Does anyone know when Oswald was first identified, or rumored to be a government informant?

And I'm not talking about just post-assassination, but pre-assassination as well.

And I'm not talking about just in government circles, but in cuban-exile circles as well.

For example, a ship called the Violin I is launched on a commando raid against Cuba in late March, 1963. Their launch pad was going to be the Bahamas. Their leader was a guy named Jerry Buchanan. When they got there, the authorities were waiting. Buchanan was interviewed by his brother, James Buchanan, a reporter for the Pompano Beach Sun Sentinel, "Buchanan (Jerry) said. "_____ went So the boat, where it been there since Saturday morning waiting for us to come in. They knew all about us. "The police came out of the building and said, 'Is your name Buchanan?' They placed both of us under detention.

The News-Herald from Mansfield, Ohio · April 3, 1963 Page 24

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/45297639/

Buchanan knew he's been set up.

Five days after the assassination, a man named Sanchez told James Buchanan that a man who used the name Oswald had tried to get aboard that boat and had been rebuffed by Jerry.

see CD 1020 p. 13. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11416#relPageId=15&tab=page

Oswald had been seen at one of the cuban-exile training camps in the New Orleans area. In July. That camp was raided by the FBI and shut down.

Was the name Oswald being circulated by the Cuban exiles as an informant for the government prior to JFK's assassination?

Steve Thomas

8 hours ago, Mike Kilroy said:

There's a myriad of reasons but just these basic facts are enough for me to require the agency to explain itself:

1) Video of Oswald showing his pro-Castro bona fides appears on national TV the night of the assassination, before he was even charged with the crime. That video WOULD NOT EXIST nor WOULD’VE MADE IT TO DC BEFORE JFK’S BODY without the CIA and its propaganda assets - the DRE and Ed Butler of INCA.

 

Mike,

I too read the CNN article that Jim Hargrove referenced, and I've been doing some thinking. Immediately after the assassination, the DRE jumped all over the fact that they knew Oswald, and I got to wondering why they would do that. At first glance, you would think that they would want to deny they knew anything about this presidential killer, let alone that they had had dealings with him.

But then I got to thinking, by jumping out ahead of the story, they tried to kill two birds with one stone:

1) They revealed that, yeah, we knew the guy, but we knew right off the bat that he was a no good rat bastard, Castro-loving, commie, and we sent him packing; and,

2) They undercut the CIA. I would be interested to know when the rumors of Oswald being a government informant first began to surface; not only post-assassination, but pre-assassination as well. I would like to know what rumors about Oswald were being circulated by the cuban-exile groups. I think I will start a separate thread on that question in the Forum

The CIA and the Cuban exile groups were not strictly working together. There was no love lost. As 1961 and 1962 wore on, the Cuban exile groups began to realize that the CIA was just stringing them along. The official policy of Jack and Bobby Kennedy was that, "Yeah, we support the Cuban exile cause, but we can't lend the legitimacy of the United States to their efforts by allowing them to launch their overthrow efforts from U.S. soil." "We'll support their raids on Cuba, as long as they are launched from somewhere else. So we'll set them up in Guatemala and Nicaragua."

The Cuban exiles, on the other hand, needed that legitimacy. They needed the world to know that their overthrow efforts had the full backing and support of the United States government.

You might want to read this April 12, 2001 article by Jefferson Morley in the Miami New Times Magazine.

"We worked with the CIA," recalls Salvat. "We never subordinated ourselves to them."

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/revelation-1963-6353139

Steve Thomas

Is it possible that these photos, 510 and 512 are part of the reconstruction photos that were taken on November 25th?

See the DPD Archives, Box 11, Folder# 37 and 38.

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box11.htm

I did not see the photographs of these shells listed among the scans provided in the DPD Archives in Boxes 11 and 12, but there are a bunch of photos and negatives that were not scanned and just listed as being taken of the TSBD.

See Box 12A Folder# 27.

If they were taken on the 25th, and were part of a "reconstruction", they'd be kind of useless.

Steve Thomas

14 minutes ago, Gary Murr said:

Hi Steve:

These two exhibits were introduced during the March 25, 1964 testimony session of Luke Mooney - 3H286, 3H287.

Gary

Gary,

Thank you. That was the one guy I hadn't checked.

I can't tell if he actually watched the DPD photograph the shells in situ. He talks about being upstairs long enough to be present when the rifle is found.

Were the 510 and 512 photographs actually taken days later?

Mr. BALL - They were turned over to Captain Fritz?
Mr. MOONEY - Yes, sir; he was the first officer that picked them up, as far as I know, because I stood there and watched him go over and pick them up and look at them. As far as I could tell, I couldn't even tell what caliber they were, because I didn't get down that close to them. They were brass cartridges, brass shells.
Mr. BALL - Is this the position of the cartridges as shown on 510, as you saw them?
Mr. MOONEY - Yes, sir. That is just about the way they were laying, to the best of my knowledge. I do know there was--one was further away, and these other two were relatively close together--on this particular area. But these cartridges--this one and this one looks like they are further apart than they actually was.

Mr. BALL - How long did you stay up on the sixth floor? After you found the location of the three cartridges?
Mr. MOONEY - Well, I stayed up there not over 15 or 20 minutes longer--after Captain Will Fritz and his officers came over there, Captain Fritz picked up the cartridges, began to examine them, of course I left that particular area.

Steve Thomas

Today's Politico Magazine (3/25/18) ran an article on Michigan State University's connection to the CIA and the Vietnam War. In particular, it focused on the police training programs.

(I immediately thought of Captain Westbrook, but I have not searched to see if he had any connection to MSU).

The University That Launched a CIA Front Operation in Vietnam

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/25/vietnam-war-secret-msu-michigan-state-217705?lo=ap_e1

I have not delved into this, I just brought it up to bring it to people's attention.

If you run Michigan State University through the Mary Ferrell Foundation search tool, you come up with some interesting results.

Steve Thomas

9 hours ago, Tom Hume said:

I'll give it a go: The top photo is a close-up of Shell "A" from CE510, and the bottom photo is a close-up of Shell "A" from CE512. I used the CE510 and CE512 photo-versions  that were posted on this thread. Looking closely,  this version of CE510 appears to have a whole lot more pixels than its pixel-poor neighbor, CE512 (How come? Are there higher resolution photos out there for us to look at? Is there anything to be learned here?).

CE510 (shell "A" close-up)

CE512 (shell "A" close-up)

Jim D, you wrote that in his book, John Armstrong had some interesting things to say about CE510 and CE512. Anything worth sharing?

Steve Thomas asked, “The shells have been moved, haven’t they?”

I'll say that shell “A” appears to be in a different spot. And I wonder if there is something fishy about CE512. Notice that the black circles are perfect, and that before the perfect black circles were added to the photo, some lighter circles had been drawn in by hand. Notice the lighter hand-drawn circle around shell “A” in CE 512. If that thing that looks more like cigarette butt than a shell casing is the reason for that circle, it’s not in the middle of the circle where it should be, but on the edge. Who would circle something and not place the object of interest in the middle?

 

 

Tom,

Just out of curiosity, I went looking for when CE510 and 512 were introduced as evidence. Maybe I just missed it, but I couldn't find it in the WC testimonies of Sims, Boyd, Johnson, Montgomery, Studebaker, or Day. I wondered who put those circles on those pictures and when; because as you said, the dark circles in 512 are too perfect. They are done by a machine and not by hand.

When Day was questioned, he was given CE 716 to look at. Here's a comparison of 716 and 512. Notice the lighter pencil circles around the shells in 716 and then again in 512. Like you said, It looks like they are offset to me in 512.

Steve Thomas

9 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

No, Steve, the shells have not been moved. In the poor-quality photo we see in CE512, we can barely see two of the shells, and the thing you might be thinking is a "shell" (closest to the cameraman) in CE512 is actually not a shell. It's a piece of paper or debris of some kind.

Here's a higher-quality picture of the three bullet shells from the Dallas Municipal Archives....

9 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

No, Steve, the shells have not been moved. In the poor-quality photo we see in CE512, we can barely see two of the shells, and the thing you might be thinking is a "shell" (closest to the cameraman) in CE512 is actually not a shell. It's a piece of paper or debris of some kind.

Here's a higher-quality picture of the three bullet shells from the Dallas Municipal Archives....

David,

Thank you, but to my untrained eye, this looks like a higher quality resolution of CE510, not of CE 512.

Steve Thomas

49 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Can anyone download CE 510 and CE 512?

John Armstrong says some interesting things about these two pics in his book.

 

The shells have been moved, haven't they?

Steve Thomas

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

When I re-read all this stuff last year, I made a list of all the unidentified officers observed in the building, as well as the names of officers who were in the building but never made a statement. There were something like 6 references to unnamed officers, and 5 named officers who never made a statement. In short, the assassin or assassins could have escaped without problem should they have been police officers, or disguised as police officers.

As far as Mooney, I'm pretty sure the men he saw were Inspector Sawyer and another unnamed DPD officer, who took the front elevator up to the fourth floor, ran to the back of the building, saw Baker and Truly as they came down on the east elevator, and then ran back down the stairs and out the front in order to close off the building.

Pat,

I don't know. I've re-read Sawyer's WC testimony several times now, and I don't see where he says he came back down using the stairs. Is that somewhere else?

Steve Thomas

7 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I'm confused.  My wife says that's sometimes easily done.  But this sounds impossible, the last sentence.

How could Fritz have "let" Day dust the live round for prints Before Ejecting It From The Rifle?

It can't be done.  It IS impossible.  McCloy wasn't that stupid, he let it slide.  Another Warren Omission smooth over.

Ron,

That was why I included that reference.

Day's and Fritz's stories are inconsistent. Something's wrong.

Steve Thomas

12 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Wouldn't it have been interesting to sit these two down in the same room and have them swap war stories?

Wonder how that would have turned out.

 

Steve Thomas

Mostly I was was thinking about the idea that you've got a guy or two groups of guys saying, "I was up on the grassy knoll behind the fence".

And one guys says, "I was there", and the other guys says, "No you weren't. I was."

"Were not". "Was so." "Were not." "Was so."

We can debate all we want, but it would have been interesting to sit them both down in the same room and have them look each other in the eye.

I wonder what would have come out of that.

As for myself, I don't believe Files for two reasons:

1) I worked in public service all my life and I learned not to trust somebody who talks too much and too fast. 99 times out of a hundred, they're trying to pull a fast one.

2) Both Lee Bowers and Ed Hoffman talk about seeing a couple of guys together up there. If Files says he was up there alone, I discount that.

Steve Thomas

Wouldn't it have been interesting to sit these two down in the same room and have them swap war stories?

Wonder how that would have turned out.

Steve Thomas

8 minutes ago, Gary Murr said:

Hi Steve:

Unfortunately Twyman,  and many others, are just wrong on this point about the image in question showing a fully loaded 6.5mm WCC Carcano cartridge along the sixth floor southeast corner window wall, down in one of the spaces between the boards, circled as "A". If one looks at a decent copy of this photograph and enlarges this area it is clear that this is a spent cartridge case, not a loaded cartridge. I am attaching a link below; go to this image from the Texas Portal website, click on it and then use the "zoom" function to expand the image as large as you like; then look at cartridge "A".

Link:   https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth49604/?q=Texas%20School%20Book%20Depository 

FWIW

Gary

Gary,

Thanks. You're right.

That zoom feature is pretty neat, isn't it?

Steve Thomas

34 minutes ago, Ian Lloyd said:

Yep - been knocking around for years...

What strikes me is that Mooney was looking for a gunman/gunmen in the building, these guys come running down the stairs yet he doesn't stop to ask them who they are, where they've been, what they've seen/found etc., etc...????...

Great police work!!! :-(

Ian,

Thanks. I'll bet you're right about the WCC.

As far as Mooney goes, he doesn't seem to know who these guys are either, which would be strange if they were fellow Deputies.

Steve Thomas

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I would just like an informed crowd on the JFK case to go ahead and chime in on this issue.

How many shells were up on the sixth floor and were found at about 1:00 PM?

Please offer your insights if you can as to why you think what you do.

Jim,

Read pages 90-94 of Noel Twyman's Bloody Treason here (especially page 92):

https://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Bloody_Treason.pdf

Here's a wild thought.

Did Fritz take the live shell from the rifle and throw it on the floor with the spent shells?

Steve Thomas

4 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

I have a question for the general forum. Fritz said that he turned the unfired bullet over to the crime lab "later", before it went to the FBI.

Has anyone seen a crime lab receipt for this unfired bullet being received from Captain Fritz? I can slog my way through the DPD Archives, but that's going to take a while.

 

Steve Thomas

Okay. I found part of the answer. This looks like the receipt of the Crime Search Section turning over the live round to the FBI.

DPD Archives Box 9, Folder# 4, Item# 32

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box9.htm

CSS Section

This is a handwritten note

“1 live WCC 6.5 shell in barrel ready to fire of rifle# C2766 when rifle ready to fire on 6^th floor” (I think WCC should be MCC)

Date submitted 11/22/63 “about 2:15PM” written above that is 1:45.

Submitted by J.C. Day and Captain Fritz. It doesn't say who in the lab this was originally turned over to Friday afternoon.

It looks like this was turned over to Vincent Drain on 11/22/63 at 11:45 PM

Steve Thomas

16 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Jim,

 

You may be interested in this.

Look at the DPD Archives Box 5, Folder# 2, Item# 102 page 1

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box5.htm

This is an inventory of the evidence in the case.

1 live round 6.5 Recovered by Dep't Sheriff Luke Mooney at 411 Elm, 6th floor, in the southeast window.

6.5 spent rounds (3) Found by Deputy Sheriff Mooney; picked up by Det. R.M. Sims.

No mention of the live round ejected from the rifle and retained by Fritz.

 

Steve Thomas

 

Compare this to:

DPD Archives Box 6, Folder# 1, Item# 23 page 5

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box6.htm

This is an index tab for the evidence in the DPD case file under “e” for evidence

live round 6.5

3 6.5 spent rounds Found by Dep Sheriff Mooney. Picked up by Det. R.M. Sims.

Notice how the wording about where that live round was discovered has changed.

Steve Thomas

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I would just like an informed crowd on the JFK case to go ahead and chime in on this issue.

How many shells were up on the sixth floor and were found at about 1:00 PM?

Please offer your insights if you can as to why you think what you do.

Jim,

You may be interested in this.

Look at the DPD Archives Box 5, Folder# 2, Item# 102 page 1

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box5.htm

This is an inventory of the evidence in the case.

1 live round 6.5 Recovered by Dep't Sheriff Luke Mooney at 411 Elm, 6th floor, in the southeast window.

6.5 spent rounds (3) Found by Deputy Sheriff Mooney; picked up by Det. R.M. Sims.

No mention of the live round ejected from the rifle and retained by Fritz.

Steve Thomas

Fritz did have a way of hanging on to things, didn't he?

The old klepto.

Steve Thomas

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Boy what an interesting question that is.

So what time could this be, like around 12: 45 when Mooney gets to the sixth floor?

Jim,

It's impossible to know really. He said that within seconds after the shots rang out, he ran across Houston, up the embankment, jumped the fence and ran into the railroad yards.

(Mooney is another one of those witnesses who said the second and third shots were closer together than the first and second shots).

He left the rail yards and went into the TSBD through the back door. He said there were already other officers in the rail yards checking the cars, so he didn't stay there very long. He said he was only there for a few seconds until he received orders from Decker, relayed by another officer, to cover the TSBD.

I have a question for the general forum. Fritz said that he turned the unfired bullet over to the crime lab "later", before it went to the FBI.

Has anyone seen a crime lab receipt for this unfired bullet being received from Captain Fritz? I can slog my way through the DPD Archives, but that's going to take a while.

Steve Thomas

7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

So the cartridges were found about 20 minutes before the rifle.

Therefore, they had to find a rifle to match the cartridges or else you have two gunmen and a conspiracy right?

Steve, when did the first policemen enter the sixth floor?

Jim,

I have to admit that I have not worked out the exact timing, but from what I've read, aside from Baker and Truly, the first people to go into the Depository were Sheriff's Deputies. Surprising as it is being a City jurisdiction, aside from a couple of officers (like the two Smiths and Welcome Barnett) working traffic control, the Dallas City Police didn't seem to have much of a presence in the Elm and Houston area proper.

There is a curious little passage in Deputy Sheriff, Luke Mooney's WC testimony: (He's the one who found the shells)

WC testimony of Luke Mooney

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/mooney1.htm

"Mr. MOONEY - Mr. Webster and Mr. Vickery were there with me at the time that we received these orders from another deputy.
Mr. BALL - They are deputy sheriffs?
Mr. MOONEY - Yes, sir; they were plainclothes officers like myself, work in the same department,..."

(After going into the TSBD)...

"So I looked around their office there, just a short second or two, and then I went up the staircase myself. And I met some other officers coming down, plainclothes, and I believe they were deputy sheriffs. They were coming down the staircase. "

"I got out on the floor with these women and looked around in their office and I then took to the stairs and went to the 6th floor, and Officers Webster and Victory went up to the 7th floor. I was the only person on the 6th floor when I searched it and was reasonably sure that there was no one else on this floor as I searched it and then criss-crossed it, seeing only stacks of cartons of books."

(Is it Vickery, or Victory?)

I myself, have never seen any statements by Deputy Sheriff's Webster, or Vickery or Victory. Their statements might exist, it's just that I've never seen them, so I don't know what they might have seen or heard.

It's interesting. Baker and Truly were supposed to have been about the earliest people around those top floors, but the two groups of people don't seem to have run into each other.

Who were these plainclothed men coming down the stairs as Mooney was going up?

Steve Thomas

2 hours ago, Rick McTague said:

Steve,

These two factors make it improbable, in my opinion, that the only shots fired at JFK happened as the WC report said.  Who loads different types of rounds, in reverse order of intended targets?  Who partially loads a clip when they are intending to assassinate the president?

Thanks

Rick

Rick,

I have long speculated that somebody screwed up and planted the wrong caliber bullets in the sniper's nest. The 6.5 caliber spent shells were found, photographed, dusted for prints, and placed in an envelope at 1:00 PM. They had already been entered into the chain of evidence. The rifle was discovered at 1:22 PM

Read this WC reply by Will Fritz carefully when he was asked about the mention of a 7.65 caliber Mauser:

"Mr. BALL. Well, did you ever make any---did you ever say that it was a 7.65 Mauser?
Mr. FRITZ. No, sir; I am sure I did not.
Mr. BALL. Or did you think it was such a thing?
Mr. FRITZ. No, sir; I did not. If I did, the Mauser part, I won't be too positive about Mauser because I am not too sure about Mauser rifles myself. But I am certainly sure that I never did give anyone any different caliber than the one that shows on the cartridges."

It's not the rifle he is concerned about. It's the caliber of the bullets.

I can't think of any other reason why; when that live round was ejected and fell to the floor, that Fritz picked it up and stuck it in his pocket, rather than calling Studebaker and Sims to come over and put it in an evidence bag. My belief is, that he looked at it and realized that the caliber of the live shell did not match the caliber of the spent cartridges.

Steve Thomas

I have been thinking about the physical process you go through to load bullets into a clip, and the fact that the live round in the rifle did not have any fingerprints on it. Don't you have to press down on the bullet with your thumb to get it into the clip? Even if the shooter wore gloves to load the clip, wouldn't the unfired bullet have at least Fritz's and Day's fingerprints on it? Both of them handled it. And why would Fritz have stuck this bullet in his pocket and not place it in an evidence bag and give it to Studebaker or Sims who were collecting evidence at the TSBD? The fired shells were placed in an envelope that was marked with the date and time. Why wasn't this done with the unfired round?

Day's and Fritz's testimony are at odds as to when that bullet was dusted for prints.

Mr. BELIN. What did you do with this after you put your name on it?
Mr. DAY. Captain Fritz took possession of it. I retained possession of the rifle.

Mr. BELIN. Did you process this live round at all for prints?
Mr. DAY. Yes, sir; I did. I did not find any prints.

Mr. BALL. After the pictures had been taken of the rifle what happened then?
Mr. FRITZ. After the pictures had been made then I ejected a live shell, a live cartridge from the rifle.
Mr. BALL. And who did you give that to?
Mr. FRITZ. I believe that I kept that at that time myself. Later I gave it to the crime lab who, in turn, turned it over to the FBI.

Mr. McCLOY. Before Captain Fritz ejected the live cartridge, did you dust the rifle for fingerprints?
Mr. DAY. Not before.

Mr. McCLOY. When was the rifle as such dusted with fingerprint powder?
Mr. DAY. After ejecting the live round, then I gave my attention to the rifle.

Mr. McCLOY. Can I ask one question there, did you take any precautions as to fingerprints before you ejected this?
Mr. FRITZ. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. So in your opinion your fingerprints wouldn't show?
Mr. FRITZ. He could have taken mine but I let him dust first before I ejected a shell.

Steve Thomas

33 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

I'm thinking of the 2004 Australian test, which essentially showed that the SBT is "valid" (with respect to the basic path that the 2004 test bullet took through two "bodies", with the missile ending up in one unbroken piece).

Makes me wonder why you put "bodies" in quotes.

Steve Thomas

1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said:

Ron,

 

I was watching an interview with Carmen Boulter the other night. She is a Professor at the University of Calgary in Canada. She teaches in the Graduate Division of Educational Research in the Faculty of Education. She said that any theory must have validity and reliability.

That is, any theory must have the quality of being logically or factually sound, and yield consistent results over time.

Testing a theory can be reliable, meaning that the test-takers will get the same score no matter when or where they take it, within reason of course. But that doesn't mean that it is valid or measuring what it is supposed to measure. A test can be reliable without being valid. However, a test cannot be valid unless it is reliable.

I think a perfect example is this WC exchange with Captain Fritz. He is speaking of Roger Craig...

Mr. FRITZ. "One deputy sheriff who started to talk to me but he was telling me some things that I knew wouldn't help us and I didn't talk to him but someone else took an affidavit from him. His story that he was telling didn't fit with what we knew to be true."

 

Fritz is being reliable, but is his theory valid? He is consistent with the evidence he had at hand, but what does he do when presented with new or conflicting evidence? He dismisses it outright.

 

Steve Thomas

Ron,

Here's another one looking at it from a different angle:

The theory is that you can hit a moving target with a bolt action rifle three times in less than six seconds.

So, they tested that out, and sure enough it can be done. So, the theory is valid.

But is it reliable? Can you consistently prove that theory over multiple tests?

Well, no, you can't.

The theory is valid, but not reliable.

A theory has to be both valid and reliable.

Steve Thomas