Paul Brancato

Wet blanket time - if Oswald didn't assassinate JFK who cares? Given the way the WC went about questioning people, and knowing they were trying to convict Oswald in absentia, all testimony portraying Oswald as prone to violence, whether it's hitting Marina, shooting at Walker, threatening Nixon, hijacking a plane, is worth taking with a heavy dose of skepticism.

Tracy - it's 30-34 lbs.

Peter Dale Scott, in Dallas '63, points out that Marguerite was the apparent source for many false bits of info that ended up in various intelligence files. He found so many instances of her false statements, such as duplicate letters she wrote to various politicians, ostensibly to find out what was going on with Lee when he first went to the Soviet Union, that were not duplicates at all, that he suspects she might have been performing an intelligence function related to the 'barium meals' in Lee's files. i don't agree that there was more than one Marguerite Oswald, but efforts on her part to obscure addresses, physical characteristics of herself as well as Lee, might have been part of a yet to be discovered deep cover. How are we supposed to understand her physical description of Lee being 5'10" and 165 lbs?

Agree - really interesting, seems almost obvious.

The latter day Marina believes her husband was innocent. Has anyone recently asked her whether she stands by her statement that Lee went to Mexico?

Michael - I opened mine too but didn't think it was out of bounds because Lance was so direct. I react badly when men take the position that the state should be empowered legally to punish a woman for having an abortion, especially when they take the even more extreme position that it doesn't matter how they got pregnant.

Question someone asked me recently - what is counterintelligence?

Michael - what's with the deleted posts?

Chuck - this post, and the long one previously written by you on Crichton, get to the heart of the matter. It was Crichton who began the process of turning Marina Oswald into prime evidence against Lee. Russ Baker did great work on this while researching the Bush family. I did not know until you posted it, that Cichton's 488th reported directly to Army Intelligence. I wonder if you know who was the head of Army Intelligence in 1963, and whether that ndividual had ties to General Lemnitzer.

I'm with you Cliff, and Kirk. lance - for an educated guy you prove your ignorance when it comes to JFK, and why we 'true believers' care about his death. You don't know who he was and why his death mattered. We are not true believers, you are. How can you be so interested in the true believers without realizing you are a prime example? Just because you allow yourself the right to pick and choose what you believe doesn't change the fact that your attitude towards abortion is typically patriarchial. That proves to me you are also ignorant of Christian and dare I say Jewish history. Jesus was surrounded by women. They were his closest companions, something unheard of in his day. The early 'churches' were egalitarian. Patriarchic ideas were imposed later by power hungry men, you know, the ones who deemed as 'full of hubris' anyone who dared to question the male hierarchy that gradually took over the Christian movement and turned it into something Jesus would have found deplorable. We can thank Paul, formerly known as Saul, for that turnaround. A careful reading of his history reveals him for what he was - an agent of Rome, clearly at first, and obviously to me later after his 'vision' on the road to Damascus. He apparently died in Rome too. Demeaning a woman by using the term 'manage to get herself pregnant' as if men had nothing to do with it is laughable. The argument on abortion has been reframed by those that try to impose the state on a woman's rights. It is pro choice, not anti life. No one on the pro choice side believes that abortion is a good thing.

Enlightening posts all. Would it be fair to assume that the COG underground bunker manned by Crichton and his reservists was set up in case of nuclear conflict?

Larry - I can see your point. But we are talking about a group of men who in many cases are both Dallas police and detectives and ex military who were involved in the motorcade planning and in the motorcade itself, in housing Marina and supplying her first translator, who founded and manned an underground bunker created in what is now called Continuity of Government. And if Escalante is to be believed, and I for one find him credible just like I find Castro credible, Crichton and his buddy George Bush were original funders of Operation 40, Nixon's creation.

Steve - I get your point. What the hell is the 488th? Apparently started by Crichton. It doesn't fit in to the military reserve system. Do you think that because of that it is a disinformation campaign? What strikes me most odd is that we don't know, 54 years later. All the fine researchers have clearly run into an impasse, like the one you have. I keep waiting for DiEugenio or Hancock to weigh in. There is no way I would dismiss the little we do know. It's the tip of some iceberg.

iPad here

Steve - have you read the Spartacus entry on Jack Crichton?

Same here - not an expert or a researcher.

Great posts. I would add something, maybe a minority pov. Oswald might have needed the separation because he was working undercover. I think the vanishing files on Cubans discovered in the first search of Ruth's home on 11/22, Oswald being seen at an Alpha 66 safehouse in Dallas, his clearly provocatory actions in New Orleans, his use of the Hidell alias, and his friendship with DeMohrenschildt, all point in this direction.

Or that Oswald was working undercover, and not a wannabe. What are Bright's connections to guys like Angleton, Phillips, Scott, etc?

Thomas - I think there is confusion on whether there were deliberately false descriptions of LHO in one or another of his files in CIA or MI. One of those files reversed his names and called him Harvey Lee Oswald. Another had false height and weight biometrics. I asked if both of these mistakes occurred in the same file entry. Also, there were possibly two marked cards, one originating as you point out in 1960, and one after MC. I confess that without a lot of work I can't answer these questions, which is why I asked you. Clearly Angleton kept his knowledge close, and since he was looking for a Soviet mole he deliberately inserted into one file false info in 1960. But then after MC there was some effort to confuse things. One poster here who shall remain nameless for now is fond of calling this MC disinformation a mole hunt, which confuses things. I'm not sure if Bill Simpich also called it that. Can you help untangle this?

Larry - are you saying the bogus physical description that Graves mentions was accompanied by the reversal of Lee and Harvey?

Yes it is fair. Is it, as Mr. Graves keeps asking, the Webster-like description he calls Popov's mole? And is that a clue as to its author or authors?

Here's the Colonel to look at - William Bishop. He was Felipe Vidal Santiago's case officer. Hancock says FVS was in Dallas several times in the month before the assassination. Among his Dallas contacts - Edwin Walker. A year previous, Lyman Lemnitzer was removed from the JCS by JFK. Just like with Curtis LeMay, there was extreme enmity between Lemnitzer and JFK. According to David Talbot in Brothers, Lemnitzer wrote to Walker praising his efforts to indoctrinate his troops in Augsburg before Walker was removed. I think it more likely that it was Oswald who appeared at the Alpha 66 safehouse in Dallas than so-called lookalike Masen. Peter Dale Scott's theory that Oswald was working as an informant for one or more intelligence agencies Seems likely. It would explain a lot, for one thing the files reportedly found at the Paine residence in the first post assassination search of her home which subsequently vanished. Alpha 66 would have been a likely organization to spy on. Colonel Bishop was involved with Operation 40, worked with Alpha 66, had close ties with David Atlee Phillips, according to the Spartacus entry on Bishop. It is really a short step between this nest of vipers and colonels to a ground crew in Dallas. LeMay was reportedly at the autopsy at Bethesda. The Air Force One transcripts that we have note the frantic efforts of LeMay's adjutant to contact LeMay while AF1 was en route. Since LeMay did land at Washington National Airport, close to Bethesda and not so close the Andrews Air Base, where the autopsy would have taken place was it not for a change of plans aboard AF1 (in close contact with McGeorge Bundy at the WH situation room) after a heated argument on the plane, it makes sense that LeMay was aware of the assassination and of the change of venue for the autopsy. The main eyewitness to LeMay, seen by him smoking a cigar at the autopsy, says an unidentifiied Army general was in charge of the autopsy. Wonder who that was. I have to add something anecdotal here: I distinctly recall in the weeks following the assassination that early doubters of Oswald being the lone Communist gunman assassin speculated that General Walker and the Minutemen were behind the assassination. I've never had a problem with Walker as a suspect in running the ground crew in Dallas. I just cannot see that as a rogue operation. And it seems very clear to me that if the plan was hatched and overseen from higher up the chain of command in active military the conduits to communicate with Dallas were in place - Walker, reserve military, DPD. Is it a tell that Colonel Bishop later claimed he knew about the assassination beforehand, but put the blame on Jimmy Hoffa?

Steve - thanks for posting the link to Tannenbaum's presentation at the Wecht conference. I was struck by many things in it. One question - what do you think is the source for Crichton being previously familiar with Oswald? I think you are on to the key connections in the assassination - the colonels, the close ties between the 'mysterious 488th reserve intelligence group and the Dallas Police, the connections between DeMohrenschildt and some of the same characters involved in the early cables about Oswald and about the FPCC - this is a new one to me. Russ Baker did some excellent follow up research to the Continuity of Government (COG) info that Peter Dale Scott unearthed decades previous. Since this all links to the ACSI, who later destroyed their Oswald files, we are not talking about retired or reserve units, but active Army Intelligence. I have no trouble, even without proof, that we are only one step from the Joint Chiefs, who, if JFK could talk, would be his chief suspects.

I thought I had a copy of that book, but what I have instead is something he wrote early - 1971 - maybe unpublished since I have a manuscript only which Scott gave to me when I met him briefly in the late 1980's while writing the Coup D'Etat trading cards. It's not indexed. But I'll look through it anyway.

I just don't want to see this thread die.