Jim Hargrove

Sandy, Just my opinion, but I don't think Mr. Wilcott knew there were recorded patterns of multiple Oswalds. I do think Mr. Wilcott was one of the bravest Americans of the past century!

Thanks, much belatedly, Gene. Even after all these years, I'd like to thank Bill Simpich for inserting the following, however cautiously, into the Mary Ferrell Foundation JFK database: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=RXZIM This is progress! Thanks again, Bill!

Mr. Booth, That seems entirely possible, but I’m more inclined to believe David Phillips planned the details for the whole enchilada, with Angleton certainly involved. Phillips (via Hunt) probably set up the New Orleans commie sheep-dipping of the patsy-to-be, utilizing Banister and Ferrie. I do think Dulles & Company would not have moved forward unless at least a few military men were in on it, and Lansdale seems a more and more likely candidate.

Thanks for this, Mr. Niederhut! Looks like Steven Gaal got the material you quoted from this webpage, which consists of a transcript of a 1992 interview of John Newman by Gus Russo. The words are Dr. Newman’s (according to the transcript) and so they are probably accurate. I’m reasonably convinced that this puts the Mongoose man in Dallas the day JFK died. From Wikipedia’s bio on Lansdale: From 1957 to 1963, Lansdale worked for the Department of Defense in Washington, serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Operations, Staff Member of the President's Committee on Military Assistance, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. During the early 1960s, he was chiefly involved in clandestine efforts to topple the government of Cuba, including proposals to assassinate Fidel Castro. Much of this work was under the aegis of "Operation Mongoose", which was the operational name for the CIA plan to topple Castro's government. According to Daniel Ellsberg, who was at one time a subordinate to Lansdale, Lansdale claimed that he was fired by President Kennedy's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara after he declined Kennedy's offer to play a role in the overthrow of the Diem regime.[8] The whole sordid story of the Mongoose Op puts Lansdale right in the lap of the Agency and its erstwhile (but still active on the day of the hit, I’ll bet) director. There are lots of pictures of Allen Dulles and Lansdale together. Megathanks!

Mr. Niederhut, Thanks for the observation. Beyond the photo of "the tramps" (the one Mr. Prouty believed was Landsdale was based on a back of the head image, right?) do you know of any other evidence that Lansdale was in Dallas that day?

Paul, I meant to say in a previous post, but forgot, that if I were Dulles (or whoever was coordinating activities in this case), I wouldn’t proceed unless I had at least several high ranking military people behind it. This was, as almost all of us agree, essentially a coup d'état

You wrote a very interesting article, Mr. Cole, that I’ll have to read through again more carefully. Thanks! I do believe, though, that portions of the cover-up were executed earlier than you suspect, a perfect example being the 10th and Patton “Oswald/Hidell” wallet that the evidence seems to indicate was photographed by WFAA-TV news photographer Ron Reiland BEFORE Oswald’s capture at the theater. Here’s how John Armstrong described the scene on our website: A few minutes later, at 1:42 PM, crime lab officers George Doughty, W.E. Barnes, and Paul Bentley arrived and inspected the wallet produced by Westbrook. FBI Agent Bob Barrett arrived, parked his car, and walked toward Tippit's patrol car. Barrett explained, "I went on over there and Captain Westbrook was there with several of his officers.... It hadn't been very long when Westbrook looked up and saw me and called me over. He had this wallet in his hand. Now, I don't know where he found it, but he had the wallet in his hand... the wallet was there. There's no getting around that. Westbrook had the wallet in his hand and asked me if I knew who these people were. I'm adamant that there was a wallet in somebody's hand and Westbrook asked me if I knew who 'Lee Harvey Oswald' was and who 'Hidell' were." As Westbrook showed the wallet to Barrett and fellow DPD officers, WFAA-TV Channel 8 news photographer Ron Reiland filmed the wallet. Sgt. Bud Owens was holding the wallet while Capt. Doughty was looking at the wallet. Here's a still from Reiland's film:

Mr. Cole, David Phillips strikes me as a good candidate for the operational leader in every respect but one. No doubt the assassination conspiracy was kept as small as possible, but certain functions had to be carried out. Needed, for example, were at least two or three shooters willing to strike a sitting president in broad daylight in the heart of a major American city. (Some ticked off Cubans might have been crazed enough to take the obvious risks. I doubt many professional hit men would accept such an assignment.) At least a Dallas cop or two (Westbrook and Ken Croy?) were needed to put into evidence the throw down "Oswald/Hidell" wallet and to lead cops already angered by the Tippit slaying to the patsy’s hideout. And several people would be needed to make sure the designated patsy was in the right place at the right time so he could be blamed for it all (including Roy Truly, probably). Also needed was someone with the ability to fake a Magic Money Order to tie “Oswald/Hidell” to at least some kind of rifle. (U.S. Postal Inspector Harry Holmes was the obvious candidate.) And well before the hit, you’d have to assume that the search for JFK’s assassin(s) would be relentless—at least until someone was apprehended. So there had to be a patsy, and then the patsy would have to be silenced before a trial might endanger everyone involved. And so someone was needed—in advance--to lead the cover-up during an investigation that would surely go to the Feds despite Texas laws. No doubt I’m forgetting some additional steps here, but more than a mere handful of conspirators were needed to have a chance of success at this murderous scheme. The usual cut-outs, compartmentalizations, and need-to-know techniques were probably adopted, but despite that, I just don’t think Phillips had the gravitas to pull that off. But I can think of another Agency man who clearly did. For me, it’s partly a process of elimination, leaving Dulles as the prime suspect.

Fair enough. There may not be a single smoking gun, but let’s look at some considerable circumstantial evidence.... After JFK fired him, Dulles became one of the President’s chief political enemies. Why? Beyond his dismissal, surely at the top of his list of grievances was Cuba. Dulles never told JFK (or the Warren Commission) about the assassination plots against Castro, and yet Richard Bissell testified to the HSCA that, without Dulles’s personal approval, he never would have involved himself in the Castro assassination plots. Apparently, Dulles didn’t even tell his successor, John McCone, about the plots and he should have. Surely the primary purpose of the Kennedy Assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba, a provocation that was eventually, according to Earl Warren in his autobiography, quashed by LBJ. Just review the post-assassination shenanigans by David Atlee Phillips, who attempted again and again to link the assassination, and the alleged assassin, with Castro and Cuba. Dulles’s appearance at LBJ’s Texas ranch just a week before the assassination was probably a set-up to force Johnson to nix any deep look at the Agency or risk being accused of conspiring with it in the hit. The fact that Dulles was at the CIA’s Virginia “Ranch” in November 1963 was a clear indication that, though he may have been fired by Kennedy, he was still very much involved with it. From the it’s a small world department: The mayor of Dallas on 11/22/63 was Earle Cabell, whose brother Charles was CIA Deputy Director under Dulles. Charles was also fired by Kennedy in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs. Howard Roman, husband of CIA’s Jane Roman, helped Dulles write his book, The Craft of Intelligence. More directly, when they all were involved in the organization of the Bay of Pigs, Dulles was ultimately in charge of Phillips, Hunt, Barker, and Sturgis/Fiorini, all very familiar names in the JFKA. Almost immediately after the Katzenbach memo, Dulles became the first name on the list of proposed appointees to what became the Warren Commission. It was Dulles who handed each commission member a book indicating (incorrectly) that assassins or attempted assassins of U.S. Presidents were all lone nuts. Dulles told the WC nothing about the myriad pulse cameras and backup cameras trained on the Cuban and Russian consulates in Mexico City, undoubtedly because he knew no pictures were taken there of LHO. Allen Dulles had the motive, means, and opportunity to run the JFKA. He also had years of experience organizing foreign assassinations of government overthrows. Everything about this case smells like an intell operation, and no one on earth had more experience with American spycraft than Dulles. This is largely from memory, and so there may be a few errors, but I think it is essentially correct. If it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck, it probably is one.

Jon, Can you think of any evidence to support the contention that Dulles was intended to be a patsy?

So much agreement here is surprising! David Talbot captured the big picture when he reviewed all Dulles’s assassination plots and other shenanigans in Iran, Guatemala, Italy, France, the Congo, Cuba, and let’s add the U.S. Whoever else may have been involved in the JFKA, we all seem to pretty much agree that Dulles played a pivotal role, and not only in the cover-up. As Richard Booth pointed out above, Dulles regularly met with Angleton after he (Dulles) was fired. Mr. Talbot indicated that Dulles was at the CIA’s sprawling “Farm” (Camp Peary in VA) in November 1963. To Mr. Cole – I understand your point about legal proof, but we’ll probably never get a real trial like you describe, and I’d like the world to know what the available evidence seems to show regarding what really happened. Mr. Schwartz – Interesting list. Thanks. Should we add Clay Shaw? The Agency’s Ray Rocca (surely among other personnel) apparently thought Shaw would be convicted for conspiring in the hit. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=6515#relPageId=2&tab=page

Just wondering . . . .

And what better way to be remembered than to shoot at other guys' targets? The numerous sightings of “Lee Harvey Oswald” at the Sports Drome Rifle Range followed a familiar pattern in the lead-up to the assassination, activities designed to show “LHO” as a gun-toting fan of Fidel Castro. My bet is it was all to set him up for the assassination and eventually provoke an invasion of Cuba. Among the other activities…. Offering absurdly high prices to buy rifles from Castro’s friend Robert McKeown The appearance at Morgan’s Gun Shop on Nov. 2 and the infamous visit to the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership later that same day Visiting Mrs. Hunter and Mrs. Whitworth at the Irving Furniture Mart looking for a gun part The ridiculous “Comrade Kostin” letter of Nov. 9 The Southland Hotel visit looking for a roof with a good view of downtown Dallas, The Ralph Leon Yates encounter of Nov. 20 … … and so on. Setting up LHO was not a particularly subtle affair, and the Sports Drome appearances were just part of that now familiar pattern.

Page after page of descriptions of witness sightings of “Lee Harvey Oswald” at the Sports Drome rifle range can be found in this file at the John Armstrong JFK Collection at Baylor University. If you wish to download all the pages, click the download button and be sure “Full Asset” is checked in the subsequent menu. https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/sightings-of-lho-nov.-1963-1963-11-17-sports-drome/691366 There are some duplications, but John’s "Sports Drome" file is 75 pages long. Here are just two of the pages:

Paul, No doubt any nefarious communications between the two would be well hidden, but are you aware of any suspicious connections between Colonel Lumpkin and Captain Westbrook? It's hard to imagine they didn't communicate with each other often about everyday DPD business, but discovering much beyond that seems unlikely, even if anything conspiratorial about the JFK assassination actually occurred between them. Still, I believe Westbrook played a part in this, especially in the framing of Oswald and the murder of Officer Tippit.

Dallas Morning News, Saturday, Aug. 20, 1966, p. 4:

That’s sort of reminiscent of the phone call Tippit apparently made at the Top 10 record store right after McWatters’ bus passed the GLOCO station without dropping off Oswald. Why was Tippit sitting idly in his car at the station immediately after the shooting of JFK? Why did he stop to make the phone call? Croy testified that he owned a Mobil station but didn’t give an address. If he actually owned the station that Hawkins and Baggett entered, I suppose it might or might not mean something. Besides the odd choice of driving to Jefferson and Marsalis instead of 10th and Patton, do you have any other reasons to be suspicious of Hawkins (and Baggett)? I doubt these two played the pivotal roles that Croy and Westbrook performed. After all, we’re to believe that Croy got the 10th and Patton throw-down wallet from an “unknown witness” and then gave it to Westbrook who, as luck would have it, not only showed off the wallet in view of a television camera man but also “found” that Eisenhower-style jacket allegedly owned by LHO. Westbrook then led the charge to the Texas Theater and was standing right next to LHO during the arrest. Croy, of course, was standing right next to Ruby when Oswald was shot. These guys sure knew where to stand! Croy testified that he tried to grab Ruby but failed to reach out to him in time. Remarkable!

Steve, According to Croy's WC testimony, he just happened to hear a police dispatcher talking about the Tippit shooting while in his car at Colorado Blvd. and Zang, and that is how he was able to get to 10th and Patton before any other police. But the timings simply do not work. From John A's writeup on our website: #3) If we rely on the time as noted in the altered police transcripts, the time of the dispatch is 1:18 PM. The earliest Croy could have arrived at 10th & Patton would have been at 1:23 PM, long after the ambulance left the scene, and eight minutes after Tippit was declared dead at Methodist Hospital. If Sgt. Croy had arrived at 10th & Patton in his personal car, in uniform, he would have been approached by many witnesses as soon as he got out of his car. But this did not happen, because Croy did not drive to 10th & Patton. Reserve officer Croy most likely arrived at 10th & Patton in police car #207 with personnel officer Capt. Westbrook. Both men sat in the police car and watched momentarily as LEE Oswald shot and killed Tippit at 1:06 PM. Westbrook got out of the car, briefly looked at Tippit lying dead or dying in the street, and then quickly returned to the car. Westbrook left the scene in police car #207 while Croy quietly remained at the scene. During the next few minutes Sgt. Croy kept a low profile, and a few minutes later watched as Tippit's body was loaded into the ambulance (circa 1:09-1:10 PM). After helping load Tippit's body into the ambulance, T.F. Bowley said that he talked with a police sergeant at the scene and then left (see page 3 of the affidavit below).

My belief is that Captain Westbrook and Reserve Sgt. Kenneth Croy, both of DPD, were actively involved in the framing of LHO and the murder of J.D. Tippit and that Croy may have helped Ruby into the police building to kill LHO. Minutes after JFK was shot, Croy said he asked several Dallas cops if he could be of any help, was told no, and then went to his parents’ house and on to Austin’s Barbecue to have lunch with his estranged wife. Westbrook claimed that he sat around headquarters for a few minutes, and then couldn’t get a police car or a ride with anyone and had to spend nearly a half hour walking to the Book Depository. Really, boys? Despite these inauspicious beginnings, Westbrook and Croy were soon performing near miracles of forensic police work. Within minutes of the Tippit hit, Westbrook was at 10th and Patton showing the LHO throwdown wallet to FBI SA Bob Barrett and several DPD cops. Croy later said he was the first policeman at 10th and Patton, saw Tippit loaded into the ambulance, and got the throwdown wallet from an “unknown witness” which he then gave it to Westbrook. But wait, there’s more! Minutes after that, Westbrook was the first police officer to arrive at the Texas Theater. There are numerous images of his unmarked squad car parked directly in front of the building. Westbrook was standing next to Oswald when he was arrested! To top off the trifecta of miracles, lowly Reserve Sgt. Croy was standing right next to Jack Ruby seconds before LHO was shot. There’s one more issue to resolve, though. Why did both Westbrook and Croy have such unbelievable explanations of how they spent their time immediately after JFK was hit? My bet is that they were the two men seen by Earlene Roberts in a DPD squad car honking the horn in front of Oswald’s rooming house at the very time Oswald was changing his clothes. Neither would want to have to explain that, eh? Far more details about the above are here: THE PRE-ARRANGED MURDER OF J.D. TIPPIT

Bill, This link to Dallas Police Box 14 on the Mary Ferrell Database (MFD) leads to image views that, for me at least, only include the left portion of each of the 20 or so pages I looked at. Sliding “page scale” to the minimum value helps some but doesn’t fix the problem. Clicking “printable page” does fix the issue, but only one page at a time, which is a slow process. I’m using Chrome browser on a Linux computer, but I think others will see the same issue. If memory serves, Steve Thomas has discussed here a number of the issues raised by the DPD archives, and a few of the pages you link have been up on HarveyandLee.net for some time. Since MFD is a much better known site than the DPD archives, perhaps you could look into fixing this issue, assuming others are seeing the same thing I am. With Westbrook in charge of putting this all together, your description of it as "the Warren Report of the Dallas police" sounds pretty darned accurate.

Thanks, Gil. Many of us have appreciated for YEARS your exposes of the assassination of JFK and how it was plotted. My favorite post of your is this.... just three minutes long, showing how the FBI lied about the witnesses to this assassination. THANKS SO MUCH! MEGATHANKS! jim

Good luck with your presentations, Bill. I look forward to reviewing them ASAP. I think the man pictured above is Ruby, but that seems less significant than the ID of Croy. Ruby, after all, clearly emerged from that general area immediately before he shot Oswald. It’s pretty undeniable that he was there! Kenneth Croy, otoh, hasn’t been researched nearly as well. John A. became suspicious about Sgt. Croy’s potential witnessing of the assassination of J.D. Tippit (and his potential involvement in the larger plot to set up “Oswald” for both assassinations) when he read Croy’s sworn alibi to account for his time for an hour or so after the JFK hit. In the chaos after JFK was shot, at a time when DPD was calling in even off-duty personnel, Croy said he asked several Dallas cops if he could be of any help, was told no, and then went to his parents’ house to change his clothes and then on to Austin’s Barbecue to have lunch with his estranged wife. This was less than an hour after JFK was shot! Croy couldn’t remember who told him he wasn’t needed, but after that alleged lunch with his wife, remarkably, he became the first DPD member to arrive at 10th and Patton, where Tippit was shot. Croy said he saw Tippit lifted into the ambulance. But he may have been there even earlier. Helen Markham probably saw him, and it was probably Croy young Virginia Davis saw when, arriving at the Tippit murder scene seconds after the hit, she said a policemen was “already there.” On our website, John A. wrote: Capt. Westbrook and Sgt. Croy both gave hard to believe accounts of their time for more than an hour after the assassination of JFK. Could they have been the two men in the squad car (#207?) that Earlene Roberts said honked in front of her rooming house?

Thanks to Bill Simpich for providing these translations to the Paris Match articles. And congrats to Jim Di for the whole project... and a question…. Although the evidence clearly shows a relationship during this era between CIA black ops and organized crime, do you agree with the implication in the paragraphs above that it was actually Mafia hoodlums (for lack of a better term) who pushed CIA personnel into the assassination plot?

Ah, can you feel the **LOVE**? Since he asked so nicely, here is some more "masquerading propaganda" for Mr. Charles-Dunne showing that the war between the CIA and the Kennedy Administration was so bitter it had spilled onto the pages of U.S. newspapers, all just weeks before the assassination of JFK. And here is the Scripps-Howard piece that so upset Mr. Krock: The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3 'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE 'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam By Richard T. Starnes SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power. Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here. In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it. This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy. It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy. Others Critical, Too Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA. "If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically. ("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.) CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis. An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans. Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't." Few Know CIA Strength Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks. Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines. A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it. "There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said. "They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added. Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere. The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests). Hand Over Millions Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces. Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed. Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.) Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments. It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that. And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations. A Typical Example For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military. One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer. Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither. There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it. # # #

Way back on June 22, in an H&L thread you were actively participating in, John K. asked if John Armstrong “has found any connection between Edwin Ekdahl and ONI?” On June 27 I answered as follows: “I asked John A. about this and he said no, he had found no direct evidence for that.” Here is the link. I’m think there was at least one other post in which I said something like we were a long way from having hard evidence linking Ekdahl and American intel, but I’m not going to bother looking for it. No matter what is said, you will try to launch a personal attack about it. It is clear that several posters here are trying to use hate speech and personal invective as a smokescreen to hide from the evidence in this case. In summary, you broke out of an existing H&L thread to start this new thread calling me out by name, and then you insisted that only you can determine what subjects I present in your new thread about me? Unless I hear otherwise from a forum administrator, I don’t think things work that way. I try my best to avoid this kind of personal rancor, preferring to focus on the evidence, which I’ll start doing again. I won’t even agree with your observation that you look like a horse’s posterior. If you or Mr. B. wishes to continue the hatefest, I can’t stop you, but I’ll continue to discuss the EVIDENCE in this case. Almost all of it is related to intel and LHO-World, just like your original alarm that we were speculating about Ekdahl and American intel.