Paul Jolliffe
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Posts posted by Paul Jolliffe
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1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:
Paul:
I have a lot of respect for you and your work. I think you are one of the most valuable posters here. But I disagree with this interpretation.
The key for me is the fact that Bringuier got out the Castro/Oswald broadsheet within 24 hours via CIA funding, and Butler was in Washington that weekend, at Dodd's request. And their video of the debate is at WDSU, with Kerry waiting to be interviewed.
That afternoon, the films of the lonely Oswald leafleting in the streets of New Orleans are broadcast to the nation. And then the whole background story comes through that afternoon on a call by Seth Kantor to Hal Hendrix, nicknamed the spook. Then that call gets scrubbed from the log sheet, and it turns out that one of the handlers for Hendrix was Phillips.
I have talked to reporters about this. And they said, it surprised them how fast the entire background on Oswald got out there since, relatively speaking, he was an obscure person. That scene in the film JFK, with Mr X in New Zealand, that was not at all a false pattern or was it exaggerated. People are still trying to figure out where that picture came from.
The point is, by the morning of the 23rd, Oswald is guilty in the public's mind, he did it and he did it for a communist cause. It got so bad that Castro had to give a speech explaining how no, he was not behind the assassination. And most of that imputation was done by his actions in New Orleans.
The helpers, were of course Ruth and Michael Paine, who were oh so eager to go on TV.
Jim,
Thank you for the kind words and the clarification.
We completely agree that the film and tape of "Oswald" in New Orleans was used at lightning speed after the assassination to support the view that he was a goofy, half-assed Marxist who couldn't think straight and therefore (somehow) he must be guilty of (what exactly?) . . .
We completely agree that the CIA had its media assets all lined up to frame "Oswald" as soon as his name was announced on Friday afternoon, and we agree that the CIA made tremendous use of all that New Orleans footage which portrayed "Oswald" as a looney leftist.
We also agree (I think) that all that footage smeared "Oswald's" political stance on just about everything. (Which I believe was his handlers original strategy in the summer of 1963.)
However, my point was simple: in none of that New Orleans footage was "Oswald" portrayed as a potential assassin. In exactly none of that coverage did he come across as violent or murderous. Surely the New Orleans crew (Bannister, Shaw, Ferrie, Thornley, the Cubans, etc.) would have had "Oswald" do something violent if they knew then and there (Summer 1963) that he was to be the assassination patsy later in the year!
But they didn't have him do anything violent. Instead, "Oswald", in every public appearance about which we know, came across as non-violent: debating, speaking, leafletting, discussing, lecturing, registering to vote, etc. He wouldn't even use his fists when punched by Bringuier!
"Oswald" in New Orleans was the exact opposite of a violent, murderous, would-be assassin.
His handler/s (certainly some of the above, if not others) would have had him do some violent things in New Orleans if they knew then what was yet to happen on 11/22/63.
Now, did some of those same of the New Orleans crew (Bannister, Shaw, Thornley, Ferrie, the Cubans, etc.) learn LATER - say in October or November - what was planned for both President Kennedy and "Oswald"?
Possibly (or maybe even probably) some of them did - your speculation about Shaw creating an alibi by flying to San Francisco is pretty good. If David Ferrie didn't know in advance of 12:30 pm what was to happen on 11/22, he sure got his marching orders in a hurry as he made his 400 mile dash from New Orleans to Houston. Did Bannister know in advance? Maybe, but I wonder then why he hadn't already destroyed his files from the summer, certainly before Jack Martin started poking around.
Did Thornley know in advance? Maybe, but we'd need some evidence.
Did Carlos Bringuier know in advance of 11/22? I don't know, but I kind of suspect he would have been kept out of the loop because he was a hothead who couldn't be trusted to keep his mouth shut.
What about the other Cubans, say Celso Hernandez or Carlos Quiroga or Sergio Arcacha Smith? I would expect from the CIA's standpoint, the fewer who knew what was to happen, the better.
Anyway Jim, you and I agree that the New Orleans media coverage was used to great effect and at warp speed to cement in the public's eye the view that "Oswald" was a lefty nut, which also then could be blurred into the implication that (somehow) he was guilty of murder.
But my point was that had his New Orleans handlers known back in August what was to be "Oswald's" fate in November, they would have had him take some violent actions then and there so that no such blurring would later be necessary.
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1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:
If I am recalling this correctly, the Jones Printing episode did not occur in the fall, it was the early summer, in May.
Which, if true, it means that Oswald met Thornley within weeks of his arrival and that Thornley was helping him in the first phase of his operation, the underground part. This was likely out of Banister's office.
Jim,
You and I agree that Thornley probably did cross paths with "Oswald" that summer in New Orleans, and that Weisberg's suspicion that Thornley picked up the flyers from Jones Printing was correct. We also agree that the destruction of Garrison's files means we'll never really know the full extent of whatever it was that Garrison believed Thornley's true role to be.
However, there was nothing in our "Oswald's" behavior in the summer of '63 in New Orleans that indicated he was being groomed as a potential assassin patsy - he wasn't frequenting rifle ranges, popping off at other people's targets, mouthing off about how JFK ought to be shot, getting a rifle repaired, bragging that he was soon due to come into some money, etc.
No, all of that (fake) behavior occurred in Dallas, not New Orleans.
So, that indicates to me that the whole slew of suspicious characters in New Orleans - including Kerry Thornley - did not yet know of, or were not included in the plans to frame "Oswald" as an assassin. Otherwise, they surely would have done more than have "Oswald" pass out flyers, start (and lose) arguments on TV and radio, and attend a voter registration drive in Clinton, etc.
In New Orleans, "Oswald's" role seemed to be designed to discredit various leftist organizations, most notably the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, but also the New Orleans Committee for Peaceful Alternatives (COPA), the ACLU, and possibly even the Jesuits at Spring Hill College in Alabama. ("Oswald" spoke there about contemporary life in the USSR in July of 1963. Clay Shaw spoke about International Relations at Spring Hill one month earlier. Did Shaw - or someone - pressure the Murret family to invite "Oswald" to give a speech there? What a bizarre coincidence, if coincidence it was!)
President Kennedy's Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in Moscow by Secretary of State Dean Rusk on August 5, 1963. However, before the Senate ultimately ratified the treaty on September 23, 1963, the debate was hot and heavy. Opposition was intense, especially among the reactionary right. Fear that the treaty would leave us vulnerable to the Soviets was rampant in New Orleans and throughout much of America. At that very same time, from the first week in August to the third week in September, our "Oswald" was making a fool of himself in public: on street corners, in radio interviews and debates, and on TV.
That is not a coincidence - "Oswald's" overarching mission in New Orleans (whether he knew it or not) was to discredit President Kennedy's Test Ban and JFK's (secret) rapprochement with Cuba.
(Whether either "Oswald's" speaking appearance at Spring Hill College in Alabama in July, or his strange arrival/charade at the voter registration drive in Clinton had anything to do with the Showdown at the Schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in June, I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.)
Ultimately, "Oswald's" mission in New Orleans failed - Kennedy's treaty was ratified, his (secret) hopes and plans for a '"normalized" relationship with Cuba were continuing unabated and he seemed prepared to begin to desegregate the American South.
By early October, our "Oswald" was safely ensconced in Dallas, and by the 16th, he was working at a building overlooking the murder site. I believe "Oswald's" move from New Orleans to Texas was the sign that the conspirators had changed their plans: they were now intending to kill JFK with "Oswald" as the patsy.
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26 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:
The Jones printing episode is described by Weisberg in his book Never Again.
That is the place that Oswald dropped off some flyers to be printed. But there was a question about who picked them up. Weisberg picked up some photos from Garrison's collection, this included Thornely's. Harold layed them in front of the Mr. Jones, and he picked out Thornley as the guy who picked up the flyers.
Harold was on to this because he had read about the problem in SS and FBI memos previously. That Jones would not ID Oswald as the guy who picked up the flyers and the FBI was telling the SS not to push it any further since they really did not want to know who actually did pick them up. So that is where Harold picked up the baton.
Boxley had been with Harold to the print shop. When Harold got back and told Garrison about the Thornley identification, Boxley tried to deny it happened. But Weisberg had secretly recordered the exchange so he pulled out the tape recorder and played it. That is how treacherous Garrison's office was that early.
Thanks, Jim for that reminder from Harold Weisberg. I'd forgotten that tidbit until you mentioned it.
This makes me even more curious as to whether Thornley too was being set up - after all, no active assassination conspirator would show their face before a witness if they were to be associated with "Oswald" and the FPCC.
If the person who picked up the FPCC flyers from Jones Printing was indeed Thornley (and thanks to Weisberg's work, we can reasonably infer he was the one), then it may be that someone back in August in New Orleans was trying to create an association between "Oswald" and Thornley.
It also occurs to me that the same someone may have attempted to create a phony overlap with "Oswald" and Thornley in Mexico City. Thornley's denials that he met or saw "Oswald" in Mexico City are disingenuous: he did not meet our "Oswald", but he may (or may not) have interacted with a different Lee Harvey Oswald in late August or early September of 1963.
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On 7/9/2020 at 1:54 AM, Ron Bulman said:
Stumbled across this. Straight from the horses mouth...
Thanks Ron for finding and posting that interview - I've never seen it before.
As odd as Thornley seems here, I am not sure that this is a complete snow job. He freely admitted that he portrayed our "Oswald" as an assassin back in 1963/64 and was convinced of his guilt because all of the major media said so, but by 1975 he had changed his mind, thanks to the involvement of Cubans in Watergate with whom he had been acquainted back in New Orleans in the early 1960's. (Frustratingly, Thornley never specified who!)
A few things are striking, and don't easily fit with the theory that Thornley was a witting and active conspirator:
1. Thornley claimed to have met Clay Shaw in the context of a discussion of Thornley's novel about "Oswald" two weeks before the assassination! (If he were a witting conspirator and part of a wider plot involving Shaw, he never would have confessed to that.)
2. Thornley freely admitted that he could not explain the coincidental meetings he had with so many of Garrison's suspects: Banister, Shaw, Ferrie, and Life Magazine stringer Dave Chandler (?) Thornley also said he worked in the fall of 1963 at a restaurant in New Orleans (The Court of the Seven Sisters, maybe?) over which our "Oswald" and his "mother" had lived in the same building several years earlier. Thornley marveled later at the apparent coincidence of the overlap.
3. Thornley stated that a "big bald-headed Nazi" intelligence agent "arranged" for Thornley to shake hands with the men listed above - was Thornley (and were these other men) being groomed as a possible patsy/patsies?
4. Thornley said that his own trip to Mexico City would have overlapped with "Oswald's" claimed visit, had he, Thornley stayed an additional week as he had originally planned. But because Thornley cut it short, he did not meet "Oswald."
(While I am convinced our "Oswald" never went to Mexico City, it seems very possible someone using the name Lee Harvey Oswald really did go in late August/early September. But whether anyone at all went during the last week of September, well, I'll leave that aside for now.)
5. Thornley no longer believed "Oswald" was on the sixth floor, and then he cited the statement of an unknown secretary on the second floor. Immediately after the shots rang out (said Thornley, paraphrasing the unnamed secretary's statement), "Oswald" walked up to her and asked "What happened?" Thornley cited the Altgens photo as proof that "Oswald" was on the front steps of the TSBD just before the fatal shots.
6. Thornley asserted there were "Oswald" doubles but "most of them did not look like him, however." (That statement, of course, implies that Thornley had at least some contact with them. The details of those meetings were not explored on this tape.)
In sum, Thornley seems to me to have been a potential patsy for the conspirators. He seemed to imply that years later he realized he had been unknowingly manipulated by people working for an intelligence agency.
In that, he just might have been telling the truth.
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On 6/28/2020 at 3:46 PM, James DiEugenio said:
John: Nice try, there is a bit of a resemblance, but I think that guy is a little too tall for Thornley if he was really 5' 10". (But like I said, with him, who knows?)
See, Garrison and others have also speculated about this, as did Fonzi. It was not about what Lifton or Gorightly say as there being some kind of Oswald double. Since the facial resemblance was not of that degree. As Weisberg was trying to show, you could not do that even if you tried.
But if Thornley was 5' 10", then physically, he had a similar slender physique as Oswald did. So, as you read Garrison's book, on page 74, Thornley admitted to stopping off in Dallas in the early summer of 1963. Which is when the Oswalds had left the city to go to New Orleans. But the Neely street apartment was empty at the time. And I have to say, Breck Wall, who knew Ruby, once told writer Dave Manning that its Thornley in that BYP.
The other thing that I did not mention is the thing about Mexico City. Thornley also visited Mexico City about 3 weeks before Oswald went. He allegedly went alone and his reason was to practice his Spanish. Hmm. In my book, I might have got this date wrong. In researching the article, I found out that Thornley sent a postcard from Mexico to New Orleans dated something like August 30th. His girlfriend Jeanne Hack said Thornley, who was usually kind of loquacious, would not say anything about that journey.
He told the FBI in February "that he had made this trip by himself and emphatically denied that Oswald had accompanied him from New Orleans to California, or from California to Mexico." And BTW, that denial began very early, like the first time the FBI questioned him and it continued for months.
But yet on the same day of that February memo, another FBI memo was written which said, that Thornley had been been in Mexico and California with Oswald, and the Secret Service had been notified of this. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 190)
Again, there should have been a full court, no holds barred, air, land and sea inquiry into this guy. And the WC gave him a free pass to do his cut and paste job on Oswald, literally creating an assassin for them, a man who wanted to be known 10,000 years from now as he had the hand of God on his forehead.
Like I said, Thornley, was good at creating pulp fiction.
Jim,
Thanks for the update on Thornley in Mexico City in late August/early September of 1963.
Clearly the FBI did not believe Thornley's denial that LHO accompanied him then to Mexico City, and I think the FBI had good reason to be suspicious:
1. There was already in federal custody (Richard Case Nagell) a man who plausibly claimed that, as part of an intelligence assignment, he (Nagell) had surveilled LHO in Mexico City in late August/early September!
2. Also by then, the FBI knew of Clifton Shasteen's claim that the LHO, who had been his customer at Clifton's Barber Shop in Irving, had a pair of yellow house shoes from "Old Mexico". Shasteen and this dark-headed LHO (whom he'd seen many times in Irving) memorably discussed those very shoes from Mexico, and this was of considerable interest to Albert Jenner. (Yet no such yellow shoes were ever found at either 1024 N. Beckley nor at 2515 W. Fifth in Irving.)
3. Finally, Robert Clayton Buick made various claims over the years, but the essential bit was this: in the summer of 1963 (before September) he was paid by two agents of American Intelligence to report any relevant conversations from the Hotel Luna in Mexico City. Buick claimed he talked with "Alex Hidell" a couple of times and later saw him several times at the bar in the Hotel Luna. Buick asserted that the "Hidell" he met was actually LHO and that assassination talk was in the air between various shady characters in the bar. Buick also identified Nagell in that very bar (although he never claimed that he saw Nagell and LHO together.)
Hmm.
While Buick's statement on its own is nearly worthless, both the manager and the bartender in the Hotel Luna were connected to intelligence: Warren Broglie, the manager, got together socially with Win Scott, the CIA's Station Chief in Mexico City and Franz Waehauf, the bartender, was allegedly Czech Intelligence. By all accounts, Buick really was in Mexico City that summer and the Hotel Luna was awash with intrigue. Was Buick really approached by American Intelligence and did he meet LHO?
Maybe not, but it just might have actually happened - it isn't that far-fetched.
My point in listing these three sources is to demonstrate that the FBI had reason to wonder whether LHO had indeed been in Mexico City in the late summer of 1963, just as Kerry Thornley made his trip.
We know that the man arrested in Dallas, the man shot by Jack Ruby, the man married to Marina - "Oswald" - that guy never went to Mexico City.
But the cumulative evidence was not bad that somebody who looked like "Oswald" (sort of) and who used the name Lee Harvey Oswald apparently did go to Mexico City at least once in the late summer of 1963.
Jim, you've pointed out that the FBI suspected Thornley was lying about not seeing or interacting with LHO in Mexico City. Paradoxically, Thornley might have told the FBI the truth - because our "Oswald" was never there!
However, if Buick, Nagell and especially Shasteen (whom I believe told the truth) are correct, then clearly some other LHO was in Mexico City in late August of '63, and it is then very likely Thornley encountered this other LHO.
No wonder the FBI was suspicious of Thornley and hounded him about his trip to Mexico City!
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On 7/8/2020 at 5:24 PM, James DiEugenio said:
VInce Bugliosi could not have done better by his process of argument by length and charcterization. "I say". "She says"
Its not what someone says its what was on the evidence list, what was testified to my credible witnesses, how the list was then altered.
You take ten paragraphs to obfuscate what I wrote in two.
I do not know what this means: "This second camera has nothing whatever to do with Oswald and is entirely irrelevant. You say this second Minox was really Oswald's camera and that the Paines were lying when they said it was theirs. Then you say that second Minox was not Oswald's"
Flapdoodle. This is what I wrote, and they are the key sentences:
"The police already found Oswald's Minox. (Italics in original) The Paines are now trying to say they missed it, and by saying it was really Mike's they are separating that camera from Oswald. But now, Mike says this: the light meter found by the cops was really his also, not Oswald's. "
The second Minox was never Oswald's. Oswald's MInox was deep sixed by Hoover. And I am very clear about this and do not know why you would obfuscate it. But that would not do because the Dallas authorities insisted they had found the Minox in their original search. It was on their list and there is even a picture of it on the property room floor that I have seen. So the simple matter is that the police were calling BS on the FBI's revised story which was making the first Minox disappear and saying they only found a light meter. This got to be a serious problem as to the credibility of the FBI. So, as with the Tague strike, Hoover went to work altering the evidence and camouflaging the record with plenty of help from the Paines. Now, the added, second Minox was Mike's. And we were all supposed to forget about Oswald's Minox. Which would have indicated he was some kind of undercover agent.
No WC inquiry into this piece of evidence substitution and subterfuge. No HSCA inquiry since Paines are not called. But Gus Russo trots out Mikey and in 1993 on the lying PBS special Mikey says the Minox camera found was his.
No it was not. The Minox camera found in November by the Dallas police was Oswald's. The Paines then substituted another Minox to cover up for Hoover. There are two Minoxes in the Archives today. BTW, Ruth helped the WC on this camera issue later again. She said the Stereo Realist camera was hers. She recalled this in August, nine months later. The Paines had now effectively left Oswald with just one pocket camera. Just like normal people. Not spies.
Its that simple to understand. No Bugliosian bloviation necessary.
Jim,
Do you believe Kerry Thornley's basic role was to articulate the "Oswald was a would-be commie/potential assassin while he was in the Marines" line and that's why the Warren Commission gave him so much love?
(That's how I see him.)
Did Thornley play any other role in the framing of "Oswald"? In particular, did he ever impersonate "Oswald", either in Dallas or New Orleans? (Garrison himself wondered whether Thornley could have been the stand-in for the backyard photos taken at Neely Street, though I suspect they were created after the assassination in a rushed effort to shore up the case against a still very much alive "Oswald" on Saturday.)
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1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:
Hi Paul. Yes, I am aware of the smear FPCC campaign, and the Clinton voter drive incident, which can be tied to Shaw. I see your point that leafleting in front of the Trade Mart might be linked to Shaw as well. MC seems likely to be tied to the CIA/FBI anti - FPCC operation also. Your main point is well taken. Even if Permindex was somehow involved through connections to OAS terrorists, or Otto Skorzeny, or whatever, Shaw’s phone call, if it did happen, appears to show that he would still have been out of the loop.
Yeah, at the end of the day, the Dean Andrews/Clay "Bertrand" phone call story aside, we just don't have any evidence that Shaw was manipulating "Oswald" in October or November. That assignment was for others, not the least of whom was Ruth Paine, the lady who kept "finding" evidence so helpful to the Warren Commission's lone-nut theory. Could our "Oswald" have been contacted/handled in Dallas by Roy Truly, Bill Shelley, Capt. William Westbrook, David Atlee Phillips and/or others?
Sure.
But not by Clay Shaw from afar in New Orleans.
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2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:
Paul - your reasoning seems sound to me. I had not thought of it that way before. What are your thoughts generally on what Shaw was up to with Oswald in summer 1963?
Thanks, Paul.
While we can only guess at Shaw's assignment, we do know that the effect of "Oswald's" radio debate with Bringuier in New Orleans on August 21 was to discredit the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. (Once "Oswald" was revealed, on air, as a defector to the United States, anything further he might have had to say would have been disregarded in the minds of any listeners.) That the CIA notified the FBI that they were running an operation to do exactly that has been known since the publication of the 1975 Church Committee's Volume V, page 65:
"The CIA also took an interest in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee with which Oswald was -associated. According to the FBI documents, on September 16, 1963, the CIA advised the FBI that the "Age anti-Castro propaganda] advised that his Agency will not take action without first consulting with the Bureau, bearing in mind that we wish to make certain the CIA activity will not jeopardize any Bureau investigation."ncy is giving some consideration to countering the activities of [the FPCC] in foreign countries." 100 The memorandum continued: CIA is also giving some thought to planting deceptive information which might embarrass the Committee in areas where it does have some support. Pursuant to a discussion with the Liaison Agent, [a. middle level CIA official working on."
Most researchers, including me, agree that the "Oswald"/Bringuier debate was exactly the result of such a CIA plan (even though the CIA didn't get around to notifying the FBI until after the "debate" took place.}
Is it reasonable to assume that Clay Shaw was involved with "Oswald" in an earlier, similar plan to discredit voter registration drives in Louisiana when he and "Oswald" were in Clinton together?
I think so.
Was there also some sort of (aborted?) attempt involving "Oswald" to smear the New Orleans Committee for Peaceful Alternatives by association with "Oswald"?
According to N.O. Lt. Francis Martello's WC testimony, there may well have been:
"It should be noted at this time during prior investigation conducted, while I was a member of the Intelligence Unit, information was developed that Fair Play for Cuba Committee literature was found in the 1000 block of Pine Street, New Orleans, which was near the residence of Dr. LEONARD REISSMAN, a professor at Tulane University. This investigation was conducted by me.
As I remember, Dr. REISSMAN was reported to be a member of the New Orleans Council of Peaceful Alternatives which is a 'ban the bomb' group recently established in the city and had conducted meetings and two or three demonstrations in the city. Knowing that Dr. REISSMAN was reportedly a member of the New Orleans Council of Peaceful Alternatives I thought there might be a tie between this organization and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
"When OSWALD stated that meetings of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee had been held on Pine Street, the name of Dr. REISSMAN came to mind. I asked OSWALD if he knew Dr. REISSMAN or if he held meetings at Dr. REISSMAN's house. OSWALD did not give me a direct answer to this question, however I gathered from the expression on his face and what appeared to be an immediate nervous reaction that there was possibly a connection between Dr. REISSMAN and OSWALD; this, however, is purely an assumption on my own part and I have nothing on which to base this. I also asked OSWALD if he knew a Dr. FORREST E. LA VIOLETTE, a professor at Tulane University. I asked him this question because I remembered that LA VIOLETTE allegedly had possession of Fair Play for Cuba literature during the year 1962."To sum up, we know that
1. The CIA was trying to discredit the FPCC, and the Bringuier/"Oswald" "debate" was certainly part of that.
2. The voter registration drive in Clinton was suspicious as hell - or so it sure seemed to the black people in line that the white guys around were not on their side. (Probably correct.)
3. The New Orleans COPA was the subject of an investigation (by Martello himself!) to see if the FPCC could be linked to it, and maybe it could!
4. And finally, we might suspect that the "Oswald in Mexico City" charade (even if he never set foot there, as most people strongly suspect), could be viewed as yet another step in the CIA's admitted plan to smear the FPCC "in foreign countries."
(The "Oswald" in Mexico City charade/narrative may well have had several purposes, including the framing of "Oswald" as an assassin, and/or hunting a mole, but one of the many outcomes was certainly to tarnish the FPCC.)
So, Clay Shaw was a CIA asset who helped with #2 above. We also suspect, because of Shaw's role in the New Orleans International Trade Mart, that "Oswald's" presence there while FPCC leafleting was no coincidence. Shaw probably had some hand in that, too.
Did Shaw play some role to counter COPA? Did Shaw have anything to do with Mexico City?
I don't see any evidence for those.
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On 6/21/2020 at 12:40 AM, David Lifton said:
((edited and modified, 6/21/2020 - 430 AM PST)).
The numbered list you provided --while attempting to be "comprehensive" --does not provide an accurate picture. The idea that what happened in Dallas on 11/22/63 represented a coup was first voiced by M.S. Arnoni in a series of articles in his publication "The Minority of One," (TMO). TMO was available at the UCLA Research Library and I spent hours studying his writings back in 1965/1966. Another pioneer was Vincent Salandria who (along with Thomas Stamm) went to the National Archives, and viewed the Zapruder film and then came his (Salandria's) articles in Liberation magazine. Still another "first generation" researcher was Josiah Thompson, who --in 1966 (approx) --was hired as a consultant by LIFE, visited Dallas, interviewed witnesses, and had "early access" to the Zapruder film. Furthermore, and speaking only for myself, I learned a lot from speaking with--and meeting with - Raymond Marcus, during that same period. Another member of the SoCal "group" was Maggie Field, and still another Lillian Castellano. All of this activity by "first generation" researchers--this complete immersion in the 26 Volumes of the Warren Commission, and the realization that the Warren Commission was not just "wrong" but perhaps deliberately so (i.e., an outright fraud) --- took place between 1964 and late 1966. (Furthermore, all of it was "pre-Internet," by several decades). District Attorney Garrison entered the scene in February 1967, making his headline-producing announcement that he had "solved" the Kennedy assassination; and then, in March, charging New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw with conspiracy. It was around May 1967 (or perhaps a bit later) when I first met with him --- more than once, and for several hours.
(The chronology of my own involvement is laid out, in detail, in the opening chapters of Best Evidence, which was first published (in hardcover) in Jan 1981, which was a Book of the Month Club selection; and then (again) by three more publishers: Dell [1982], Carroll and Graf ["Trade paper," 1988], and Signet [paperback, 1993]). Your point number 8 --that Garrison was "[the] first critic who said JFK's murder was a coup d'etat," is incorrect-- completely incorrect. I had any number of conversations with Ray Marcus on this very subject (back in 1964/1965). Also, and on the subject of "coup," a most important book is (i.e., "was") "Coup d'etat," by Edward Luttwak, first published by Harvard University Press in 1968, and reprinted a number of times since. That book provided a methodical way to examine the JFK assassination (from the standpoint that it was a coup); and led me to focus on the Secret Service -- specifically, the White House Detail ("WHD") of the Secret Service as the key to understanding the mechanics of any plot.
Bottom line: there's a very solid published record about how thinking developed --among early JFK researchers --about the JFK assassination; and, should you wish to get an overview, there are two lengthy articles in Esquire Magazine --one in December 1966, and then a follow-up several months later (Just Googe "Esquire" and "assassination theories"). Garrison was not the progenitor of the ideas on your numbered list, and to believe that is a gross oversimplification. The original books on this case -- "Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy," by Joachem Joesten (1964 or 1965), Inquest (by Edward Epstein, July 1966), and Rush to Judgement (by Mark Lane, August 1966); marked the beginning. Two other "first generation" researchers were Ray Marcus and Maggie Field. Later (in 1968, I believe) came Josiah Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas, and my own work (Best Evidence ) was published in 1981. My final chapter -- Ch. 32 ("The Assassination as a Covert Operation")-- explicitly argues that the assassination was an "inside job" and leaves little doubt that we are talking about a coup. FWIW-- and this is admittedly subjective --it was always my impression that Garrison's "political theory" (i.e., his very public talk about a "coup") emerged after a Spring 1967 trip to Los Angeles, and the extensive contacts that he had--at that time--with Ray Marcus and Maggie Field (mentioned above). In particular, your point #9 --that a purpose of JFK's murder was to change the foreign policy of the U.S. (a polite way of saying, "to escalate the Vietnam War", e.g., starting with Tonkin Gulf, august 1964) -- is developed in The Minority of One (TMO), and was a subject of intense discussion among the two Southern California researchers (mentioned above, along with another, Lillian Castellano) with whom I was in contact back in those days. A good "snapshot" of the situation can be found in a New Yorker article published in June 1967, called "The Buffs," by writer Calvin (Bud) Trillin. Years later (circa 1992), some of this history blossomed into a Ph.D. thesis of John Newman, which then (in 1992/93) became his published book, "JFK and Vietnam." If you will study the materials I have mentioned, and arrange everything in "chronological order," you will have a much more accurate understanding of how the JFK controversy emerged, and the role played by District Attorney Garrison.
I am not taking issue with some of the "particulars" you raise; rather, I'm trying here to focus on "the big picture."
In many ways, Garrison can be viewed as "just another JFK researcher" --the big difference being that, as D.A. of New Orleans, he could charge people with crimes, and actually present evidence to a Grand Jury (which he did). Unfortunately (and this was the serious downside of his investigation) the principal person he charged --businessman Clay Shaw--was, IMHO, completely innocent of any wrong doing. The result was legal proceedings which produced national publicity and historically important testimony (e.g., the Shaw Trial testimony of Col. Finck, one of the Bethesda autopsy doctors) and much other testimony and documentation-- all if which led to a "not guilty" verdict (Spring 1969). The trial also led to the first public showing of the Zapruder film (in a New Orleans courtroom) which shows that JFK was thrust "back and to the left" by the force of a shot to JFK's head (which received world wide publicity, and was featured in Oliver Stone's 1992 movie, "JFK"). Personally, I don't believe the Clay Shaw had a blessed thing to do with JFK's death, but his prosecution --the prosecution of an innocent man, and a situation that was right out of Kafka -- became the center of Garrison's "quest" for the truth.
David,
Whatever it was that Shaw and "Oswald" were a part of in the summer of 1963 in Clinton, Louisiana, I doubt that it had much to do with the assassination plot. Further, I agree that Shaw simply could not have known that "Oswald" was to be the patsy for the assassination, and therefore, he simply could not have been anywhere near the top of the conspiracy to murder JFK.
Why not?
Because Clay Shaw called Dean Andrews on Saturday evening, 11/23/63 and asked him to go to Dallas to represent "Oswald"! We know that "Oswald" was shot the next morning, but obviously Shaw did not know then that was the plan - otherwise, he never would have made the phone call!
Did "Oswald" call Shaw on Saturday evening from the Dallas jail and request help in getting a lawyer,?
Almost certainly.
And did the Warren Commission then hide the fact that "Oswald" called and talked to an unknown party for 30 minutes Saturday evening? And has way too much focus been made of the "Oswald" call that did NOT go through (the "Raleigh Call") and far too little to the call that did go through?
Did Shaw then immediately call Andrews and ask for help for "Oswald"?
Yes!
Despite the best efforts of Shaw's lawyers to impugn Dean Andrews, it is clear: Clay Shaw called Andrews (and used the name "Clay Bertrand').
No reasonable doubt is possible on that point, and therefore, Shaw did not know what "Oswald's" role was in the conspiracy (i.e. designated patsy.)
Was Shaw a longtime CIA asset, and did he have contact with "Oswald" in the summer of 1963?
You bet.
Was Shaw glad that JFK was gone?
Very probably.
Did the CIA screw with the Garrison investigation using every media asset they could muster? (Were they afraid that Shaw might start talking about agency connections from the summer of 1963?)
Yes, absolutely true.
But was Clay Shaw himself "in the loop" about "Oswald's" role in Dallas and his fate? And therefore, was Shaw an active organizer in the plot to kill President Kennedy?
No evidence exists.
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2 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:
,Hunt took the fall for Watergate. I think he’d been wearing the patsy jacket for a while.
Hunt seems to have been a spy inside the Nixon White House for Richard Helms. Hunt’s principal, then, was neither fellow Brown alumnus Chuck Colson (whom Hunt had been pestering since 1969 about a job in the White House), nor Gordon Liddy. Hunt was first, last and always a CIA man.
Hunt went to jail to keep hidden his role in the JFK assassination. Both Hunt and Nixon had dirt on the other, and I believe both were playing a very dangerous game of blackmail.Blackmailers usually wind up dead.
So, had the JFK assassination unraveled to the point where top people were threatened, could they have thrown Hunt to the wolves?
Once JFK’s heart stopped, that question was moot - the plotters were confident that the coverup would hold.
It did.
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1 hour ago, Joe Bauer said:
Paul, from your post above I take it you feel E. Howard Hunt was in some way involved in the JFK assassination?
At least to some degree?
So many people, even here on this forum, discount Hunt's involvement and especially the account he shared with his son St. John Hunt, even though St. John Hunt has an actual tape of his father stating this account ( I think no one disputes the tape actually being E. Howard Hunt ) with specific names mentioned by E.Hunt such as Morales, Frank Sturgis, Cord Meyer and LBJ himself.
Personally I have always been fascinated with Hunt's JFK "Big Event" end of life confessional tape.
If his account is true...we have an insider's account as to who planned and coordinated the JFK murder in Dallas, Texas, 11,22,1963!
An absolute "highest level insider" who was deeply involved with some of the most important covert actions ever taken in the world of political espionage both domestically and foreign during this time period.
Hunt is such a high level "spy" he is involved with the highest levels of our government and secret government agencies and for a long time.
Any volunteered tape confession of something as mind blowing as his "Big Event" story
cannot be so easily dismissed because of this highest level background imo.
Yes, at the time of this taping Hunt did show some signs of dementia...at least regards his slower and more halting speaking. But compared to witnessing dementia in my own experience, his cognitive skills were pretty good over-all.
And I do believe Hunt could have done this all for his son St. John Hunt thinking that his confessional tape might fetch a six figure sum from some national book publisher due to it's mind blowing content and context.
Still, the story itself is so incredible in who it implicates, if it was perceived to be "too good to be true" then E. Hunt and his son St. John Hunt tried a scheme that backfired.
I still can't fully believe that E.Howard Hunt could throw out something so outrageously government rule and lying shocking that if it was to be believed, could throw our entire nation, our government and our MSM into a state of righteous revolt.
If LBJ and Cord Meyer and Hunt's crew actually made the JFK assassination happen, then we as a nation would be required to shake every aspect of our federal government to the core with indictments regards the cover up.
And every bit of historical information on LBJ would be re-centered around his role as the most treasonous American ever.
So, Paul, how much "do" you believe of Hunt's JFK "Big Event" confessional tape and story?
Joe,
Good question. I suspect that elderly, half-senile, faltering E. Howard Hunt was engaged in a classic “limited hangout” i.e. a partial (but spectacular) truth designed to preserve a larger, more dangerous truth.
So what was true?
Hunt was involved, somehow. So say both the Marita Lorenz sworn statement and the Angleton/Helms memo, disputed though both may be.
Was LBJ a plotter/ prime mover?
I doubt it, although he may have had an inkling that something was in the works. His questions to Hoover about the shooting itself to me have the ring of innocence, not to mention his belief in a conspiracy, repeatedly voiced to his aides and others.
Cord Meyer? Maybe, but no evidence.
William Harvey, David Morales?
Oh, very possibly - Harvey ran/managed Task Force W, had access to a wide range of covert executive action agents, and personally hated RFK “with a purple passion.” (Did Harvey hire the hit teams? Very possibly.)
David Morales?
Probably - who else would drunkenly gloat over JFK’s murder, if not someone connected to it?
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/David_Morales_-_We_Took_Care_of_That_SOB.html
So what did Hunt hold back?
That it was plotted and executed by people inside the CIA loyal to Allen Dulles, and Hunt, as paymaster, played a crucial role. Did Dulles engineer the assassination on behalf of other, unnamed (very wealthy, powerful and politically dominant) patrons?
Of course.
Dulles didn’t act on his own. This was a consensus decision, the collective desire of those whom C. Wright Mills called “The Power Elite.”
But only Allen Dulles had the connections, the knowledge and the skills to manipulate both the crime and the coverup.
Allen Dulles was the heart and soul of the CIA, and E. Howard Hunt was devoted to both with every fiber of his being.
To his dying day, Hunt was determined to preserve the stature of Dulles and his beloved CIA, even if that meant misleading his own sons.
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21 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:
But if you’re a back up patsy who the Agency was willing to sacrifice in the contingency of a plot gone awry, you might get photographed when Ed Lansdale is seeing to it you’re brought in from the cold.
Cliff,
I am convinced that the back-up patsy was Buell Wesley Frazier. If the lone shooter scenario fell apart (and on Friday night with a live “Oswald” protesting his innocence before TV cameras, that was a great possibility!) then Frazier was next in line.
On Friday night, at that very moment, Frazier was already in Fritz’s clutches, the finger of suspicion pointing straight at him!
There was even a witness from the infamous Sports Drome Rifle Range who claimed that “Oswald” had practiced there with a man named “Frazier”!
No, Howard Hunt was way too high up the CIA food chain (he knew way too much) to be burned as a patsy.
Frazier is alive and walking around today because the FBI intervened at that very moment late Friday night, took over the case, seized all the “evidence” and flew it to Washington. With the pressure no longer on Fritz to make the case, he released Frazier right then.
The FBI intervened on Friday night not because they wanted to save Frazier, but because by then J. Edgar Hoover knew how crucial it was to manipulate the evidence to pin it all on “Oswald.”
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1 hour ago, Pete Mellor said:
.....and is it true that Nixon once told an aide that the coverup of JFK's assassination was the greatest hoax ever. (quote from George Schwimmer's 'Doppelganger'.)
Nixon may have said that, but I don’t know the specifics.
What is intriguing to me is the probability that Nixon’s fabled penchant for secrecy (as noted by every one of his mainstream biographers) may NOT have been due solely to his own personality.
I think it’s very likely that Nixon tried to amass as much power as possible in the NSC in the White House (at the expense of the State Dept., the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, etc.) because he knew and feared what they had done to the two presidents before him.
Nixon was very savvy politically - he loved to talk politics with his aides.
Even as a private citizen in 1963 he was very attuned to the possibility that JFK might dump LBJ from the 1964 ticket - on 11/21/63, in Dallas(!!!), Nixon ruminated in an interview on that very topic. It raised headlines in Dallas, only to be superseded by events within 24 hours.
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6 hours ago, Adam Johnson said:
If your E.H.Hunt and you have had any role in the financing or planning of JFK's assassination and you had to be in Dallas to make it all come together...where is the last place on earth you would let yourself be filmed or photographed between 11/21/63 and 11/23/63. There is no way its Hunt as a tramp or strolling around elm st. Minutes after the shooting. Use some logic people.
Adam,
I doubt Hunt was a tramp, and I can’t tell if the Hunt-like figure in the hat and raincoat on Elm Street was really Hunt either.Douglas Caddy, who knew Hunt, wrote that the Cancellare photo looks like Hunt. That’s as far as anyone can say, for now.
What is more interesting is that Hunt’s alibi for 11/21 and 11/22/63 was destroyed, under oath, by his own stupid admission that his children could not place him with them at home in Washington that weekend!
Further, the combination of both Marita Lorenz’s sworn statement and the Angleton/Helms memo would seem to be pretty good evidence that Hunt was indeed in Dallas then. Not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but not bad.
By his own admission to his own son, E. Howard Hunt was involved (somehow) with the assassination!
The murder of the president was an act of an enormous collective ego - these guys were sure they could get away with it!
It is entirely plausible that various conspirators were cocky enough to watch in person in Dealey Plaza. Whether he was or was not captured in a photo, Hunt may very well have been right there near Elm Street.
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5 hours ago, Paul Jolliffe said:
One further point: the super - sophisticated, smooth - talking, polished, urbane DCI, Richard Helms himself was asked under oath why he’d gone along with Nixon’s demand to use the CIA to (Falsely? Certainly not!) claim to the FBI that the Watergate break-in was an agency operation, and therefore, the FBI should back off.
After all, if there was nothing to Nixon’s threat that an unfettered look at Howard Hunt would track back to the “Bay of Pigs thing”, then the CIA had nothing to fear from the FBI.
But Helms (despite his real anger) did cave in, and the CIA really did tell the FBI to back off!
https://www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/nixons-bay-pigs-secrets/
When asked on August 2, 1973, why he’d gone along with the Nixon threat, if there was nothing to it, Helms stammered that maybe somehow that Nixon knew something he didn’t about Hunt and the “Bay of Pigs thing.”
Bull.
Richard Helms was (literally) known as “The Man Who Kept The Secrets”. He was the CIA Director because he knew everything about the CIA.
Helms complied with Nixon because Nixon’s threat was real.
https://www.amazon.com/man-who-kept-secrets-Richard/dp/0394507770
Ron,
The definitive account of that infamous memo (Angleton to Helms: Someday we’ll have to explain Hunt’s presence in Dallas on 11/22/63) was written by Mark Lane in his fascinating book about the 1985 libel trial, “Plausible Denial.”
Exactly who saw that memo, whether it was authentic, or disinformation is still a matter of some dispute.
In the book’s stunning summation of Hunt’s testimony, Lane was able to get Hunt to admit he had no good alibi for his whereabouts on 11/21 or 11/22/63 - Hunt’s long stated claim to have witnesses to his presence in Washington D.C. at that time was false.
Incredibly, Hunt admitted that his own children did not believe he was in Washington that weekend!
They still don’t.
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13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:
Nice to see you post Paul as I don't remember any lately. In relation to it I thought Angleton's cryptic note to Helms about Hunt in Dallas 11/22/63 should be, noted, as well.
One further point: the super - sophisticated, smooth - talking, polished, urbane DCI, Richard Helms himself was asked under oath why he’d gone along with Nixon’s demand to use the CIA to (Falsely? Certainly not!) claim to the FBI that the Watergate break-in was an agency operation, and therefore, the FBI should back off.
After all, if there was nothing to Nixon’s threat that an unfettered look at Howard Hunt would track back to the “Bay of Pigs thing”, then the CIA had nothing to fear from the FBI.
But Helms (despite his real anger) did cave in, and the CIA really did tell the FBI to back off!
https://www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/nixons-bay-pigs-secrets/
When asked on August 2, 1973, why he’d gone along with the Nixon threat, if there was nothing to it, Helms stammered that maybe somehow that Nixon knew something he didn’t about Hunt and the “Bay of Pigs thing.”
Bull.
Richard Helms was (literally) known as “The Man Who Kept The Secrets”. He was the CIA Director because he knew everything about the CIA.
Helms complied with Nixon because Nixon’s threat was real.
https://www.amazon.com/man-who-kept-secrets-Richard/dp/0394507770
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Paul Brancato raised an excellent point: the infamous 11:00 am June 23, 1972 conversation between Richard Nixon and Bob Haldeman was the one in which Nixon invoked the "Bay of Pigs" code to coerce the CIA into telling the FBI to back off the Watergate break-in investigation. (When the tape of this conversation was finally released after the Supreme Court denied President Nixon's claim of executive privilege to keep it secret, Nixon resigned two weeks later.)
Brancato is also correct that (for many years) Haldeman later claimed in writing that the "Bay of Pigs" reference was a code for the JFK assassination. It is also true that the CIA director, Richard Helms, vehemently and angrily denied to Haldeman during their meeting later that same day that "the Bay of Pigs had anything to do with this" (the Watergate break-in.)
What especially troubled Richard Nixon about the Watergate break-in was the involvement of E. Howard Hunt. Nixon knew that Hunt had done some very secret (illegal) work for the CIA and that a full-blown FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in would "uncover a lot of things . . . a lot of hanky-panky . . ."
What I don't see in this thread is the critical point of the "Smoking Gun" tape - Nixon's threat worked! Despite Helms's dislike and disdain for Richard Nixon, the involvement of E. Howard Hunt in Watergate FORCED Helms to lie to the FBI that Watergate was a CIA operation (which, while unbeknownst to Nixon, it almost certainly was!)
Haldeman's guess that Nixon's code phrase the "Bay of Pigs thing" was a reference to the JFK assassination was undoubtedly correct (which is precisely why he was pressured to retract it years later!)
Refardless of whether or not Hunt was either a tramp or in the hat and raincoat, E. Howard Hunt was involved in the JFK assassination and both Richard Nixon and Richard Helms knew it. Helms had no choice but to lie to the FBI.
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On 3/21/2020 at 11:17 PM, Micah Mileto said:
I tried looking into this issue for my torso wounds megapost, but didn't include it. I think it's very likely the "verified" notation was made on 11/24-26 after the paper was photocopied for the Secret Service.
Micah,
It is possible, as you conjecture, that Admiral Burkley signed his name and added the word "verified" to Boswell's sketch sheet on 11/24/63.
While anything is possible, the most likely explanation for a Burkley's signature and his word "verified" is that he wrote that in the autopsy room, as Boswell completed the sketch sheet late in the evening of 11/22/63. After all, at that moment, Burkley was indeed in a perfect position to "verify" the wound locations on the president's body - he was looking at JFK's corpse right there and then in the morgue at Bethesda!
In any event, you and I can play guessing games from now to eternity, but it was the Warren Commission's sworn duty (and moral obligation) to get to the heart of this and every other matter relating to the assassination. That they did not do so in this crucial matter (Where the hell exactly was the president hit?) is yet further proof beyond any doubt that they had no interest in conducting an honest investigation.
The Warren Commission was only interested in reaching the finding that one man, LHO, did it and that he did it alone, and that he did it because he was a nut.
Nothing else mattered to them.
They conducted no investigation whatsoever - they merely propped up a politically expedient conclusion, one that had already been sanctioned by those who committed the assassination.
The president's murder has never, never been properly investigated by any governmental authority.
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David,
If I am following your argument correctly, you believe that because the extant transcripts of the alleged phone calls made from the Cuban Consulate to the Soviets on Friday afternoon, Sept. 27 have nothing to do with the substance of the conversations/confrontations between Duran, Azcue and an unknown male earlier that day, that therefore that same unknown man could not have been deliberately impersonating our "Oswald", correct?
I agree that the existing transcripts we have of the alleged phone calls from the Cubans to the Soviets on Friday afternoon are deeply suspect, for all the reasons you've listed. Those transcripts are probably completely phony, at least in terms of connecting our "Oswald" to the earlier visits to the Cuban Consulate.
You and I also agree that our "Oswald" was never inside the Cuban Consulate on Friday, September 27, and never interacted with either Duran or Azcue. We agree that some unknown man was there, who did indeed have some kind of interaction (maybe heated, maybe not) with Duran and Azcue. We agree (as does LITAMIL 9) that this unknown man did NOT resemble our "Oswald." (Apparently he was short, thin, blond and poorly dressed.)
You believe that the lack of supporting documentation from either Azcue or Duran about a suspected American spy in their midst is evidence that no such suspect appeared before them on that Friday.
Fair enough.
However, I doubt if Azcue and Duran really considered this unknown man to be an American spy. My impression is that both of them described this man's actions and words as if they believed he was some sort of naive fool - after all, they made it clear to him he could NOT get an immediate transit visa to Cuba! Would they - at the time - have considered it likely that U.S. intelligence agencies would have sent this idiot on a hopeless mission, one doomed to fail? I doubt it. And therefore, I think it is at least possible that they dismissed the entire episode - at the time - as nothing more than pathetic effort by a dumb, ignorant clown, not worthy of further comment.
Obviously, on November 22, 1963, their interactions with this man would come under heavy scrutiny. But back on September 27, I could see both of them dismissing this obnoxious, stupid young man without a second thought.
So, the key question remains: did this young man, whoever he was, deliberate invoke our "Oswald's" identity during his meeting/conversations/confrontations with Azcue and Duran, or not?
If not, and if this man's business was completely unrelated to our "Oswald", then how in the world did this particular mundane episode become entangled in the "Oswald" legend? How would David Atlee Phillips have seized upon it a week later to serve as the basis for the "Oswald - in - Mexico City - meeting - with - Commies" myth? If this man's (legitimate?) visit to the Cuban Consulate was indeed completely unremarkable, then how in the world would DAP have even known of it, let alone how it could be twisted into the "Oswald in Mexico City" myth later?
Yet DAP is seemingly taking action by no later than October 7 about these visits.
It seems likely to me that this unknown young man, whether he deliberately used "Oswald's" identity or not, really did visit the Cuban Consulate at least once on Friday, Sept. 27, and that he really did want a transit visa to Cuba and the Soviet Union.
That part of the story, as related by Azcue and Duran, rings true - they did not make that part up out of thin air.
So, could the visit of this unknown man to the Cuban Consulate have been seized upon by DAP a week later to create the myth that this young man was, in fact, our "Oswald"?
Well, theoretically, yes it is possible.
But it would be one helluva coincidence if some unknown young man, completely unrelated to anything "Oswaldian", really visited the Cubans to secure a visa through Cuba to the USSR just at the same time that the JFK assassination plot was really heating up, and plans to frame our "Oswald" were in place.
And I don't believe in coincidences.
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1 hour ago, David Josephs said:
Hi Jim... Yes, I did consider that... my feeling is if Ruby's LHO is supposed to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to Mexico and back, he does an amazingly terrible job.
A single 4 part ticket to and from Mexico City does the trick... he doesn't even really have to go.... but at least have the tickets...
Yet that is not what we see... at every junction along the way the evidence gets worse and worse in support of anyone making the trip...
Additionally, wouldn't there be real evidence of a person taking this trip, being in Mexico...
Wouldn't the summary reports related to all the wire tapping have picked up something before Nov?A real person leaves a real trail... Nothing suggests that any of what we have is Authentic Evidence of a real person doing anything....
And this report is a classic... What the FBI concludes he did - is not possible, so instead of realizing there was something terribly wrong with the Mexico info, LEGAT (FBI) is sent back to the drawing board to find another way he could have made it....
You'd have to read my work on the trip back to Dallas to see how absurd it truly was.... FBI Mexico and assets were on it from 11/22 on....
David,
We agree that our "Oswald" in New Orleans in September, 1963 never made the trip to Mexico City late that month. I think it is likely our "Oswald" instead went directly to Dallas somehow. In Dallas outside Sylvia Odio's door on Thursday,, September 26, our "Oswald" was in the company of two Cubans, one of whom, "Leopoldo" later made a phone call to Odio in which "Leopoldo" clearly implied (albeit falsely) our "Oswald" was a future assassin and JFK hater.
So of course there is no legitimate record of our "Oswald's" trip to Mexico City - he never went there, either by bus or car or plane!
You have done a great job of showing the problems in the evidence that our "Oswald" made the trip via bus.
But you seem to be implying that no one was impersonating our "Oswald" in the Cuban Consulate on Friday, September 27, nor the USSR Consulate on Saturday, September 28. Forgive me if I have misread your guess here, but is that what you are thinking?
Hmm.
If no "Oswald" at all was in either the Cuban or Soviet consulates on either day, then what in the world were Duran and Azcue talking about later? To whom were they referring? Surely their stories were not made up completely out of thin air, were they? Isn't it more likely that they did indeed interact with and argue with someone who wanted to create the impression he was our "Oswald"?
Isn't that person, by definition, an "Oswald" impostor, no matter the resemblance (or lack of it)? And since that person was there, physically present inside those consulates, is it then productive to speculate about how they got there?
David, I am open to the idea the entire "Oswald" visits were a fiction, created by David Atlee Phillips after the fact. But surely, they must have been based on real incidents with a real person, one who somehow (at least for a bit), persuaded both Duran and Azcue that they had interacted with Lee Harvey Oswald? Otherwise, how would the plotters know in advance that Duran and Azcue would remember it that way later?
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22 hours ago, Ed LeDoux said:
The rest of the series may help Paul.
Jones is alias for Floyd De Graffenreid
Cheers, Ed
Thanks, Ed for posting these two articles.
The first one quotes Jerry Duncan extensively.
How in the world does Jerry Duncan's insistence that LHO's visits (a man with whom Duncan really met and interacted at least twice!) to the Humble Gas Station, directly across the street from 1026 N. Beckley, support your theory that LHO did NOT live at 1026 N. Beckley?
As you know, on 11/24/63, Duncan insisted to the FBI that LHO DID LIVE at 1026 N. Beckley, and that this "Oswald" had no automobile - he came to the gas station on foot!
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh26/html/WH_Vol26_0143b.htm
Now, maybe (maybe) LHO did not live at 1026 N. Beckley, but Duncan's above story - which you cited! - makes it very likely that LHO really did live there. Furthermore, the fact the FBI completely made up a phony refutation a month later is very powerful evidence that on 11.24.63, Duncan told the FBI the truth - LHO really did come to the Humble Gas Station directly across from 1026 N. Beckley at least twice to make long distance pay phone calls. Moreover, Duncan believed that LHO really did live at 1026 N. Beckley and on 11/24/63, said so to the FBI!
In the second story you posted, "John Adams" living at 1026 N. Beckley, clearly believed that he been introduced to the accused assassin, also living at 1026 N. Beckley, by the name "Harvey Lee." You have speculated that perhaps "John Adams" misheard or mis-remembered that name. While that is theoretically possible, you have no evidence that "Adams" was mistaken about the name "Harvey Lee". You have based your speculation on the phonetic similarity to another previous roomer - Herbert Leon Lee.
However, you neglected to tell your readers that Herbert Leon Lee did not use the name "Herbert."
No, instead he went by "Leon" Lee, a name far less likely to be mistaken as "Harvey Lee."
Finally, "John Adams" described overhearing "several" (at least three) phone conversations - at least one of which turned heated - between "Harvey Lee" at 1026 N. Beckley and an unknown party in Russian. Those conversations were between real people, but you have speculated they did not involve the accused assassin.
Fair enough. It is your right to speculate all you like. But you have produced not one tiny drop of evidence that any other person in residence at 1026 N. Beckley between the middle of October and November 22, 1963 even spoke Russian, let alone that they were later mistaken for "Harvey Lee" using the phone!
"Harvey Lee" absolutely did converse with his wife in Russian all the time! But besides "Harvey Lee", there is not the slightest shred of evidence that either "Leon" Lee or anyone else living at 1026 N. Beckley even could have made those calls in Russian.
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20 hours ago, David Josephs said:
I see the Same group Paul... Oswald's work at this point, on this trip is FBI despite having CIA assets surround him... and potentially an ongoing CIA relationship due to his Russia days (either sending him initially, or learning as much as possible afterward)...
Everyone.. EVERYONE is watching. There are few reasons, at this time, for the complete lack of coverage of our man Ozzie by the FBI... other than to remove any connection.
For Phillips et al, Ozzie playing the FPCC role accomplishes both dips, and maybe gives Oswald Bona Fides for more work supporting Castro and finding others like him for his FBI buddies..
But the 2nd dip kills him... When accused and caught he is now a Castro supporting Commie Marxism blah, blah.... with obvious proof which only Oswald can, or would refute.
Multi-use idiot.... a real patsy in the truest sense of the word.
David,
If our "Oswald's" visit to Sylvia Odio on 9/26/63 was at the behest of the FBI, then presumably his assignment was connected to the other two men. I've never seen any particularly persuasive evidence that our "Oswald" was actually in the service of the FBI in the fall of 1963. '
Who was "Oswald's" FBI handler/contact that fall?
Warren C. de Brueys, maybe?
Carlos Pena insisted that de Brueys and LHO not only drank together at the Habana Bar in New Orleans in August of 1963, but knew each other "very, very well." That is probably true. However, I have long suspected that the LHO with de Brueys was not our "Oswald", but someone else instead, maybe the real LHO.
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32246608.pdf
I can't believe James Hosty was our "Oswald's" FBI handler/contact - there is not any evidence for it, and powerful evidence against it. (As far as we can tell, the two did not meet face-to-face until 11/22/63!)
However, I do find it plausible that our "Oswald's" handler/contact (CIA? ONI? unknown at this moment) was in touch with the FBI that fall, and the FBI was able to keep tabs on our "Oswald", but at a degree or two of separation. Of course, if I'm right, then the FBI was dependent on this unknown agency for their "Oswald" information. And of course, that meant the FBI was (stupidly) vulnerable to being manipulated or framed by unknown operatives from this unknown agency.
What evidence do you have that our "Oswald" was directly in contact with a FBI agent/handler that fall?
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21 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:
Assuming that both MC and Odio were efforts to frame Oswald, wouldn’t that indicate two different groups at work?
I see your argument and it’s logical but still not ironclad. But you convinced me that it was more likely Oswald at the Odio’s than an imposter. Which of course weighs against the real Oswald being in Mexico.
Paul B.,
If we accept the theory by Bill Simpich, Peter Dale Scott and others, namely that the visits by someone calling himself "Lee Oswald" to the Cuban and Soviet Consulates in Mexico City on 9/27 and 9/28 represented a "legitimate" U.S. intelligence operation (ie: not related to the assassination), then it is certain that the Odio episode on September 26 and 27 represented the work of the assassination conspirators. "Leopoldo's" phone call to Sylvia Odio on that Friday night clearly implicated the patsy as a future assassin. Therefore, "Leopoldo" was working directly for someone who was part of the assassination conspiracy.
So, yes, in the most literal sense, these two separate incidents, 1,000 miles apart on the same day represent the work of two different groups for two different purposes: the Mexico City charade was by unwitting American intelligence officials in pursuit of some (undisclosed) U.S. operation, but the Dallas/Odio episode was by witting (American intelligence officials, presumably) to frame "Oswald" as a potential JFK assassin.
Bill Simpich used the term "piggybacked" to describe how the murder plot was grafted onto the "legitimate" Mexico City operation. I suspect that is generally correct, which would explain why the extant transcripts of the phone calls by someone calling himself "Lee Oswald" to the Cuban and Soviet consulates are not sinister - instead, they read as if they were not to be taken at face value. They seem to hint that something else was going on. John Newman argued decades ago that the transcript of the October 2 call by ("Lee Oswald") is almost certainly an artifact - it is the one at which CIA officials would later point as evidence that this ("Lee Oswald") was up to no good , colluding with commies.
Whether one accepts Newman's analysis or not, a "legitimate" Mexico City operation coincident with the Odio episode means that two separate U.S. intelligence teams were at work for two different purposes. In theory, on September 27, 1963 neither team may have been aware of the other. However, we can conclude that by October 9 or 10, the assassination team conspirators (at the very latest) planned to "piggyback" the murder plot onto the "legitimate" Mexico City operation.
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10 hours ago, Ed LeDoux said:
I cant find it remotely possible he lived there Paul.
No actual evidence says he did.
The cops were no saints by any stretch.
Will Fritz didn't get a 98% clearance rate on murders by doing it all alone.
We have the benefit of history, and his story isnt fairing well. Fritz lied, cheated, railroaded and did what it took to get a confession, many many were false. The foot soldiers were not clueless. Oswald's treatment and Reid Technique application robbed him of his alibi.
Not till Bart Kamp found Hosty's notes did we find out where and what Oswald's alibi was.
Thus conjecture over an alias and address Lee never used or can be substantiated is direct proof the original story has more holes than cheese in Switzerland.
If you want to surmise an address for Oswald then I suggest a thread by Mick Purdy called Buell Wesley Frazier Where's Your Rider. If its correct then Lee was staying at Ruth's till a washing machine was rented for Marina to use in a family size apartment they were set to occupy before Christmas.
Lee had enough money saved up.
Did he have another place. Did Marina make/sew/knit curtains? For what?
Not the tiny room at Beckley with curtains on every "wall" ... seems odd doesn't it Paul?
Cheers, Ed
https://servimg.com/view/17602890/1339
Ed,
Exactly when and why was the (theoretical) "Oswald lived at 1026 N. Beckley" story created? Before or after the assassination? Why did the DPD go there and search it on the afternoon of 11/22/63 if it had no connection to our man?
You've produced some intriguing evidence, but I need to hear more. If our man was really living with his wife and daughters out in Irving at the Paine residence, then why this giant "1026 N. Beckley" charade?
Kerry Thornley: A New Look
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
But Jim, even the late August/early September "Oswald" trip to the East Louisiana State Hospital (ostensibly to get a job to allow "Oswald" to register to vote in the Clinton/Jackson area) did NOT involve any violent, menacing or threatening behavior on "Oswald's" part that could later be construed as evidence that he was a potential assassin.
How do we know that?
Because the Warren Commission and FBI would certainly have told us if they could have found any sign that "Oswald" was violent on that trip - instead, they buried the whole thing!
(I think you and I agree they buried it because any close look at what was going on out there would have focused on Shaw and Ferrie, and that was way too risky for the CIA. So the whole trip was suppressed from investigation back in 1964.)
Now, you suspect that the whole "voter registration/job at the hospital" thing may have been part of a discontinued attempt to portray "Oswald" as nuts. Perhaps it was, but even so, there is no indication that this (false) depiction of "Oswald" involved a potentially dangerous violent streak. (Personally, I think this late August/early September episode was likely part of a soon-to-be-terminated attempt to stir up opposition to JFK's Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. To wit: only "nuts" would be in favor of banning the bomb!)
At the end of the day, we both agree that on 11/22/63 the CIA used the media coverage of "Oswald" in New Orleans to great effect - in the public's mind, since "Oswald" seemed to be a looney leftist, well (in some vague way) then he must be guilty of something . . .
We also agree that Jim Garrison's focus on David Ferrie was very dangerous to the assassination conspirators. Ferrie may not have known about the assassination in advance of 12:30 on 11/22/63, but he sure was a part of immediate aftermath - he was ordered (by whom?) to make that 400 mile trip non-stop from New Orleans to Houston to do . . . what, exactly?
Through Ferrie, a direct connection could be made to someone involved in the conspiracy - the same person who ordered Ferrie to get to Houston. From there, who knows where an honest investigation might lead?
No wonder the FBI shut down the Ferrie link so publicly on 11/25/63 - they were in full cover-up mode, not "let justice be done, though the heavens fall" mode!
Jim, make your best guess: who forced Ferrie to make that trip on the afternoon of 11/22 and what was Ferrie's role in Houston? Why did he go?
Personally, I think old drunk Jack Martin just might have been on to something: maybe, just maybe Ferrie was to be a backup getaway pilot for conspirators. But I really don't know, and I'd like your opinion.