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Mark Lawson

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  1. Since a criminal organization called the CIA continues to figure prominently in this discussion, I will here throw a name against the wall, to see if it sticks. I did not know James O. Deiser personally, but a good friend of mine did. Deiser claimed to have served in various capacities as a low-level CIA asset, and was in the process of writing a book about his experiences; but in a suspicious burglary of his home, the only item taken was the computer on which the lone copy of his manuscript was contained. Deiser attributed the break-in and theft to the CIA. In any event, sometime prior to Deiser's death in 2012, he penned a note to a mutual friend of my friend, regarding four DVDs that Deiser had passed along to him, containing thinly veiled "fiction" describing some of Deiser's past exploits. I do not know what became of the DVDs, but their original hand-written cover note is still in the possession of my good friend. My scan of the document is too large to post here in its entirety, but here is a snippet of it, followed by my textual transcription of the entire note: D----, More than I care to say I was offered to bid on a contract to take out people the (Company) wanted dead. I never bid on even one, but others must have because the people ended up dead shortly after the bid notice was made. Now Our government admits to "training" and "planning" hits, but [denies] any were carried out. Every one of these four DVDs are based on Facts but had to be claimed to be fiction as the government would never let them out for any one to see. Also just the thought that "Maybe" they were true will put fear in many people and cause them to think that "They" might be next on some hit list. I never Assassinated anyone, but I did train others in how to prevent assassinations, and looking back to the late 1960s and what happened in Chile that put "Our Man" Pinochet in power in the 70s I see now that tho I did not pull the trigger, people I trained did. No one can play in mud and not feel muddy afterward, and I sure feel muddy over that one! These DVDs are Based on fact - even if the writers did take some liberties in writing the story's [sic], it happened! J. -------------------------- All that I have been able to find online about Deiser, so far, is this brief obituary: http://www.whitefuneralhome.org/obituary/1881782 Strictly FWIIW.... ML
  2. Taking a detour regarding LBJ, the following account, never previously published, comes from a now-dearly-departed friend who lived near Johnson City, Texas. Here is what he wrote to me, after reading The Outfit Killed JFK, a 2010 PLAYBOY article by Hillel Levin:: Thanks for sending this. It is quite good and I was unaware of its publication. I will say it dovetails with pretty much everything else of a credible nature that I have learned about the incident over the years; two of which I will offer up here as they would not be accessible to the general public. The first is the recollections of my closest friend, E. [who] spent his adult life in one form of law enforcement or criminal justice or the other. At the time JFK was shot he was on the Ft. Worth PD. He reports that there was not a cop in the DFW area that had any doubts that Ruby was "mobbed up." Hell, most of them hung out after hours at his strip club. Given that knowledge, they were amazed that a known criminal would just waltz into the Dallas cop shop while the alleged killer of the President was being transported. Many of the cops in both cities were, according to Earl, pretty skeptical about the "official story," given who Jack liked to play with. The second is much, much closer to home. From the earliest days of LBJ's political career (stuffing the ballot boxes of Duvall County to get into the US House), he had a close friend and collaborator: nominally his "business manager," named A. W. Moursund. A. W. became a very powerful man in Blanco County, TX (LBJ's home) and well beyond. That was due, in no small part, to LBJ giving him back-room control over his greatest political plum - the Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC). A. W. was extremely smart - street smart - and a very credible, if dishonest, attorney. He was also exceptionally ruthless. In addition to being referred to as LBJ's "bag man" (with sound justification) he was also an enforcer. It has been persistently rumored (even now that he has been dead for going on 10 years) that he was "mobbed up." As far as I am concerned, he was and the final confirmation of that came to me through a woman of some 80 + years and her daughter. The older woman was, until her recent death, a well respected member of the ranching tradition in this area. Her daughter had, for a period of time, worked in Moursund's insurance companies, one of four businesses he built on a PEC foundation. Both women reported to me, and at different times, how private planes would frequently arrive at the Moursund's private strip. The daughter would be detailed to go pick up the visitors from Chicago, Detroit, Vegas and New Orleans. The men who would deplane were straight from central casting - large men in black shirts with white ties, a bulge under the left armpit and pushed over noses. So, it is pretty clear that LBJ - even if sly enough to keep a degree of separation through A.W. - certainly had easy access to the mob and they to him. ------------------------------ "... I don't know if the Mob did it, but I doubt it. From my experience as a committee investigator and, later, as a team leader, I know that the Committee's investigation was simply not adequate enough to produce any firm conclusions about the nature of the conspiracy. To give the impression that it was, is a deception...." - From The Last Investigation, by Gaeton Fonzi. Many thanks to Linda Minor for providing the following Web link: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70663920 My late friend Dave, and the two people he cites, above, must have been referring to the grandson of the above-referenced A. W.: Albert Wadel Moursund III, who lived between 1919 and 2002: "Graduate of University of Texas School of Law, admitted to Bar of Texas in 1941. Served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and opened his law practice in Johnson City, Texas, after the war. Elected to Texas House of Representatives for two terms (1948-1952). Lifelong friend, business associate, counselor and advisor to President Lyndon B Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. Married to Mary Allen Moore Moursund for 60 years." Above from: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7700683/albert-wadel-moursund
  3. Welcome to the club, Jim! <g> In the following message thread, attorney Cory Santos sets out some interesting information on "reasonable doubt" and beyond, particularly as it applies to murder cases that are tried in court: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25352-bush-not-in-dallas-he-is-dead/?page=9 Based on the currently available evidence, I do believe you, Sandy and others have presented a convincing case that the referenced DPD radio transcripts and recordings were altered. In the meantime I have read James DiEugenio's April (2018) article "The Tippit Case in the New Millennium," at https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-case-in-the-new-millennium - which provides additional, corroborating evidence in support of your Tippit murder theses. Thank you for your continued hard work in this area of inquiry, which I will continue to follow closely. ML
  4. Thanks much for the clarification, Jim! Now I understand what I had interpreted to be a direct conflict between the two https://harveyandlee.net/Tippit/Tippit.html statements, as quoted above. Perhaps you can make those critical time stamps more clear, as you did so well immediately above, in the Web site's treatment of those details. Thanks again, ML
  5. https://harveyandlee.net/Tippit/Tippit.html Jim, at the above-referenced Web page, you and/or Jim Armstrong write: "Reserve officer Croy most likely arrived at 10th & Patton in police car #207 with personnel officer Capt. Westbrook, and they both watched as LEE Oswald shot and killed Tippit at 1:06 PM. Westbrook drove away in police car #207...." Further down the same page, however, you write: "Westbrook did not drive directly to the scene of the Tippit murder at 10th & Patton.... Capt. Westbrook drove his own dark blue, unmarked police car to Oak Cliff with Sgt. Stringer sitting next to him in the front seat and with Dallas Morning News reporter Jim Ewell sitting in the back seat (read Jim Ewell's account here: http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/History/The_deed/Sneed/Ewell.html). And an unknown police officer did NOT let Westbrook out at the scene of Tippit's murder, because Westbrook drove his unmarked police car from the Book Depository directly to the Texaco Station at 401 E. Jefferson and arrived shortly before 1:25 PM.... [italics and emphasis from the original] Can you clarify, please? ML
  6. As I wrote in the following posting to this message thread, below, "... I find the under-construction highway-landing scenario implausible, but OTOH, the old Greater Southwest Airport (KGSW, formerly Amon Carter Field) was still operating then; and also located nearby was the former Hensley Field (by 1963 called the Naval Air Station Dallas, currently named the NAS Fort Worth JRB) - both of which could have easily accommodated the C-54. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Southwest_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Dallas It would have been flirting with a huge disaster to have attempted a landing on such a highway, unless it had been thoroughly checked in advance to be sure it was cleared of obstacles - and especially people. Since the day was Friday, where was the road construction crew? Where was their machinery and equipment? By contrast, a quick stop at the military-controlled NAS Dallas, especially if refueling of the aircraft was not required, might have looked perfectly ordinary to any casual observers who happened to be present. ML
  7. Somehow his face was *not* covered, as evidenced by this and other remarkable - and all too *convenient* - color transparencies, credited to a US Navy-employed civilian, Stuart L. Reed, who promptly left Dallas for New Orleans, and from there on to the Panama Canal Zone. From https://harveyandlee.net/Leaving/Leaving_the_TSBD.html:
  8. Yes, apparently no one has found any primary source doc backing up Hunt’s claim that he himself was temporary MC station chief in Sept. ‘63, or at least when the “Oswald” nonsense was unfolding.... Jim, have you considered contacting Jefferson Morely directly, via jfkfacts.org or via e-mail message, to see if Hunt might have made any such claim(s) during Morely's interview(s)? ML
  9. Recall, too, that in 1960 Howard Hunt - at that time "... known by the alias 'Eduardo'" - was back in Mexico City to lead the AMCIGARs in Operation Zapata - modeled on Operation Success [sic] in Guatemala - with the goal of assassinating Fidel Castro, but ultimately a prelude to the Bay of Pigs. The Yanquis, particularly including station chief Win Scott, thought they had the Mexican president and his cabinet securely in their pockets, but they "... completely ignored that the Cuban Revolution had substantial support in Mexico, even in the ruling PRI party.... Within weeks of their arrival, the Cubans were proving a daily disaster. Win wanted the AMCIGARs gone, and soon they were. Hunt and the Cubans bought one-way tickets back to Miami. 'As we flew east across the Gulf,' Hunt later wrote, 'it seemed as though we could hear a sigh of relief from Los Pinos,' the Mexican presidential residence where Lopez Mateos lived...." Our Man in Mexico, pp. 105-106. Regarding Hunt's later claims to have been "chief" of the MX CIA station during the alleged "Oswald" visits, Morely cites interviews with numerous sources, including Hunt himself; as well as Hunt's book Give us This Day. Morely makes no reference, that I can find, to Hunt's claim of having been MX chief at that time. ML
  10. Yes she did, according to Our Man in Mexico and other sources. This prompts me to ask: Who was it who said - accurately, I think - something close to: "Anne Goodpasture should be in jail"?
  11. Jim, I have seen free copies of Cigar Aficionado in the businesses (called FBOs) at airports where high-rollers come and go in their private jets, but not being a high-roller (or cigar aficionado) myself, I've never bothered to flip through it. In any event, I have not yet had time to evaluate all of the several index entries for E. Howard Hunt in Our Man in Mexico, but I wonder if the following account might somehow have been conflated with, or into, Hunt's claim, as stated above: "... The debut of the CIA in Mexico had not been auspicious. One of the first CIA operatives in Mexico was E. Howard Hunt, a graduate of Brown University and a novelist with a gift for cliches. He came in 1951 as chief of the OPC [Office of Policy Coordination] station. A brash man of outspoken conservative convictions, Hunt inevitably offended the finer sensibilities of of some at the embassy and more than a few Mexicans, who mistrusted his Yanqui style. When he moved on to join Operation Success [sic] in Guatemala in late 1953, he was not missed by many. To say that Win Scott surpassed Howard Hunt in Mexico City is an understatement...." Our Man in Mexico, p. 85. Stay tuned.... ML
  12. That's not an easy question to answer, Tom, but I'll try by offering you a tepid "yes." The book was published in early 2008, and considerable new source information has been released since then; but it does seem that Morely establishes a factual account of Scott. It was hard for me to imagine liking the CIA less than I did at the time I began reading this book, but that has indeed been the result. Winston Scott himself has turned out to be someone I find extremely hard to admire, and many of these players seem to me more adept at blatant criminality - hidden, or at least protected by, "color of law" - than they are at gathering and analyzing actionable intelligence. During Scott's unusually long tenure as station chief there - nearly 13 years, compared to the usual four - Mexico City was considered to be one of the CIA's best and most important stations, hosting both Soviet and Cuban embassies and consulates that were vulnerable to US espionage - thanks in large part to the complicit and accommodating Mexican government and its corrupt, oppressive security apparatus, the DFS. Even with this comprehensive access, Scott and his station were at the epicenter of what may have been one of the most important intelligence failures in CIA history: choosing not to disclose to HQ the contacts of one or more "Oswald" characters with the Cuban consulate; and missing altogether some alleged extra-consular "socializing" between "Oswald" and consulate employee (and Mexican citizen) Sylvia Duran. (Scott himself specifically requested that the Mexican DFS brutally interrogate Duran regarding her contacts with "Oswald.") Some additional quotes from Our Man in Mexico: "Oswald's conspiratorial connections, [Scott] argued, had gone unexamined because of liberal bias. The fact that the communist embassies dealt with and counseled this '... assassin a few weeks prior to the time he murdered President Kennedy is treated as an irrelevant bit of news, not worthy of consideration,' he wrote. 'This could be due to the fact that a serious investigation into the matter would offend the Soviets, with whom our foreign policy pundits, leftists and liberals are trying to be friendly while the Soviets stab us in the back and insult us to our faces.' "Win's conclusion that there had been no 'serious investigation' of Oswald's communist connections was well informed. His effort to blame '... foreign policy pundits, leftists and liberals' was less persuasive. There were, after all, few such heretics at the top of the CIA.... Likewise, his esteemed colleague Dick Helms could have ordered a closer review of the proliferating reports of Oswald's activities in Mexico. Instead, he ordered Win and other station chiefs to cut off and discredit all discussion of the alleged assassin's motives and contacts. "The peculiar truth that Win's conservative political faith could not absorb was that it was the impeccably patriotic Dulles, Helms, and Angleton, not deluded liberals, who blocked investigation of Oswald's communist connections, and his friend David Phillips who fudged the record. They stalled, avoided, and dissembled in the course of the Oswald investigation not because they were soft on communism, not to avoid offending liberal public opinion, but out of self-preservation...." p. 279 "... In June 1969, Win traveled to Washington to receive one of the highest honors that could be accorded to a CIA man: the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. He had been eased out of the station chief job...." p.273 In any case, I do suggest that you read the first three or four reviews of this book at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2288129.Our_Man_in_Mexico#other_reviews If you have not already read Morely's 2017 tome on James Angleton, The Ghost, I recommend that you read it prior to diving into Our Man in Mexico. Strictly FWIIW.... ML
  13. Uhm, at least tangentially related to the sometimes touchy subject of You-Know-Who in Mexico City (cough!): I have just completed a long and exhausting slog through Jefferson Morley's Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA. One of the book's more memorable quotes is taken from Scott's post-retirement memoir "It Came to Little" - over half of which is, to this day, redacted by the CIA: "Above all, [the clandestine intelligence operations officer] must know and realize that almost all agents are knaves, in the worst sense of the word. But, he must treat them as if he thought them gentlemen." (Our Man in Mexico, p. 281) FWIIW, ML
  14. Jim Garrison, October 1967: "... [A] member of [the JFK assassination] group is an individual who deliberately impersonated Lee Oswald before the assassination in order to incriminate him: we believe we know his identity...." From: http://www.maebrussell.com/Garrison/Garrison Playboy Intvw 1.html
  15. Bill Simpich writes in the Conclusion of "State Secret": "I am convinced that the impersonation of Oswald is a historical fact...." - https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/State_Secret_Conclusion.html Regarding the escape of this posited Oswald double from Dallas, Armstrong repeats the story, also recounted by James Douglass, of a supposed landing and subsequent takeoff of a four-engine Air Force C-54 cargo airplane somewhere within the area of the Trinity River, between Dallas and Ft. Worth, in which airplane the double supposedly was flown to Roswell, NM. I find the under-construction highway-landing scenario implausible, but OTOH, the old Greater Southwest Airport (KGSW, formerly Amon Carter Field) was still operating then; and also located nearby was the former Hensley Field (by 1963 called the Naval Air Station Dallas, currently named the NAS Fort Worth JRB) - both of which could have easily accommodated the C-54. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Southwest_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Dallas Robert Griel Vinson, a self-proclaimed witness to this alleged event, would have been 79 years old when the video at the following Web link was published - 5-11-2008 - and even though his memory is foggy as to a few specific details (e.g., a "twin-engine" airplane versus the originally alleged four-engine C-54), I find his timeline and account of that day generally credible. A C-54, leaving Andrews AFB (ADW) "around 8:30" AM ET, and originally bound for Lowry AFB, near Denver, could have made an un-refueled stop in the Dallas area, and then made it, with a comfortable fuel margin, on to Roswell (Walker) AFB (ROW), by the arrival time cited by Vinson. See: http://harveyandlee.net/November/November_22.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZYQiQmXPkk
  16. "Harvey and Lee" presents evidence and testimony that this "Harvey" briefly boarded the Marsalis bus - "HARVEY Oswald's boarding the Marsalis St. bus (instead of the Beckley St Bus) was unusual..." - obtained a bus transfer slip; walked a few blocks; and then took a cab to within a few blocks of the above N. Beckley address. Two DPD officers - *perhaps* Westbrook and Croy?? - were reported to have boarded this bus just *after* Harvey's departure from it; while a civilian long employed by the US Navy took Kodachrome transparencies of both the front and back of that bus as it passed him; followed by his shot of the TSBD; "miraculously" followed by his shot of the arrested Oswald being led our of the Texas Theatre. The Navy-employed civilian photographer then left his Kodachrome at a Dallas lab for processing, assigned the rights to investigators, and then left for Panama via New Orleans. What a collection of coincidences.... See: https://harveyandlee.net/Leaving/Leaving_the_TSBD.html and http://harveyandlee.net/November/November_22.htm
  17. *Excellent* post, Tom! Jim Armstrong's latest on Tippit raises the possibility of there having been two guns: https://harveyandlee.net/Tippit/Tippit.html
  18. From the reproduced HSCA report, above: "... Kittrell explained that she had added additional work classification codes to Oswald's employment records ... [including] ... offset printing work...." That pretty well answers the question of whether offset lithography was in use at that time, and whether Oswald had experience in using the process. Keeping in mind that he was already using the A. Hidell alias in New Orleans at the time of his claimed work for the FPCC, if he was also using those or similar fake ID cards at that time, then the CIA could have been their source. From Harvey and Lee, p. 430 (414 in the PDF version): "... On October 10th [1963] Oswald was interviewed by [Texas Employment Commission] counselor Helen Cunningham ... in the clerical and professional office of the TEC at 1025 Elm Street in downtown Dallas. Mrs. Cunningham reviewed Oswald's file from Fort Worth and noted on form E-13 "GATB (General Aptitude Test Batteries)-taken Fort Worth, 4/62."121 But in April 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald was still in Russia and could not have taken GATE tests in Fort Worth. This entry may explain why Lee Oswald's file from the TEC office in Fort Worth, and most of the records from Harvey Oswald's TEC file in the Dallas office, disappeared...." [emphasis in the original] "... Fort Worth [TEC] counselor Annie Laurie Smith interviewed [Harvey] Oswald on two occasions in 1962, but was never questioned by the Warren Commission. Counselors Donald Brooks, Laura Kittrell, and other counselors in Dallas interviewed Oswald and created numerous job application forms, but were never interviewed by the Commission...." - Ibid., p. 707 (723 in the PDF version)
  19. That's an interesting and compelling list, Jim. At http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25200-i-was-a-teenage-jfk-conspiracy-freak/?page=50 you write: "... Visit HarveyandLee.net to see what several people here are trying to dismiss. Don't let others tell you what it says. Decide for yourself." During the past few weeks I have read just about every article on the above-referenced Jim Armstrong site - with the exception of the recently posted http://harveyandlee.net/Wilcott/Wilcott.htm (above) - and am now in the process of reading sections of the e-book version of Harvey and Lee. To me the documented evidence makes clear that somebody - and perhaps multiple somebodies - impersonated Oswald at various times during the years and months leading up to the JFK murder. That two young children, methodically merged into one identity by the CIA, could have such strikingly similar facial features - as posited by Armstrong - is a hard pill to swallow, but I nonetheless remain open to the evidence he presents that just such a merger could and did take place. Call me agnostic on that point - and in the meantime keep up the good work, Jim! ML (As an aside, my Forum Notification Settings are configured to notify me via e-mail to new postings to message threads in which I have participated, but sometime last week those alerts stopped cold. Has this feature been disabled?)
  20. From what I have read, it seems logical that Oswald would have had the know-how and the available technology to do that. Your hypothesis regarding the presence or absence of signatures also seems plausible to me. As to Jim H's comment's, I did not intend to state or imply that those documents had been produced using a hot-lead Linotype machine. Rather, they appear to me to have been made by producing camera-ready artwork, from which photographic negatives, and then metal printing plates, would have been made. I believe this would have been one of the predominant production processes in use at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall at that time. Regarding Oswald's "wanna'-be" CIA agent status, to me that's a matter of semantics as much as anything else. I have no doubt that Oswald was at the very least a paid CIA asset; but if he was indeed an agent, in the strictest sense of formal CIA classification, then it seems entirely possible that it was the CIA itself that furnished him with those multiple - phony - identification cards and corresponding identities. ML
  21. <grin> Excellent point, Cliff - and thanks for the reply. ML
  22. Roselli did operate within Trafficante's Miami orbit, but at least according to a 2010 Hillel Levin article in PLAYBOY,* Giancana was beholden to Chicago-based kingpin Tony Accardo. Would Trafficante have ordered Rosselli's elimination without due consultation with the Mob heirarchy, particularly including Accardo? - ML *The PDF version is too large to attach herewith, but is available for reading at: https://issuu.com/markt_777/docs/kennedy_assassination_playboy_11-20
  23. Uhm, just who is it occupying which pole ("Who's on First?")?! <g> In a separate message thread, Gene Kelly writes: "... I am frequently asked (as the infamous person in the family "into the JFK thing") what are the best books to read. Joe McBride's book is on my short list...." What I consider to be a balanced and concise (~200-page) treatment of JFK information available circa 2017 is Jeremy Bojczuk's 22 November 1963: A Brief Guide to the JFK Assassination (original copyright 2014). Apropos of conspiracy research and this "I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak" message thread, Bojczuk writes: "... It is irrational to invent a conspiracy to explain every apparent discrepancy in the evidence. Not every such discrepancy even requires a specific explanation. Eye-witnesses can be mistaken, technical data can be incompetently assembled and analyzed, and photographs can display unexpected visual effects. In any complex set of evidence, there are likely to be elements that do not match. The desire to explain everything, whether to find an elusive smoking gun or to stake one's claim to a particular area of study, is a harmful characteristic of much JFK assassination research. It has led to cult-like behavior, in which anyone who fails to agree with every aspect of a particular explanation is damned as a heretic...." (p. 166) FWIIW, ML
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