Ron Ecker

James, I found only one reference to Secord, during the time in the late 1970s when WerBell and Singlaub were involved with the Lyndon LaRouche movement: "WerBell was also in touch with 'Secret Team' members such as Ted Shackley and Richard Secord, and allegedly was paid once through the drug-linked Nugan Hand Bank when he conducted 'operations for U.S. intelligence.'" http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_R...ommit_TICC.html

James, So who exactly was Whatley? Was he one of the 13 No Name Key guys arrested by Diosdado in 1962? Ron

James, He refers to two buildings (besides the TSBD), the County Recordings Building and "this building that I was standing in front of." It's the latter where he went to look for a phone. His address is shown as 3609 Patomic in Dallas. A search at Mapquest finds no such street, but it's probably a phonetic misspelling of Potomac. Here is 3609 Potomac, if anyone in Dallas would like to try tracking Florer down: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?count...archtab=address

James, What were the circumstances regarding the Whatley lookalike? I recall you posting that comparison on the Lancer forum. Wasn't the lookalike photographed in the sheriff's office or DPD? Ron

Wim, I did not say that the Hoover memo says all that. I said that Kangas says all that. His misquoting of the memo is only one item I referred to. Ron

I beg to disagree. I've run across this Kangas article before. It is so full of misstatements, distortions, and absurdities (e.g., it misquotes, in quotation marks, the Hoover "George Bush" memo, says Nixon was going to run against Kennedy again in 1964, says Jack Ruby worked as a "hit man" for Nixon in the 1940s, says the CIA is a secret organization to which no one admits belonging, recounts as fact the myth about three BOP boats named by or in honor of Bush, says the Watergate burglars were looking for the photo of the Dealey Plaza tramps, and goes on about somebody named Preston Bush), that there is no basis for assuming that anything in the article is a trustworthy statement. The Kangas article is an irresponsible and incompetent piece of writing that is not worth a minute of anyone's time. But that's just my opinion. Ron

Our Man in Powder Springs A Look at Mitch WerBell and the JFK Assassination He was the real McCoy. Bantam-sized, sporting a handlebar moustache and carrying a swagger stick, Mitchell Livingston WerBell III was a wealthy bon vivant, international arms dealer, designer of silencers, and right-wing covert operator. Based at his 60-acre Powder Springs, Georgia, estate, WerBell loved guns, fine whisky, and freelance coup d’etats. He was referred to as the “Wizard of Whispering Death,” (1) for being the preeminent designer of the modern-day silencer, his work credited with enabling the widespread use of silenced sniper rifles in the Vietnam War. (2) There are those who suspect that in the John F. Kennedy assassination some of the rifle shots (officially there were only three, fired by alleged lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald) may have been fired in Dealey Plaza using sound suppressors. Was the U.S. intelligence community (or rogue agents thereof) involved in the assassination conspiracy, as many researchers believe? If so, what role, if any, was played by this Powder Springs wizard called "the armorer of the CIA"? (3) In their book Deadly Secrets, Hinckle and Turner describe WerBell, the son of a wealthy Czarist cavalry officer, as “at once the most stylish and the craziest man” they have ever known. His life, they note, was “like an Errol Flynn movie with Max Steiner music in the background.” (4) In World War II, he served as a secret agent in the China-Burma theater of operations for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, forerunner of the CIA, making WerBell, in Gaeton Fonzi’s words, “a dues-paid life member of the Old Boys network of American secret intelligence”). (5) Photos from the 1960s show WerBell in South Vietnam demonstrating weapons with his patented silencers for Vietnamese army officers. In the late 1960s he traveled to and from Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, with a high security clearance and the temporary rank of U.S. Army general, to confer with the appropriate CIA or foreign officials on the subject of “programmatic liquidations.” (6 ) Among his freelance foreign intrigues, WerBell did covert work for Cuban dictator Batista in 1959 and for military strongman Imbert in the Dominican Republic in 1965; in the mid-1970s he helped some Bahamian secessionists try to set up their own country on the island of Abaco; and he traveled to Central America in 1982 to support Mario Sandoval Alarcon in an attempted coup in Guatemala. (7) In 1966 WerBell served as adviser on Project Nassau, a planned invasion of Haiti by Cuban and Haitian exiles to oust the dictator Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier. CBS was going to film the invasion, indeed was basically financing the project through its production budget in exchange for the filming rights. (8) Project leaders included Cuban exile Rolando (“El Tigre”) Masferrer, who planned to use Haiti as a base to invade Cuba, and Father Jean Baptiste Georges, who planned to be the new President of Haiti. (9) The project was aborted in January 1967 with the arrest of 75 of the would-be invaders for conspiring to violate the Neutrality Act. Project leaders were tried and convicted, but the charges against WerBell were suddenly dropped, thanks presumably to his CIA links. There was a Congressional investigation of CBS on the question of aiding and abetting illegal acts. CBS successfully argued in part that WerBell’s CIA ties implied government sanction of the planned invasion, recalling the CIA-backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. (10) In 1967 WerBell went into business with Gordon Ingram, designer of a small submachine gun, slightly larger than a conventional pistol, on which WerBell suppressors were mounted, for a quiet and compact weapon with military contracts in mind. (11) In 1973 WerBell’s arms company Defense Services, Inc. and his son Mitchell IV were indicted for allegedly trying to sell some of the silenced Ingram submachine guns to a federal undercover agent. The case was eventually thrown out of court, but the indictments happened to coincide with WerBell being subpoened by a Senate committee that was investigating Robert Vesco, a fugitive financier living in Costa Rica. Vesco had sought through an intermediary to purchase 2,000 silenced Ingrams from WerBell, with the intent, some suspected, of taking over Costa Rica. (Also temporarily residing in Costa Rica at this time were Mafia don Santo Trafficante and anti-Castro Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch.) The indictments prevented WerBell from testifying before the Senate committee, and WerBell himself believed that the indictments were a gag order to keep him from talking about Vesco. “From now on, call me Mitch the Fifth,” WerBell said after the indictments were dropped. Bitter that his family had been dragged into the affair, WerBell soon got out of the arms sales business, concentrating instead on security work and counter-terrorism. (12) In 1976 WerBell was in trouble again. He and four other men were tried in Florida on charges of conspiring to import marijuana from Colombia for a profit of $100,000 each. WerBell’s lawyer Edwin Marger said that WerBell would never get involved in a conspiracy to import marijuana. “Guns, revolutions, maybe even assassinations,” Marger said, “but he’s not being tried for that.” (13) The defense argued that WerBell and the others were actually working undercover in President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs. (14) Lucien Conein, the legendary CIA agent and an old friend of WerBell’s from their days together in the OSS, had joined Nixon’s new Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 1972. (White House consultant and former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt had considered hiring Conein for the team that bungled the 1972 Watergate burglary. “If I’d been involved,” Conein later said, “we’d have done it right.”) (15) The defense claimed that WerBell and Conein were “putting together assassination devices for the DEA” to use against drug smugglers. (16) (The Senate in the mid-1970s investigated allegations that the DEA was preparing to arrange the assassination of drug lords, but nothing was ever proved. According to Fonzi, Conein indeed set up a DEA safe house or “office suite,” funded by the CIA, on Connecticut Avenue in Washington DC, where WerBell admitted being in business with two former CIA men “manufacturing ultrasophisticated assassination devices.”) (17) The defense even moved to subpoena Nixon and top White House aides John Ehrlichman and Egil Krogh. Only Krogh testified, and denied any knowledge of the defendants’ alleged undercover operation. Conein was subpoenaed but was not called to the witness stand. (18) It should be noted, before leaving the subject of Conein, that either he or a remarkable lookalike can be seen in a photograph taken as the presidential limo was driving past him in Dallas only moments before the JFK assassination. (19) The prosecution’s star witness in WerBell’s trial, convicted drug-smuggler Kenneth Burnstine, was killed before the trial started when a plane he was flying mysteriously stalled and crashed in an air show in the Mohave Desert. Burnstine’s last reported words were “Oh no!” His death was a serious blow to the prosecution, and WerBell and the other defendants were acquitted (20). “The government tried to frame us all,” said defendant John Nardi of Cleveland, “but the jury didn’t buy it” (21). WerBell’s friend Nardi was a Teamsters Union official who had allegedly ordered the murder earlier that year of Cleveland mobster Leo Moceri (22). Nardi and “Irish mob” leader Danny Greene were reportedly trying to take over control of the Cleveland organized crime family (23). Moceri had recently become underboss of the family, which was headed by James “Jack White” Licavoli (24). Moceri had also told a government agent that Chicago mobster Sam Giancana and former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa had both been killed to protect the secret of the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (25). (According to government informant Charles Crimaldi, Hoffa was the original liaison between the CIA and Mafia in the Castro plots.) (26) The late Chauncey Holt (who claimed to be the oldest of the three “tramps” photographed in Dealey Plaza) alleged that Leo Moceri was in Dallas on the day of the JFK assassination, having driven there with Holt, Charles Nicoletti, and Joe Canty from Pete Licavoli’s Grace Ranch in Arizona. (Holt also claimed that Rolando Masferrer, WerBell’s later associate in the aborted invasion of Haiti, was one of the intended recipients in Dallas of false Secret Service credentials allegedly delivered by Holt.) (27) According to Moceri, John Nardi had five associates who were killing people in the Cleveland crime war by putting bombs in their cars. (28) Soon after returning to Cleveland from his Florida trial, Nardi was shot at by assailants in two cars but came away without a scratch. (29) In May 1977, Nardi’s legs were blown off in a car bomb explosion. “It didn’t hurt,” Nardi said, and died minutes later. (30) Another interesting friend of WerBell’s was Gordon Novel, who some JFK researchers suspect was the so-called Umbrella Man in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. Novel lived with WerBell in 1976. When Novel was arrested for arson in 1977, it was WerBell who bailed him out of jail. (31) Other WerBell associates whose names are familiar from the JFK assassination literature are Gerry Patrick Hemming and Bernardo de Torres. Hemming is a 6’5” ex-Marine who was the leader of Interpen (Intercontinental Penetration Force), a group of anti-Castro guerrillas who trained at No Name Key in the Florida Keys in the early 1960s. Hemming claims that he was made monetary offers by Guy Banister and others to kill JFK, which he did not accept. (32) De Torres is an anti-Castro Cuban exile referred to as “Carlos” by Gaeton Fonzi in his book about the JFK investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Carlos was alleged by a source in a Florida prison to have been “involved to some degree in the Jack Kennedy thing” (33) For a time Hemming and de Torres were both representatives of Mitch WerBell in his arms sales business (34). In 1977 WerBell went to work providing security for Lyndon LaRouche, leader of a right-wing (formerly left-wing) movement called the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). Major General John K. Singlaub, who retired from the Army in 1978, met with two of LaRouche’s party officials in WerBell’s home, and said that he found them to be “a bunch of kooks of the worst form.” They suggested, he claimed, that “the military ought to in some way lead the country out of its problems,” implying a coup d’etat. Nevertheless General Singlaub, who founded the anti-Communist U.S. Council for World Freedom in 1981, returned to Powder Springs in 1982 to lecture at Sionics, originally WerBell’s arms company with Ingram, and now a counter-terrorist training camp run by WerBell. (Sionics was an acronym for Studies in Organized Negation of Insurgency and Counter Subversion.) At that time LaRouche’s security forces comprised many of WerBell’s trainees. (35) According to Gaeton Fonzi, who in the 1970s was a staff investigator for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and then for the HSCA, “someone who had been close to WerBell” suggested to the Senate committee that WerBell was linked to the JFK assassination. (36) Fonzi therefore interviewed WerBell in his gun-filled Powder Springs den. Fonzi later described his host as a “delightfully entertaining fellow,” though WerBell’s Sionics was in Fonzi’s view “really a training camp for professional killers.” (37) Trainees at Sionics went through an intensive 10-day course, including instruction in Quick Kill (QK) techniques, at a cost of $3,000 paid in advance. (38) WerBell was “half bombed when I was talking to him,” Fonzi says, and it was difficult to get WerBell to respond coherently in the day-long taped session. (39) WerBell told Fonzi, “I’ve always cooperated very closely” with the CIA, but “I’ve never allowed them to pay me one goddamned dime. I don’t need it.” He admitted to involvement in some Castro assassination attempts. “I was sittin’ in Miami,” he said, “with a goddamned million dollars in cash for the guy who was gonna take Fidel out.” But WerBell claimed to have no connection to the JFK hit. “Now I didn’t like Jack Kennedy,” WerBell said, “I thought he was a xxxx to begin with. But I was certain not to be involved in the assassination of an American president, for Christsakes!” (“I was certain not to be involved” is an interesting choice of words, suggesting that WerBell at least knew of the plot.) At one point in the conversation, WerBell said, “This guy Ruby, he called, I didn’t know who the hell he was, but that was years ago.” WerBell then “lapsed into a drunken mumble.” Fonzi felt that the HSCA should have called WerBell for formal questioning in its JFK investigation, but significantly it did not do so. (40) The late Roy Hargraves told researcher Noel Twyman in a 2001 interview that WerBell supplied silencers used in the JFK assassination. Hargraves was an explosives expert and member of Hemming’s Interpen group. Hargraves said that he was in Dallas on November 22, 1963 as part of a four-man support team led by anti-Castro activist Felipe Vidal Santiago. (Vidal was captured on a mission into Cuba in 1964 and executed.) The team, according to Hargraves, was ordered to Dallas by CIA operative William Bishop, whose instructions likely came from someone at the CIA’s JM/WAVE headquarters in Miami. (41) JM/WAVE’s chief of operations was David Sanchez Morales, who reported to station chief Theodore Shackley. One night in 1973 Morales got drunk on scotch and told three friends, after ranting about JFK, “Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn’t we?” (42) Many of the earwitnesses in Dealey Plaza (74% of the 178 considered by the HSCA) (43) said they heard three shots (the official Warren Commission number), but others said they heard more, ranging from four shots (reported, for example, by railroad supervisor S.M. Holland, who was on the triple underpass, from which he also saw a puff of smoke from the trees on the grassy knoll), to eight shots (reported in a signed sheriff’s office statement by construction worker A.J. Millican, who subsequently received a terrifying phone threat and was not called to testify by the Warren Commission). (44) The echoes that are produced by gunfire in a man-made canyon like Dealey Plaza also made it difficult for people to tell where all the shots came from. In addition, while a silencer suppresses a rifle’s muzzle blast, the sonic boom created by the supersonic bullet is heard only as the bullet is moving past an earwitness, who might therefore think that the shot came from a direction opposite from the actual shooter. (45) The overall confusion and ballistic evidence suggest that more than one weapon was used, and that one or more shots were suppressed, in addition to an unsilenced shot or shots from the Texas School Book Depository Building to draw attention and thus implicate Lee Harvey Oswald. Having multiple shooters in Dallas--with silencers used to mask certain positions--was not only necessary to ensure a successful kill, but was consistent with an intent, evident by the continuous efforts to get Castro and by the pre-assassination creation of Oswald’s pro-Castro legend, to paint the assassination as a Castro plot, carried out by a hit team, thus hopefully precipitating a vengeful invasion of Cuba. According to this theory, the lone nut scenario—Oswald implausibly did it all by himself with three shots—was concocted out of panic when Oswald, who had supposedly been destined for elimination either immediately or outside of the country, was taken alive by the Dallas police. On WerBell’s possible role in the conspiracy, Hargraves told Twyman: “Was WerBell the source of the silencers? Of course! He’s the only clean source. Every other source for silencers would have strings attached to it. If you tried to get it from one of the intelligence agencies, they’d want to know the whole thing. . . . If (WerBell) got nailed he wouldn't give you up. And he knew if you got busted with his stuff, you wouldn’t give him up. There were so many of the sound suppressors in circulation that he had deniability at his end. There’s no way to prove that you acquired them through him.” (46) In 1980, three years before his death, Mitch WerBell went to work handling security for Larry Flynt, publisher of the adult magazine Hustler. Ironically Flynt had his own connection of sorts to the tragedy in Dealey Plaza. Flynt was a paraplegic after being shot by an unknown assailant in March 1978, two months after offering a reward of one million dollars to anyone who could help solve the mystery of the JFK assassination. The HSCA was in the midst of its investigation in 1978, and Flynt may have been shot because the conspirators didn’t need some minor character in the JFK assassination coming forward to collect Flynt’s reward. (47) Meanwhile Bob Guccione, publisher of the adult magazine Penthouse, charged that Flynt paid WerBell one million dollars to have Guccione assassinated. (48) Mitchell Livingston WerBell III died of cancer at the age of 65. At the first annual November in Dallas Conference in 1996, Interpen founder Hemming told the conferees that WerBell, Conein, Hemming himself, “and a long list of other people” should have been arrested in the immediate aftermath of the JFK assassination. (49) One never knows when to take the colorful Hemming seriously. “The thing is,” he once told researcher Dick Russell, “you had so many people planning the Kennedy thing, it was bound to happen” (50). But Hemming also told Twyman, in an interview for Twyman’s book Bloody Treason, “If you want to get to the bottom of the JFK assassination, look at WerBell.” (51) Footnotes: 1. Warren Hinckle and William Turner, Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), p. 393; Jim Hougan, Spooks: The Haunting of America—The Private Use of Secret Agents (New York: William Morrow, 1978), p. 28. 2. Carol Hewett, “Silencers, Sniper Rifles and the CIA,” Probe, Nov.-Dec. 1995 (http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr1195-hewett.html); J. David Truby, Silencers, Snipers & Assassins: An Overview of Whispering Death (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1972), pp. 108-114. 3. Hinckle and Turner, p. 392. 4. Ibid., p. 400. 5. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993), p. 67. 6. Houston, p. 48; for the WerBell photos, see Truby, pp. 9, 11, 86, 106, 110, 120, and http://www.timelapse.dk/Welrod/dk/WerBell.htm. 7. Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, “Growth of Reagan’s Contra Commitment,” in The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1987); Hinckle and Turner, p. 301; on the Abaco scheme, see Hinckle and Turner, pp. 396-397. 8. Hougan, pp. 31-32; Hinckle and Turner, p. 301. 9. “Project Nassau,” Cuban Information Archives. http://cuban-exile.com/menu2/2pnassau.html. 10. “Project Nassau”; Hinckle and Turner, pp. 308-310. 11. “Ingram Mac 10,” AEF Campaign: Operation Phoenix, n.d.. http://www.aef-kampagne.de/english/ingramstory.htm; “Maruzen M11 Ingram,” Airsoft Dynamics, 2000-2003. http://www.airsoftdynamics.net/shop/ADSsto...alogno=MZGBBM11. In the early 1970s the rights to WerBell's and Ingram's weapons system were sold to the Military Armament Corporation (MAC), of which WerBell and his son Mitch IV became president and vice president respectively. When the company failed to meet sales projections, WerBell agreed to leave MAC in exchange for 7,000 of the silenced Ingram submachine guns (half the MAC inventory), which he was free to sell through his own new company, Defense Services, Inc. (Hougan, pp. 45-46). 12. Hinckle and Turner, pp. 397-400; Hougan, pp. 155-158, 187-201 13. Gayle Pollard, “5 Acquitted in Drug Conspiracy Case,” Miami Herald, 1976, reprinted on website of Law Offices of Edwin Marger L.L.C., http://www.edmarger.com/article_5acquitted...gConspiracy.htm, n.d. 14. Ibid. 15. “Lucien E. Conein,” Arlington National Cemetery Website, 2003. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/conein.htm. 16. Pollard. 17. “Conein”; Fonzi, Investigation, p. 71. 18. Pollard. 19. Allan Eaglesham and Martha Schallhorn, “Familiar Faces in Dealey Plaza,” JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly, October 2000, reprinted at http://www.memresearch.org/econ/faces/familiar_faces.htm. 20. A.J. Weberman, Coup D’etat in America Data Base, Nodule 21. http://www.ajweberman.com/nodules/nodule21.htm 21. Pollard. 22. Angelo Lonardo, Testimony before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Affairs, April 4, 1988. 23. House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), JFK Exhibit F-553, v. 5, pp. 394-395. 24. Lonardo. 25. Anthony Summers, Conspiracy (New York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 495; Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 172. 26. Scott, p. 171; Summers, p. 493. 27. Chauncey Holt, Transcript of Videotaped Interview by John Craig, Phillip Rogers, and Gary Shaw (JFK Murder Solved, http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/holt1.html) , October 19, 1991, transcribed by William E. Kelly, April, 1992. 28. HSCA, v. 5, pp. 392. 29. Rick Porrello, To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia (Cleveland: Next Hat Press, 2004). 30. Ibid. 31. Weberman. 32. Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason (Rancho Santa Fe, CA: Laurel Publishing, 1997), pp. 705-712; Richard Russell, “An Ex-CIA Man’s Stunning Revelations on ‘The Company,’ JFK’s Murder, and the Plot to Kill Richard Nixon,” Argosy Interview: Gerry Hemming, 1975. http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacover/bell...osy-hemming.htm. 33. Fonzi, Investigation, pp. 232-242; see also Twyman, pp. 700-702. 34. Fonzi, Investigation, p. 237; “Bernardo de Torres,” Spartacus Educational. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKtorres.htm. 35. Marshall et al. 36. Gaeton Fonzi, Video Interview by the Fort Lauderdale JFK Researcher Group, October 8, 1994. 37. Fonzi, Investigation, p. 67. 38. John Veit, with Robin Brown, “Quick Kill,” Glock World Magazine Online, 1993-2004, http://www.glockworld.com/quickkill.htm. 39. Fonzi, Interview. 40. Fonzi, Investigation, p. 72. 41. Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (Southlake, Texas: JFK Lancer Productions and Publications), pp. 290-292; Larry Hancock, JFK Research News, http://www.jfklancer.com/Dallas03.html. 42. Hancock, pp. 96-97; on Morales, see also Fonzi, pp. 380-390, and Twyman, pp. 451-454. 43. HSCA 5:502. 44. S.M. Holland, Voluntary Statement, Sheriff’s Department, November 22, 1963, and Warren Commission Testimony, April 8, 1964; A.J. Millican Statement, Decker Exhibit No. 5323, Warren Commission v. 19, p. 486; Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1989), pp. 28-29. On the HSCA number of shot statistics, see HSCA 5:502. 45. Hougan, pp. 35-36. 46. Hancock, pp. 273-274. 47. “Larry Flynt and JFK,” Steamshovel Press, n.d. http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/plword3.htm 48. Hinckley and Turner, p. 400, citing the New York Post, October 27, 1988. 49. Gerry Patrick Hemming, The Gerry Patrick Hemming Panel, November in Dallas Conference, November 1996. 50. Russell. 51. Twyman, p. 701.

I agree completely. They wanted to be there, and history has proven that there was no reason for them to stay away. They knew it was safe, and that's a pretty sad thing.

I recall reading that the bullets were fired from Lennon's left, but entered his right side, or vice versa. More magic bullets!

Jack, As you know, Harvey and Lee is a massive tome. (You proofread it three times? Cowabonga!) I haven't yet gotten past the Introduction. Here is what Armstrong says in the Introduction (pp. 2-3), with no footnotes or other source references with respect to this passage: "Chief Curry turned the physical evidence over to the FBI and it was immediately taken to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. FBI Agent James Cadigan told the Warren Commission about receiving the evidence (Oswald's personal possessions) on November 23rd . . . On November 26 the FBI secretly returned the physical evidence (Oswald's possessions) to the Dallas Police where it was 'officially' inventoried and photographed. When the Dallas Police received the evidence they were unaware that many of the items had been altered, fabricated, and/or destroyed. President Johnson soon announced the FBI was in charge of the investigation and, a short time later, Bureau agents arrived at Dallas Police headquarters. "As television cameras recorded the historic event FBI agents collected the evidence, loaded it into a car, and drove away. The public was unaware that the FBI had secretly returned the same 'evidence' to the Dallas Police earlier that morning." Per your suggestion that I check the index on this subject, I looked up "Cadigan," and found that Armstrong again discusses a secret return of evidence from Washington to Dallas on November 26: "On November 26 the 'hundreds of items' were returned to DPD headquarters so that an inventory could be created to show a 'chain of possession' from the DPD to the FBI" (p. 909). But again Armstrong cites no source for this. He cites only a source for the inventory that was created on November 26 and jointly initialed by FBI and DPD personnel (WC Exhibit 2003, pp. 263-288, Volume 24, pp. 332-344). It can be logically argued that if evidence was turned over to the FBI on November 23, and again on November 26, there must have been a return of evidence sometime in between, if we're talking about the same items of evidence. I don't know that we are (I haven't gone that deeply into this), nor am I saying there was no such secret return, since it may help explain things, specifically Cadigan's deleted reference to a rush to return things. I'm just saying (based admittedly only on my reading of the Introduction and a subsequent passage near the end of the book) that Armstrong states there was such a secret return without documenting how he knows this secret. Ron

The back brace he was wearing was like a corset and did not extend up his back. There is a photo of it somewhere in the WC volumes.

James W. Douglass has a webpage called "A Letter to the American People" about the assassinations of the 1960s. I think the section that deals with the RFK assassination is a very good summary of the problems involved in that case. Here's part of that section and the link: The famous coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi in the most thorough autopsy of his career came up with some troublesome findings in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. He concluded that Kennedy had been shot dead from behind by a gun held one inch from the edge of his right ear, three inches behind the head. All three bullets which struck Kennedy had entered from behind him at a steep upward angle, causing powder burns from shots fired one to three inches away. Yet every witness of the shooting placed Sirhan Sirhan several feet in front of Kennedy when firing his gun. The witnesses were equally clear that Kennedy never turned his back to Sirhan. Another question arose from the three bullet holes found in the pantry ceiling, the two bullets dug out of the center divider of the swinging doors, and the total of six people who had been shot --- in Kennedy's case three times. Sirhan's gun held eight bullets, and he had not re-loaded. These numbers didn't add up. Most disturbing of all was the testimony of Don Schulman, a runner for a TV station, that he had seen a security guard fire three times. The recently hired security guard walking just behind Kennedy, Thane Cesar, admitted pulling his gun but denied firing it. And so it goes, with the questions piling up in Los Angeles as in Dallas, Harlem, and Memphis. In some respects the cover-up by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) task force, called "Special Unit Senator" (SUS), outdoes them all. In his book The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination, Philip Melanson describes the systematic intimidation by SUS interrogators of a series of key witnesses who had been prepared to offer evidence of a conspiracy before they were broken down. The two LAPD officers who ran Special Unit Senator were Manuel Pena and Enrique "Hank" Hernandez. Both had extensive CIA backgrounds in training Latin American security forces. Until shortly before Senator Kennedy's assassination, Manuel Pena had been on loan from the LAPD to the CIA as an instructor for national police and intelligence services in Latin America. Special Unit Senator's second-in-command, Hank Hernandez, stated in his own resume that in l963 he had played a key role in the CIA's "Unified Police Command" training in Latin America. Pena and Hernandez coordinated an investigation which not only threatened and discredited conspiracy witnesses but by the department's own admission destroyed 2,400 photographs, negatives, and X-rays of assassination evidence before Sirhan's trial. Then Assistant Police Chief Daryl Gates defended the further destruction of the door frame wood and ceiling tiles which showed bullet holes on the grounds that they would not fit into a card file. Robert Kennedy was assassinated within seconds after moving decisively toward the presidency by winning the California Democratic primary. Kennedy was committed to ending the Vietnam War, which after his death would continue for seven more years under Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. He was also dedicated to abolishing poverty by a uniquely reconciling coalition of blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Native Americans. In the Spring of `68, Robert Kennedy was walking and talking a radical transformation of the USA, in harmony with the vision of the already gunned-down Martin Luther King. It is astonishing that such a man almost became president, unsurprising that he was assassinated the moment he became the key candidate. Not incidental is the fact that as president he would have had the power to re-open the national security lid of the can of worms around JFK's murder. Parallels between the JFK and RFK cover-ups are striking. The Warren Commission's inquiry was steered by Allen Dulles, the CIA head whom John Kennedy had fired after the Bay of Pigs. In the view of international observers, investigator Dulles played an unacknowledged dual role. He was also the chief suspect. Two CIA-affiliated police officers controlled the Los Angeles investigation of Senator Kennedy's murder. As in the Warren Commission, the fox was again in charge of solving the henhouse killing. http://home.earthlink.net/~jkelin1/letam.html

Tim, The meeting that Helms and McCone attended on the morning of 11/22/63 was with the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That sounds like a different type of meeting than the one Ruiz-Williams said he attended. On Beschloss, if you are saying that he is not a lone nutter, then I am pleasantly surprised. I have not read his books, but recall seeing him interviewed on TV, pretty much following the party line on the JFK assassination. I don't know of any "presidential historians" (by which I mean people like Dallek who are customarily presented as such on TV, who have written books about presidents, and teach courses about them, and who comprise prestigious panels on the History Channel) who are not lone nutters, or who are at least careful not to express any credence in conspiracy theories. If Beschloss is an exception, I wish he would do more to help out the cause, but I can understand why he wouldn't want to ruin his academic reputation. Ron

Tim, Good work. One minor point, and a question. Ruiz-Williams wasn't CIA, he was a Cuban exile leader who was seriously wounded and captured in the BOP invasion. What has gotten my attention about Ruiz-Williams is an interesting fib he told about where he was on 11/22/63. While it appears that he was in Washington that day, being interviewed by Haynes Johnson for his BOP book, Ruiz-Williams told Hinckle and Turner (authors of Deadly Secrets) that he was meeting that morning with Richard Helms, E. Howard Hunt, and several other CIA agents in a Washington CIA safe house. They were headed for a late lunch when they heard of the assassination. The reason I say this is a "fib" is that it contradicts the accounts of both principles whom Ruiz-Williams claims he was meeting with. Helms in his autobiography says he was in a meeting with CIA director McCone and others that morning, and was lunching with McCone when he got the news from Dallas. And if Hunt was meeting with Helms or any other CIA agents in Washington, why in the world did Hunt go through such contortions in the Liberty Lobby trial trying to construct an alibi regarding his whereabouts on 11/22? I suspect that Ruiz-Williams claimed he was meeting with Helms, Hunt, and other CIA agents simply for self-aggrandizement, though of course there could be other reasons. I was struck by your Beschloss quote, ""the most likely explanation for the cause of Kennedy's death lies in his policies." Like all "presidential historians," Beschloss is a lone nutter, is he not? What is the context of his statement? Does he think Oswald was more a strong critic of administration policies than a loser out to make a name for himself? (And why then, in Beschloss's view, I wonder, didn't Oswald state his policy differences to the press instead of "I'm just a patsy!"?) Ron

I didn't say that. If Wallace's fingerprint was there, it's because Wallace was there at the time of the assassination. If it's true that Wallace killed a man in cold blood and LBJ helped get him off with five years probation, and later LBJ used Wallace to kill the Ag Dept's Marshall, I would think there were FBI types and others who knew this, and could prove it, or else could make LBJ worry about them proving it, if Wallace were arrested in the aftermath of the JFK assassination.

I think this is a real possibility, the strongest evidence of it being the Mac Wallace fingerprint. (I believe it's Wallace's fingerprint because Darby says it is and because the FBI says it isn't.) There is no way that Johnson would have his own known thug Wallace there in the TSBD. But Wallace could have been put there to make Johnson subject to blackmail if he didn't toe the line in the cover-up. The same could have been done to the CIA. Suppose, for example, that two of the arrested "tramps" were Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt in disguise. That could have been pursued, if necessary, instead of dropped. With respect to the Mafia, consider the arrest of Jim Braden. Again, that could have been easily pursued to finger the Mafia, thus assuring Mafia cooperation, the Mob even going so far as to have Jack Ruby shoot Oswald. Having anti-Castro Cubans on the scene, including one conspicuously within spitting distance of JFK by the knoll, obviously made them potential patsies. Potentially having the goods on everybody could also explain why our lookalikes saw no need to stay away if they wanted to be there. Everybody and his brother were fair game as far as "who done it," but everybody could feel pretty safe as long as everyone cooperated. One might even say that it's surprising that more people weren't there!

In his book Harvey and Lee, John Armstrong claims that the evidence was secretly returned to Dallas on November 26, so that it could then be officially turned over to the FBI the same day, and taken again to Washington. I say "claimed" because Armstrong cites no source, he simply states this as fact. But such a secret return is one possible explanation for the alteration in Cadigan's testimony. Cadigan described a rush to get the evidence returned to Dallas. Perhaps that was a secret return that he therefore shouldn't have mentioned. Armstrong also states that in Cadigan's published WC testimony, "references to November 23 had been deleted." That is obviously not true, as Cadigan's published testimony makes clear that the evidence was turned over to the FBI on that specific date. All that was deleted was his reference to being in a rush to get the evidence returned to Dallas. As discussed in the link below, WC assistant counsel Leon D. Hubert complained in a memo about the practice of editing the transcripts of depositions, with the deletion in Cadigan's testimony being one example. I suspect it was the FBI, and not the WC, that was doing this editing, with folks like Hubert unable to do anything about it. http://jfkresearch.freehomepage.com/FBI_Sw...he_Evidence.htm Ron

Al, In using the word sloppy, I had in mind not so much the shot or shots that hit Connally, but at least one shot that missed the entire limousine and hit the street. Ron

This interesting article on Hoover's destruction of Hemingway also touches on the JFK assassination. (Seems that someone named Dr. Karla Sofen on McAdams's forum has been analyzing why conspiracy nuts think like they do.) I really don't see how anyone like Hoover could have been left out of a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, if it wasn't Hoover's idea to begin with. I guess I need Dr. Sofen to analyze me. http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/nov/20/20112004ft.htm

There is a story that LBJ tried to get JFK to let Connally and Yarborough switch places in the motorcade, ostensibly because LBJ did not want to ride with his political enemy Yarborough, but JFK refused to allow this switch, as it was against protocol. In Death of a President (p. 82), Manchester relates that LBJ and JFK had a loud argument in their last meeting together, the night of Nov. 21. According to Manchester, only LBJ and JFK knew what the argument was about, except that it was apparently about "the state's political feud," and Yarborough's name was heard several times by people outside the room. This may be the origin of the story about LBJ wanting Connally and Yarborough to switch places, but if so, the story makes an assumption, as Manchester at least professes not to know specifically what the argument was about.

I would like to see a statistician consider the question. There would seem to be enough data to consider the odds, though I know nothing about statistics. Looking at Altgens 3 (The Killing of a President, pp. 12-13), from the James Arthur Lewis lookalike on the lamppost on the left, to the Lucien Conein lookalike on the right, both inclusive, there are 18 people. (This includes the grinning Latino, partially cropped out in Groden, standing below and in front of the Lewis lookalike.) If we consider only the 4 strongest lookalikes (Pakse Man on the lamppost, later photographed at Morales's Pakse Base in Laos; Rip Robertson; Gerry Patrick Hemming; and Conein), 4 out of 18 people is 22 percent. What are the odds that out of 18 people who happen to be standing on a corner for a parade, 4 of them, or 22 percent, would look like men who worked as employees or contractors for the same intelligence agency, but actually are not those men? If we add the Lewis lookalike, or else the McCord/Barnes lookalike, that's 5 men, or 28 percent of the 18 parade watchers. If we add both of those lookalikes, that's 6 or 33 percent. I would think that the odds against just 2 (11 percent) or 3 (17%) of these men not being who they look like (operatives all connected in some way to the same agency), out of 18 people on the street, would be very high. Now somebody on the Education Forum ought to know a statistician. Ron

Gerry Patrick Hemming has stated (at the 1996 November in Dallas conference) that Goodell was among those, including Hemming himself, who "should have been arrested in the immediate aftermath of the assassination." When these arrests did not occur, Hemming said, they knew there was a cover-up. Is there anything at all about Goodell that would make him a suspect? It seems odd that if Goodell was a conspirator, he would be calling for a joint Senate-House investigation of the crime.

I thought JFK had a good idea about what to do with the CIA, if he actually did say he wanted to "scatter it to the winds." But I'm sure that if we got rid of the CIA, we'd have a hard time getting by with only 14 other intelligence agencies.

1. The large exit wound in the right rear of JFK’s head, as seen by witnesses at both Parkland and Bethesda, clear evidence of a frontal shot. 2. At least one shot heard, with accompanying smoke seen, from the grassy knoll. 3. Lee Harvey Oswald (take your pick of reasons here, e.g. could not have pulled off the shooting feat ascribed to him, could not have gotten to where Baker found him on the second floor in time, denied killing Kennedy though he presumably did it to be somebody, had obvious U.S. intelligence connections through the nature of his defection to Russia and return, etc.) . 4. A sham autopsy (inexperienced prosectors assigned to the duty, two brains used per the ARRB’s Doug Horne, faked photos, evidence of pre-autopsy body alteration). 5. The Warren Commission whitewash; there should have been nothing to hide, omit, or ignore if Oswald did it as claimed.

Al, Aren't you describing a military covert operation? I have no doubt that a hit planned and carried out by the military would go down exactly as you say. But there is plenty of evidence that this was not a military operation in Dallas. The military's direct role in all this could be basically confined to cleaning up afterwards with a sham autopsy back in Washington. There is evidence that the ambush in Dallas may have been carried out by anti-Castro Cuban exiles, managed by CIA operatives, and there was some sloppy shooting involved. There is also photographic evidence that some operatives connected to the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans were there to see it, if they weren't directly involved, from a street corner, as ill advised as it may seem. They wanted to be there and have suffered no consequences for it, nor did they expect any, because they knew the government would protect them and they had nothing to fear. There is little doubt in my mind that the black man seen with a rifle in a TSBD window was a Cuban shooter (probably Herminio Diaz Garcia), not a sniper from any branch of the military. There is little doubt in my mind that the black man on the sidewalk who held up a fist or hand as the limo went by was a Cuban and not a military man, and if not simply a signaler may have been a potential walk-up shooter. It made sense to use Cubans in this killing if the intent was to blame Cubans (that is, Castro) for it, for an invasion of Cuba. Any Cuban shooter, if killed or captured (and eliminated a la Oswald) was a potential patsy who could be tied to Castro as a double agent or whatever. In sum, I think the shooting differed from a military operation such as you describe because it was not a military operation. It was carried out by some fearless Cubans and arrogant rogue federal agents who took all the risks, with the military and powers that be having to step in and cover up in a rather haphazard fashion when Oswald got taken alive and a lone nut scenario was put into effect. Ron