated his German job right away. Here is the URL: http://www.pet880.co...to_Frank_01.JPG Yet he didn't tell his brother about his psychological torture of living in the closet as a homosexual. Instead, he turned toward a scapegoat ideology: he was being persecuted, he continually said, even before a Senate Subcommittee -- by the Communists in Washington DC. Walker was continually on the defensive -- but this was because of secret Communists, he claimed, and not because he was hiding his homosexuality from a court-martial. Edwin Walker eventually made the Kennedys into his personal scapegoats -- first at Ole Miss in 1962 -- and then in Dallas in 1963. That's how it appears to me. I welcome all constructive comments on this dimension of this historical figure. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Tom, since you're unfamiliar with the Edwin Walker thread -- started by Jim Root -- you're probably also unaware that the new theme of that thread, which I will continue today, namely, the homosexuality of Edwin Walker, was pioneered through the ground-breaking work of Jim Root. Jim Root personally visited Edwin Walker's home town, Center Point, Texas, and interviewed the neighbors among whom Edwin Walker grew up. These neighbors told Jim Root personally that Edwin Walker's struggles with homosexuality began at a young age. This is vital psychological as well as sociological data about Edwin Walker, my suspect #1 in the assassination of JFK. But Tom, this discussion belongs in the Edwin Walker thread, and not in the Harry Dean thread. In the future, please direct your insults about my work on the Edwin Walker thread to the appropriate thread. Regards, --Paul Trejo

That's a lot of strong points to be made all at once, Ian. As for the line-up of Walker, Ruby, Shaw (and perhaps Oswald) we should add several others, including David Ferrie, Eladio Del Valle, Dean Andrews, Ewan McDuff, Warren Reynolds and several witnesses called by Jim Garrison, including Perry Russo. Jim Garrison allegedly said that homosexuals were an excellent source of underground information about criminal activity, and he would often use homosexual informers in the underworld to investigate New Orleans crimes. I think this should be a major factor in the research of ex-General Edwin Walker -- not that he was a homosexual, but that he was a homosexual-in-the-closet, which is a very different condition -- arguably the very opposite condition. However, I should point out here that Harry Dean makes absolutely zero reference to the homosexuality of the resigned General Edwin Walker. Harry was unaware of it, and it wasn't even on radar; Harry was more closely following the activities of his close and personal friend in Southern Los Angeles, namely, PFC and earner of the Navy Cross Medal, Guy Gabaldon. The assassination of JFK was a serious political and military project for Harry -- and had nothing to do with individual preferences. Therefore, Ian, I propose to move the discussion of Edwin Walker's homosexuality to the Edwin Walker thread started by Jim Root. I will extend this discussion on that thread today. For purposes of Harry Dean's thread, however, I think your final three questions are important and even urgent. First, "why would Walker need Rousselot or Hall or Howard?" Harry Dean is fairly clear on this topic. Walker was not the ultimate leader of the plot to kill JFK -- he was only the leader of the ground-crew, as far as Harry Dean could see. From Harry Dean's perspective, the John Birch Society was the ultimate leader of the plot to kill JFK. By the way, that is exactly what Jack Ruby told Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, personally, on 7 June 1964. The order came directly from Robert Welch and his top advisors through a secret branch of the John Birch Society named, "RID," which stood for Research Information Development, as I recall. Walker, Rousselot and Gabaldon were among the many recipients of the "RID" bulletins. One of the those RID bulletins in late August, 1963, included a special focus on Lee Harvey Oswald, a bold officer of the FPCC making noises in New Orleans. Walker seems to have had the idea before anybody else -- let's make Lee Harvey Oswald the patsy of our plot, because he's just tailor made to be a patsy, and he's just begging for it. Walker told his plan to various John Birch Society members, and John Rousselot said he could come up with some secret money for such a plot tomorrow. Guy Gabaldon said he would support such a plot with all his strength. Guy Gabaldon, a famous World War Two hero, was known by the insiders in the John Birch Society as a man who had already prepared a plot to kill JFK in Mexico City in 1962, but that plot had to be aborted because of Secret Service related difficulties. Guy Gabaldon, a Chicano from East L.A., had two big fans, much younger than himself, who were also Chicanos from East L.A., who were also honorably discharged military men, and who would do anything Guy Gabaldon asked. Anything. Those two men were Loran (Lorenzo) Hall and Larry (Alonzo) Howard. Harry Dean also says in his memoirs (Crosstrails) that he personally witnessed Congressman John Rousselot handing Guy Gabaldon a mammoth amount of cash in early September, 1963. In the subsequent meeting with ex-General Edwin Walker, plans were made for Gabaldon to lead a team (Hall and Howard) to guide Lee Harvey Oswald in the direction they wanted him to go, starting in Mexico City. So, Ian, that should explain why Walker used Rousselot, Howard and Hall. Now let's look at your second question: "were the Minutemen on wages?" The answer is simple: no, they were not on wages. The Minutemen were 100% volunteer, and they brought their own weapons and ammunition to the training camps, and they paid their own way (i.e. there was passable food for sale at the camps), plus they paid monthly, quarterly or annual dues. For larger weapons and expenses, wealthy donors sent lots of money to Robert De Pugh, who would dole it out as needed to his local leaders, but none of that ever went for wages. Your third question, Ian, is also interesting. "If Walker was a self obsessed nut why not pull the trigger himself?" It's a temptation to think of Walker as a "nut" because he was a member of the John Birch Society which preached that all US Presents from FDR foward were Communist traitors. Also, JFK and RFK tossed Walker into an insane asylum for six days. However, Edwin Walker was a two star General, a graduate of West Point, and a hero of World War Two and the Korean War. (In the Korean War, for example, he is credited for taking Pork Chop Hill, as I recall.) Further, Edwin Walker was trained in special operations before there was a Green Beret organization. Walker was an expert in secret warfare. As an example of how Edwin Walker would operate -- about one month before the killing of JFK, Dallas was the host to Adlai Stevenson on 24 October 1963, who was going to present a glorified portrait of the United Nations, for which he was the US Ambassador. Adlai called it, "UN Day." However -- Dallas was then Edwin Walker's home town. Edwin Walker had his own John Birch Society chapter, and it was the second tenet of the BIrchers that the United Nations was entirely a Communist operation. The Birchers' had a double-slogan, namely, "US out of UN now!" and "UN out of US now!" Adlai Stevenson didn't know what he was getting himself into. On 23 October 1963, Edwin Walker called a new day -- "US Day" -- and, using the same auditorium that Adlai Stevenson hired, Walker held a massive meeting of right-wing radicals, and made elaborate plans to booby-trap the auditorium with hundreds of tickets for UN-haters with halloween noisemakers and instructions to heckle Adlai mercilessly. Then, a big banner would fall from the ceiling, reading: "US out of UN now!" and "UN out of US now!" It's a good idea to read the story from a news article the day after. Here's a URL: http://www.pet880.com/images/19631024_Texas_Observer.pdf The point is, that after all that preparation, Edwin Walker himself did not attend the heckling party! He stayed away. He had made the preparations, and it was up to others to carry out the instructions. That is how a real General operates. Good questions, Ian. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

Dear Jimbo, Allow me to translate it for you in a way that you can understand. Paul claims that 1) there was no assassination plot in Miami, and 2) that Hoover wanted Interpen to think that they were going to be used as backup protection for JFK in Miami. Why? Because Hoover wanted Hemming and his buddies to be armed and in close proximity to JFK Miami o they could be arrested for appearing to be intending to hit him! According to Paul, Hemming figured out Hoover's ruse in advance and told his men to show up unarmed. Sincerely, --Tommy Right, Tommy. You said it more plainly than I. My point wasn't simply whether Hemming was lying or not, but that J. Edgar Hoover has this sort of reputation among JFK researchers. Hemming regularly called J. Edgar Hoover, "Dame Hoover," on this Forum, and got away with it. The homosexuality issue with regard to J. Edgar Hoover is still a touchy subject, however. Clint Eastwood's recent movie, J. Edgar (2011) refused to deal with it bluntly, and basically denied it. If there are still fans of resigned General Edwin Walker out there, they surely don't like hearing reports that he was homosexual. Yet even on this Forum, there is a male member who met Edwin Walker personally, and he admits that Walker made a pass at him. The problem with Walker -- far more than with J. Edgar Hoover -- is that it was a court-martial offense to be homosexual in the US Army from 1930 - 1961, when Walker served. J. Edgar Hoover didn't have that problem, exactly. There were no laws against the FBI Director being homosexual -- although it would have been a public scandal in 1963 that would have ended his career, no doubt, just because of the public outcry. But there were actual laws governing sexual orientation inside the US Army, so it was more serious with Walker. For example, it suggests that Walker (if he was homosexual all his life, as Jim Root suggests) was living a double life inside the US Army for over 30 years. This is important psychological information vis-a-vis JFK research, in my opinion, because it suggests that Edwin Walker really and truly resigned his US Army commission (and gave up his pension as the only US General in the 20th century to do such a thing) because he was tortured psychologically. It's hard to imagine that any West Point graduate would fall for the unpatriotic lies of the John Birch Society which claimed that FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and JFK had all been Communist traitors. So, I'm searching for psychological explanations. In my current hypothesis, hiding his homosexuality was becoming harder and harder for Edwin Walker (despite decades of practice) the more he was promoted and visible to the public. The strain was too great. He had to hide his homosexuality with all his strength. But he couldn't even speak about it (the times were so different then). So, Walker's mind was probably distracted by this psychological torture, and he turned toward a scapegoat ideology -- he was being persecuted, he continually said, even before a Senate Subcommittee -- by the Communists in Washington DC. He was always on the defensive -- but this was because of Communists, he claimed, and not because he was hiding his homosexuality from a court-martial. Insofar as J. Edgar Hoover was also a homosexual, he also "had to hide his love away" so to speak, back in 1963, and goodness knows what scapegoats he ruined because of his own internal battles. Yet Edwin Walker eventually made the Kennedys into his personal scapegoats -- first at Ole Miss in 1962 -- and then in Dallas in 1963. That's how it appears to me. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

The LaFontaine book was interesting at first, but didn't hold under scrutiny. I myself was disappointed with the LaFontaine treatment of Silvia Odio. Just as the LaFontaine's accepted the account of John Elrod, they seem also ot have accepted the romantic confessions of Marianne Sullivan (Kennedy Ripples, 1994) which made Silvia Odio seem to be a conspirator with Lee Harvey Oswald, who fainted on 22 November 1963 out of panic that she might be found out. Yet Sullivan's account is biased, insofar as she blamed Siliva Odio for stealing her prospective second husband (a parish priest) from her. There was plenty of scandal in the book, but too much idle guesswork to be very useful to researchers, IMHO. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Jim, it wasn't that Hoover tried to kill JFK in Miami -- Hemming said that Hoover tried to frame Interpen for killing JFK in Miami. There was no assassination plot in Miami -- it was a sting operation. Nor was Interpen told that they were there to kill JFK, as I recall, rather, they were told they were being hired for backup Protection. It was a trick. But Hemming claimed that he saw through the trick. Hemming said this, as I recall, on this very Forum back in 2005 when he was a member of the Forum. It was one of his first stories here, I believe. Also -- I agree with you that Hemming must be taken sparingly, like John Newman took him. He was rarely under oath when he spoke, and he took advantage of that fact, evidently. Still, Hemming was able to connect dots that few others could connect. Gems can be found among the dirty rocks. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>