Ron Ecker

This is not a theory but a fact. Mary Moorman was hot.

David, Thanks, I didn't remember any side openings. Never mind!

The pavilion was enclosed except for the front entrance, right? It seems odd to me that any shooter would choose a position in which he was trapped, i.e. no way out except out the front in clear view of anyone looking. If I was a shooter, I would want my exit open behind me. But maybe I'm just claustrophobic.

Maybe this is prelude to some government disclosure? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-flying-object-navy.html

I believe that Jim Tague may have encountered a south knoll shooter. Either a cop or someone dressed as one. He said that a patrolman appeared where he was standing on Main Street and asked him what happened. For some reason he later changed his story.

Yesterday Jake Tapper on CNN interviewed James Clapper, who lied under oath to Congress with impunity, about Michael Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI. What did Clapper say about Flynn's lying? He said it's too bad for Flynn, but "the rule of law does prevail in this country."How shameless can you get? Both of them. Tapper for having Clapper on, of all people, to talk about someone lying, and Clapper for basically saying Flynn is getting his just desserts for it.I wanted to puke.

I went back and reviewed what I have on the Floyd trial. According to Torbitt, one of the conspirators in the Floyd murder told Bill Allcorn, a government attorney who helped work on the case, about the 25 to 30 assassins kept in Mexico, with the contact man being John Howard Bowen, reachable through the owner of the St. Anthony Hotel in Laredo. If that's true, apparently any info on Osborne and the assassins would be in Allcorn's private files, not in the trial transcript. But then how would Torbitt know what some conspirator told Allcorn off the record?

Shouldn't there be a court transcript of the Floyd murder trial, to show if there was any such testimony about Osborne and his alleged school of assassins? As for Division 5, which I've heard about before, is there or has there ever been any such division in the FBI? A quick Google search found nothing about it except one crackpot website.

John, Yes, I'm aware of the Torbitt Document. I was referring to the source of the notion that Osborne was connected to the ACCC. Roberts is the one source I know of. Torbitt may have been Penn Jones's source on Osborne's assassins in Mexico. Torbitt predates Jones's book by four years.

Unfortunately Jones didn't put a lot of stock in citing sources.

Paul, One of Brussell's sources on Osborne may have been Penn Jones, who wrote in Forgive My Grief IV (1974) that Osborne was "House Mother" to a group of American assassins in Mexico.

Paul, The only source that I know of is Craig Roberts. In his book Kill Zone, in which he says that Osborne reportedly ran a facility in Oaxaca for 25-30 professional assassins Roberts states that Osborne "posed as a missionary with the American Council of Churches" (sic). But Osborne was ostensibly a Baptist minister, his missionary work as such seems to have been associated with Baptist Churches, and no FBI report on Osborne that I'm aware of mentions the ACCC, with which the Southern Baptist Convention was not affiliated. (BTW Roberts also cites Bo Gritz's statement that Osborne is thought to be the older of the three tramps marched through Dealey Plaza. In his book Gritz neglected to say who thinks that.)

Yes, thanks Tom, that's the current location of the article. However, I don't know how much longer that website will remain online. If anyone knows where the Osborne article and a few others of mine (e.g. The Tokyo Flight and Jack Ruby's Dog) might find a permanent home, please let me know. I had a free website at one time, but I placed my JFK articles on it and the account was summarily canceled. (I think what they really objected to was Greetings from Lee Harvey Oswald.)

I was referring to Rabin being in Dallas, not to the Peres brother.

I've got that and shelves of other JFK books that I'm willing to sell at a reasonable price plus postage. All in good shape, though I did some yellow marking in most of them.

And lest we forget, Yitzhak Rabin was in Dallas on 11/22/63 (on his way home to Israel via NYC, I believe, after a U.S. tour). But coincidences, of course, never cease.

Woody Harrelson plays LBJ?

He was ordered to leave Mexico in 1958 as an undesirable alien after selling a car in Oaxaca without paying the import duties. (CE 2121, p. 576, and 2195, p. 34,)

He visited his hometown of Grimsby that November, but we don't know where he was on the 22nd. (Grimsby is not near Cambridge.)

A good example of such ignorance on the TV news networks is Turker Carlson the other night, oohing and ahhing with some guest over a newly released document (the same one released in 1976?) about the anonymous Cambridge, England phone call made minutes before the assassination. We've only known about that phone call for 41 years.

Talbot's list doesn't include, nor have I seen anyone else mention, the Joannides files. Is it taken for granted that the CIA is not going to release those files no matter what any president or court of law says?

I assume that's about the anonymous call made in Cambridge, England.

Paz, I have found the Argosy interview reference to Espaillat online. For some reason Russell deleted it from the reprint in his book. Here is the pertinent passage and link: ARGOSY: This connection between people in government and Cuban exiles or other Latin American operatives is amazing. Can you think of anything else along those lines? HEMMING: The Trujillo thing in the Dominican Republic, back in '61 and before that. There was an American, an ex-Marine, who worked for Arturo Espaillat, Trujillo's chief of intelligence. He got involved in some of the Trujillo operations-the Galindez kidnapping, an attempted assassination of [Romulo] Betancourt of Venezuela, and some antiCastro and anti-Haiti things. All through this, Trujillo was kicking some money in the right direction-to Congressman Cooley, Senator [George] Smathers, and some others. A whole gang of congressmen got real friendly with those people. And this American ex-Marine was the bagman; he could get entree to those people. He did all the English publications that Trujillo sent up to congressmen and wrote pro-Trujillo articles for the Indianapolis Star, which Trujillo also kicked money into. But he knew it was only a matter of time before Trujillo's end. [The CIA helped ensure Trujillo's assassination in 1961.] Espaillat knew the whole scheme, and suggested to his American aide that it looked like Washington was gonna "go all the way," so why not just watch what happened? Esp;iillat tried to take over after the hit went down. He died in an accident in Lisbon a few years ago. His American friend went to work for a private CIA operation in Baltimore called International Services of Information. http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/argosy-hemming.htm And I have found the info on the 1996 Dallas Conference, by Googling "Hemming Arturo Espaillat." The source on Hemming at the conference was Charles Drago. In November 2007, Steve Thomas wrote the following on the alt.conspiracy.jfk forum (oddly he quotes me as citing the source - good for me - unlike my post that we found earlier): From Ron Ecker in the Education Forum 12/06/04: Could there have been a Canadian connection to the French/OAS plots? Gerry Patrick Hemming was at the 1996 Dallas in November conference. In his summary of what Hemming had to say while in Dallas, Charles Drago wrote, "In Montreal, Arturo Espaillat gathered funds from Canada and Europe and sent them to Dallas in order to fund a French team" ("Hemming Does Dallas," Kennedy Assn Chronicles, Winter 1996-97, p. 47). In his HSCA deposition, Hemming said, "I had been in touch in Ottawa with Arturo Espaillat, who at one time had been part of the triumvirate that took over when Trujillo was assassinated. One of my people, (Ed) Kolby, had been in Canada with Espaillat . . . Kolby had disappeared, let us say, from the Miami scene and busied himself up in New York and Canada . . . And, now, I had gotten the information that Espaillat and this American had traveled to Dallas and were in Dallas that week (of the assassination). Now, this perturbed me considerably that behind my back everybody I knew was going to meet the Texans" (p. 171-172). (What Hemming was supposedly perturbed about was that all these people - he named Cuesta, Hall, Sturgis, Vidal, Espaillat, and Aguilar - were going to Dallas to "burn" his financial contacts, "the Texans" such as Lester Logue; but he also said he tried to find Vidal in Miami on 11/21 to warn him "to stay the hell out of Dallas while the president was there") (p. 167). Hemming identified "the American" who traveled with Espaillat from Canada to Dallas as Robert Johnson, who Hemming believed (according to Noel Twyman) was "Raoul" in the MLK assassination (Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked, p. 277). Hemming told Dick Russell in a 1975 Argosy interview, "There was an American, an ex-Marine, who worked for Arturo Espaillat, Trujillo's chief of intelligence . . . Espaillat tried to take over after the (Trujillo) hit went down. He died in an accident in Lisbon a few years ago. His American friend (Johnson) went to work for a private CIA operation in Baltimore called International Services of Information." https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.conspiracy.jfk/zSCF6wtuLLs

Paz, Thanks for finding my old post. Although I wish that you hadn't. To answer your earlier question, no I was not at the 1996 Dallas Conference. So I assume the source for my statement was someone's coverage of the conference, but I don't know whose. I'm also puzzled by my own reference to a 1975 Argosy interview. There is an Argosy interview of Hemming reprinted in Russell's book On the Trail of JFK Assassins, but it's dated 1976, and I see no mention in it of Espaillat. Were there two Argosy interviews, one in 1975? I'm sorry to say I don't know. All I can say is I did some lousy posting 12 years ago.

Paul, I was not aware of your private message till now, so I'll reply to it here. I don't recall posting on the subject and don't know what the source would have been. I did a forum search on Arturo Espaillat, and found several old posts referring to him, including by Hemming, but nothing by me. I also checked Twyman's Bloody Treason, since Twyman interviewed Hemming extensively, but nothing there on Espaillat.