Benjamin Cole

1 hour ago, Michaleen Kilroy said:

I’m always amazed that DPD brought LHO out to talk to media, and the DA allowed it.

The DPD claimed they wanted to show their prisoner was not being mistreated. It was also a sure way to endanger his life.

But what a powder keg situation that was. What if LHO, either deranged or telling the truth, yelled that he was a paid Russian assassin - that could’ve immediately led to WWIII. Who in America could’ve stopped it?

He also could’ve said he was the proverbial spy left out in the cold by his own govt. Or that others were involved still at large. Or he could’ve yelled Viva Castro!

But he didn’t say any of these things. He stayed with his innocence. Despite a tremendously dangerous idea to bring him out for a frickin’ press conference, he doesn’t say anything but restate his innocence and ask for legal representation. And he looks pissed when a reporter tells him he HAS been charged for the assassination.

As always with this case, the closer you look, the weirder it gets.

Kilroy (was here):

I like to say there isn't single straight line in the entire JFKA.  I am working on a story regarding Connally's clothing from that day. A pulp fiction novel is more believable. By far. 

4 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

Yes, let's think about that for moment; would Oswald's adventures in New Orleans and the alleged Walker incident been enough to place the entire blame for the assassination on him? Not likely. For him to be completely believable as the assassin you've got to tie him to the event better than that. That means getting his rifle into the building, that means not allowing him to wander outside onto the street to watch the motorcade, which would give him an alibi. He had to have some specific role. So that means he had to have at least some cognizance that something was going to happen. Yet not something that he anticipated needing his pistol for. Somewhere between those two situations lies the truth of what happened.

I largely concur with you. You cannot make LHO the patsy (at least immediately) if he is on the sidewalk waving at the President.

True, the rifle alone might lead to him being considered a suspect and a co-conspirator.  But then the government is left with finding the other conspirators.  LHO's mysterious wallets and mail order guns add to the clues.

Larry Hancock, based upon real and circumspect research,  posits the real shooters did not care if it became known there were multiple shooters or not. They just wanted to kill JFK and escape. Which they did.  Which leaves LHO as something of a fifth wheel. 

Unfortunately, the CIA guy in charge of assassinations, Bill Harvey, conducted paperless meetings with oblique language, and even created fake paper trails.  So reading through documents is likely a dead end. 

At his late date, we end up in a cul-de-sac , with only speculation as to the actual perps....

6 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

The fact that Oswald had to make a brief stop at his home to pick up a pistol is strong evidence that things were happening contrary to what he expected; it would have been trivially simple for him to have arranged in advance to have a handgun ready that day, yet he didn't.

I think I agree. 

So...if LHO was just doing his job and was totally uninvolved with the JFKA...then why go home and get his pistol? 

And if LHO knew nothing about the JFKA...why did Ruby gun him down? 

It sure looks like LHO was involved...probably as a patsy, but perhaps as part of multiple shooters at JFK. Somebody was shooting at JFK from the TSBD. 

49 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

In line with the topic of this thread and to encourage stepping outside of boxes, consider the following for a moment.  I'll be blogging about this in a bit more detail so those who follow that will see it again.

One of the world views we often use is that virtually nothing collected by the WC is trustworthy, not just the evidence but virtually everything.  We also point out the fact that they took a virtual pass on motive or proving that he was violent enough to jump from radio interviews to murder in one fell swoop.  That's especially interesting considering you can use what they collected to paint a picture of an increasingly radicalized Oswald - radicalization occurring over a fairly short period.  Of course one problem in doing that might have exposed the possibility that Oswald was not himself becoming radicalized, but that someone or something was behind the creation of that image and that it might have been cultivated for purposes that neither the FBI nor the CIA would want explored (and no, not presidential assassination).

So step outside the box and think a bit of what it implies if the following were true,  beginning with the manuscript Oswald himself produced shortly after his return from Russia - in which he blasts the Soviet Union, and calls out its manipulation of communist parties including the Communist Party USA as being foreign tools of Russia and worthy only of disgust. And note that this occurs in the same general time frame he has assured the FBI that he is loyal and will certainly report anyone contacting him who appears to be suspicious or intending to use him in any way.

So what follows - he approaches and begins protesting for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee before leaving Dallas,  he orders a rifle and pistol (or somebody orders it for him),  he poses with said rifle and piston and with newspapers which could only be construed as subversive or radical - especially when displayed with weapons. 

Then comes the Walker shooting, a note to provide for Marina if he is killed or captured in the act - pretty radical.   Enough so that even if he doesn't do it his friend George gets the message - "Hunter of Fascists". 

That all feels pretty radical and then what comes next - on to New Orleans and a false flag approach to the DRE - which they are too skeptical to fall for but which certainly paints him as an activist.  Media coverage, interviews, and a large scale propaganda push follows (we have documents showing the CIA was routinely trying to control and direct DRE propaganda and complaining they were out of control in propaganda work - but strangely no complaints about the Oswald propaganda in the summer of 1963.....then again we can't see the files that might contain that, them still being withheld and all).

And next letters to the SWP and CPUSA including asking CPUSA (who he detested only months before) if he should go "underground".  

Then someone shows up in Mexico City and reportedly even carries CPUSA membership credentials - Oswald seems to have gotten seriously subversive and seriously  radical. 

So...what if all those elements were true and not fictional, made up after the fact.  Step into that box and revisit the Walker shooting, the photos, the letter and ask yourself,  is this Oswald really becoming a radical,  or is it all a process for building his value for intelligence purposes, either collections or propaganda?  And if you pick one, think about what was supposed to happen next if it wasn't just Oswald becoming a radical - and why the WC didn't go full bore with painting the above picture for the public?

"So...what if all those elements were true and not fictional, made up after the fact.  Step into that box and revisit the Walker shooting, the photos, the letter and ask yourself,  is this Oswald really becoming a radical,  or is it all a process for building his value for intelligence purposes, either collections or propaganda?  And if you pick one, think about what was supposed to happen next if it wasn't just Oswald becoming a radical - and why the WC didn't go full bore with painting the above picture for the public?"--LH

Can you re-phrase the question?  My take is there was a biography build on LHO.  He himself was conflicted or just cynical, or even just youthful and academically uneducated (though certainly smart enough). Maybe willing to change views for a new paymaster. In a troubled marriage. 

21 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Benjamin,

That surely wasn't LHO's wallet. I mean, how many wallets does a man carry? And besides, even if that were LHO shooting Tippit, what are the odds  he would accidentally drop his wallet at that particular unfortunate moment?

 

 

Is there any compelling reason to believe that LHO had anything whatsoever to do with the Walker shooting? (Exclusive of anything Marina said about it, considering how unreliable her testimony was.)

 

 

If the JFKA were a CIA operation, which I believe it was, then it is highly unlikely that LHO knew anything about the assassination plot beforehand. For the simple reason that he didn't have the "need to know." But given the police car giving a honk at his apartment and his activities at the  theater, it does appear that he was tricked by the CIA into playing a part.

 

 

Sure there were beans to spill. Oswald was knocked off so he wouldn't reveal that his employer, the CIA, had set him up as patsy for their heinous crime.

 

Sandy L-

Thanks for your comments.

1. The wallet. Oh, I agree, that wallet was planted at the Tippit murder scene. There is the video, and the FBI agent commentary. The evidence inside the wallet is too pat for a comic book, let alone a pulp detective novel. And then to be left at the scene?  So who planted the wallet? If a small CIA-assassin-squad came from Miami to Dallas and LHO was not in the loop...the assassination squad came to Dallas prepared with a fake wallet? Maybe so....seems like a stretch. 

2.  https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27058-general-edwin-walker-lee-harvey-oswald-the-bad-shot-and-the-dog-that-didn’t-bark /

The above is my take on the Walker shooting. I contend the Walker shot was obviously an intentional miss, and a biography builder. Most likely LHO had a ride. I have no proof, but hear me out. 

3. OK, if LHO knew nothing at all about the JFKA on Nov. 22, totally clueless and just working his day job packing boxes (although LHO was likely a military-COA intel aset in Russia, New Orleans and elsewhere)...why did he leave the TBSD and take a taxi, go home and get his gun? Why did LHO not assume some punks or right-wing kooks, mobsters, etc., had taken a potshot at JFK, and it did not concern him? Sheesh, he could have walked home from the TBSD if he just wanted to leave work (less than two miles, and LHO was 24, and the day was not hot).  

4.  If LHO knew nothing at all about the JFKA, what beans could he spill? LHO might be able to convince someone somewhere he had in the past been a military-intel asset, or informant, although no records of that. Then what?  LHO, with able counsel, might have been able to avoid a guilty verdict. But so what? He had no beans to spill (if totally uninvolved), except that he had been a government informant, but can't prove it?  

No, the reason LHO had to be killed and quickly...logically...was that he knew a lot about what happened on Nov. 22. That implies participation. I posit unwitting participation, but enough participation he had to be eliminated. 

Larry Hancock may soon flesh out this troubling question, of LHO's role in the JFKA. 

This is my take:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27073-towards-a-simple-plausible-yet-explanatory-conspiracy-theory/

That's my story and I am sticking with it. 

10 hours ago, Karl Hilliard said:

The government theory that Oswald did it and did it all alone is a cover-up and that is no theory.

I agree. 

13 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Just as an exercise in terminology I think it might be worthwhile to describe what I have and haven't done since I became involved with this subject - the first thing being to take Jim Marr's advice, to wit,  by now we know there was more than one shooter firing a bolt action rifle in something like six seconds.  Which means multiple shooters, which means a conspiracy.  Over, done - move on.

Following that advice I moved on to examine all the potential "villains" that Jim surfaced in Crossfire - plus a few combinations and iterations that he didn't delve into in that book.  After about a decade doing that, working within several "boxes" and stepping out of them to the extent of tossing a couple of draft manuscript scenarios I finished Someone Would Have Talked which examined that "premise".  It was primarily intended for researchers and simply put a lot of people and events into context. Beyond that it examined in some detail the indications that LBJ might have had some limited foreknowledge, and how that might have happened.

Following the release of a host of ARRB documents - and the excellent work of its staff including not only Doug Horne but others - I came back with the 2010 version of SWHT which expanded on some areas but most importantly dug deeply into the hours and weeks following the attack itself, examining what might be best described as a "cover up" as it pertained to the FBI, the CIA and to some extent the DPD (in terms of covering up things they did not want exposed such as knowledge of and connections to Lee Oswald), damage control as it related to Johnson and his national security advisors (which meant aborting conspiracy investigations and selling a single, lone nut image of the attack) and finally historical manipulation as related to the Warren Commission. 

....and yes that's why its a big book

Acting on the premise that everything I had seen pointed to at least some involvement by CIA officers and surrogates I then asked myself how the CIA handled political assassination in the real world (we have considerable examples and actual data on that)  I put that research into NEXUS along with an actual scenario as to how a presidential assassination could have developed inside the Agency.

.....NEXUS is a very focused and much smaller book

Ultimately,  after having access to a lot more research and document data developed by folks like Bill Simpich, David Boylan, Stu Wexler - all of which gave me a much greater ability to examine and test sources I had become familiar with over the years (and having done the Wheaton Leads extensively detailed research) as well as having developed some new and relevant names,  I decided to once again try to be focused and to tell the "story" (or lay out the "scenario" if you prefer) specifically as to the motive, evolution, timing, logistics and details of the attack in Dallas. That resulted in Tipping Point.

To be clear, Tipping Point is not a theory, it is a scenario based in the sources I found to be credible and consistent over almost three decades of work.  It does not encompass nearly all the aspects of the assassination nor explore many of the areas which SWHT does.

.......which is why Tipping Point is a shorter paper/book

At present I'm working with David and getting some advise from Gary Murr in regard to a final research paper on the Red Bird leads - which may offer some confirmation of elements in Tipping Point as well as an expanded scenario as to how Lee Oswald was being manipulated and more specifically set up to look like a radical revolutionary and positioned as to link the assassination to Castro and Cuba.

That's it,  I don't consider that I'm presenting a "theory", what I'm doing is trying to provide solid historical context, identify credible sources, and lay out a scenario that people can evaluate for themselves (and which satisfied me). 

......just to be clear, and certainly not mysterious or sinister 😇

I am eagerly awaiting Red Bird. The connection between LHO and the Miami hit squad needs the sort of reasonable, informed, circumspect, grounded explanation that a Larry Hancock can deliver. 

It sure seems LHO was involved in the JFKA, but at what level? We will just have to wait and see what Red Bird says. 

1. But what about that wallet at the Tippit crime scene? 

2. My contention is that the Walker shooting was a test of LHO, and an intentional miss, and a biography builder. Meaning someone was directing LHO with an intention to later involve LHO in....?  Was it happenstance that somebody in the CIA had plans for LHO, while the CIA-Miami hit squad were doping out their plans? 

3.  It sure looks like either LHO was guilty, or deduced he was the patsy within moments of the shooting. Going home to get his gun, even by taxi. Does this suggest LHO was deeply involved in the JFKA?

4. LHO knew enough that somebody wanted him dead. That suggests involvement in the JFKA too. If LHO was just working his day job, knew nothing Nov. 22, then why murder him? There were no beans for LHO to spill. 

And to re-affirm, I do not suspect Larry Hancock is a powerful and sinister force in America. 

16 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

[BE SURE TO READ THE SECOND TO THE LAST PARAGRAPH THAT RELATES TO OSWALD]

 

HISTORY CORNER: SNIPERS: THE MOST FEARED WARRIORS

“One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place.” — Malcolm McDowell

During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese had a $30,000 bounty on the head of U.S. Marine Corps sniper Gunnery Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock. Usually, they only offered from $8 to $2,000 for killing an American sniper.

Hathcock was special. He was a legend in the jungle — for both sides, and the communists had to take him out. They couldn’t.

Here’s how he worked:

Hathcock volunteered for a dangerous mission before he even knew what it was.Camouflaged with local vegetation, he crawled inch-by-inch across a grass-covered meadow into the enemy camp to kill a North Vietnamese Army general.

It took him four days and three nights to get there. The days were tropical hot and humid. There were always insects. And there was no time to sleep.

While creeping through the tall grass, he was almost bitten by a bamboo viper — a nasty little green snake with an extremely painful bite. A wound would feel “as if it had been branded with a hot iron, and the pain does not subside until about 24 hours after being bitten (and) within minutes…the surrounding flesh dies and turns black.”

While watching the serpent, Hathcock didn’t move a muscle — not wishing to give away his position. The snake slithered away and the Marine kept crawling.

Just after sunset, as he lay motionless and camouflaged in the foliage, an enemy soldier almost stepped on him. He was about 700 yards away when the general emerged from his quarters onto the porch and took a stretch.

“I thought to myself, ‘This'll be good…really good,’” he said.

Carefully lining up his target in the crosshairs of his scope, Hathcock slowly squeezed the trigger. The shot hit the general square in the chest.

Mission accomplished!

Hathcock would boldly challenge the enemy snipers looking for him by wearing a white feather in his hat band. They called him “Trắng Lông,” meaning “White Feather Sniper.”

Hathcock’s fellow Marines protected him by also wearing a white feather — and risking their own lives, while confusing the enemy counter-snipers searching for him.

One report said that he killed every known Vietnamese marksman who tried to collect the bounty.

On another mission, Hathcock and his spotter, John Roland Burke, were stalking an enemy sniper in the jungle southwest of Da Nang. A commie sniper they called “The Cobra," had already killed several Marines and was believed to be looking for Hathcock. Hathcock saw him first. Seeing a glint in the sunlight of the enemy’s scope, Hathcock took aim and fired. The bullet went right through the scope and hit him in the eye — killing him instantly.

Hathcock brought the dead sniper’s gun back to camp as a trophy — but somebody stole it.

By the time he was sent back to the U.S. in 1969 having suffered severe burns while rescuing seven Marines from a burning vehicle, he’d killed 93 enemy combatants — maybe hundreds more that couldn’t be confirmed under military protocols.

While serving as a combat commander in Vietnam, retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel and Annapolis graduate Kenny Moore of Hayden was part of a staff conference that included talking about the best firing techniques.

Hathcock said, “Breathe in…breath out…relax… then squeeze.”

“That’d be easy for him,” Moore said. “He had a heartbeat of only 41.”

It takes incredible training and mental toughness to become a military sniper.

Shooters and spotters are trained to work as a team, with the objective of hitting the enemy target with one shot. Before they take that shot however, there are a lot of variables that must be factored in — such as type of gun and ammunition used, distance to target, point of impact, bullet trajectory, wind conditions, humidity, elevation and even the Coriolis Force caused by the Earth’s rotation, and other factors.

Some of this is calculated by electronic and optical equipment — the rest by the sniper and spotter. Handheld computers with ballistic-prediction software help contribute to the accuracy. All of this has to be calculated quickly: adjusting the rifle for the conditions and shooting before anything changes, or the target moves.

Snipers and spotters go through rigorous physical and academic training to do all this.

They are elite warriors of the Modern Age.

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Adelbert “Bert” Waldron of Virginia was another one of them.

He served in Vietnam as a sniper with the 9th Infantry Division, and during his eight-month tour of duty had 109 confirmed kills — the most by any American sniper during the Vietnam War.

His job in Nam was to ride shotgun on a U.S. Navy Tango “brown-water” boat in the highly dangerous Mekong Delta, infested with communist Viet Cong guerillas.

“Allied troops would launch countless search and destroy operations throughout South Vietnam in an effort to break the insurgency,” said a report in Military History Bunker, “but the VC would simply melt away into the jungles and villages…

“The VC utilized classic guerrilla tactics of ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, booby traps, bombings, and snipers to gradually inflict losses on Allied troops.

“While the Americans and their allies roamed openly in the daylight, the VC and North Vietnamese Army owned the night.”

But one night as his boat was moving along the river, Waldron shot and killed an enemy sniper in a tree 900 yards away. He was good at shooting at night. On another night, his recon patrol ran into about 40 armed Viet Cong, and a battle broke out.

Ignoring the danger, he left the patrol to take a sniper position. With his night vision scope, he could see the VC moving in the dark. He killed and wounded so many of them that they disappeared into the jungle. That earned him a Bronze Star with a “V” for Valor.

Three nights later, he was camouflaged in a sniper location when he spotted a large group of Viet Cong. Stealthily moving from one position to the next through the rice paddies, he killed 11 of them — making them think they were being attacked by multiple shooters.

He held them off for three hours before he pulled out. His actions won him the Silver Star — the military’s third highest decoration.

Bert Waldron died in obscurity in California in 1995 at age 62.

The most amazing long-range sniper shot in history took place from a tower in Baghdad in 2017.

Using a McMillan TAC-50 rifle, a Canadian sniper (unnamed for security reasons) from Joint Task Force 2 fired a shot that killed an Islamic State (IS) insurgent attacking Iraqi forces 3,871 yards away — almost 39 football fields. Video cameras and other information verified the kill.

During the Civil War, an unidentified Confederate soldier in Fort Sumter saw a Union soldier moving around 1,390 yards away at Battery Greg and took a shot at him. Probably using a Whitworth rifle, he hit the target — killing him.

Whether the shooter was a trained sniper, a good marksman, or just plain lucky is not recorded. But the deadliest American sniper in history was U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle from Odessa, Texas, with 160 confirmed kills in the Iraqi War. “I don’t have to psyche myself up, or do something special mentally,” he wrote in his autobiography.

“I look through the scope, get my target in the cross hairs, and kill my enemy before he kills one of my people.”

His autobiography “American Sniper” was a bestselling book, that became a hit movie starring Bradly Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood, that received six Oscar nominations — including Best Picture.

Sadly, Kyle’s life ended tragically in 2013 at age 38 at a firing range outside Fort Worth when he and his buddy Chad Littlefield were shot and killed by a deranged ex-Marine named Eddie Ray Routh.

They’d taken Routh with them to the range to try and help him overcome personal issues and deal with his PTSD — at his mother’s request. He’d been drinking and smoking pot the previous night.

Routh, was found guilty of murder and is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison, without possibility of parole.

The nation owes a lot to our Special Forces snipers who are among the military’s most elite warriors — selflessly helping to keep America great.

Bless them all. Why a sniper has a tough job…

“Sniping is weaponized math. Although a .50 caliber sniper rifle bullet can fly as far as five miles, a host of factors…act upon the bullet as it travels. Even worse, these effects increase the farther the bullet travels. A successful sniper team operating at extreme distances must do its best to predict exactly how these factors will affect the bullet and calculate how to get the bullet back onto target.”

Where the name 'Sniper' came from…

The word appears to have originated in India in the mid-1700s, coined by the British Military when the troops were hunting the Snipe bird, which was fast and hard to shoot. Marksmen who were able to shoot the bird in flight were called “Snipers.”

U.S. Marine Corps…

"The Marine Corps has the best sniper program in the world," according to Gunnery Sergeant Richard Tisdale, staff noncommissioned officer in charge of the Scout Sniper School, with camps in California, North Carolina and Virginia. But the Army, Navy and Air Force also have snipers and might make the same claim.

What gun did Bert Waldron use in Nam?

For the gun techies: Waldron used the National Match quality M-21 with a Leatherwood 3-9X Adjustable Range Telescope (ART) graduated to 600 yards, with standard leather M1907 sling. Rock Island Arsenal converted some 1,435 of them for Vietnam in 1969, becoming the primary Army sniper rifle until 1988. The M21 was accurate to about 900 yards, firing M118 standard NATO 7.62mm rounds, using an early AN/PVS-2 Starlight night vision scope and suppressor.

Hathcock and the JFK assassination…

During the Warren Commission investigation following the assassination of President Kennedy, a mockup of the site was built at the Marine Corps sniper school at Quantico, Va., to recreate what happened. Even with the best sniper rifle, ace Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock could not duplicate assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s fatal shot — made with a defective rifle. That finding was not included in the final Warren Report.

The book, The Giant Killer honors and highlights unique war heroes and is available on Amazon as a Paperback, Audiobook, and eBook.

Story By SYD ALBRIGHT

 

What an entirely depressing article. 

19 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

Benjamin, interesting post.  Jefferson Morley is a JFKA researcher who has done a lot of work on the connection between Miami , New Orleans and CIA HQ.  This is from his web site "JFK Facts"..

In a court motion filed last week, the CIA acknowledged for the first time that deceased CIA officer George Joannides lived in New Orleans while handling contacts with an anti-Castro student organization whose members had a series of encounters with accused presidential assassin Lee Oswald in August 1963.

The unexpected admission came in arguments before a federal court judge about whether the CIA is obliged to pay $295,000 in legal fees incurred during my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit concerning certain 50-year-old JFK assassination records.

In a previous court filing, my attorney Jim Lesar argued that two documents released over CIA objections in 2008 were significant because they showed that Joannides’s espionage assignment took him to New Orleans where Oswald lived.

 

In a 38-page response U.S. Attorney Ron Machen disputed the claim that Joannides had traveled to New Orleans in the spring of 1964 at the time Warren Commission was investigating Oswald’s contacts with anti-Castro Cubans.

Machen said the documents showed only that Joannides had maintained a residence in New Orleans.

U.S Attorney Ron Machen.

“New Orleans is clearly listed as Joannides’ place of residence when on home leave, and the form does not put him in New Orleans on the dates cited by Plaintiff,” Machen stated.

Joannides and his family lived in Miami from 1962-64, according to CIA records and interviews with former colleagues. Joannides’s residence on 65th Avenue in Southwest Miami was listed in the 1963 Miami phone book.

Machen’s filing did not disclose why Joannides maintained a second residence in New Orleans.

Whatever the date of Joannides’s travel to New Orleans, Machen’s motion confirms that Joannides lived in the Crescent City at same time, or shortly after, the anti-Castro student group under his control had contact with Kennedy’s accused killer.

The admission is significant because Joannides’s financial support for Oswald’s antagonists among the anti-Castro exiles was not disclosed to the Warren Commission. Former commission staffer Burt Griffin, now a judge in Ohio, recently told AP reporter David Porter that the CIA’s failure to disclose Joannides’s actions in 1963 was an act of “bad faith.”

Joannides, who died in 1990, was never questioned by JFK investigators about contacts between the anti-Castro students he supported and Kennedy’s accused killer.

The CIA in  New Orleans

Joannides is one of the most significant new characters to emerge in the always controversial story of JFK’s assassination.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press have all reported in recent years on the unusual secrecy around his role in the events of 1963.

As an undercover CIA officer living in New Orleans, Joannides was well positioned to report on Oswald’s actions in late 1963.

Using the alias “Howard,” Joannides served as case officer for the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE),  the anti-Castro organizations funded by the agency that publicized Oswald’s pro-Castro ways both before and after JFK was killed. He also served as chief of the psychological warfare operations branch of the CIA’s Miami station, according to declassified CIA records.

The CIA had an office in New Orleans where Oswald, an itinerant ex-Marine married to a Russian woman, lived from April to September 1963.

Lee Oswald came to the attention of CIA-funded anti-Castro exiles in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.

In August 1963, Oswald had a series of encounters with members of the New Orleans chapter of the Cuban Student Directorate who challenged his public support of Cuban president Fidel Castro.

The Cuban students publicized and denounced Oswald’s pro-Castro activities on a local radio program.

They sent one member, described as an “intelligence officer,” to visit Oswald’s house posing as a Castro supporter, to learn more about him.

The group issued a press release on August 21, 1963, calling for a congressional investigation of Oswald, who had not shot anyone at that point.

At the time, the CIA, via Joannides, supplied the Cuban students in Miami with $51,000 a month, according to CIA memo found in the JFK Library in Boston. The group’s activities involved “propaganda, political action and intelligence collection,” according to Joannides’s fitness evaluation from the summer of 1963.

When it came to Oswald, the DRE delivered what the CIA paid for.

The first JFK conspiracy theory, published with CIA support, on Nov. 23, 1963.

Within an hour of Oswald’s arrest for killing JFK on November 22, 1963, DRE leaders in Miami called reporters to say the president had been killed by a communist. The group’s information about Oswald helped generate headlines nationwide about “the pro-Castro gunman.”

The day after the assassination, the DRE published a broadsheet featuring the photos of Oswald and Castro under the headline “The Presumed Assassins.”

It was one of the first JFK conspiracy scenarios to reach public print. According to former members of the DRE, the group was wholly dependent on CIA funds provided by Joannides at the time.

‘Attenuated connection’

My Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed in 2003, sought records that would show what Joannides knew about the contacts between the DRE and Oswald, as well as what he reported to his superiors.

In ten years of litigation, CIA officials have stated repeatedly said they will “neither confirm nor deny” the existence of records related to Joannides’s participation in any specific covert project, operation or assignment in the summer of 1963.

The phrase, “neither confirm nor deny,” is a standard CIA response to inquiries about covert operations.

In the Nov. 7 court filing, Machen stated:

“While it is true that Joannides was a CIA officer and liaison to DRE, an anti-Castro group that had a couple (sic) of encounters with Oswald, this doesn’t implicate either Joannides or DRE in the assassination. Even then, the records cited for support by Plaintiff do not pertain to this attenuated connection, and those that do have already been publicly released in the JFK Act collection.”

Machen’s sworn statement erred in saying members of the group had “a couple of encounters” with Oswald.

In fact, the Warren Commission report found that DRE members came in personal contact with Oswald on five different occasions in August 1963.

Retired CIA officer George Joannides (left) received the Career Intelligence Medal from deputy CIA director Bobby Ray Inman on July 15, 1981.
(Photo credit: CIA)

 

A medal for his service

In the Nov. 7 filing, Machen also disputed the significance of CIA records, released under appellate court order in 2008, that revealed Joannides had received a CIA medal.

In a previous filing, I argued that the previously unknown honor reflected official approval of Joannides’s actions in 1963 and in 1978, when he served as the CIA’s liaison to congressional investigators looking into Kennedy’s murder.

The CIA rejected that claim, saying that the declassified citation of the medal “does not address any specific assignment, rather it speaks in terms of 28 years of [Joannides’s] cumulative service ‘in diverse assignments of increasing responsibility at Headquarters, the domestic field and overseas.”

The specific reasons why Joannides was honored remain secret, even 50 years after the fact. The CIA has asserted in previous federal court filings that a five-page 1981 memo to Joannides’s superiors about the medal cannot be made public — for reasons of “national security.”

Chuck S-

Yes, Jeff Morley is another dedicated, smart and serious JFKA researcher.  The CIA, beyond debate, did not cooperate with the WC or HSCA investigations, and in fact engaged in obfuscation. 

If a CIA hit team was dispatched from Miami to Dallas, rogue or otherwise, I contend they must have worked with LHO. 

LHO was involved enough that somebody wanted him dead post-JFKA, and also many witnesses saw shots fired from the TBSD, in which LHO worked, and also in which nobody saw LHO at the time of the gunshots.  

LHO's behavior post-JFKA strikes me as someone who is running, and that means he is guilty or had deduced he was a patsy. I suspect the latter. 

Side note: One thing is you can't have it is both ways. "LHP was totally innocent, but was also running to the Texas Theater to meet a co-conspirator." That doesn't make sense. If LHO was in fact trying to meet a ride, getaway man or contact at the TT, then he must have been a party, unwitting even, to the JFKA.  That also meant co-conspirators knew how to tip off the DPD as to LHO's location. 

My guess is LHO was simply trying to hide in a dark theater, and wait until dark. The best, bad option. His brains may have been fried at the point. 

2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

That's a little weird Ben.  Larry is a large figure in the search for the Truth.  But there's nothing sinister about him I've ever read.  The Assassination of John Fitzgerald  Kennedy is no longer about a theory.  It is a fact it was not the act of a lone nut but the result of a Conspiracy.  No question.  Done deal regarding Truth and History.  

Ron B.

Of course, you are correct. 

I was speaking tongue-in-cheek about Larry Hancock as a powerful, sinister figure.  

I concur, at least three shots were fired at JFK and JBC more rapidly that can be accounted for by a single-shot bolt action rifle. In my book, that is a conspiracy.

Despite the best efforts of shrewd and tireless researchers, the outlines of the JFKA conspiracy are unclear. We have suspects....

11 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Interesting thought experiment here about cognitive bias in the formulation of explanatory theories.

The good news is that I just ordered Larry Hancock's new book, Tipping Point, from Amazon.

Time to get up to date on some of the new JFKA data... 🤥

 

I have just re-read Tipping Point, and think it a very worthwhile read, even if it will disappoint some readers as an incomplete picture of the JFKA. The reason the picture is uncomplete is because the real picture is incomplete.  

We know why the picture is incomplete, and it is not Larry Hancock's fault (unless Hancock is a far larger and more sinister figure than imagined). 

I have a theory that no JFKA theory can proven, but I cannot prove my theory. 

Ditto.

The important thing is first, and that is several days of discussion about AOC's dress.  Now that that is out of the way, perhaps we can discuss transparency in democracy and disclosure as required by law. 

12 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

This is from a Dick Russell review of the aforemention book. The review is dtd. 8/1/96.."Noting the possibility of a CIA “renegade faction” manipulating Oswald, Newman concludes: “We can finally say with some authority that the CIA was spinning a web of deception about Oswald weeks before the President’s murder,” based upon an exhaustive survey of now-visible files that were denied to previous official investigations."

Chuck S.--

Yes, it seems probable, close to certain, that the CIA was using LHO prior to the JFKA, and building a biography around him, based upon the work of Newman and others. 

I suspect the CIA's plan was to use LHO in a false-flag fake (intentionally unsuccessful) JFKA.

However, Larry Hancock, who has spent a long time on the JFKA and also looked at a lot of primary materials, is more prone to a JFKA explanation that a group working out of Miami's giant CIA base, and Cuban exiles, organized a real JFKA. See his Tipping Point book.

The connection between LHO and the Miami hit squad is muddy, even with Hancock's insights. 

Moreover, there is no provable connection between the Miami hit squad and CIA HQ----Bill Harvey's standard operating procedures were to keep no paper records, to speak in oblique terms, and create false paper trails to boot. In addition, many documents have been destroyed in the meantime.  Dulles, Angleton, Harvey, Helms, et al, are all dead now, and cannot be cross-examined. 

Of course, one can have dark suspicions, but suspicions are not facts. 

As a result, it is opaque whether the CIA hit on JFK was sanctioned even tacitly at higher levels, or was a rogue operation.  Larry Hancock, if I read Tipping Point correctly, is open to the idea the JFKA was tacitly sanctioned at higher levels. 

I still hold out that the JFKA could have been a CIA HQ tacitly sanctioned false-flag but fake assassination attempt that got out control.  Unfortunately, I am limited to what is online for my research, as I live offshore.  

That's my story and I am sticking with it. 

16 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

One would think that with the heavy jostling lifting of JFK's body out of the limo by the big beefy SS agent and others and then placing him on a gurney and then lifting him and his limp head again off the gurney and onto the ER room exam and treatment table and probably hands on moving parts of JFK's body ( including his head  ) in a straight prone position that the huge blown out flap of skull bone we see in the photo and described by 10 to 15 feet away eyewitness Bill Newman might have moved enough for someone to notice it was separated?

Would have been lots of blood and/or brain fluid oozing out of that open brain tissue area as well - no?

Every attending Parkland doctor who had need to be at the head end of JFK's body on that table described the gaping "baseball size" hole in the back of JFK's head...and the oozing of brain matter and fluid from this, while JFK was being worked on.

What happened to that part of JFK's skull bone that would have covered that hole?

Could this have been the skull bone piece that was described as landing somewhere onto the curb side of the street?

 

I am with Joe B. I don't understand the photo or the Ida Dox drawing at all, or the x-rays or anything. 

The Parkland doctors said there was a blowout in the back of the head. They have no reason to lie, and seem earnest. 

Then you see this photo and drawing, or the x-rays. 

Like everything about the JFKA, it is screwy.  

4 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

I don’t see any reason to trust Fritz’s notes. It’s always seemed absurd that there are no recordings or film of the interrogation. It’s so unlikely to be true. So why would anyone believe anything they say about it? I don’t at all doubt that at least a few DPD were in on the frame, and prepared. So again, their mutual buttressing of the arrest story isn’t convincing. 

Paul-

Certainly, distrust of official narratives in the JFKA is warranted.  I cannot prove my views.

But I am cautious about JFKA counter-narratives that require multiplying numbers of complicit actors, such as (in the immediate example), the officers in the Texas Theater arrest. OK, maybe the three or four officers involved in the arrest, and possibly a few theater patrons, lied and kept quiet over the years.  

Then the DPD fabricated his statement he had a pistol, requiring an additional set of XXXXX. Others participated in planting a gun on him. 

At some point, I sense credulity is stretched. The official narrative, regarding LHO arming himself, seems likely true. 

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Pardon my poor memory, but did he have any money on him? I agree that it seems unlikely he would show up at a preplanned rendezvous if he was trying to vamoose, unless he was also guilty, not just a patsy. Since I don’t think he was guilty, and don’t buy the whole revolver/Tippit story I’m not so sure it wasn’t just an afternoon at the movies. Are we all sure he had a gun on him when he was arrested? 

Hi Paul:

Maybe the "LHO was armed" story was fabricated, but there seems to have been a lot of witnesses in the Texas Theater.  LHO appears to have acknowledged he was armed in the (unrecorded) interviews with the DPD. 

We do have a conflict in much the rehashing of the LHO stories.

1. If LHP was totally innocent on Nov. 22, not a party to anything, just doing his job that day (although an erstwhile intel asset) then why would he rendezvous with anybody post-JFKA? There would be nobody to rendezvous with. 

2. OK, if LHO was a party to the real assassination, maybe somebody would be at the Texas Theater to take him offshore or to a safehouse. But that strikes me as a weak plan. A simple car leaving Dealey Plaza would work a lot better. There were no road-blocks out of Dallas.

3. If (as I suspect) LHO believed he was part of a false-flag op to unsuccessfully assassinate the President, then likely he would not meet anyone at the Texas Theater, correctly deducing he had just been made the patsy in a real assassination by his colleagues.  LHO appears to have known that he had been made the patsy almost immediately, which is why he went home, had the taxi drop him a few blocks from his room, and then got his revolver. 

LHO's best option at that point, but still very bad option, would be to hide in the theater until dark outside. LHO's frame of mind was fried at that point, and so he snuck into the theater, rather than just paying. 

My guess is that if the DPD was "in on the JFKA" they could have shot LHO dead in the theater.  

That's my story I am sticking with it. 

If we assume that LHO was a patsy and knew it, then the last place he would go would be to a pre-arranged rendezvous with the people who just made him a patsy. He might well determine that would be a lethal meeting. 

My guess is LHO figured out he was the patsy rather quickly, and vamoosed by the means available, and then got his gun. He knew he could not stay at home, or on city streets. A movie theatre, darkened, might the best of bad options. 

IMHO, LHO's leaving the TBSD and getting a gun have always signalled either guilt or involvement in the JFKA. If we rule out guilt, that means LHO was the patsy, but figured it out quickly on the basis of a few gunshots and sirens. 

To me, that suggests LHO was involved in some event that was supposed to happen, such as a false-flag but unsuccessful JFKA. 

But I am re-reading Larry Hancock's Tipping Point for pointers.  The connection between LHO and a small assassination team imported into Dallas from Miami, on a very compartmentalized basis, is difficult to ascertain.  

3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Which is why the shenanigans with an undetermined number of hijackers and hijackings, and four disputed crash sites, are so pesky and troublesome to an organized mind

My mind is unorganized, and I still don't understand 9/11.

6 hours ago, David Andrews said:

We have a president's dead body with bullet wounds in it, but no whole bullets found or definitive wound tracks established.

It's no wonder the much more complicated 9/11 scenarios can't be proven nor debunked.

 

David A.--

My understanding of controlled building implosions is that they require multiple charges on every floor, and associated wiring to time the charges. 

There were 110 floors on each of the WTC big towers, and 57 floors in  #7. 

I have no great insights to the 9/11 disaster.  But when it comes to conspiracies, the smaller the number of participants, the better.  

13 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

How do you explain the pre-arranged, skillfully orchestrated psy op throughout the U.S. and international media that was launched on 11/22/63-- before Oswald was ever charged with a crime?

The deployment of fake Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza, and confiscation of cameras?

The confiscation and scrubbing of evidence-- including JFK's body and the limo?

Henry Luce and C.D. Jackson's purchase and sequestration of the Zapruder film?

The role of known CIA asset and Dallas mayor Earl Cabell in the motorcade and post-assassination public relations?

Aside from the details of the hit, the assassination was, obviously, a complex psy op, orchestrated on a very high level by people involved with the mainstream media.

W-

I handle most of your q's in 

Verily, a great deal of complicity after the fact---Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After the Fact-1967 still holds a lot of water. That's how obvious the post-JFKA cover-up was. 

Larry Hancock suggests the reason the post-JFKA cover-up was so obvious, mangled and crude is that there was, in fact, not much in the way of pre-JFKA planning. I defer to Hancock as a default position. 

That said, my take (different perhaps from Hancock's) is LHO was being run by the CIA, and they planned to use a witting LHO in a false-flag fake JFK assassination attempt. Ergo, the biography build on LHO.  

Cuban exiles piggybacked on the false-flag op, and made it real. 

Yes, the WC was a cover-up, and much that the CIA has done since in media, etc. The FBI destroyed and manufactured evidence (CE 399).  

This cover-up has allowed a mythology to build, that the JFKA itself must have been a very sophisticated operation. But a true and dreadnought investigation starting on Nov. 22 might have cracked the case within a few days. 

If LHO had lived, he might eventually have spilled the beans.  

As a basic premise, my take is that successful conspiracies, especially on the supremely explosive topic of assassinating a US president, require fewer, rather than many, participants. 

The versions of the JFKA requiring dozens of malicious and witting participants, high and low across many organization lines....well, for me, they just don't hold water. 

Think small!

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ben,

      Prouty was a Deep State whistle blower who has been the target of a CIA smear campaign for many years-- the same type of disinformation campaign that has been directed at Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone. 

      That is why I object to vague, non-specific criticisms of Prouty's observations and commentaries about the CIA, Vietnam, and the JFK assassination-- especially from people who have seen the CIA disinformation on-line but haven't read Prouty's own books and commentaries.

     No one has posted any evidence here debunking Prouty's "hypothesis" that Ed Lansdale was involved on some level in the JFK assassination op.

    Prouty worked with CIA black ops expert Ed Lansdale for many years, and was intimately familiar with Lansdale's appearance and work.

     So, yes, I trust Prouty's identification of his long-time colleague Ed Lansdale in the Dealey Plaza photo.

     That isn't a "loose standard," IMO.  Prouty was a rare, primary source historical witness.

     Also, there were a number of other first hand observations (besides the photo of Lansdale in Dealey Plaza) that led Prouty to suspect that his colleague Ed Lansdale was involved in the Dallas assassination op.

   

"No one has posted any evidence here debunking Prouty's "hypothesis" that Ed Lansdale was involved on some level in the JFK assassination op."--W.

Not to belabor a point, but this comes close to "guilty until proven innocent." 

Here is a book: 

Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy

by John H. Davis, c 1989.

I just read this book, very readable. Free online, Internet Archives. 

Many connections between LHO, Ruby and Marcello, lots of documented bad blood between the Marcellos and Kennedys, and of course Mafia in bed with the CIA. Many eyewitnesses saw someone who looked liked LHO meeting with so-and-so, thus indicating a connection.

David Ferrie was spending weekends at Marcello's manse before Nov. 22. That is sort of strange. 

What in the heck could the oddball eccentric gay Ferrie have in common with rich mobster Marcello?

No one has debunked that Marcello was the animating force behind the JFKA.

Was Marcello the animating force? 

I doubt it. But I can't debunk it either. 

On 9/7/2021 at 12:56 AM, Richard Booth said:

And who would have spotted and recruited Mr. Phillips? 

Angleton. He planted the "virus" to ensure post-assassination cover-up and I think surely he picked who would head up the operational compartments. Phillips was a perfect choice: proven track record of victory (PB/SUCCESS) and known hatred for John Kennedy. 

Ultimately I pretty much agree with what you wrote here. I just put Angleton up near the top in the hierarchy. 

OK, this is speculation, but here goes: 

DA Phillips concocts a false-flag but failed assassination attempt plan on the JFK, to be blamed on the leftie-loner-loser-commie LHO. 

Phillips cannot just do this, but needs tacit approval, unwritten etc., from above. He gets it. 

But then Angleton, or someone, plants a couple of very angry guys (Cubans) on Phillips false-flag team. Maybe even with no instructions, but a sense of what might happen. 

Ergo, LHO cooperates, expects to escape Dealey Plaza with help, but figures out JFK was shot for real and he is the de facto patsy, and goes AWOL. 

Even Phillips does not know what really happened. 

Maybe only the two guys know what really happened at the JFKA.

The CIA concludes they have to eliminate LHO, but need plausible deniability, and hire the Mob. The CIA then spends decades scrubbing records and inventing false narratives, and, btw, destroying Garrison. Wrecking Richard Sprague, etc. 

That's my story I am sticking with it. 

Best of luck, Pat. You are a top researcher, devoted to finding real facts, and letting the chips fall where they may. 

7 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ben,

  1)   Ed Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/63, as Prouty observed 30 years ago.  John Newman and David Lifton also found some ex post facto evidence indicating that Lansdale was in Texas in November of 1963, following his "retirement" from the CIA/USAF to pursue "fun and games."  Prouty pointed out years ago that Lansdale's comment about "fun and games" after his retirement was a code word for special ops.

  2)   Lansdale was a black ops favorite of Allen Dulles and Cabell-- based on his history with the CIA in the Phillippines and at Saigon Station.

     And let's cut through the forum denial about CIA involvement in the U.S. mainstream and social media.  Prouty has been smeared by government propagandists and "cognitive infiltrators" for years because he blew the whistle on people involved in JFK's assassination.

Why was General Ed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza?
Those who knew him, say this man is Ed Lansdale. Photo taken Nov. 22, 1963.

 

 

 

W-

I am on board that large parts of the M$M are CIA apparatchiks. At CNN they dispense with the charade, and just hire ex-CIA'ers directly and put them on the air. 

I also believe more than one gun was used to shoot at JFK and JBC that day, based upon research on primary materials. 

But really, you are convinced, beyond reasonable doubt, that the photo in question is Lansdale? 

Prouty implies the two Dallas police are fakes and in on the gag, by the "casual" way they are holding their weapons. Not much to go on, and yet that implies yet two more people who have information regarding the JFKA, and who have to be trusted to keep quiet. 

The "Lansdale" in the picture---he would walk around Dealey Plaza in the immediate aftermath of an presidential assassination he plotted? With cameras blinking everywhere? That is spycraft?  "Lansdale" doesn't even doff a fedora (still worn back then) and sunglasses? A little brazen, no? 

If the three tramps were truly involved in the JFKA, and the two Dallas "cops" in on the gag, why parade the trio in public as suspects? Why not squeeze the three men into a car near the railroad cars-tracks and send them on their way? 

Other probable participants in the JFKA simply melted onto the crowds, such as the phoney "Secret Service agent" accosted by Dallas police officer Joe Smith and Dallas Sheriff Seymour Weitzman.

Why parade tramps around in public? In ordinary civilian clothing, the "tramps" could have simply walked away from the scene, melted into the crowds. 

Nothing about this makes sense. 

If we applied such loose standards to LHO as are applied in the Lansdale Hypothesis, we would have LHO convicted and hung on the JFKA in two minutes. 

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Matt,

    This is a non sequitur. 

     I assume that we can all agree that Prouty was, in fact, a first hand participant observer of events within the Pentagon and the JFK administration in 1963 -- not some latter day "conspiracy theorist."

     So, my questions (above) are really about the specificity of Larry's criticisms, if any, of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty's observations and theories about the CIA, Vietnam, Lansdale, and the JFK assassination.

     Given the obvious history of orchestrated, on-line disinformation about Prouty during the past thirty years, impugning his reputation on vague, non-specific  grounds is less than appropriate.

     Wouldn't you agree?

 

Below:  Allen Dulles, General Ed Lansdale, Gen Charles Cabell, and Nathan Twining

 

 

   

W.--

Larry H. is more than capable of presenting his arguments, so I am not here to defend him, although I hope we do not lose his participation in this forum as he will weary of explaining and then re-explaining his position.

Yes, Prouty has been bad-mouthed online, probably by people with an agenda.

On the other hand, is there any evidence to support his scenario below, or is it speculation? 

The "hit men" were from CIA overseas sources, for instance, from the "Camp near Athena, Greece. They are trained, stateless, and ready to go at any time. They ask no questions: speak to no one. They are simply told what to do, when and where. Then they are told how they will be removed and protected. After all, they work for the U.S. Government. The "Tramps" were actors doing the job of cover-up. The hit men are just pros. They do the job for the CIA anywhere. They are impersonal. They get paid. They get protected, and they have enough experience to "blackmail" anyone, if anyone ever turns on them...just like Drug agents. The job was clean, quick and neat. No ripples."

OK, in this forum the evidence against LHO in the JFKA is parsed, debated and often refuted, often for good reason. But at least LHO is a person, who was in the TSBD on the day of the JFKA. What role that LHO played in the JFKA can be discussed, debated, parsed. 

But sheesh, we don't even have evidence or names to debate against the mysterious "hit men" from Greece. Or, in other scenarios, hit men associated with anti-Gaullists in France. At least with the anti-Gaullists we have the name Lucien Sarti, or possibly Jean Rene Marie Souetre, or Michel Victor Mertz. Mertz (or somebody) was supposedly deported from Dallas area in the aftermath of the JFKA, although the story is murky.

In conclusion, what Prouty offers on stuff he knows about is very good, and informative.  When it comes to the JFKA, what he is offers strikes me as speculation.

If you applied the same strict standards to Prouty's explanations of the JFKA  that you apply to the Lone Nut theory....you would say Prouty's explanations do not hold water, as there is no vessel to begin with. Prouty's amorphous JFKA explanation may be true, but how to begin to verify? 

Even a reasonable suspicion is not an explanation or a conviction.