Ron Ecker

In his book J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets, Curt Gentry says that reporter Arthur Egan told the Ervin committee that "somebody in the Watergate thing murdered . . . J. Edgar Hoover," and another witness reportedly told the committee "that he had heard that some of the men later involved in the Watergate burglary, led by a man familiar with the security of the FBI director's home, had burglarized Hoover's residence and that a poison of the thiophospate genre was placed on Hoover's personal toilet articles, inducing a fatal heart attack" (pp. 727-728). Also, 3 of the 6 FBI officials who died in 1977, when all 6 would likely have been called for questioning by the HSCA, died of "heart attacks." Ron

No. But logic tells me they were anti-Castro operatives, not pro, since the U.S. government, not Castro, was all set to start a 41-year cover-up. No, Conein and Pakse Base Man were there too, among possible others. I didn't mention them by name because they were not identified with anti-Castro operations. No, I don't assume that at all. I said perhaps, as a possible explanation for the presence of your Castro agents. But I'm inclined to agree with Robert that these mysteriously traveling Castro agents were products of CIA disinformation. Don't forget that the CIA is an organization of professional liars and you can't believe a damn thing they say, whether it's about Castro agents in Dealey Plaza or WMDs in Iraq. You're probably right, in which case no Castro agents were there. See my above comments on the CIA. Ron

An unidentified black Latino known as DCM, an unidentified cohort called UM, a Latino using a radio at the corner of Elm and Houston (seen in Altgens 6), and Rip Robertson and other known covert operatives on the corner of Main and Houston. The behavior of DCM and UM, the Latino's radio, and the physical appearance of Robertson and others. Yes. I don't believe they all converged at Dealey Plaza by some big collective coincidence or for an annual JFK conference. Ron

Given the evidence that there were Cuban exile and other anti-Castro operatives who knew that something was up in Dallas, to the extent that they were there that day in Dealey Plaza, it would hardly be surprising if Castro agents within the exile community also knew something was up. Perhaps Castro, knowing something was up, wanted someone there on the ground to observe exactly what happened and report to him ASAP, since he himself could be a suspect if JFK were murdered in Dallas. This would of course explain what a couple of Castro agents were doing in Dallas, and why they wanted to get to Havana ASAP to report personally how things went down as they saw it. To say that Castro was able to make a prompt study of the case would be an understatement. Castro gave an immediate analysis of Oswald and the assassination in a speech on Cuban TV and radio on the night of 11/23/63. In this speech Castro even noted that Oswald was able to return to the U.S. from Russia "thanks to a loan of 435 dollars and 71 cents," acquired from the U.S. "after an appeal to Senator John G. Tower, Republican, Texas." (The text of Castro's speech is in E. Martin Schotz's book History Will Not Absolve Us.) It seems obvious that Cuban security had a file on Oswald before the assassination. Cuban security may even have had Oswald identified as a potential patsy if JFK happened to get shot in Dallas. Indeed there's one thing I'm almost sure of: If Castro had been included on the Warren Commission, this case could have been solved long ago. Ron

Shanet, See this thread on Whitmeyer at Lancer: http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.p...ing_type=search

Jim, I would be kind of surprised if Hurt died only recently. He didn't seem to be in the best of health in 1963, and if alive today he would be 96 years old (born in 1909). If he lived into his 90s despite mental illness, drinking, and dangerous living, maybe I should stop worrying too. Ron

No, not at all. Where did you see or hear this? Ron

In a previous thread Jim Root has proposed the possibility that the Japanese linguist John Hurt may have been the John Hurt that Oswald wanted to contact by phone while in the Dallas jail. While the linguist Hurt is certainly a lead worth pursuing, I think that the background of the John Hurt who Oswald tried to reach in Raleigh strongly suggests that the Raleigh Hurt was indeed the person whom Oswald wanted to talk with. The reason I believe this is that the John Hurt in Raleigh appears to have been a good candidate himself for being a patsy in the JFK assassination. It’s hard to believe that the status and activity of John David Hurt from Raleigh in 1963, and the fact that Oswald tried to contact him, can be chalked up to coincidence. According to the biographical outline on Grover Proctor’s website (an outline that was provided by an investigator to attorney Bernard Fensterwald in 1968), Hurt was a former Army counterintelligence agent (1942-1945) and state traffic accident evaluator, allowed to resign in 1955 for “conduct not becoming to a state official,” who was on disability for arthritis and paresis, and diagnosed at a state hospital as a manic depressive paranoid “very dangerous to society.” According to his wife, in 1963 this troubled fellow worked as a private investigator in “Southern Florida.” Then his wife briefly committed him to a mental hospital. “He was released around the last of October 1963 and immediately took a trip.” (Hmm. Reminds me of Ed Lansdale, who retired from the AF around the last of October and immediately took a trip too.) Hurt told his wife that he went to Missouri and Louisiana to visit his parents, but she believed that he had no relatives in either place. She thought he was gone “about ten days.” Now a former Army counterintelligence officer just released from a mental hospital and considered dangerous to society might make a good candidate to go to Dallas and get potentially set up in a presidential assassination. He reminds me of Tom Vallee, the former Marine with a history of mental illness who was arrested in Chicago in November 1963, and may have been the reason JFK’s trip to Chicago was cancelled. Is it possible that Oswald and Hurt came into contact in Dallas and/or New Orleans as potential unwitting patsies, that Oswald knew Hurt was from Raleigh, and that Oswald thought that Hurt may have headed back to Raleigh after the assassination if not before? No way to prove this, of course, as there's no evidence that I know of that Oswald came into contact with anyone fitting Hurt's description leading up to the assassination. But John David Hurt certainly fits the profile, it seems to me, of a potential framed “lone nut,” he goes on a mysterious trip in November 1963, and the “lone nut” Oswald tries to contact him on November 23. Coincidence, anyone? Here’s the link to the report on Hurt at Proctor’s website: http://www.groverproctor.us/jfk/jfk-hurtbio.html Ron

I buy the theory that Hoffa was killed because he was trying to regain the Teamsters presidency and was threatening to expose or end Mob access to the Teamsters pension fund. That's the explanation given by the late Frank Sheeran in the book "I Heard You Paint Houses," written by Charles Brandt based on taped interviews with Sheeran. Sheeran was a hit man for both Hoffa and the Mafia. (The book title refers to what Hoffa said to him when they first met. Painting a house meant killing somebody, with blood splattering everything.) The Mob gave Sheeran a choice of killing Hoffa or of being killed himself. (I imagine Jack Ruby was given the same kind of option with regard to LHO.) It's a darkly entertaining book, as when a Philadelphia don gave Sheeran a murder assignment by saying, "You gotta do what you gotta do." Sheeran says, "You didn't have to go down the street and enroll in some courses at the University of Pennsylvania to know what he meant." Ron

Well said. I completely agree. Ron

Yes, Malcolm Liggett has sued The History Channel, alleging that the program falsely portrayed him and invaded his privacy. He says he did not meet with his brother John in Corpus Cristi two days after the assassination as alleged, and it is not Malcolm and his wife in the photo with Ruby. Ron

Dawn, Tippit could have been murdered in order to have a spare body just in case. I say that because the strong resemblance to JFK simply makes me very suspicious. For years I seemed to have some kind of chemical dependency on coincidences, or some kind of recurring virus that made me easily suspectible to coincidental explanations, especially as they related to political assassinations, "suicides," or "accidental" deaths. But I have since developed a strong resistance. This built-up immunity does have its side effects, which are occasional feelings or flashes of paranoia. But all in all it's given me a much clearer head. Ron

Tim, I don't know much about Underwood, but I certainly don't consider Win Scott to be a reliable source. Ron

Tim, I'm curious about something. Former JFK and LBJ advance man Martin Underwood told the ARRB that former CIA station chief Win Scott told him in Mexico City in 1966 that a plane arrived in Mexico City from Havana on 11/22/63, and that one passenger got off and boarded another plane headed for Dallas, and that the CIA identified the passenger as Fabian Escalante, the now retired head of Cuban security. Were you aware of this? I've been wondering why you have not included it in your argument that Castro did it. It's in chapter 7 of the ARRB final report: http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part10.htm Ron

I suspect, but don't know, that the composite photo was made to support the theory I remember reading (I don't recall whose, perhaps Morningstar's) that Tippit's body was used for the JFK autopsy (and may be buried in JFK's grave). The theory is seriously flawed IMO because, for one thing, if they used someone else's body for the autopsy, it would stand to reason they would have done a better job of creating the wounds they needed, instead of just butchering the head as was done. That said, it's interesting to note that no positive ID of JFK's body was made at the autopsy. Humes told JAMA that no dental x-rays were deemed necessary because everybody knew who it was. And then there are the remarks by the family that the embalmed body didn't look like JFK. Also, one has to believe that the strong resemblance between JFK and Tippit as clearly shown by the composite means that either Tippit was murdered for a purpose related to that resemblance, or else one has to swallow yet another unlikely coincidence in the JFK case. And what exactly are you here for? Ron

After looking again at the copy of the doc I posted, I don't think that the zip code necessarily indicates fakery. The FBI letterhead and the the memo were originally two separate pages, written at different times. The memo was written in 1947 by a staff assistant of Nixon, not the FBI. The FBI later attached a copy of the memo to FBI letterhead, which by that time included a zip code. The posted copy is the two pages melded together. But then why did the FBI itself call the memo a fake? When and how was this determined? In his online Crime Magazine article "Richard Nixon's Greatest Cover-Up," Don Fulsom writes (without citing any sources) that the 1947 memo was "found in 1975 by a scholar going through a pile of recently released FBI documents . . . The FBI subsequently called the memo a fake, but the reference service Facts on File considers it authentic." Ron

Richard, Below is a copy of the Ruby/Nixon doc. Unless the doc was altered to add the zip code, I would say that the zip code was a pretty stupid mistake by a forger. But I suppose the forger could have been young enough to assume that zip codes have always been with us. (The moral: Never take anything for granted.) Re the Hoover memo referring to "Mr. George Bush of the CIA," how do we know that it's not a fake too? Ron

Yes. Aside from the company Helms kept, read Bob Haldeman's account (The Ends of Power, pp. 37-39) of Helms's "violent reaction" to "the Bay of Pigs may be blown" message that Haldeman conveyed to Helms from President Nixon during Watergate, and what Haldeman thought that it meant. Ron

Tim, I know all about the Barbara J, and yes I know you can find things wrong with all of these websites that cover things that the established corporate media will not cover. But I don't care if Parascope says somewhere on its site that the world is being run by aliens at Area 51 or in Madison Square Gardens. That doesn't invalidate what the link I provided contains about the Reagan shooting. You have to find this kind of info wherever you can, if it can be found at all. The only place to find good 9/11 independent research, for example, is on websites many of which are run by people who have all kind of weird or wacko ideas about things in general. That's the way it is when the mainstream media in this country won't do its job. I did not say Bill Clinton murdered Foster or Brown. I said that his regime benefited, in that these were members of the regime whom someone clearly felt needed to be gotten rid of. And why do I say the U.S. government was involved in all these assassinations that have been discussed? Because in every case it's the U.S. government, through whatever investigative bodies are involved, that covers up the crime, in one of three ways: it was a lone nut, suicide, or accident. But in every case there is left the same type of unanswered questions, improbabilities, absurdities, and coincidences, and the controlled media will not touch them, the cases are closed. Well, they're not closed as far as I'm concerned, but I don't want to argue about it. This is clearly a waste of time. Ron

Tim, I'm not going to review all the evidence of government complicity in these serial assassinations because I don't have the time and because this forum is about the JFK assassination. Suffice it to say that the latter is part of (the beginning of) a pattern. There are books on these other cases, but you want me to spell all of it out for you here? Melanson, for one, has written excellent books on the MLK and RFK hits. See also Pepper's An Act of State. If you want to know the evidence of murder in the Foster case, read The Strange Death of Vincent Foster. If you want to know the evidence of murder in the Brown case, read Ron Brown's Body. On the Reagan attempt, I said that the CIA and Bush would have benefited simply due to the fact that it would have put the CIA's man Bush in the White House. I call that benefit. There may have been additional motives, or that benefit alone could have been enough for the likes of Bush and his bloody organization to bump off another victim. They have no compunction about it, and who's going to stop them? The Reagan shooting fits the pattern, another patented lone-nut government hit including another magic bullet. There is clear evidence that Hinckley didn't shoot Reagan. Almost nothing has been written on this, due to America's controlled corporate media, but here's a good link: http://www.parascope.com/mx/articles/hinckley.htm Ron

I remember Richard Helms years ago, conversing with other guests on some afternoon TV talk show like Oprah's, refer to JFK as a "womanizer." It struck me as an unnecessary dig, because JFK was not the subject of the conversation. I don't remember the exact subject, I think it was something like the media's coverage of politics, and Helms injects this remark to the effect (as best I can recall) that JFK got a free pass from the media. The other guests let it pass, but I thought it was interesting that this known suspect in the assassination felt the need to bring up JFK's womanizing. Ron

From Document # 180-10070-10273, an interview of Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden by HSCA staffer Jim Kelly and Harold Rese, dated 1/19/78: (Bolden) said when Agent Tom Kelly arrived in Chicago from Dallas on or about 11/26/63, he mentioned a John Heard or Hurt. They searched the office card files for a similar sounding name. http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_...ue/arrb_12.html Ron

George Wallace (failed) and John Lennon can be added to the list of political assassinations, with the beneficiary as usual being the U.S. government at the time. Ron

LN David Reese's website has several pages of interesting photos: Dallas then and now. http://www.cannet.com/~reesedw/DealyPage1.html On the last page I found this JFK/Tippit composite photo. This really gives me the creeps:

Tim, I look at the whole history of political murder in America from 1963 on, and apply common sense to the repetitive evidence. Who benefited in each case, and who covered up in every case? JFK (MIC benefited), MLK (MIC and right wingers benefited, silencing a strong anti-Vietnam and civil rights voice), RFK (MIC benefited, an extension of JFK coverup), Reagan (failed attempt, CIA/Bush would have benefited), Vince Foster (Clinton regime benefited), Ron Brown (Clinton regime benefited), 9/11 (Bush regime benefited), Paul Wellstone (Bush regime benefited). I'm sure this list is incomplete, but is there a pattern here? It looks like the U.S. government as Murder Inc. In any event, it has been the U.S. government covering up for Murder Inc. in every case. Where's Castro or Onassis in all this? Nowhere. The Castro agents you bring up are certainly intriguing. It suggests there could have been a Castro plot. Was it simultaneous with a U.S. government plot? Or was a Castro plot allowed to proceed by the U.S. government? Whatever the answer, it was the U.S. government, not Castro, who covered up the assassination, and it's the U.S. government that has been covering up assassinations in the U.S. ever since. Of course there are people who say I'm paranoid and they could be right. I'm not a psychologist, but I've always heard that people who are crazy don't know it. Ron