Royce Bierma

My guess would be, IF the Yates statement is true...then the conspirators assigned Oswald to bring in curtain rods, and that's why the package Randle/Randall and Frazier reportedly saw was described as "curtain rods" to Frazier by LHO...probably because it WAS curtain rods.

Of course, I have more doubts than confidence in the Yates story. I was just playing devil's advocate, and considering what the circumstances might've been if Yates was being truthful. I don't think Yates was tied in with the conspirators at all; if he was, why would he volunteer a story at all?

"I don't think Yates was tied in with the conspirators at all; if he was, why would he volunteer a story at all?" Well, as someone pointed out, Yates didn't come forward with the story until weeks later. By that time he may have ascertained that the police weren't interested in a conspiracy anyway. But if through someone in the police department or the media, he realized they "had their man", and therefore wouldn't look to Yates as an accessory, he may have given the story for the purpose of confirming the Oswald story and pointing away from any conspiracy. In any event, the story was ignored. It didn't appear in the 26 volumes of evidence, although it did appear in the larger collection of Warren Commission Documents. It is a strange phenomenon, though.

Roy

Perhaps things occurred as Yates stated, but it was merely an Oswald IMPERSONATOR...???

Like the one in Mexico City, perhaps...in order to tighten the frame, maybe? Or maybe to cast doubt, and help ensure that the "mystery" stayed a mystery??

Again, just a thought...and it only works if the decoy Oswald knew how it would end from the beginning.

Mark, if the Yates statement was part of the frame, and the curtain rods were part of that, then what about the Frazier and Randle's testimony, which tied in with curtain rods? Was this guy just some wacko who wanted to help out the official case, or does this indicate he was tied in with conspirators?

Roy Bierma

We have to except that not everything that happened on that day was part of a conspiracy, some things just happened, this is a case in point. Pure speculation is poor ground for evidence gathering.

i'll give you some evidence,if the secret service had done their job that day,11/22/63 would be a footnote in history as the day of a foiled assassination attempt.....Palamara's work speaks for itself,i'm a huge fan.... you discount the uncovered Chicago and Miami plots against JFK, in the previous weeks prior to Dallas, as if they never happened and imply that Dallas was a routine trip in regards to security....

What happened to Rybka? All that I heard is that he in died ( in his thirties) in 1975.

At Love Field was he being playful? Simply angry for being left behind to guard Air Force One? Or, was he upset because he was not allowed to do his job and knew it was endangering the president?

I was looking for a "Greer Shootist" thread, but couldn't find one. I also found the following comment on a Greer shot JFK video which I think is right on the mark.

"The (unintentioned) result of this frame is

a stark reminder of the driver's looking back

twice (and many-if not most) people claiming

to have watched the limo slow to an almost

stop, when the first order of business is to

flee immediately at the first sign of

trouble. Whether the driver shot JFK is

secondary to the greater liklihood that he

was probably involved in the setup. "

Peter, Henry Rybka was born January 28, 1918, and passed away December 1975. He was 57.

Hey Roy,

To whom have you been talking?

Gary Eugene Marlow, yes.

Wim

Wim, I just became curious when I read something you posted which mentioned his name and I found him in the Social Security Death Index. It seems he was about a year younger than Oswald, and ended up living in Conyers, Georgia, or around there. Original social security card issued in Illinois. Was this in Chicago? What was he doing in Georgia?

Tot ziens,

Roy Bierma

DATE: April 4, 2007

PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA)

TYPE: News Obituary Listing

GARY E. MARLOW, 66, of Conyers died Monday. The body was cremated. Memorial service, 11 a.m. Friday, Scot H. Ward, Harry White Chapel.

Right: James Files

Left: The man that shot J.D. Tippit, according to Files

Gary E. Marlow, who passed away last year, right? Do we know anything else about him?

Regards,

Roy Bierma

 Under this auspice, in theory, Oswald was acting on behalf of some third party (presumably ATF?) in obtaining the rifle and handgun, and thus (which may or not be a part of the theory) would have surrendered either or both of these weapons to such a party. Whoever that might have been could conceivably have been privy to the serial number of the rifle that could've been traced to Oswald. But if not, who else might've had access to or knowledge of the "original" serial number to duplicate, and how might they have obtained, from all the MC rifles sold during that time frame (including by a large Dallas sporting goods chain, the name of which escapes me at the moment), a 91/38 barrel with the same serial number?

So how did the 91/38 get inside the TSBD? Truth is, we'll probably never know.

Well, I just alluded to a distinct possibility, but as I noted before, that's fodder for a different thread!

Duke, it seems likely that Oswald could have been working with the ATF in association with Frank Ellsworth. Ellsworth, by the way, lived at 718 N. Zangs, not far from where Oswald lived. In that case, if Oswald were at work in March at J-C-S at the time he was supposed to have picked up the rifle, perhaps Ellsworth picked it up instead. Similarly with the pistol and the C.O.D. that needed to be paid for it. 

"But if not, who else might've had access to or knowledge of the "original" serial number to duplicate,...." 

Harry Holmes would have had access to the serial number at the post office and someone may have phoned ahead for him to involve himself in particular with the gun items. As an FBI informant, and possible ATF informant, he may have notified Ellsworth when the rifle and pistol arrived. The keys of course are the Hidell alias and the serial numbers. If they could tie Oswald to the Hidell alias AND the rifle order, and likewise to that alias and the pistol order, they could at least in part incriminate him. And once someone passed on the 2766 numbered rifle(as I believe the 38 short rifle was obtained via Montreal, and added the C, it would have been all set to help frame Oswald. Otherwise, as you suggest, someone buys a 38 short from a local source, either a store, or another gun owner. More likely the latter since the gun showed heavy usage in various areas of the rifle.

Roy Bierma

I received my copy two days ago.

Dick Russell is in my top 3 of authors on the subject, along with Gaeton Fonzi. Although I have only glanced the book, I already know it is outstanding.

Wim

I've read it and consider it outstanding. I'm not sure if people looking for a smoking gun or proof-positive there was a conspiracy will be satisfied, but anyone reading the book should come out amazed at the number of strange characters and weird leads. The book would make a great mini-series, IMO.

Although I've never subscribed to the "single-assassin theorists are all cognitively-challenged" argument, I will venture that anyone reading this book and still feeling absolutely sure Oswald acted alone is lacking curiosity, and lacking understanding of their own lack of understanding.

As per the bard, speaking through Hamlet

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Dick Russell has showed us some of those things.

Guys, the two so-called "Luis Castillo" guys are different. The one born in Puerto Rico was Angel Luis Castillo Cabrera. The Bayo-Pawley participant was Luis Angel Castillo Vega. The names are quite different. The B-P Castillo was 39 at the time of the assassination, while the Cuban Castillo was only around 21 or so. Thanks, Bill, for sharing from Dick Russell's new book, in particular, about Castillo Cabrera.

Take care,

Roy Bierma

Sorry, don't think so....see here: {don't know where the 'confusion' came in, but suspect is was purposely inserted by those who wanted to blow smoke - as they did with the two Bishops, and many other figures - standard proceedure to confuse us.

Peter, I had what I still consider to be two of them switched around in my post. Angel Luis Castillo Cabrera, is as the document you posted indicates, a member of the B-P mission. It was the much younger Castillo, born in Puerto Rico(the other man was born in Cuba)that is named Luis Angel Castillo Vega. I have seen quite a number of docs in the archive concerning them. One troublesome problem is that some of the Puerto Rican Castillo's claims to be in Cuba during the early 60's are contradicted by arrests of him in Miami at the same time. There is definitely "smoke" here, but I need further convincing that the two are the same person.

Thanks,

Roy Bierma

I received my copy two days ago.

Dick Russell is in my top 3 of authors on the subject, along with Gaeton Fonzi. Although I have only glanced the book, I already know it is outstanding.

Wim

I've read it and consider it outstanding. I'm not sure if people looking for a smoking gun or proof-positive there was a conspiracy will be satisfied, but anyone reading the book should come out amazed at the number of strange characters and weird leads. The book would make a great mini-series, IMO.

Although I've never subscribed to the "single-assassin theorists are all cognitively-challenged" argument, I will venture that anyone reading this book and still feeling absolutely sure Oswald acted alone is lacking curiosity, and lacking understanding of their own lack of understanding.

As per the bard, speaking through Hamlet

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Dick Russell has showed us some of those things.

Guys, the two so-called "Luis Castillo" guys are different. The one born in Puerto Rico was Angel Luis Castillo Cabrera. The Bayo-Pawley participant was Luis Angel Castillo Vega. The names are quite different. The B-P Castillo was 39 at the time of the assassination, while the Cuban Castillo was only around 21 or so. Thanks, Bill, for sharing from Dick Russell's new book, in particular, about Castillo Cabrera.

Take care,

Roy Bierma

I know that John Judge uses that quote a lot, and went to some of the text of his talks on line and found that he says that Dulles said to publish the records and Americans don't read anyway in a conversation with fellow Warren Commissioner Hale Boggs.

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:icFce...;cd=3&gl=us

In Vince Palamara's archive (Thanks Vince), he has John Judge at the American U conference in which he says,

"....I think from my own work, I have read the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission….You know Alan Dulles, when he was asked about releasing the evidenceby Hale Boggs, replied, "Go ahead and print it, nobody will read it anyway."

And unfortunate, especially now, in this post-literate generation, Stone's film is about the only thing that will reach youth. There are a few of us who read still, but as you know, the FBI is trying to get our names from the library. (Laughter)

Googling Allen Dulles and Hale Boggs I came up with a very valuable and underutilzed resource:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKboggs.htm

which goes into detail on Boggs but doesn't mention the Allen Dulles/Hale Boggs conversation that Judge alludes to.

John, if you didn't find that answer to this question yet, I would think that if you look closer at Boggs you might come up with something.

BK

Bill, thanks for the suggestion that Boggs was also in on the conversation. But it wasn't a dialogue. As I mentioned above, Albert Jenner spoke just after Dulles. So if Hale Boggs was also at this session, there were at least two commissioners present, and one senior counsel. What remains a mystery to me is why this exchange including the Dulles remark does not have a better reference than what we have found so far. I guess we'll have to keep looking, or look for something else and find it by accident.

Roy Bierma

Duke, the NBC news report you refer to was the first TELEVISION report not the first RADIO report. The first radio report of a policeman (no mention of Tippits name yet) being shot in Oak Cliff was on radio KLIF at 1.33.

It's always good to know facts. Got a cite on that one? NBC, unless I'm mistaken (which is possible) was also involved in radio at that time, so it's not necessarily apparent that it was a television announcement.

It's probably doubtful that any such tapes or transcripts have survived to give us any indication whether it was a one-time announcement or if it was repeated, or what. It's really a minor point because Brewer for whatever reason decided to see what the guy who ducked into his vestibule was up to. The big news was, of course, the shooting of the President, and I imagine that local news coverage focused largely on that, with the Tippit shooting being a mere sideline. Maybe they had repeated it shortly before Oswald ducked in, which drew the connection for Brewer together with the sirens, which were not the first sirens being heard in that area at the time (police had been in the area for more than 20 minutes by the time Oswald would've appeared).

It is merely a question of whether Brewer really thought of the connection between the news of the shooting and someone ducking into his storefront, or whether that's what he thought he sensibly thought after the fact. I might've myself.

Hi Duke, Do you believe Oswald played any part in the events of that day?

The most interesting question on this thread yet Steve, I like the way you come straight to the point. But will "THE DUKE" give as straight a reply?

It's highly unlikely.

To paraphrase someone once at the forefront of the news, "it depends on what the definition of 'played any part' is." Clearly he had a role, even if it was - as he said - merely that of "patsy." It is easily possible to construct completely different scenarios of both shootings that do not have Oswald involved in pulling any triggers, all based on existing and established evidence and testimony.

Leaving that aside, it is interesting to note that it would have been much easier to place Oswald at the scene of the Oak Cliff crime had it not been for people who knew him. Even if he had not been seen by anyone at all - as he wasn't, apparently, when travelling between 1026 and 10&P - between the TSBD and the Tippit scene, it would only have been necessary to show that he could've gotten to that area of Oak Cliff in time to kill him: he might've walked from TSBD directly to the Greyhound station and gotten in Whaley's cab for a ride to Neeley & Beckley and then walked to 10&P.

There was nobody who could've said that he didn't have his pistol stashed somewhere inside or outside of the building: he supposedly was able to spirit his rifle out of his house and bury it near where General Walker lived, then bury it again and spirit it later back into his house with nobody the wiser. Would it not have been as equally possible for him to have done something similar downtown with his pistol? Since Whaley's logs of pick-up and drop-off times were mere approximations, and Whaley did approximate the time Oswald got in his cab as being 12:30 and out at 12:45 (CE307), it would have been a simple matter to have had Oswald going directly from the TSBD to Greyhound and into Oak Cliff with lots of time to shoot Tippit, even as early as when Tippit was actually shot.

But enter Mary Bledsoe's having seen him on the bus, as well as Earlene Roberts' having seen him in the rooming house. Right or wrong, they were insurmountable problems, even if somewhat handy (Bledsoe for her "maniac" description, and Roberts for helping to account how Oswald came to have a pistol on him), resulting in the fudging of Tippit's death to allow Oswald arguably enough time in which to get there.

If we begin with the premise that the Tippit murder was a diversion (as I've postulated elsewhere, and which has considerable evidentiary support), then it requires a complete re-evaluation of all that took place in that area, involving Oswald and not, and it's a cinch that Oswald did not kill Tippit simply so the cops could find him faster (he could've stayed on the sixth floor with rifle in hand had he wanted to accomplish that, and wouldn't have disappeared between 10&P and TT only to be walking along the main drag acting suspiciously five blocks and half an hour later).

It then boils down to the question of trying to explain the inconsistencies in Oswald's known, unquestioned actions if they are not what they are supposed to have been ... and he ain't talkin'.

Duke, what are your thoughts concerning Earlene Roberts' claim that a police cruiser stopped by around the time Oswald was at the Beckley address? Do you think she mistook another vehicle for a police cruiser because of her failing eyesight? Since it's certain that Tippit couldn't have been there at that time, who would have been in the vehicle, if it was a police cruiser?

Roy Bierma

John, as far as I know, there is no July 9 Executive Session. But possibly this is the source of the statement: Allen Dulles, Warren Commission member, fired by JFK as CIA Director:

"But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record...The public will read very little."

(September 6, 1964, Warren Commission internal memo)-per Martin Shackelford

Roy Bierma

Thanks for your reply.

If I'm not mistaken, I posed this same question about Dulles to another JFK forum some years back, and Martin gave me the same answer.

Obviously, Dulles's statement, or alleged statement, is one of those that has a lot of potential weight attached to it. And it troubles me that I've never seen a source for it.

In a similar vein, I looked a long time for the JFK quote about splintering the CIA into a thousand pieces -- finally found it in a 1966 New York Times article. As I recall, it was unattributed, which likewise makes me uneasy.

Both quotes may well be accurate, but without proper sourcing start seeming more like urban myths.

John, I agree with you. The fact that there seem to be two attributions, one 7-9-63, and the other one 9-6-64. I wasn't satisfied with the sources for the remarks either, so after I posted I continued my search. The "internal memo" origin didn't seem right, because after Dulles makes his remarks, Albert Jenner responds. This would seem then to come from some sort of executive session. But it must have been a private session, with only a small portion made public. After going through 20 pages of Google results, I still haven't found anything other than many persons quoting each other on 7-9-63, and the Martin Shackelford sourcing, with one person quoting him. Perhaps there is a JFK book which gives a source for it. This is annoying.

Take care,

Roy Bierma

Hi all,

Does anyone know the source of the oft-quoted remark attributed to Allen Dulles, "But nobody reads..." ?

I have asked other forums and no one seems to know.

Paraphrasing, the full statement, in the context of publishing the WC material, is along the lines of, "But nobody reads. Oh, a few academics will read it, but that's about all..."

My apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere.

John Kelin

This website claims it was said by Allen Dulles, Warren Commission meeting , July 9, 1964:

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...php/t42959.html

This website says: "But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record... the public will read very little. - Allen Dulles, 7-9-64."

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/tom.blackwell/

Thanks for the reply, John.

The problem is, this is just a web site containing the quote we're all familiar with. The date helps. But this particular meeting, which I'm guessing was an Executive Session, isn't in the "Document Addendum to the Warren Report" or a Lancer CD that has most of the stuff in the Document Addendum.

Has anyone seen a transcript of this July 9 session? I guess I"ll try the NARA web site.

John

John, as far as I know, there is no July 9 Executive Session. But possibly this is the source of the statement: Allen Dulles, Warren Commission member, fired by JFK as CIA Director:

"But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record...The public will read very little."

(September 6, 1964, Warren Commission internal memo)-per Martin Shackelford

Roy Bierma

The only way you can put him into the theater before Brewer saw him is to do it without his wearing a jacket, i.e., without his going home to get it.

As I indicated earlier in this thread, I believe Earlene Roberts fatally undermined the probative value of her clothing identification when she admitted to her poor eyesight and admitted that her attention was elsewhere. The evidence that he left 1026 Beckley wearing a jacket is both implausible (it was too warm for a jacket) and unpersuasive, IMO.

But it was good enough to identify Oswald's face, which was smaller than his jacket and apparently made less noise than his zipper? She could make a mistake about a relatively large jacket, but be absolutely positive of Oswald's identity?

I think it's fairly plain that it was Oswald who ducked into Brewer's store.

Well admittedly I was not there when it happened, and admittedly your view is definitely the majority view, but I for one see grounds for real doubt that this was how the deal went down.

[W]e're still left with the question of where he was from the time he got out of Whaley's cab to the time he was arrested (which is effectively the same as saying "from the time when Tippit was shot").

According to the reports we have from his interrogators, he said he he went to his room and changed his clothes, then went to the movies. It seems you have a problem with that, while I do not.

Well, admittedly I was not there when it happened, and admittedly your view is definitely the majority view, but I for one see grounds for real doubt that this was how the deal went down. I guess it comes down to how selective one wants to be with Earlene Roberts' evidence, whether she was completely right, part-wrong and part-right, or completely wrong.

Duke, speaking of Earlene Roberts' testimony, earlier you referred to her mention of hearing a car horn peeping, and the matter of two officers which were in the "police" car. I would be interested in your take on this, especially since at the end of one of your posts you wrote, "Think Frank Ellsworth" Could you enlarge on that?

Roy Bierma

One thing Adele and Ed Haslam seem to have discovered, which I have yet to confirm, is the Magazine Street apartment where Oswald lived, (whose phone number was known to Rivera in DC before Oswald moved in), was owned by William McLaney.

If this can be confirmed, it would be very significant, since William McLaney also owned the Lake Pontchartrain training camp and his brother co-owned the National Casino in Havana with LBJ's pal Carroll Rossenbloom.

BK

Bill, the apartments were owned by Isabella Gregory. See CE 2349. Her husband at that time was Blaine Gregory. At some stage, she was also known as Isabella Dawson (probably either maiden name or name of second husband after Blaine died in '81).

Hi Greg,

Thanks, for that.

Didn't Dawson cash an Oswald check?

Also, it's possible McLaney owned the property before Gregory.

There's an old neighborhood bar called Gregory's near the Quarter.

Wonder if they're same family?

BK

Bill, we researched the ownership of that apartment about 7 years ago through our old friend Lamar Chauvin of New Orleans. Don't you remember? Isabella Dawson indeed signed a rent check from Oswald.

Take care,

Roy Bierma

Hi Roy,

I remember, but I am trying to substantiate and confirm what Adele and Ed say, that the apartment house was owned at some time by William McLaney, which would put it into the hands of a major player.

Also got your note on the Joan Mellen talk at Pittsburgh so I put it up as a separate thread for people to react to it.

I also hope Joan will rejoin us and talk some more about it.

BK

Bill, the receipt for the rental check is dated Aug. 9, 1963, the same day Oswald was arrested. The William McLaney ownership would be nice to confirm. I'm also aware of the presence of an "Isabel"(lnu)with Jack Ruby in Islamadora, Florida, in 1958 when he was running guns by boat with James Woodard. In one of the documents on that subject it says that "Isabel" was from Chicago, where Ruby also originated.

Roy Bierma

Thanks, Bill.

Then that would be Julio Cesar Fernandez.

James

Bill, the Julio Cesar Fernandez of Martinsburg is of course in the 26 volumes. The "Julio Fernandez" a pseudonym given by Clare Luce to interviewers, was a DRE operative. Fonzi pursued the leads given re the latter 'Fernandez' Fonzi found out from Luce that one of the three men whom she sponsored along with a boat for anti-Castro use was Jose Antonio Lanusa. Did Fonzi also interview Dr. Julio Cesar Fernandez? I'm not sure there isn't some confusion here.

Best,

Roy Bierma

... One other question concerning the identities of the other movie patrions in the theater that day; has anyone ever come forth to publicize their being in attendance there, using their ticket stubs as proof? I would think that such a ticket stub would be very valuable to collectors, if not to any participants in a real investigation. Have any such stubs ever appeared, on Ebay or elsewhere?

I've never heard of such a thing, but that's hardly to say that it hasn't happened or that these folks haven't got their stubs in a frame on their mantlepiece either.

Think of the hundreds of people who were at the Trade Mart for the luncheon that never took place: occasionally, someone will trot out their invitation to it, but it's been a relative few in terms of the number of people who were there. Proportionately speaking, we might never expect anyone to come up with such an item of memorabilia, especially since it seems unlikely that it would have been dated.

Another interesting aspect of that, for the sake of saying so, is that it seems equally unlikely that anyone would believe the person who came forward with such an item (and especially if it wasn't dated!). I've spoken to a couple of people - one of them was in a lineup with Oswald, another says he was outside the theater when Oswald was brought out (and who disputes the "angry mob" several people claim to have seen or encountered) - whose own families don't believe them. In the case of the former, it's easy enough to prove just getting a copy of the Report (at least, I think the names of the other "suspects" are there; certainly in testimony); in the latter, I'm still supposed to find the guy a photo of people outside the theater since he thinks he might've been in it. He was also a school chum of Butch Burroughs.

I would also agree with Raymond that the accused need not prove anything. It is up to the state to prove its case, and critics have been showing how absurd that proof is for several decades now. This discussion has been informative and enjoyable.

It's an interesting concept that, first of all, "this is not a court of law" and we therefore should not be constrained by such things as "reasonable doubt" or technical issues of admissibility (or stoop to using such "unethical" tactics), but merely be able to "see the reality" based on the "obvious." Too and conversely, this not being a court of law, the "obvious" invariably points to Oswald as being the sole perpetrator; to suggest otherwise, however, does require "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

Nicholas Katzenbach hit the nail on the head in his famous memo to Bill Moyers, albeit in a slightly different context:

Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or ... a right-wing conspiracy to blame the Communists. Unfortunately,

the facts on Oswald seem about too pat – too obvious

(Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.) ....

Those words could as easily be applied to the case in chief rather than the single aspect of Oswald's "motivation," which naturally presumes his guilt since the innocent don't have motives! Nevertheless, the "facts" are "too pat - too obvious," and the fact that a quasi-legal body of politicians - as all were, in one form or another - would endorse them without any form of devil's advocacy, and moreover, that thinking Americans - who are trained from Day One that we are all "innocent until proven guilty" - can swallow such explanations without question is disturbing.

It is all as with the rifle: there is little if anything to factually and fully support the conclusion, but since it was there and we don't know who else might've gotten it there or how, Oswald "must" have done it even though it objectively seems like he didn't. (Unless you've got a better explanation? If so, prove it: I don't have to.)

Isn't it funny that Johnny Brewer decided to conceal such a vivid and precise memory from the Warren Commission, despite the oath he took to "tell the whole truth?"

I've often wished that I would one day witness something of great import and be called to testify, and that in the course of so doing was asked a question by one of the attorneys who, as I began to elaborate, demanded "yes or no, Mr. Lane. Did it happen that way?" whereupon I would have the opportunity to turn to the judge and say, "Your Honor, I took an oath to tell 'the whole truth,' and a simple 'yes' or 'no' would not do 'the whole truth' justice." Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately! - I don't foresee that ever happening (but there's still time in this life!!).

While by no means intending to disparage Mr. Brewer, it might've been nice - and might well have happened if there was cross-examination - to know exactly how it was that Brewer thought he'd recognized Oswald as a former customer; as it stands, his speculation on that point tends to be "proof" of his recognition of Oswald ... as if that is any sort of indication that Brewer knew him to be the "suspicious" type, or that his customers were more likely to be sneaking around and darting off the streets when cops were around than anyone else.

Duke, hello. Perhaps, although he told the FBI he did not know Lee Oswald(apparently untrue) he recognized him when Oswald bought a pair of shoes from him at Hardy's Shoes. Among Oswald's possessions found the weekend of the 22nd were two new pairs of shoes, one of which was a pair of black oxfords with crepe soles, John Hardy brand.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=752247

If they were new, perhaps the encounter between Brewer and Oswald was recent.

Roy Bierma

Jim,

Am I correct in assuming that Dallas T-2 was Harry Holmes?

James

James, yes, Harry Holmes was Dallas informant T-2.

Roy Bierma

One thing Adele and Ed Haslam seem to have discovered, which I have yet to confirm, is the Magazine Street apartment where Oswald lived, (whose phone number was known to Rivera in DC before Oswald moved in), was owned by William McLaney.

If this can be confirmed, it would be very significant, since William McLaney also owned the Lake Pontchartrain training camp and his brother co-owned the National Casino in Havana with LBJ's pal Carroll Rossenbloom.

BK

Bill, the apartments were owned by Isabella Gregory. See CE 2349. Her husband at that time was Blaine Gregory. At some stage, she was also known as Isabella Dawson (probably either maiden name or name of second husband after Blaine died in '81).

Hi Greg,

Thanks, for that.

Didn't Dawson cash an Oswald check?

Also, it's possible McLaney owned the property before Gregory.

There's an old neighborhood bar called Gregory's near the Quarter.

Wonder if they're same family?

BK

Bill, we researched the ownership of that apartment about 7 years ago through our old friend Lamar Chauvin of New Orleans. Don't you remember? Isabella Dawson indeed signed a rent check from Oswald.

Take care,

Roy Bierma

WHO WAS LEE HARVEY OSWALD?

THE WECHT INSTITUTE, DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY, PITTSBURGH, PA.

OCTOBER 5, 2008

By Joan Mellen

I've devoted my writing life since the early 1970's to the subject of this conference, "Making Sense of the Sixties." My first book was about the 1962 Algerian war of independence from France. So I am especially grateful for the opportunity to say a few words about where we are in assessing the events of the sixties. For me, we're far beyond searching for one more "smoking gun." The Kennedy assassination at this moment in our history is about linking the events of the sixties with the crises facing the Republic today. I'll begin with an anecdote about the detective story writer Dashiell Hammett, the subject of one of my biographies.

Hammett was editor of the base newspaper in the Aleutian Islands during World War Two. One of his writers, a soldier named Eliot Asinof, later to write a book called "Eight Men Out" about the Chicago Black Sox, wrote an article for the paper exposing the corruption of officers smuggling booze. Expecting Hammett's approval, Asinof instead received this advice, advice for this field of research no less than for any writer: "Lieutenant, everyone knows what. Why don't you try to find out why." That, in my view, is where we go from here.

My particular subject this morning is Lee Harvey Oswald, that figure whose identity seems ever to recede beyond the reach of conventional historical research. The Warren Commission decided, with breathtaking defiance of the reality, that he was a sociopath, a person who "does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people…a man whose view of the world has been twisted…[a] troubled American citizen..[an] unstable character whose actions are highly unpredictable." Moreover, this man murdered President Kennedy without the assistance of confederates, clearly in contrast to reality. Oswald as we examine his life was, for one thing, never alone.

At the other extreme is the view that Oswald was a "legend" created within U.S. Intelligence, a composite of two people, one born in the USA with that name, and another, of Eastern European origin, trained from an early age as an agent. That there happens to be a CIA CCD (Central Cover Division) fuels this scenario, along with inconsistencies such as that Oswald boasted two report cards for the fall term of 1954, one from the Bronx, the other from Louisiana.

Drawing on what we know as certain, the Oswald who is recognizable to us, was born in New Orleans, and seems rarely to have been deprived of the company of others. Certainly, he was not a loner in Dallas where he was offered the friendship of CIA asset and so-called oil geologist (he had no degree in the subject) George de Mohrenschildt. DeMohrenschildt reported to the Domestic Contact Service (00) in Dallas on Haitian matters, the existing record shows. The quintessential unreliable narrator, a year before his death, de Mohrenschildt targeted Haroldson Lafayette Hunt as the sponsor of the Kennedy assassination. Coincidentally, H. L. Hunt was unique among Texas oil men in being a lifelong antagonist of the CIA, as has been his son, Nelson Bunker Hunt. It was, perhaps, de Mohrenschildt's final Agency assignment.

Nor was Oswald particularly solitary in New Orleans during the summer of 1963 where his presence was noted at anti-Castro training camps north of Lake Pontchartrain.

Almost from the moment of his arrival in New Orleans from Texas in April 1963, Oswald sought the acquaintance of CIA and FBI assets. He attempted to infiltrate anti-Castro groups. By the time he was arrested on Canal Street in August, he was so well acquainted with the FBI field office that he told the officer interviewing him, Lieutenant Francis Martello of New Orleans police intelligence, "Call the FBI. Tell them you have Lee Oswald in custody." It was a moment that Martello neglected to describe to the Warren Commission which he held in utter contempt until the end of his life, as former police intelligence officer Robert Buras, working for the House Select Committee, and a long-time Martello acquaintance, told me.

Supporting the conclusion that the CIA was behind the Kennedy assassination is the fact that in New Orleans Oswald associated only with people with intelligence connections, beginning with Arnesto Rodriguez, an FBI informant with family members rooted in the CIA's clandestine service. Rodriguez was one of FBI Special Agent Warren de Brueys' informants. One day Oswald appeared at Rodriguez's office at the International Trade Mart building at 124 Camp Street. He wanted to help the Cubans, Oswald said. He wanted to be part of the training camps. Rodriguez was suspicious. Who had sent Oswald to him? he wondered. How did Oswald know that there was "a training camp across the lake from us, north of Lake Pontchartrain?" It was top secret at the time, yet Oswald knew about it.

Pilot David Ferrie was a CIA asset whom Oswald knew from his youth in the Civil Air Patrol and with whom he renewed his acquaintance that summer. They were joined in their travels by Clay Shaw, a CIA operative whose activities were charted by at least five CIA components. The sources who observed Oswald with Shaw and Ferrie in those hamlets north of Baton Rouge are unimpeachable, and include Dr. Frank Silva, the medical director of the East Louisiana State Hospital at Jackson where Oswald applied for a job.

Dr. Silva himself observed at the hospital, chatting with some orderlies, a sloppy, unruly figure in an T-shirt bragging about how he had learned to shoot in the Marines and planned to go to Cuba to kill Fidel Castro. This man invoked his Marine Corps manual, exactly what Oswald had done when he visited Carlos Bringuier's New Orleans store in an effort to join the DRE. (Of course if he really wanted to join the Directorate, he would have been in Miami, and not in New Orleans that summer. Oswald did visit Miami, only for the anti-Castro people training there, as Ed Arthur told me, to be instructed by their CIA handlers to "stay away from him").

A digression about sources. From about fifty hours of taped interviews, I could not use any of what a New Orleans figure named Gordon Novel told me. With a soldier of fortune named Gerald Patrick Hemming, the percentage of the truth to fabrication was 50-50. Knowing of my interest in Colombia, Gerry told he he had been imprisoned on Gorgona. (This was an island off the western coast of Colombia, named because of the preponderous poisonous snakes wandering there. I didn't believe him. This seemed like bragging. No, it turned out to be true. Smuggling drugs and not paying off the right people in Medellin, Gerry found himself on Gorgona.

Gerry told me that Robert Kennedy had addressed a group of Cuban exiles at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida in the summer of 1963. I needed corroborating witnesses; Gerry promised to name some, but couldn't, and I broke off all contact with him. I forgot about this matter until a researcher named William Pepper told me the same story. His source, he said, was an aging, very ill documentary filmmaker who had been a close friend of Robert Kennedy's. He had won eight emmies! Pepper said. And no, he couldn't give me this dying man's name.

As a film historian, I could reach any documentary filmmaker, and called about ten people. None had ever heard the Homestead story. Then I contacted people close to Bobby Kennedy: Peter Edelman, John Seigenthaler, one of Robert Kennedy's daughters, Ed. Guthman, Frank Mankiewicz, George Stevens, Joey Gargan, a Kennedy cousin, the list goes on. None had ever heard of the Homestead story. Seigenthaler suggested I call the Kennedy library and ask to see the appointment book of Bobby's secretary, Angie Novello. I did. They searched. 1963 was missing!

I went back to Pepper and insisted that he name his source – and it turned out that the source was…Gerald Patrick Hemming! In the course of the same conversation, Pepper told me that Bobby had flown to Dallas on the evening Oswald was arrested, and talked to Oswald in his cell! But I must not use this revelation! So historians must be wary, especially in this field.

Back to Oswald in Louisiana: Under heavy discipline, Oswald was following orders: hence, his not knowing that the East Louisiana State Hospital happened to be a MENTAL hospital. Dr. Silva spoiled the CIA's scenario by determining that there was no way that this man would ever be employed at his hospital.

Among the most telling details about Oswald emerged in the testimony of William Wulff who had been head of the Astronomy Club of New Orleans. One day Oswald showed up, wanting to be a member, although it was clear he had no interest in astronomy. Wulff asked him why he wanted to join the Astronomy Club.

"I like to infiltrate," Oswald the teenager said, even then a person who preferred the company of others to being alone. At the same time, he cultivated invisibility, as if he were transparent. Infiltrating, he could follow the path laid out by that favorite of his fictional characters, FBI informant Herbert Philbrick, hero of "I Led Three Lives." A caveat: it was his brother Robert alone who gave out that Lee watched obsessively "I Led Three Lives," while, as John Armstrong points in his book, "Harvey & Lee," Robert is less than credible.

In his book "Lee," Robert Oswald wrote that when he left home to join the Marines, Lee was still watching the reruns of "I Led Three Lives." In fact, Robert joined the Marines on July 15, 1952, and the re-runs were not aired until after the series ended, in mid-1956. Oswald may have watched "I Led Three Lives," but it wasn't as his brother said. The program was first aired in September 1953.

The mainstream press persists in describing Oswald as a "Marxist" or a "Communist," the diametrical opposite of what he was. Didn't he express sympathy for the Soviet Union on New Orleans radio that August of 1963? Didn't he pass out pro-Castro leaflets on behalf of the Fair Play For Cuba committee, a group created by the Socialist Workers Party?

And hadn't he, as a Marxist, defected to the Soviet Union? Being a Marxist or a Communist was his cover, one that he cast off with regularity, as if it were all a game, a charade, like his defection itself.

Let's turn for a moment to why CIA Counter Intelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton was so anxious to discount the testimony of Soviet defector, the late, ill-fated Yuri Nosenko. Having read KGB's files on Oswald, Mr. Nosenko reported that the KGB had never used Oswald; and that, by the way, the Soviet Union did not sponsor the Kennedy assassination. Yet a caveat is in order here too since 1964 Nosenko said there was only one thin file. By 1977 when Nosenko talked to HSCA, the file had grown to "eight bulky volumes."

Oswald's appearance in the Soviet Union was as a participant in the Agency's "false defector" program, in which he was joined by several other young men, whose files can be found at the National Archives. There is no document that names a "false defector program," but that does not mean such a program did not exist, and there are copious files about various of the participants. James Angleton ran that program. By putting the lie to the possibility that the Soviet Union had sponsored the assassination, Nosenko's statements implicitly threatened to expose for whom Oswald was acting. Nosenko's life became a living hell after that.

There are reasons for challenging Nosenko's credibility that we needn't get into here. That Nosenko settled on the "lone nut" theory of the assassination is odd. To quote Lee Oswald's mentor, David Ferrie, "people are no damn good," and the "true" motives of defectors are too opaque to penetrate. That he suffered does not elevate Nosenko to credibility. That Nosenko failed two polygraphs gives one pause. (These polygraphs stood up when re-examined by HSCA experts, agreeing on the areas of deception).

Yet evidence suggests that Oswald was indeed in the Soviet Union on behalf of the CIA. I received a telephone call last November from one Donald Deneselya, who had worked for the CIA as a Russian language translator in the Soviet Russia section at the time of Oswald's return to the United States from the Soviet Union.

As we know, the CIA, from John McCone on down, denied that CIA had ever debriefed Oswald upon his return. Had Oswald been debriefed by the Agency, we would have had the quick confirmation that he was indeed, as were a whole list of people, a participant in the "secret defector" program run by CIA counter intelligence. CIA debriefing Oswald in itself did not, of course, would mean that he was theirs. But the curious nature of his defection, with all its contradictions, combined with this debriefing, at least points to the existence of Angleton's false defector program.

I was not the first person to whom Mr. Deneselya revealed his proof that Oswald had, indeed, been debriefed by the CIA. Deneselya had come forward first to Senator Richard Schweiker (they met together twice), to the House Select Committee, and later to the television program "Frontline." What Mr. Deneselya did for me was to provide more details of what he had seen.

What Mr. Deneselya witnessed was a document detailing how a man, a defector, (his name was not mentioned), but who had been working at a radio factory in Minsk, had been upon his return to the United States been debriefed by one "Anderson," a CIA employee with an 00 designation. Deneselya did not remember the given name of Anderson, which has created a certain amount of confusion.

A Commander Anderson indeed was "seconded" to the CIA NYC field office by the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Commander Anderson of the United States Navy who was assigned to CIA's covert office in New York was the original contact for Alexander Rorke, who accompanied Geoffrey Sullivan, the pilot who flew in and out of Cuba for the CIA along with Frank Fiorini (Frank Sturgis). Commander Anderson's name appears in a CIA document dated June 28, 1962, to the Director of Central Intelligence from John Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, in connection with Rorke and Fiorini.

Yet it seems that "Commander Anderson," was not the person who debriefed Oswald. Nor was the debriefer "ANDY Anderson," as Donald Deneselya assumed after conversations with author, John Newman. There was yet another "Anderson," operating out of the Soviet Russia 6 Division, who was responsible for debriefings. "Anderson" was a pseudonym used by a woman named Eleanor Reed, a deputy chief of the Section 6 Soviet Russia research branch who was near the age of retirement. (Reed joined SR6 in 1956 and transferred out in 1964; she retired in 1970). "Anderson" turns out to have been a woman!

What was SR6? Thomas Casasin became Chief of the Soviet Russia, SR6 Branch in 1960. Casasin told HSCA in an interview conducted on August 17, 1978, that "the function of Section 6 was operations in support of the Soviet Russia Division of the CIA," including "classical espionage work."

The "Anderson" who debriefed Oswald was, strictly speaking not working directly for Robert T. Crowley, who headed up the CIA Contact Division, Support Branch, the primary function of which was Counter Intelligence. But she may have acted on his behalf in the debriefing. I recount this information in my new little book, the prequel to "A Farewell To Justice," which I called "Jim Garrison: His Life and Times."

Who ordered Eleanor Reed to debrief Oswald has emerged in a piece of investigative work worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself. A CIA document, number 287-690, Memo for Record, 3 December 1963, by Birch D. O'Neal, Chief, CI/SIG, Subject: Lee Harvey Oswald deals with Mexico City and Gilberto Alvarado Ugarte, who walked into the U.S. Embassy on November 25, 1963 and said he had witnessed Oswald at the Cuban Embassy on September 18^th accepting $5,000 from a "red-haired Negro" to kill President Kennedy. Alvarado later failed a CIA polygraph and retracted the whole story.

This document was perused by historian, John Newman. Newman looked at a signature on the upper right hand corner, a signature that apparently had leaked off or burned off from another document, because it's in reverse, as if it had been in a mirror. Newman concluded that the signature belonged to "Andy Anderson 00 Oswald. The 00 Oswald were clear, but the signature was not that of Andy Anderson!

This signature, revealing who ordered the debriefing of Oswald, in fact belongs to one E.M. Ashcraft, who was a close associate of Robert Crowley in that Support Branch, which worked Counter Intelligence as its prime function. Reed's overall boss would have been David Murphy, Chief of the Soviet Russia Division. Robert Crowley may have just about left 00/OSB (Operational Support Branch) where he was replaced by George S. Musulin by the time Oswald returned from the Soviet Union in June of 1962.

This is how it might have worked. Ashcraft would have called Thomas Casasin or Richard L. Winch or Donald E. Poole at SR6. This person in turn would have talked to Rudy Balaban (SR6 Research). Balaban would have consulted with Reed, who then called OS, the Office of Security, requesting permission to debrief Oswald. OS would pass the request on to Personnel Security Division, who would give a green light or a red light.

In the meantime, OS would liaise with CIA/SIG (Special Investigations Group), probably Anne (CIA nickname "Betty") Egerter, then with the Counterintelligence Staff or with Paul Hartmann, who was Birch O'Neal's "gofer." (The Special Investigations Group was a secret, small elite unit consisting of eight of James Angleton's most trusted and closed-mouthed people. Among them in addition to Egerter were Newton (Scotty) Miler, Birch O'Neal, and others. SIG's original brief was to investigate possibilities that CIA might have been penetrated by KGB. Soon after the inception of Counterintelligence, James Angleton expanded and established such components as R & A (Research and Analysis), Ops, and others. Each of the branch chiefs and deputies reported directly to Angleton. The Special Investigations Group was a closed book and most Agency people were denied access to it).

Sometimes Soviet Russia Counter Intelligence was called in at the briefings. So the mystery of Oswald in the Soviet Union unravels. The above trajectory offers further evidence that Oswald was a creature of the CIA, worked for the CIA, and, quite understandably, was debriefed by them upon his return.

Additional evidence that CIA debriefed Oswald after his return from the Soviet Union resides in the unredacted version CIA document 435-173A, dated 25 November 1963, by the same Thomas B. Casasin.

This document is familiar because we have long had a redacted version of Casasin's 25 November 1963 memo to Walter P. Haltigan, whom Casasin subsequently revealed to be one "Jim Flint." Flint was part of SR9, the operations part of the Soviet Division and was Casasin's "normal contact" in Paris where Casasin arrived in September 1962.

In this memo, Casasin writes that "Oswald's unusual behavior in the USSR" made him look "odd," leading Casasin not to use him in operations in the REDWOOD target area." REDWOOD was an action indicator for the SE Division. (SED was a CIA geographic designator for the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe). It seems now a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing, a not infrequent CIA situation.

In that unredacted version of Thomas B. Casasin's memo to Walter P. Haltigan, Casasin writes: "as chief of the 6 Branch I had discussed – sometime in Summer 1960 (he later corrected that date to "1962") with the then Chief and Deputy Chief of the 6 Research Section the laying on of interview(s) through KUJUMP [the operations division] or other suitable channels." KUJUMP had a contacts division for debriefing persons. KUJUMP was synonymous with 00 (Contacts Division).

Casasin closes his addendum to the memo with this line, indicating that was not aware of Angleton's program: "It was partly out of curiosity to learn if Oswald's wife would actually accompany him to our country, partly out of interest in Oswald's own experiences in the USSR, that we showed operational intelligence interest in the Harvey story." Casasin was looking for links between Soviet women marrying foreigners and the KGB. Casasin also refers in his 25 November 1963 memo to a program called AEOCEAN 3, then run out of SR10, and referring to Oswald in particular: this was the legal travelers program, i. e. the intelligence use of legal travelers to the Soviet Union. It seems apparent that Casasin, a pseudonym, was not in the loop, and is struggling to make sense of Oswald and his defection.

In his HSCA interview, while speculating, without any real evidence, that Oswald might have been a "lay-low Soviet operative," Casasin fills in some gaps in our knowledge about what Oswald was doing in the Soviet Union. He reveals that "there were some type of special design plants in Minsk which were of interest to the CIA." Casasin adds that CIA "had some type of encyclopedic information at the agency on the radio factory in Minsk where Oswald worked." He is talking about a component of CIA called the "Industrial Registry." In passing, let us note that the Warren Commission never contacted Casasin about his Oswald memo.

Casasin's HSCA interview, released in 2000, reminds us of how heavily compartmentalized, how much on a need to know basis, counterintelligence operated: Casasin told HSCA "he does not recall any discussions concerning the possible use of American defectors to penetrate the Soviets." Casasin does admit: "Counterintelligence did have their own closely held operations…and "it was possible or even probable that Counterintelligence ran operations in his own geographical target."

Back to Donald Deneselya, who worked at a far lower rung of the Soviet Russia Division than Casasin, not to mention Crowley and Ashcraft. When Deneselya asked his Agency confreres about the document, he was told that the subject was Robert Webster, although Webster was located not in Minsk, but at a plant in Leningrad, and there was a parallel document mentioning Webster by name.

Mr. Deneselya was convincing. Among the details he added was that some time after he witnessed the Oswald debriefing document, he asked James Angleton where he might find a copy so that he could peruse it again.

"You'll never find that document," Angleton said. The bad faith of the House Select Committee is reflected in the "Outside Contact Report," dated September 26, 1978, in which the Oswald revelation is barely mentioned, and Deneselya's information is almost completely confined to his work with a KGB defector named Golitsin. Ken Klein in his report should have been excited by the appearance of proof that Oswald had been debriefed by the CIA. Instead, he affects disinterest. You can see him yawning ostentatiously over what should have been an astonishing revelation. Klein behaves no differently than the specious "Frontline" program which allows Deneselya a few words, then rapidly brings on Richard Helms and Robert Oswald, the brother whose bona fides I have already called into question, to discount the information that Oswald had been debriefed by CIA.

I've always believed that many documents have been destroyed and been wary of the notion that somehow once ALL the files were opened, we would gain the truth. I know of mounds of materials that were removed from libraries by "men in suits," never to be seen again, despite FOIA requests. (In one case the men lied outright and said that they had been sent by the University where the papers had been willed: they hadn't been).

So I doubt whether the debriefing report witnessed by Mr. Deneselya, will emerge. Yet it is also true that new information is always appearing: for example, I was telephoned after the publication of "A Farewell to Justice" by a witness who observed the Gurvich brothers in New Orleans at Saturn Aviation run by one Al Crouch, for whom David Ferrie flew. The Gurviches took away with them, never to be seen again, the flight record showing Ferrie's movements. These included a flight Ferrie made to Dallas the week of the assassination.

After the assassination, knowing how sensitive they were, Crouch had put Ferrie's log books in a floor safe, and they survived even a break-in.

Crouch was threatened, getting an anonymous phone call, saying, "Do you have a little girl about three years old who rides a tricycle?" Then he turned the log books over to the brothers Gurvich, one of whom, William Gurvich, had ingratiated himself into the Garrison investigation. Gurvich claimed he would deliver these records to Jim Garrison. Of course, Garrison never saw Ferrie's log books.

Another lead that has emerged, this time from a newly released document, has a figure named Hugh Williams, released from the East Louisiana State Hospital on one of many writs of habeas corpus, meeting Oswald and Ferrie. On one occasion they went into the Gulf on a boat for target practice with World War II M-1 rifles. They talked about going to Cuba and assassinating Fidel Castro. This information matches Oswald's rant at the hospital, overheard by Dr. Frank Silva.

Donald Deneselya's having witnessed a document describing CIA debriefing of Oswald alone places Oswald as a participant in U.S. intelligence. That Oswald was a CIA asset, is this news? At a meeting of the National Board of the Communist Party, USA, held on December 4, 1963, the party's National Secretary," Benjamin J. Davis, rejecting the idea that Oswald was one of their own, commented, "Oswald was with the Central Intelligence Agency." (This comes from a 12/11/63 FBI confidential document).

What else? I was fortunate enough to have been given by police lieutenant Francis Martello's son a copy of the original note that Oswald handed to him. It is not what the Warren Commission saw. Oswald uses the term "AMEP" at one point, which refers to American Express. Apparently, Oswald was communicating from Russia back to the CIA through a CIA asset at American express named Michael Jelisavcic, who ran the American Express office in Moscow. The Oswald document contains the words Amer Ep (American Express) and the word "pouch."

Now let us turn to an FBI document, dated 12/17/68, to Director, from SAC, New York, dealing with the investigation of Michael Jelisavcic, (spelling as it appears on CIA 104-10006-10130, NAME TRACE, JELISAVCIC, M.)and placed in an Oswald 105 file, indicating a relationship between Oswald and Jelisavcic. The document relates to the Bureau's attempting to, quote, "resolve all facts concerning possible compromise of Jelisavcic by Soviet intelligence during his employment within the USSR." The Bureau knew that Oswald possessed Jelisavcic's name and room number, and were doing the usual damage control.

What is interesting, and encourages us to look at every document released that we can, is a number written on the right side of the document: 65-69127-13. Whether it belonged to Jelisavcic or to American Express, it suggests Oswald's contact with Jelisavcic or with American Express or with both. Perhaps American Express was the conduit for funding, for Oswald's orders, or simply provided the "pouch" for intelligence information from Oswald going back to Headquarters. What we know, as that consummate researcher on these subjects Malcolm Blunt explained to me, is that "65 serial is FBI filing system-speak for espionage. The number runs along the margin and refers to an "Espionage File."

So now we can connect the following elements: the words American Express, and pouch on Oswald's handwritten note, along with the American Express Co. representative in Moscow possessing an espionage number. But to recognize the value of the document, and its explosive quality, you have to know that the 65- designation points to an espionage number. (Apparently Western Union performed a similar function for the CIA within the United States.

There is also a CIA document, undated, with a single handwritten line: "See AmEmb Phone book trace on Michael Jelisavcic, AmExCo head in Moscow." It's titled "FILE NOTE RE TRACE ON MICHAEL JELISAVCIC." Traces and how they are run are at the core of the CIA indexing and filing system; from traces, all identifiable information on an individual could be gleaned.

So we have two documentary pieces of evidence pointing to Oswald as a tool of the CIA placed in Moscow. This evidence matches the fact that the opening document in Oswald's 201 file reflected Oswald as still being in the Marine Corps as of December 1960, even after his defection to the Soviet Union, suggesting that his "defection" did not bother them. The CIA index card indicated that "as of 1960" he was still in the Marines.

In the spring of 1960, Oswald's name appears on a CIA mail opening list, meaning he was one of the two hundred most important people to them. CIA had yet to open a 201 file on him, although he did have a file and an AIN (Agency Identification Number), courtesy of the OS (Office of Security). Other evidence that CIA was monitoring Oswald closely includes an Oswald May 31^st, 1960 cover sheet signed off on by a Jerry Prehn at Soviet Russia 9, which was the Operations component of the Soviet Russia Division. There were only six to eight people in this office and they kept their activities very close.

We also have the strange incident of Oswald's name appearing on a list of people whom State Department security was asked to investigate: He appears as "Lee Oswald, tourist." The responsibility for this investigation fell to one Otto Otepka, and what I wrote about Otepka and Oswald can be found on my website and on Rex Bradford's Mary Ferrell website. Suffice it to say that the document naming Oswald, along with all the documents Mr. Otepka had collected, and including the results of Mr. Otepka's investigation, were stolen from his private safe.

What makes this story so beguiling is that the likely suspect for the robbery of his safe and the demotion of Mr. Otepka from his position of responsibility in State Department security is Robert Kennedy himself, on whose behalf Walter Sheridan was acting in the Otepka matter.

I won't go into Robert Kennedy's fingerprints in the Oswald story, but I would like to reiterate; I have no reason to doubt the anti-Castro activist Angelo Murgado (Kennedy) in his statement to me that Robert Kennedy was aware of Oswald during the summer of 1963, found out that he was an FBI informant, and concluded that if the FBI was controlling him, Oswald was no one to worry about. As John Volz, former US attorney in New Orleans, speaking about a witness named Vernon Bundy, said to me, "I know when someone is shucking me!"

A strange reference in one of investigator Anne Dischler's notebooks dated 3/13/67, from a page I did not review for "A Farewell To Justice," refers to a Billie White answering service in Lafayette, Louisiana, which received a telephone call from an aide to Bobby Kennedy, suggesting, perhaps, Bobby Kennedy's interest in the Garrison investigation. This lead cries out to be followed up.

Nor is there any evidence to contradict Mr. Murgado's very reluctant testimony that he was present with Oswald and Bernardo de Torres at the home of Sylvia Odio in late September 1963. Mr. Murgado and Mr. de Torres were both people with heavy government connections: there is even a document from J. Edgar Hoover telling his people no longer to use Mr. de Torres because of the nature of his CIA relationships. In the murky waters of U.S. intelligence during those years, Oswald swam with approved government contacts. Once more he was in the company of others, and intelligence operatives at that.

Others have studied CIA's awareness of Oswald prior to the assassination, information disseminated to the FBI by Pete Bagley regarding Oswald's movements in September 1963. (See the FBI document to: Mr. W.C. Sullivan, from: Mr. D.J. Brennan, 105-82555-183. The date of the document is 11/23/63).

When we return to Oswald's activities in New Orleans, we find the Church committee investigating an Oswald arrest on April 10, 1963 reported by Customs Officers. This was the same day that Oswald supposedly or did shoot at General Walker….the Immigration and Naturalization Service wanted to know as well whether they were any other arrest records in New Orleans on Oswald. The Church committee investigator, Paul Wallach, was told to contact the Intelligence Unit of the New Orleans police.

Wallach discovered an apparent August 9, 1963 arrest of Oswald. We don't have the records which include a memorandum by one Lt. August Lang, and an August 12, 1963 "Inter-office memo" to a Major Prossens. I outline Oswald's shared connections to U.S. Customs, connections enjoyed by other CIA assets like Cesario Diosdado in Miami in "A Farewell To Justice."

Just as I was perplexed about the community's silence about the Odio visit, I was equally bewildered when historians of the Kennedy assassination did not seize upon that material about Oswald and customs, attempt to investigate it further, or simply add it to what we know about Oswald. Oswald was close to customs officers in New Orleans: he was not invisible. Just as he was seen up in Clinton and Jackson with David Ferrie and Clay Shaw, just as he spouted off about killing Fidel Castro at the East Louisiana State Hospital at Jackson, so too in New Orleans customs officials knew him. He was seen by someone with some acquaintance with intelligence himself, Warren de Brueys' informant, Orestes Pena.

Was Customs involved in the Louisiana events surrounding Oswald and the assassination? We see a rare mention of Customs in connection with the July 31, 1963 raid on the McLaney house in Lacombe, Louisiana, reported in August by Warren De Brueys, who sent copies of his report to US Customs, both in New Orleans and in Miami. Customs was called in to seize the explosives obtained.

Many witnesses came forward to reveal that Oswald knew Ruby, and Shaw and David Ferrie. One, revealed in an August 1977 Dallas Police Department Intelligence Division document was one "Max Long" a former boxer, who operated a motel-bar in New Orleans. A document reports Long to have had in his possession a photograph of Ruby and Oswald together. Dick Russell, who, in his biography of Richard Case Nagell, has accomplished very significant work in uncovering the CIA's and other agencies' involvement in the Kennedy assassination, reports in his revised edition to "The Man Who Knew Too Much" how the 112^th Military Intelligence Group files showed Oswald under surveillance by CIA's Richard Case Nagell in the fall of 1962.

Jim Southwood corroborated that Oswald had been an intelligence operative. The custodian of the file room assigned to the 502^nd Military Intelligence Battalion, near Seoul South Korea reported that the 112^th requested files on Oswald and Nagell both. My favorite line about military intelligence comes from Gerald Patrick Hemming, previously mentioned. Asked what role military intelligence played in the assassination of President Kennedy, Gerry said, "what did they ever do except sit around all day sucking on jelly donuts?"

When we look at all the established evidence, Oswald and Customs officials in New Orleans; Oswald as an intimate of the chief suspect in the murder of Mary Sherman, a man who called himself Juan Valdes, and who worked at the Customs House; Oswald in Clinton and Jackson with David Ferrie and Clay Shaw; we realize that there has been to date virtually no credible official investigation of Oswald.

To students, I would ask that you educate yourselves in the history of the socialist and Communist movement, the better for you to perceive why Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been a Marxist, and in his actions bore no relationship to any member of any socialist movement, Stalinist or anti-Stalinist, (Trotskyist). That photograph where Oswald holds both "The Worker" (the Communist Party newspaper) and "The Militant," the paper of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, reveals a mischievous Oswald signaling to those in the know that he did not subscribe to the views of either, since in those times you had to be one or the other. Stalinists and Trotskyists were blood enemies, as witness, of course, the Stalin-sponsored murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico as well as Stalin's betrayal of the Loyalists in Spain.

Oswald in New Orleans sometimes let the façade drop, as in his assertions that he planned to kill Fidel Castro, and in that fact that he made no contact with any known socialist or Marxist, which at once signaled to the Tulane student left, as several student radicals of the day told me, that he was a fraud. I interviewed Hugh Murray, several times, and Bob Heller. They had been arrested for attempting to integrate Woolworth's and other places in New Orleans. At Tulane, they found Oswald's "Fair Play For Cuba" leaflet. At once they knew that Oswald was no leftist.

What leftist made no contact with other leftists? Oswald ignored the Southern Conference Education Fund, led by James Dombrowski (discussed in "Jim Garrison, His Life and Times"), CORE, and even the pale Council on Peaceful Alternatives. What leftist hired people to hand out leaflets with them, as Oswald did? The answer, as CORE activist Bob Heller put it to me, was "none in history."

Tulane graduate student Hugh Murray and his roommate Oliver St. Pe looked at the leaflet that had been stuck onto their friend Harold Alderman's door. They considered, fleetingly, replying to the Post Office Box of "Hidell." Then, Murray told me, they decided it must be some kind of trap and steered clear. (The Tulane student radicals drew this conclusion without knowing that Oswald and his leaflets were perched on the second floor of the detective agency of Guy Banister, former FBI Special Agent in Charge in Chicago, a virulent anti-Communist and CIA bagman to anti-Castro training camps; as I'm sure everyone here knows, one leaflet bore the address "544 Camp Street," the side entrance of Banister's office, until Banister saw it. After that there were no more "544 Camp Street" leaflets.

Oswald, arrested in Dallas, and asking, famously to be represented by a Communist Party lawyer named John Abt was Oswald signaling to his handlers that he intended to maintain his cover, that he would not tell the truth. It didn't, of course, do him any good. Oswald was murdered on assignment by his old acquaintance Jack Ruby anyway.

Meanwhile, since my book came out, I have received confirmations of the CIA connections of Oswald-connected figures like Fred Lee Crisman, the handler of Oswald's acquaintance Thomas Edward Beckham, and Jack Martin, whose name, CIA admits (see the Appendix to "Jim Garrison, His Life and Times") was a "generic." A fragmentary report of Crisman as what is termed an "Internal Security Section" agent emerged from a FOIA inquiry I initiated. The document, dated September 13, 1969, its attachment missing, refers to Crisman as a 4250 agent.

Its author is a CIA agent himself, who takes the risk and exposes Crisman's CIA connection, because Crisman's behavior as what he calls a "disruption agent" appalls him. The author finds people like Crisman "dangerous to the democratic way of life and they should be halted. These men bear no love for the USA," he writes. They serve the CIA, and, what is more, they serve only a part of the CIA, for they would kill a fellow agent as fast as they would arrange your death…."The author, whose name is redacted, was angry enough to provide information to an outsider.

This document is what CIA would call a "trace." It reveals that not everyone connected with the Agency was nefarious and evil. The author of this document exposes Crisman because he "is a man that is dangerous to the future of America." Hunter Leake was second in command at the New Orleans CIA field office in 1963. His son Robert has talked about how his father told him he knew Oswald in New Orleans well.

There is further confirmation of Ruby and Oswald knowing each other in a piece of paper found by a woman in Martinsburg, Pa. with both Ruby and Oswald mentioned on it. The FBI was called. When the woman offered to take a lie detector test, the FBI refused to give it to her.

The woman was foraging in the trash can she shared with her neighbors, a Cuban family, because she was searching for evidence of her husband's infidelity. The father of that family was named Julio Cesar Fernandez. She picked up the paper because she saw the name "Ruby" and thought she had caught her husband out! The word "Silver Slipper" was on the paper as well. Ultimately Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Fernandez, but the story petered out. As we know, Ruby owned the Silver Slipper lounge in Clinton, Louisiana. You can talk to Professor Gary Schoener up in Minnesota about this lead.

Today the Oswald story is relevant because it connects directly to the erosion of an independent press, and to its acquiescence in the government's abrupt weakening of the rule of law. Once the CIA was able to get away with the murder of President Kennedy, it was a short step to the torture performed in Vietnam and then at Bagram and Abu Ghraib by CIA operatives; the official sanctioning of torture; and the casual dismissal of the principle of habeas corpus. Barack Obama has promised to support "open government." If he fulfills that promise by, for example, opening the Church committee testimonies of the New Orleans customs officers and their relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald, he will win over many of us skeptics.

Much of what I have recounted about Oswald is familiar material to many members of this audience. I have been disappointed that few have been willing to draw the apparent, obvious and necessary conclusion about who sponsored the assassination of President Kennedy, a conclusion that emerges inescapably from what we know about Oswald. The place we go from here, the topic of this afternoon's panel discussion, in my opinion, is not to plead with government agencies, from inside courthouses or outside, to help us locate more minutiae. We know enough.

Rather, it's long overdue for this research community to confront not just the fact, but the meaning of who planned this assassination and why. The Agency that sponsored the assassination of President Kennedy has revealed itself in multiple ways, not least in exposing how it used Lee Oswald as its scapegoat and, indeed, as its "patsy." It seems past the hour for coyness in naming that sponsor, and time to consider the political consequences of a government agency's having murdered a President. I think it's time to draw a line from the Kennedy assassination to the present historical moment where we have been faced with a systematic undermining of the US Constitution and an agenda demanding permanent war, a policy from which neither presidential candidate has dissociated himself.

If you grant that Lee Oswald was a creature of the CIA, and that the Agency's fingerprints are everywhere in this case, what do you plan to say about these facts in your books and articles and speeches? How do you connect these details with the current plight of the Republic, and what can we do about it?

Hey Bill, thanks for posting this Mellen presentation. This is worthwhile reading, especially for those unable to attend the conference.

Roy Bierma

Okay, I'll give a hint... it has to do with the red stars.

Pat, in the left photo the star appears to be directly above the ear, whereas in the upright photo of President Lincoln, the star appears to be above and back of the ear. Were the wounds in Lincoln's case placed inconsistently? (Not a student of the Lincoln case)

Best,

Royce Bierma

Good to hear from you, Lee, and very interesting that Mr. Brownlow never mentioned the gunfire to you.

Premature to assume he made it up. For all we know the post I found was misquoting him. If I can find his number I shall try to call him and inquire.

Tim, I've met and talked to Brownlow on two separate occasions. I include him as a witness on my witness list at patspeer.com. He told me the same story each time. He was with his grandma in front of the Dal Tex. He heard four shots. He had NO IDEA where they came from, but, seeing people run towards the knoll, ASSUMED the shots came from the knoll.

He stands on the knoll with Groden, selling his videos. Brownlow has interviewed many of the Dallas citizens on the periphery of the assassination, and sells videos of his interviews.. In my opinion he is very knowledgeable. I am totally surprised by the allegation he claims to have seen a shooter, and doubt he said anything so wild. Both times I spoke to him, a year apart, he mentioned that he personally liked Jean Hill and Beverly Oliver, but had extreme doubts they'd seen any shooters on the knoll.

I, like others have met and talked to Mr. Brownlow at the pergolas end, where the steps start. He and Robert Groden set up several times a week selling Grodens books, and such, and swapping assassination stories. I talked to him several times, and he never mentioned seeing anything. All he had to ad was that he was there with his family. I dont know how old he is, but he cant be much older than me, so he couldnt have been that old. I was in the 3rd grade when the assassination took place. I dont think anyone that age would be that alert to notice these things and recall these events so clearly after all these years. Im not saying he didnt, but I find it hard to believe, as I cant recall much about anything about 3rd grade, let alone yesterday. I can believe that he heard what his family talked about for years, and has elaborated it to the point it has become today. [if he is saying what you say hes saying] No offense to Mike intended, as he seemed like a very nice guy. He is just working alongside of Bob Groden trying to inform people who come to the plaza. I have his # and mailing address. If you want it, contact me through the message board. thanks-smitty

Hi, yes, I also met Mike, back in 2005. Mike had to have been eight years old at the time of the assassination.

Roy Bierma

Greg, this is mostly for you. It turns out that there is no such thing as an "Alpawna box", as Leon Hubert suggested. Later in the evening of November 22, 1963, John McCullough, reporter from the Philadelphia Bulletin, bumped into Jack Ruby. McCullough said Ruby was wearing a gray porkpie hat, very wooly, and a blue topcoat. He was holding a box that had a blue background and white lettering on it that spelled, "Alpacuna" Alpacuna was a brand of men's outerwear manufactured by the Jacob Siegel Co., then of Philadelphia. Earlier, in 1946, Siegel sued the FTC in order to retain the use of his brand name, Alpacuna, since lower courts had threatened to make him abandon it on the grounds that it was misleading, bordering on false advertising. Although the coat was partially made of alpaca, there was no vicuna in it. Further, Siegel had advertised products as including material that was not actually in them. Eventually, Siegel had to stop false advertising as regards non-included materials, but was allowed to keep the Alpacuna label. Now just what Ruby was doing holding such a box, measuring 8 inches by 5 inches by 3 and one-half inches, is beyond me. Questioned by Burt Griffin, McCullough was informed by Griffin that people had seen Ruby with neither topcoat nor hat that evening. Yet McCullough was certain that it was indeed Ruby he had encountered.

Roy

Sample:

Skaggs slide (18)

Robin, good shot of Lovelady in front of the TSBD. Never seen this before.

Good work,

Roy Bierma

Thanks Roy.

I assume you are refering to the man leaning on the car with a cigar in his hand. ?

Robin.

Yes, Robin, everything seems about right about this being Lovelady, except the shirt. According to TKOAP, p. 187, Lovelady was wearing a window pane shirt. This looks more like the pattern of Oswald's shirt. But Lovelady had a bald spot in the area shown in the photo, and the facial profile looks like his. Hmm. What do you think?

Roy

Roy.

To be honest i'm not sure, however the bald spot does look right, and he has a similar profile to Lovelady. ?

Did Lovelady smoke cigars? And another thing, and I don't want to come off as a contrarian, but isn't that a suit jacket?

Robert, it looks like a shirt to me, but it could be a suit jacket. I have no idea whether Lovelady smoked cigars. It's probably someone else. Incidentally, do you or anyone else have a photograph of William Shelley? He was supposed to be next to Lovelady in the Altgens 5 photograph, but his figure is obscured. It seems that his arms are up, but you can't see the face. I've seen Truly in a photo, but never a good one of Shelley.

Roy

Although the Smith-Wesson handgun Oswald allegedly used in the Tippit murder is thought to originate with a mail order filled out by Oswald in January, this New York Times article states that the gun was purchased "two months ago."(Nov. 29, 1963 article in New York Times) That would place the purchase some time in the latter part of September, 1963. The article goes on to say that the police traced the gun "to its point of origin" Was this another mail order placed by Oswald as part of his work for either the Dodd Committee or for the ATTU(Alcohol, Tobacco, and Tax union)? Or was this an order placed by someone else trying to tie Oswald to it?

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=141591

" target="_blank"> http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=141591

</a>

Roy Bierma

Roy,

I was told by one of the Kloepfer daughters who visited Oswald in Sept that he told them he was heading east "on important business" and to buy a gun.

That seems to support what the article says as far as time of the purchase. However, what I really think was going on here was something entirely different.

The information seems to be coming from the DPD. You'll note that the article also points out that the Dallas trip was announced on Sept 28 -- about 2 months prior to the story. In other words, someone was trying to tie the purchase of the handgun to the announcement of the Dallas trip.

Greg, greetings. Yes, that may very well be. Also, according to the hand-written Fritz notes, Oswald told him that he had bought the S-W a few months before in Fort Worth. In the end, though the announcement of the trip would tie him to this purchase, someone higher up than the Dallas police determined that the "evidence" used for the purchase of the handgun would be the mail-order placed with Seaport Traders, and the serial number, and tying Oswald to the Hidell alias. Interestingly, Richard Case Nagell also used the Alex Hidell alias.

Cheers,

Roy

Although the Smith-Wesson handgun Oswald allegedly used in the Tippit murder is thought to originate with a mail order filled out by Oswald in January, this New York Times article states that the gun was purchased "two months ago."(Nov. 29, 1963 article in New York Times) That would place the purchase some time in the latter part of September, 1963. The article goes on to say that the police traced the gun "to its point of origin" Was this another mail order placed by Oswald as part of his work for either the Dodd Committee or for the ATTU(Alcohol, Tobacco, and Tax union)? Or was this an order placed by someone else trying to tie Oswald to it?

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=141591

" target="_blank"> http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=141591

Roy Bierma