Jim Hargrove

From Harvey and Lee, by John Armstrong: Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley wrote, "He [Oswald] stated that he wanted to contact a Mr. Abt, a New York lawyer whom he did not know but who had defended the Smith Act victims in 1949 or 1950 in connection with a conspiracy against the govern­- ment; that Abt would understand what this case was all about and that he would give him an excellent defense."74 NOTE: John Abt was famous for defending alleged communist subversives accused of violating the Smith Act, which made it illegal to advocate the violent overthrow of the US Government. Abt gained notoriety in New York, when Harvey Oswald was living there in the early 1950s. At 6:37pm the lineup was over and Oswald was returned to Captain Fritz's of­fice by Detectivs Sims, Boyd, and Hall.93 Responding to reporter's questions while walking through the hallway Oswald answered in a loud voice, "I don't know where you people get your information. I haven't committed any acts of violence ....I want to get in touch with a lawyer, Mr. Abt, in New York City .... I never killed anybody."94 Allegedly from Fritz.... He reminded me that he did not have to answer any questions at all until he talked to his attorney, and I told him again that he could have any attorney any time he wished. He said he didn't have money to pay for a phone call to Mr. Abt. I told him to call 'collect,' if he liked, to use the jail phone or that he could have another attorney if he wished. He said he didn't want another attorney, he wanted to talk to this attorney first .... .I asked him why he wanted Mr. Abt, instead of some available attorney. He told me he didn't know Mr. Abt personally, but that he was familiar with a case where Mr. Abt defended some people for a violation of the Smith Act, and that if he didn't get Mr. Abt, that he felt sure the American Civil Liberties Union would furnish him a lawyer. He explained to me that this organization helped people who needed attorneys and weren't able to get them."196 SS Inspector Kelley asked Oswald if he shot the President and he said he had not. He asked Oswald if he had shot Governor Connally and he said he had not. Oswald said that he did not intend to answer any further questions without counsel and that if he could not get Abt, then he would hope that the Civil Liberties Union would give him an attorney. At that point Captain Fritz terminated the interview (about 11:30 am)197 and Boyd and Sims returned Oswald to his cell at 11:33 am.198 4:00pm-After the visit with Robert ended, Oswald requested permission to use the telephone. Officer J.L. Popplewell was on duty on the 5th floor of the jail and es­- corted Oswald from his jail cell to the telephone. Oswald tried to call New York attor­- ney John Abt but was unable to reach him. He then called Ruth Paine, gave her Abt's 927office and residence phone numbers, and asked if she would try to contact him. Mrs. Paine, who said that she was irritated by Oswald's request, claimed that she made one cursory effort and then gave up. But there are no records which show that Mrs. Paine even attempted to place a long distance call to New York. Oswald then told officer J.L. Popplewell that he was unable to reach his party and would try again later in the evening.235

To James Gordon, Ah... I am clearly the culprit here. I didn't realize I was breaking forum rules, and didn't mean to do so. Please accept my apologies. It is certainly the right of the people who run this forum to determine the posting rules, and I'll make every effort not to violate them.

Steve, Can’t help with the Whitmeyer letter, but I wanted to point out that the “Finding Aid” for assassination holdings and sources is seriously out of date. All three of the links I tried were broken. The address listed for my Harvey and Lee website was abandoned more than a dozen years ago. If it were up to date, this document would be really valuable. Cover says updated through 2009, but that may be a stretch for some of the listings, including mine.

Thanks to Jim DiEugenio for making this information available. It’s interesting that Robert Groden moved to Dallas in 1995. That’s the year his photographically-rich book “The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald” was copyrighted. His chapter “Too Many Oswalds” begins on page 240 of that book. Mr. Groden was enormously helpful in aiding the research of my friend John Armstrong. In November 1994, John learned that Mr. Groden was about to be interviewed by Kevin McCarthy on KLIF radio in Dallas. John had noticed that Robert Oswald had said, on numerous occasions over a period of years, that his brother had attended Stripling School, a fact essentially denied by the Warren Commission. John asked Mr. Groden to broadcast a simple question: Did any of the radio station’s listeners attend Stripling School along with Oswald. Two people responded by calling the station and saying they attended Stripling with Oswald. One was a fellow named Don who left no phone number. The other was Fran (Schubert) Tubbs, who John contacted and eventually interviewed. That interview can be seen here:

Ray, Actually, I don’t agree with anyone who claims to know the identity of PrayerSmudge, including Brian Doyle. As I’ve said at least a dozen times, the image is too fuzzy to make a credible ID. The purpose of this thread was to provide new information that relatives of Sarah Stanton say she told them that she saw LHO carrying a soda inside the TSBD just prior to the assassination. It is clearly hearsay evidence, and therefore of limited value, but it is NEW evidence nevertheless, and worth adding to the body of evidence we now have. Since everyone else seems only interested in debating endlessly the PrayerSmudge controversy, I thought, out of fairness, Brian Doyle should have a chance to respond to his critics. He, after all, made the effort to speak to Stanton’s daughter-in-law and granddaughter. I would have let this thread die off some time ago, but the PrayerMan proponents want to keep arguing about it.

There don't appear to be any insults in Brian Doyle's answer to Bart Kamp's post above (he wrote it before the posts by Mr. Stancak and Mr. Butler) and so I'm going to post it even though I think the whole PrayerSmudge controversy is silly because the image is too blurry to analyze credibly. Here's what Mr. Doyle wrote: Kamp's latest post tries to convince the Education Forum members that Frazier pointed-out Oswald to his left side...The reason Frazier points left is because when Stanton first came out she stood over on Frazier's left and he remembers her there...However, there's a very simple reason why Stanton isn't to Frazier's left at the time in question, and that is because we can't see Stanton to Frazier's left in Darnell...Stanton was tall enough and obese enough that she could not be missed in Darnell and we don't see her there... We are right back to Frazier's 2013 interview where he tells us he was facing Sarah Stanton and looking at her when Calvery got to the steps...The Couch/Darnell film shows Calvery climbing the steps with Betty Thornton...Since Thornton is seen next to Calvery in Zapruder we know that is Calvery on the steps because Calvery stayed with her...But we also know because Frazier said Lovelady & Shelley spoke to Calvery before they left the steps to go up the Elm St extension...Since Couch/Darnell shows Lovelady & Shelley about 3 seconds after speaking to Calvery at the steps we therefore know the woman in the black scarf next to Betty Thornton is Calvery...We also know Calvery is at the steps because Running Woman is Peggy Burney and she is obviously following Thornton and Calvery to the steps after being next to them in Zapruder... So once we confirm Calvery is climbing the steps we can conclude she has already finished her run shouting the president has been shot...In his 2013 interview, that Kamp posted, Frazier makes clear that after he heard Calvery say the president had been shot he looked at Sarah for a little while...There's no arguing that Frazier has detailed a very precise timing for when he was looking at Sarah and that timing necessitates that it was immediately following Calvery having communicated that the president had been shot...Since Couch/Darnell shows beyond any doubt the precise moment following Calvery's communication, we can assume Frazier is looking at Sarah at this time like he made clear...One look at Couch/Darnell shows Frazier facing Prayer Man at that moment, so that makes Prayer Man Stanton... Kamp neglects to include the 40:52 time mark for Frazier's 2013 interview where he describes this...Kamp also fails to show the Darnell close-up of the front steps where you can see Sarah is not to Frazier's left...All you can see to Frazier's left is Molina and Sarah was obese enough, as well as tall enough, to not be able to be hidden by Molina...We can then see that Prayer Man is Sarah Stanton's 5 foot 5 height...Has Stanton's chubby forearm...Has Stanton's wide hips...And finally has Stanton's precise shoulder line according to her obese upper arms... There's no doubt what so ever that Sarah Stanton is Prayer Man, as both Debra Conway and Sarah's grand daughter Wanda agreed, which means efforts would be better spent examining how Sarah Stanton's witnessing of Oswald near the 2nd floor lunch room with a Coke influences the true evidence and Oswald's true where abouts... Oh yeah, when Lovelady described the people around him on the steps from his left to his right he named Shelley, Frazier, and Stanton...Altgens places those same people in those same locations...Lovelady mentioned that Frazier was behind him, which means he was speaking in the context that Shelley and Stanton were beside him on either side and he saved the mentioning of those who were behind him for Frazier...

I never wanted this thread to be about PrayerSmudge.... The image is too fuzzy to make any kind of ID with certainty. But since folks here seem to want it to keep this going, I'm going to post the following Brian Doyle sent me a few days ago, though I'm removing one minor insult: Sarah Stanton almost certainly saw Oswald by the rear 2nd floor staircase landing...Not only were Cokes sold right next to the staircase landing in the lunch room but Carolyn Arnold saw Oswald in that same lunch room shortly after Stanton... Stanton had an eating problem and it is very likely she ate before going out to watch the motorcade...So after having eaten in the 2nd floor lunch room she saw Oswald on the way out and asked if he was going to eat too...The reason Stanton asked was because of Oswald's proximity to the lunch room...It is even possible that Stanton saw Oswald on the staircase landing, went through the vestibule to talk to him out on the landing in order to invite him to view the motorcade, and then went back through the vestibule and exited via the hallway and front elevator... It is unlikely that Oswald was by the front staircase because Mrs Reid detailed going out that way on her way out to see the motorcade...If Oswald were by the front staircase on the 2nd floor Mrs Reid would have seen him there too and mentioned it...I would also imagine Stanton would have taken the elevator had she gone to the front staircase on the 2nd floor...The elevator is before you got to the staircase and separated from it, so Stanton would not be able to talk to Oswald had she taken the elevator... The Coke is clear confirmation of the lunch room encounter...It not only places Oswald in the lunch room where Carolyn Arnold saw him but it sets him up there as intending to eat... The Coke also gives validity to Mrs Reid, whom the Prayer Man people were dismissing as a xxxx who was in on the plot... Let's tally the score here: 2nd floor lunch room witnesses for Oswald - Sarah Stanton, Carolyn Arnold, Baker & Truly... Witnesses for Oswald being right in front of everyone on the portal landing: Z E R O ... Witnesses who describe in clear terms Prayer Man being Sarah Stanton: Buell Frazier... Billy Lovelady...

John Abt appears to have been a real NYC-based attorney who specialized in defending leftists and Communists. See.... http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-arm/id/46604/rec/2

RE: David Atlee Phillips In a lawsuit brought against Playboy magazine for publishing Jim Garrison's claim that Novel worked for the CIA, Novel testified in deposition that former FBI man Guy Banister was working under CIA operative David Atlee Phillips. Who other than Banister and/or Ferrie could have been instructing the patsy-to-be to act as a Castro-loving commie? Phillips was then Chief of Cuban Operations, Chief of Psychological Operations, and supervised the CIA's surveillance posts in Mexico City (photographic surveillance of the Russian and Cuban Embassies). Who better to direct a plot to blame the assassination on Castro and Cuba? Parts of Alpha 66 head Veciana's story have corroboration. CIA agent Ron Crozier, who worked in Cuba under Phillips, said that Phillips sometimes used the code name "Maurice Bishop." Phillips later confirmed, under oath in deposition, that he was in Dallas in early September, 1963. The name "Bishop" (likely a reference to Phillips) appears in Jack Ruby's notebook with telephone number RI 87991. Who but Phillips had the information needed to compose the 11/9/63 "Comrade Kostin" letter? The person who wrote this letter had access to confidential data about the Cuban Consulate and Russian Embassy in Mexico City, confidential information about FBI surveillance of Oswald, detailed knowledge of Oswald's Russian wife and family, and, perhaps, access to Ruth Paine's typewriter. David Phillips, according to his brother James Phillips, was in Dallas on the day JFK was assassinated. In the summer of 1988, as Phillips was dying of lung cancer, he telephoned his brother James. During their conversation James asked David, "Were you in Dallas on that day?" David said "Yes," whereupon James quickly hung up the phone. Hours after the assassination of JFK, Jack Ruby told friends and employees that he could be reached through KLIF Radio. Jack Ruby and Ft. Worth native David Atlee Phillips were both close friends of Gordon McLendon, owner of radio station KLIF in Dallas. Phillips and McLendon attended school together in Ft. Worth. When Phillips founded the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), an organization for retired CIA agents, McLendon was one of the founding charter member. Phillips provided the Warren Commission with information that Oswald was at the Russian and Cuban embassies in Mexico City, then later admitted that the information he had provided was false. In total there were more than a dozen fabricated plots/plans, created or directed by Phillips, that were intended to link Cuba/Castro to the assassination of President Kennedy. Before, practically during, and well after the assassination, Phillips just seems to come up in critical areas again and again. Was that a coincidence? Much of the above is excerpted from: https://harveyandlee.net/Patsy/The_Patsy.html

Thanks, Paul. It’s frustrating that with the mountain of evidence against Phillips and others, there is little as persuasive against potential foreign participants—take OAS assassins in general and Souetre in particular—despite research by a number of people. There is no question that the trail from Dinkin to OAS remnants to their possible removal from the Dallas area shortly after the assassination is intriguing… but can the evidence rise above that level? Even what has been uncovered by a dogged online researcher like Steve Thomas is limited, which probably should be expected, but what can we do beyond following real evidence that extends beyond the circumstantial? As to the actual shooters, I have some difficulty believing that a professional assassin would be interested in shooting a sitting U.S. president in broad daylight on a public street. Sounds pretty dangerous for someone most interested in making money. More likely to me would be some enraged Cuban exiles willing to take the risk because of ideological considerations rather than financial ones, but, of course, I have even less evidence to back that up than you do for an OAS connection.

Does anyone here think any of the people below may have conspired to kill JFK? Just wondering....

It is important to keep in mind that Boxley/Wood was a plant meant to disrupt and mislead the Garrison investigation. As Jim DiEugenio wrote.... A final CIA-related penetration also occurred at this time in the figure of William Wood/Bill Boxley. Boxley was responsible for injecting all manner of disinformation into Garrison’s office, from his fingering of Nancy Perrin Rich’s husband as the grassy knoll assassin, to his wild goose chase involving Edgar Eugene Bradley, and his mediation of the Farewell America hoax, whose main sponsor Harold Weisberg discovered to be Philippe de Vosjoli, a double agent who worked for Angleton. Aside from this waste of valuable time and resources, this low point in Garrison’s investigation is both sad and comically absurd [278-283].

Thanks, David. You’re right. In my 1992 first edition of TMWKTM (don’t know if there were other editions) the “Timeline of Primary Events” goes from pp. 713-729. On p. 553, Mr. Russell wrote: It began on October 22, 1963, when Dinkin writes that he mailed a letter to Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Dinkin said, I did offer in this letter a warning that an attempt to assassinate President Kennedy would occur on November 28th, 1963.... But it appears that, as Paul Brancato said above, so far we only have Mr. Dinkin's word on that. In TMWKTM, the Dinkin section is immediately followed by a discussion of OAS and Souetre.

There is a 17-page printed timeline in the JA collection at Baylor that mentions Dinkin twice. The most interesting entry is this: “October 22: Army code breaker Eugene Dinkin writes Robert Kennedy from France about military plot against JFK, soon goes AWOL to offer warning at various embassies.” The 10/16 vs 10/22 dates might simply be an error, but could it also be an indication that someone in RFK’s office acknowledged the 10/16 letter mailed from France six days later? Don’t know who composed the timeline (it doesn’t look like John’s work to me), but it can be seen here: http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-arm/id/4259/rec/4

Gene, Have you ever seen a reproduction of Dinkin's actual 10/16/63 letter to RFK? I'd LOVE to read it but so far can't locate a copy.

I just wanted to repost Gene's wonderful summary on this page, for anyone who might have missed it previously. Thanks, Gene! To Steve Thomas, Thanks for the confirmation that Moltzon did indeed serve in the 529th. JIm Di is right... this is a fascinating thread. Wish I knew more.

Megthanks to Joe Bauer for finding this recording. One small question comes to mind…. Starting at about the 13:15 mark in the audio, the name “McLendon,” or a name that sounds like it, comes up repeatedly. Anyone know if this is a reference to reporter Sarah McLendon, or to KLIF’s Gordon McLendon, or to someone else entirely?

Interesting, Steve. If I’m interpreting all this correctly, it suggests that Dinkin at one time seemed sane enough to be stationed among heavily armed nuclear weapons controllers and crypto communications, but that he became so mentally unbalanced after allegedly hearing about a plot to assassinate JFK that, according to his mother, he was sent for a psych evaluation in Landstahl Hospital in Germany and was subsequently under psychiatric observation at Walter Reed. Ouch! Kind of reminiscent of those “Lee Harvey Oswald” observers who seemed to develop psychiatric issues. Immediately coming to mind are DeMohrenschildt, Ralph Leon Yates, and Steven Harris Landesberg, but there may be others I’m forgetting.

At least some of Garrison’s material on Dinkin, including a hand-written three page letter from his mother also claiming he had prior knowledge of the assassination, can be read and downloaded from the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor University: CLICK HERE.

Thanks, John. I couldn't agree more.

Ray, He assures me that his real name is Brian Doyle, and I’m inclined to believe him, though I corresponded with him on Deep Politics forum for several years as Albert Doyle. My guess is he was forced to use pseudonyms because he can’t help but personally insult just about everyone he disagrees with on the JFK assassination issue and was banned from LOTS of different places. (Heck... he’s insulted me more than once in email about my performance in this thread.) Despite his total lack of diplomacy, Brian Doyle knows A LOT about the assassination of JFK, and I wish there was a way for him to participate in our discussions. Regardless of our PrayerMan/PrayerSmudge squabbles, Doyle can offer insights (and incites) that might surprise many here. I miss his participation, though there can be little doubt that our host has every right to determine who can and cannot post here. Sounds fair enough to me, Bart.

To anyone reading this: The insults and personal attacks are irrelevant. All that matters is the EVIDENCE. And the EVIDENCE shows that Brian Doyle interviewed Sarah Stanton’s granddaughter and daughter-in-law who said that Sarah talked to them about seeing Oswald carrying a soda inside the TSBD just prior to the assassination. There were clearly some leading questions, but the fact remains that Doyle took the time and effort to interview these women, and no one else here did. That EVIDENCE does not go away despite all the blather.

I didn’t even realize the 488th was officially nonexistent. Would you mind pointing to what you feel is the best online examination of Crichton, Lumpkin and Whitmeyer? Is there anything that goes much beyond what Russell Baker has presented?

Operation Paperclip? And CMC/Permindex? One thing I forgot to mention above is that two men associated with Crichton’s 488th Military intelligence detachment were in the pilot car of JFK’s Dallas motorcade: George L. Lumpkin, A member of the 488th, and Lt. Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army reserve units in East Texas, including the 488th. Still, none of this is direct evidence of Crichton’s possible involvement in the hit. But it is intriguing, and quite a nexus of entanglements.

Like it or not, the interview Brian Doyle did with Sarah Stanton's family members is real research. Argue all you want about PrayerSmudge... I sincerely doubt it will ever prove anything. But the recorded interview below remains real research, and it was this new information, not PrayerSmudge, that prompted me to post Brian's material.