Greg Doudna

5 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

That’s what I thought too. In the doc I refer to, which is filed under Nagel, someone in CIA, the author of the doc, says flat out that Kohn is an enemy of Garrison, which must be because as you say he thought Garrison was corrupted by Marcello. The author seems to be inferring that Kohn assisted Sheridan because he disliked Garrison, but not specifically because Garrison was whitewashing Marcello on this particular issue. So it’s logical to infer that Sheridan was out to stop Garrison, something Kohn appreciated. Sheridan worked for NBC at the time, not RFK, his former boss. Why were Sheridan and his superiors trying to stop Garrison? It certainly wasn’t because he was protecting the Marcello organization. Was it to defend innocent CIA asset Clay Shaw? They did protect him, but that’s not why they obstructed Garrison, which they assuredly did. They were protecting state secrets, not a Mafia assassination. 
I think I agree with Jim D on this one. 

I admit I am not well informed on Kohn. From the interview in Kirkwood, it seemed like Kohn was viscerally anti-Garrison analogous to the way many thoughtful Americans today (of which I am one) are viscerally anti-Trump. Kohn spoke of Garrison as like a Huey Long, a populist appealing to base instincts (at that time there was a prospect that Garrison could become a senator and who knows, maybe even a run for president). He seemed certain that Garrison was corrupt, compromised in his relationship with Marcello, and outraged that Garrison would not acknowledge that Marcello was involved in organized crime, which to Kohn was sort of missing the elephant in New Orleans. I do not think it follows necessarily at all that the reason Kohn was anti-Garrison was because he was trying to stop him from exposing a CIA conspiracy or exposure of state secrets related to the JFK assassination. That is like saying the reason there is wide and serious opposition to Trump is so as to stop Trump from draining the swamp in D.C. or exposing the Deep State. If I were to guess (this is a guess), if Kohn was like most people and believed the Warren Commission he would not believe there was any CIA JFK assassination conspiracy to be exposed.

Have you read Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here? It is about a Huey Long-like fictional character who turns America fascist, in a 1930s setting. It is little known even though by one of America's acknowledged best writers. It has special relevance in the Trump years. (I recommend it.) It was written in 1935. I do not know if Kohn read it but what I read of Kohn sounded like echoes of someone who saw Garrison in something of those terms. 

2 hours ago, Allen Lowe said:

Oh come on. He is saying he was guilty of participating in the plot,  just not in the  way Garrison charged him. “Garrison had the right idea. He was almost right.”  He would not have said this if he had no connection to the plot.

Well Allen that's one way it could be read, on the prior assumption that he was guilty. In checking the footnote, I see the witness, George Dureau, told of Clay Shaw's "Garrison was on the right track ... " words in a television interview taped in 2002. That is 28 years later than the time of the conversation reported. Tracy Parnell was right in commenting earlier that memories can be shaped over time on the basis of later input. Dureau gave a version of something Clay Shaw said, the original 28 years earlier being inaccessible. To cite that as evidence that the original was a confession goes too far. You don't know that. To make this point clear, consider this question: are you saying that the unknown original words Clay Shaw spoke 28 years earlier (which you do not know directly), of which Dureau gives the hearsay quoted above 28 years later, could not under any reasonable construction have been spoken by an innocent man? 

I think the answer becomes clear when reformulated this way, that answer being "no". Therefore your reading is at best a possible reading. If you do not already know Clay Shaw was guilty, it does not establish that he was. I still think an innocent Clay Shaw was musing that he could see Garrison's point of view and (if Dureau's version is roughly accurate) he could almost sympathize and agree with it--people like him of his background could have been involved in the assassination, maybe were, so Garrison was not wrong in suspecting him. But that is not him saying he was involved in the assassination, or had any knowledge of who was. Also, it does not mean his musing has any claim to being correct, of any greater weight than a thousand other musings of reasonably intelligent persons uninvolved in the assassination. Obviously my opinion, not meaning to disrespect yours.

On 4/1/2022 at 10:31 AM, Joe Bauer said:

Never got into this area very much but just now I noticed a few things in the pics Sean Coleman posted that seems quite noticeable to me.

Just my 2 cents worth.

The top pic shows an older aged lady in a bulky tan colored coat running up the grassy knoll along with other rushing people.

Some say this is the same lady shown in the lower pic with a tan coat and head covering of some sort ( scarf?)  This lower photo scarf wearing woman is first shown standing about 10 feet to the right of Jean Hill on the grass on the other side of Elm and is shown taking a picture of the Presidential limo a micro-second before JFK's head explodes.

Number 1:

The older grassy knoll running woman shown in the upper photo is not the same woman shown standing behind Brehm and then seconds later actually in front of a sitting Jean Hill and Mary Moorman. 

So easy to compare each woman's coats and see how different they are.

The older grassy knoll running woman's coat has much more bulky upper sleeves than the woman shown standing near Hill, Moorman and Brehm. Very noticeably different. Also, the upper torso part of the Hill, Moorman, Brehm woman's coat is clearly tailored much tighter around her versus the Knoll woman's coat. Also, the older grassy knoll running women's hair is clearly dark brown versus blond and she has no head adorned scarf as the lower photo woman does.

...<snip>...

I never gave much thought to Beverly Oliver's life long claim that the woman in the tan coat and scarf taking a picture with Hill and Brehm just as JFK's head explodes was her, but I now have a much more open mind to this being the case.

Oliver was a fairly big boned women. The tan coat picture taking woman's exposed lower legs depict a woman similarly built imo. And I don't think Oliver was short. The tan coat woman looks to be 5 ft.9 in. at least. And the posture of the tan coat picture taking lady seems very youthfully healthy and upright straight.

Maybe Beverly Oliver was telling the truth about her being right there when JFK was shot. 

Just thought I'd throw in my two cents here as uninformed as they are. The thread is compelling.

I have not followed this topic but found this comment of Joe Bauer of interest, in challenging the identity of the older aged running lady running up the Grassy Knoll and the shorter tan coat woman on the south side of Elm. What do others think? To me, that older aged running lady has always been the main reason I saw for excluding the Beverly Oliver identity claim. But if that is removed, as Joe B. is suggesting per argument, then Beverly Oliver may not quite so obviously be falsified on the basis of the rest of the photos, as Joe also suggests. That does not mean it would be Beverly Oliver, but it could reopen the question. But never mind Beverly Oliver which is irrelevant to the strict point at issue: are those two women certainly the same woman, or not? Has this question been asked and answered long ago?

8 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Is the story of the NOPD booking officer stating Shaw gave him the alias name of "Clay Bertrand" true or not?

I know the judge in the Shaw trial would not allow mention of this officer and his claim ( and for sure the officer himself ) which if proven true would have blown Shaw's defense out the courtroom window.

Agree Joe, there are many cases in which if a charge is proven true then a defense would be blown out of court. If Howard Brennan's claim in his book that he saw Oswald shoot Kennedy from the sixth floor TSBD window were proven true, then Oswald's defense would be blown out of court, etc and etc and etc. All true, that is how if-then logic works. But that does not say anything really does it, because the prior question is is the "if" part is true.

You know the testimony at issue regarding the alias on the fingerprint cards is all available, you can read it. You know that officer Habighorst's testimony that Clay Shaw told him he used the alias was contradicted by multiple other officers not to mention Shaw himself and his attorney, who testified that Habighorst had Shaw sign blank cards in advance which were then filled in by the officer with fingerprints and information on the basis of arrest paperwork not questioning; that Shaw's attorney had given strict instructions to Clay Shaw that he was to say nothing and answer NO questions, and that other officers present confirmed that Clay Shaw abided by those instructions and was not talking or answering questions, such as telling of an alias. You know that the testimony impeaching Habighorst was so weighty that the judge himself said flat out that he did not believe officer Habighorst's testimony, in light of the multiple fellow officers contradicting.

So when you ask, "Is the story ... true or not?", well, that is the question isn't it. Don't just ask the rhetorical question and leave it hanging. What do you think, after looking at the testimonies on that?

Links to all the full testimonies can be found here: https://www.jfk-online.com/arresttest.html. Next best and a bit quicker at only 63 pages, mostly selected documents, is Litwin, https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/did-clay-shaw-admit-to-aloysius-habighorst-that-he-was-clay-bertrand (author favors Clay Shaw against Habighorst).

For me it is pretty clear that Habighorst's credibility is questionable. I do not know why he did that, but I believe, against his testimony, that he followed a routine procedure in having Clay Shaw sign blank fingerprint cards in advance, then the alias which was an allegation against Clay Shaw was typed in on those cards drawn from other paperwork, not from anything Clay Shaw said. If I were on the jury that would be practically a no-brainer on the basis of the testimony as I judge it. Even if there were genuine ambiguity concerning who was and was not truthful there, ambiguity does not justify conviction of someone in a criminal case.  

I think it was Mark Lane who also did not buy this alias story who thought there was a plausibility issue in supposing, as the prosecution charged, that Clay Shaw used his secret alias to hide his identity in a plot to assassinate the president, then freely volunteered his secret alias to the first officer who asks: "I also go by the name of Clay Bertrand, officer." Did that actually happen? Really?

28 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Greg - I gather that you think Kohn’s beef with Garrison is that he was protecting Carlos Marcello by dismissing him as a subject of investigation. This comes down. I think, to Garrison’s personal credibility as a DA. Who is more believable - Garrison, who spent a decade or more investigating the JFK assassination under much duress and with official obstruction, or Aaron Kohn? Did Kohn have his own theory regarding Marcello’s part in the assassination, or simply dislike Garrison because he deemed him corrupt? I could reread your posts but thought I’d maybe just ask this question instead. 

I am not aware that Kohn ever suspected Marcello in the JFK assassination. As I understand it, Kohn objected to Garrison because he considered Garrison corrupted and compromised by Marcello on the organized crime issue. I do not know what Kohn thought about the JFK assassination itself, whether Warren Commission or conspiracy or what. 

24 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

The whole Sehrt as Bertrand stuff was Aaron Kohn's invention.

Is that accurate? Willing to be shown wrong if evidence is shown, but I do not know of Aaron Kohn connecting Sehrt to Bertrand or the Dean Andrews phone call. Not that it would matter if Aaron Kohn did--it would be of interest if so--but I just question that that is accurate. Where is this claim coming from?

In fact I have not confirmed any suggestion that Clem Sehrt was involved in the Dean Andrews phone call prior to the Peter Whitmey article of 1994. (It would not surprise me if the suggestion had been made earlier, but I do not know of any.) 

2 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Pardon me for butting in Greg. I assume that the only evidence of this conversation is Dureau's memory. Since many years passed between the time he allegedly talked to Shaw and spoke about it to Mellen, he could be misremembering details. Or, he could be mixing his memory of an actual conversation with things that he has read in the interim.

I have no way to prove it, but I believe that late-occurring memories by individuals like Dureau (and many many others) are likely influenced by what they have read about the case. Take the case of John Armstrong and his "witnesses." These people were told that they witnessed something significant, something that changed history. That is a powerful motive to "remember" something new.

You're not butting in Tracy. Your input is always welcome in any discussion in which I have a part.

58 minutes ago, Allen Lowe said:

Except for the fact that if you read Joan Mellen’s book A Farewell to Justice, Shaw made a death bed confession to having participated in the plot.

I don't believe that is a fact or correct at all. I found the passage in Joan Mellen's book. It is only a confession if you change "wasn't guilty", Shaw's words, as really meaning "was guilty". If you make that change of wording, projecting belief in his guilt into overriding Clay Shaw's words saying the opposite, then you can call it a confession. It is like reasoning that a person charged of a crime asked his plea who answers "not guilty" is actually a confession, on the grounds that since he really was guilty he actually was confessing, if you overlook that he said the opposite. Oh well. Here is the passage, with Joan Mellen's interpretation that this was "close to a confession".

"Nearly five years later, Clay Shaw came as close to a confession as he dared, setting him apart from the many CIA employees, from Lawrence Houston to David Atlee Phillips to Richard Helms, who carried their silence to the grave. Near death from lung cancer, Shaw was visited at the Ochsner Foundation hospital by longtime acquaintance and neighbor George Dureau, a New Orleans painter and photographer.

"As Dureau remembers, Shaw said, 'You know, I wasn't guilty of what Garrison charged. But Garrison had the right idea. He was almost right. Someone like me, with a background in army intelligence and with post-war intelligence connections, very well might have been asked to meet with someone like Oswald or Ferrie, to give them a package or some money or whatever, and I would have faithfully done it without ever asking what I was doing it for.' That 'package' recalls Donald P. Norton's testimony that Shaw gave him a suitcase of money to deliver to Oswald in Monterrey [Mexico]." (Mellen, Farewell to Justice, 2007 edn, 317)

This is one of those things that is read by people differently, like a Rorschach Inkblot. If you already think Clay Shaw was part of a plot to kill Kennedy, then of course this looks like he is "close" to confessing, by euphemistically saying what really happened in the language of "hypothetically" how it could have worked. 

If on the other hand Clay Shaw had no part in a plot to kill Kennedy, it reads as in a thoughtful moment seeing it through Garrison's eyes, almost sympathizing with Garrison, wrong as he was.

Rorschach Inkblot. 

Part 3 of 3

Dean Andrews makes an “excited utterance”

Dean Andrews then calls his secretary at her home, Eva Springer. Eva tells Andrews she will not go to Dallas for that purpose. Then the logical if fateful question from Eva to her boss. She asks, who asked you to represent Oswald? Dean Andrews has to answer something and thinks quickly but not quite quickly enough. He does not mention Clem Sehrt’s name but says (probably later regretting so) "Bertram" or perhaps Clem Sehrt or Dean Andrews already had heard “Bertram” as “Bertrand”. In either case the name which really was Bertram became told to the Secret Service and FBI on Mon Nov 25 by Eva and Dean Andrews as “Bertrand”. In the days that followed, Dean Andrews, even if he knew the true spelling of the name was “Bertram”, would be happy to have that slight alteration in spelling which would shield from discovery of the true identity of the name. (Dean Andrews also mislocated the time of the call to the FBI from the true time of just after 4 pm according to Eva Springer’s accurate memory, to “Saturday night” when he was “under sedation” in his original FBI interview, at which time he also claimed to the FBI that he had “made no notes” and that the caller had left no return phone number, of this phone call which involved what would have been the most significant legal case of his career and which he told his secretary and fellow attorney Zelden he was going to do [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10477#relPageId=307]).

The reason Dean Andrews would not want Lane Bertram of Houston identified as involved in his call would be because the FBI would interview Lane Bertram and then Clem Sehrt would become involved and under FBI scrutiny, which Andrews had been asked not to have happen.

An alternative trajectory could be Clem Sehrt makes his first call not to Dean Andrews but instead to the Marcello crime organization to find out what they want to do. The Marcello crime organization—if the concluding suspicion of the HSCA investigation that it had carried out the JFK assassination was correct—may have intended or anticipated that Oswald should have been killed already, such that a need for a lawyer was not supposed to happen. But with Lee still alive in police custody as of Saturday afternoon, the Marcello crime organization may have considered as a contingency sending a lawyer to Oswald in response to Marguerite’s plea. Sehrt was linked by long association to the Marcello organization, and Dean Andrews had recently been part of Marcello’s legal team in Marcello’s deportation case. And if what the son of Dean Andrews told the son’s friend above is correct, Dean Andrews was a friend of Marcello. From Sehrt’s point of view, he would have been caught in the middle and if ever there was a sensitive situation with landmines, this would be one. It can therefore be assumed that disclosure by Andrews that the call to Dean Andrews came from Sehrt, or someone else speaking for the Marcello organization, would be considered most unfavorably by people whom Andrew knew it was best not to cross.  

Although Eva Springer told the FBI she heard only the single name “Bertrand” in Andrews’ answer, what Andrews told her now committed him to that name, which although it has not been recognized, reflected the name of one of the links in the phone call that had come to him. Andrews may have intentionally altered the spelling of Lane Bertram to the phonetically similar but differently spelled Clay Bertrand. Andrews then fabricated all of his fictitious stories about who Clay Bertrand was and it was off to the races. If Andrews’ purpose in all this was to conceal that the name came from Lane Bertram, it was successful. 

That Dean Andrews gave so much smoke and mirrors and mystification in concealing the identity of "Clay Bertrand" supports the idea that Dean Andrews could have intentionally altered the spelling so as to disguise, such that the name given by Dean Andrews to the FBI—“Clay Bertrand” in agreement with Eva Springer confirming to the FBI that she heard “Bertrand”—went nowhere for investigators (apart from a mistaken prosecution and ruination of the life of an innocent man who had nothing to do with that phone call). Except for the little-noticed Newcomb and Adams manuscript, and then the mention of Palamara noted as a curiosity without further significance, investigators did not notice the similarity or match between the names “Clay Bertrand” and Lane Bertram.

In this reconstruction it is necessary to assume that a Secret Service agent in Dallas, SAIC Bertram in Houston, and any fellow Secret Service agents they might have privately or informally told, did not come forth either in written reports at the time or voluntarily in media interviews in later years with their role in a phone message on behalf of Marguerite to Sehrt of New Orleans. (They would have had no direct knowledge of a connection to Dean Andrews.) The reticence is therefore not difficult to understand in terms of agency and career considerations, if not simple accident. If it had been disclosed later it would raise questions of why was it not disclosed earlier, with all of the inevitable questions that would be raised in tabloids of whether something more sinister was involved, perhaps even allegations of Secret Service collaboration with the Marcello crime organization in the assassination itself. 

Not only would there be the question of propriety in assisting the Oswald family in an attempt to obtain legal counsel for Lee behind the backs of the Dallas police and other investigative agencies, there would be the failure to disclose earlier. These considerations reasonably account for the silence thereafter on the part of the ca. 2-3 Secret Service agents involved, agents not generally known to be talkative in public in any case, concerning what at the time was a small act of kindness to a bereft family. If the story had later come out, the Secret Service might have responded by saying that had not been an approved action, though the agent meant no harm.

This solution is admittedly conjectural. There is, critically, no independent corroboration of a Lane Bertram role in the phone calls. The role of Lane Bertram in this reconstruction is entirely based on the testimony of Eva Springer and Dean Andrews of the name. The expression of the name by Dean Andrews is interpreted on analogy to what in law is called an “excited utterance”, in which something truthful is expressed before dissembling or self-censorship takes over in a person. It is a proposal motivated from the twin premises that Clay Shaw did not make that phone call but someone did, and that the name associated with that phone call told by Dean Andrews was real, “Clay Bertrand”. Lane Bertram.

Corroboration that the phone call to Dean Andrews originated from Marguerite Oswald

Because Dean Andrews was in the hospital on Sat Nov 23, Andrews called Sam “Zonk” Zelden, a prominent New Orleans defense attorney, on Sun morning Nov 24 to arrange for him, Zelden, to go to Oswald in Dallas on Andrews’ behalf. Then Andrews would follow as soon as he was discharged from the hospital. That was being discussed by Andrews and Zelden over the phone when the news came over national television that Oswald had been shot dead in police custody by a Marcello crime organization-linked Dallas night club operator, Jack Ruby. Zelden, seeing this on television while on the phone to Dean Andrews, told Andrews, never mind, you don’t have a client any more, he just became dead. 

What has received less attention than it deserves is that Sam Zelden, prominent attorney in New Orleans, confirmed that Marguerite Oswald (not Clay Shaw) was the source of the request to what may have been a Zelden-Andrews defense team for Oswald if Oswald had not been killed.

Houston Post March 3, 1967

“[Dean] Andrews spent more than two hours in Garrison’s office Thursday night [March 2, 1967] along with his attorney, Sam Monk Zelden of New Orleans. When they emerged from the office, Zelden told Andrews not to answer questions.

“’We have tried to co-operate in an effort to reach the truth,’ Zelden said.

“In Andrews’ Warren Commission testimony he said he called Zelden on the Sunday after the assassination and asked him if he would go to Dallas and represent Oswald. Andrews was hospitalized with pneumonia at the time.

“’Mrs. Marguerite Oswald called me,’ Zelden said outside Garrison’s office. Zelden gave this same information to the Warren Commission. Mrs. Oswald, Lee’s mother, denies making any such call.

“Zelden said neither he nor Andews personally knew Clay Bertrand.” (https://www.jfk-online.com/jpsmzsmch.html)

Before addressing the apparent contradiction of the denial of Marguerite Oswald, note that Zelden does not deny the existence of a real request for legal assistance for Lee in Dallas that had come to Andrews and Zelden. Zelden knew the phone call to Dean Andrews was real. Zelden is saying where it came from, from Marguerite Oswald in Dallas.

The significance of this statement of Zelden has not been appreciated, largely because of the press report, as above, that Marguerite denied (presumably a reporter phoned and asked) that she had called Zelden the weekend of the assassination. There is no reason to suppose Marguerite was aware that Zelden became involved as a result of her message to Clem Sehrt that weekend. That will explain Marguerite’s denial. She denied calling Zelden because she had not called Zelden. But there is no need to assume an actual contradiction. Marguerite had not called Zelden, but Zelden meant Marguerite had called him in the sense that Marguerite originated the request which had come to Zelden in which Zelden would have gone on to take the leading role in the defense of Oswald at trial.

The Zelden family understood this correct sense of what Zelden meant when he said Marguerite had called him, that it was the request to defend Oswald which had come to Zelden from Marguerite via Dean Andrews. From Mark Zelden, grandson of Sam Zelden, writing in 2013:

“My parents’ bookshelf has always had an original copy of the official Warren Commission Report for as long as I can remember. My grandfather, Sam ‘Monk’ Zelden, had been friendly with the late Congressman Hale Boggs, a member of the Warren Commission, and received a signed original Report. 

“Sam Zelden was one of the greatest criminal defense attorneys the City of New Orleans has ever produced. For many years after WWII, he represented a number of colorful characters like ‘Diamond Jim’ Moran and Dean Andrews, and often was the go-to lawyer on criminal defense cases at the time of the Kennedy assassination in New Orleans. Therefore, it should have been no big surprise that Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, reached out to my grandfather through Andrews and another intermediary that fateful weekend in 1963.” (https://thehayride.com/2013/11/zelden-jfk-the-new-orleans-connection-and-revisionist-history/)

The bolded last sentence above clears up and removes the apparent contradiction in the earlier reporting between Sam Zelden saying Marguerite had called him that weekend, and Marguerite denying she had called Zelden that weekend. The difference is illusory not substantive. The request to Zelden came not via a person-to-person phone call from Marguerite to Zelden, but “through Andrews and another intermediary.”

Well, we know the Dean Andrews intermediary step—it has been before our eyes all this time--that was the phone call Dean Andrews received ca. 4 pm Sat Nov 23. That phone message came from Marguerite Oswald via a Dallas Secret Service agent to Lane Bertram in Houston and then via Clem Sehrt to Dean Andrews and through Dean Andrews, Zelden. Zelden’s standing in the case, stillborn because Oswald was killed, therefore did come about by request of Marguerite in its origin, as the grandson of Zelden writes, from Marguerite “through Andrews and another intermediary that fateful weekend”. Mark Zelden is saying his grandfather was invited to defend Oswald by means of that same phone message that originated from Marguerite Oswald to Dean Andrews.

The ”other intermediary” besides Andrews probably refers to Clem Sehrt--the anonymity attached to Sehrt’s name at Sehrt’s request starting from that first weekend continued to the present day in the Zelden grandson’s article--or else a Marcello organization caller after a briefing from Sehrt. One wonders if Dean Andrews had the option to say "no" to the request to represent Oswald in Dallas if he had wanted to. Some requests are just hard to refuse, depending on who is asking. 

Part 2 of 3

How did Dean Andrews come to name “Clay Bertrand” as his caller?

There are several possibilities. One, Dean Andrews could have just made up the name out of the air, just as he told the Warren Commission he had made up two other names out of the air on another matter to the FBI (who had taken Andrews seriously and looked for the names given). This first option was suggested by an investigator employed by Andrews, Prentiss Davis. 

“Researcher Jerry Shinley unearthed a long-forgotten item from a New Orleans Times-Picayune August 13, 1967, article on Dean Andrews’ perjury trial: a statement from Dean Andrews’ investigator Prentiss Davis, who ‘volunteered the information that Andrews frequently used the name Bertrand to mask the identity of whomever he might be talking to …’” (https://www.jfk-assassination.net/shaw2.htm)

The weak point here is that the secretary, Eva Springer, showed no knowledge of such a practice on the part of Andrews, nor, in Davis’s original FBI interview of Dec 5, 1963, is there record of Davis having said that in explanation of the name (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1142#relPageId=392). In the absence of verification this has the appearance of a created explanation by a friend to help a friend.

Two, there was an unconfirmed rumor that a nurse at the hospital where Dean Andrews was recuperating was named Clare Bertrand; perhaps that was where Dean Andrews got the name? From a diary kept by Tom Bethel, a staffer of the Garrison investigation:

“[Aug 19, 1967] [Deputy prosecutor] Alcock suggested that Dean might have just made up the name Bertrand. He said there was a rumor that there had been a nurse at the Hotel Dieu while Andrew was there named Clare Bertrand, and that as far as he knew nobody checked this out.” (https://www.jfk-assassination.net/bethell1.htm) 

Three, there was a real Clay Bertrand, by that name, originally from Lafayette, Louisiana but reported to have been in New Orleans around the time of the assassination, his existence missed by the FBI in 1963 and apparently missed also by the Garrison investigation in 1967-1969. 

“[Managing director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans Aaron] Kohn advised that he also received information that there is [in 1967] a man named Clay Bertrand living in Lafayette, Louisiana, a real estate broker that lived in New Orleans about the time of the assassination of President Kennedy. Kohn unable to supply additional information re Clay Bertrand of Lafayette, Louisiana. (FBI New Orleans to Director, 2/25/67, https://www.jfk-online.com/jpssfbidcs.html)

Obituaries from 2019 of this Clay Bertrand (verification of his existence), https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/dailyworld/name/clay-bertrand-obituary?pid=193240801; https://www.melanconfuneralhome.net/obituary/claiborne-bertrand. 

There is no known connection of this Clay Bertrand with anyone of interest to the JFK assassination. But could it be that Dean Andrews had some otherwise-unknown contact with this Clay Bertrand and the name somehow entered into Andrews’ telling of the phone call?  

Four, Dean Andrews, taking notes as he listened to the caller, handwrote a line which included the word string "Clem Sehrt and" or “Clem Sehrtand”, then misread his own handwriting as "Clay Bertrand". 

Five, there have always been some investigators who have thought, encouraged in some ways by Dean Andrews himself, that “Clay Bertrand” indeed was an alias but used by Eugene Davis, proprietor of a New Orleans restaurant called the Court of the Two Sisters. Just as in the case of Clay Shaw, there are witness testimonies which believers in the Eugene Davis solution can cite. Davis himself denied both use of the alias and that he made the Nov 23 phone call to Dean Andrews. The problem with identification of Dean Andrews’ caller as Eugene Davis, apart from making no sense with respect to Oswald (who had no known association with Eugene Davis or gay or any other nightlife, nor did Eugene Davis have anything to do with the assassination in Dallas), is the same as the Clay Shaw alias witnesses, just not substantial. The one possible exception which I see is from a William Livesay writing in Dec 2000. He comes across as credible. He says Eugene Davis sent him to Dean Andrews once when he needed a lawyer, and that Eugene Davis had told him on that occasion, “tell Andrews that Mr. Bertrand sent me. I remember this as though it were yesterday, and it meant absolutely nothing to me at the time. Only after seeing nearly 40 years later, how crucial the Clem Bertrand thing was to the Garrison case, does it have any meaning to me” (https://jfk-online.com/livesaypost.html). However although I believe this witness is truthful, the problem is the witness’s memory of the name first comes to light nearly forty years later, not contemporary, such that it is impossible to know that the witness's memory is not simply mistaken. If, however, there is anything to Eugene Davis using an alias “Bertrand”, the suggestion would be Dean Andrews used that fictitious name (drawn from Eugene Davis) in his answer to Eva Springer when asked who the caller of Nov 23 was who asked Andrews to represent Oswald in Dallas, not that Eugene Davis was that caller. 

None of the five possibilities above seems satisfying, though it must also be said that each of the above is difficult to categorically exclude either. Option five is the most appealing of the above to me, such that if the proposal to follow (option six) is ultimately deemed to fail, some form of option five by default would probably be the correct explanation as I see it. 

Here is my proposed solution, option six: the name “Clay Bertrand” reflects the name Lane Bertram, Secret Service Special Agent in Charge at Houston, the equivalent in Houston to Sorrels of Dallas. In a website post of 2012 Vince Palamara took note of a phonetic similarity between the two names as a passing curiosity, but did not take it any further beyond that:

“when New Orleans lawyer Dean Andrews (a man known to the Secret Service for hisassistance in legal matters) testified to the Warren Commission that a ‘Clay Bertrand’ called him on 11/23/63 and asked him to defend Oswald (Andrews had previously seen Oswald in the summer of 1963 on various legal matters), no one realized that ‘Clay Bertrand’ was phonetically close to Lane Bertram. (Andrews interview with Fred Newcomb)(CD No. 75, page 305; 11 H 327; 26 H 704; 11 H 332 – 333; 26 H 357) In fact, the SAIC of the New Orleans office, J. Calvin Rice, stated that Andrews was ‘well known to this office’! (CD No. 87) However, when the FBI attempted to find out who the man really was, they stated: ‘…locate any recordidentifiable with Clay Bertrand or Bertram’! (26 H 356)…” (https://vincepalamara.com/2012/04/09/lane-bertram-and-the-day-before-dallas/)

Newcomb and Adams on Lane Bertram as Clay Bertrand

After I completed the research and writing of the rest of this piece, alerted by the Vince Palamara mention above, I tracked down the reference to Fred Newcomb. To my surprise I found that Fred Newcomb and Perry Adams, in their little-known unpublished 1974 manuscript Murder from Within which was first published only in 2011 by Newcomb’s son, explicitly suggested the identification I develop in the present argument: that Dean Andrews’ Clay Bertrand was Lane Bertram. 

The reference has special meaning to me. For in the early months of 1977 I was living in Santa Barbara, California, and read a feature article in a local weekly newspaper about a JFK assassination theory developed by what I thought at the time was a professor (actually staff) at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Perry Adams. I called Adams out of the phone book and Adams generously invited me over, and in his living room allowed me to read the entire manuscript, double-spaced on typed pages, which I did. He waited until I finished reading, then I had a good talk with him. I had no expertise or knowledge of the JFK assassination at that time beyond the general public’s interest in what happened. I soon moved away from Santa Barbara, lost contact with Perry Adams, and it was not until about 2017 that I began researching the JFK assassination for real. And now, as if in a Rip Van Winkle time-warp, I find the Lane Bertram = Clay Bertrand identification which I must have read in those pages long ago in coauthor Adams’ living room, has come to life.

Here are Newcomb and Adams as published in 2011. After telling the story of Secret Service agent Lane Bertram causing the Warren Commission to go into emergency session concerning a report by Bertram that Oswald had been an FBI informant, Newcomb and Adams continue:

“Bertram may also have tried to get an attorney to defend Oswald. The lawyer was Dean A. Andrews, Jr., of New Orleans, who had done some work for the Secret Service in the past. The agent in charge of the New Orleans field office noted Andrews was ‘well known to this office.’ (. . .) Andrews testified to the Commission Bertrand phoned on Nov. 23, 1963, and asked him to defend Oswald. Andrews’ secretary confirmed Bertrand had hired him. The possibility exists that Secret Service agent Lane Bertram and Andrews’ Clay Bertrand are the same person. Andrews’ position, however, is unclear . . .” (Newcomb and Adams, Murder From Within, pp. 230-31)

The allusion to Dean Andrews having “done some work for the Secret Service in the past” goes to a footnote without further elaboration, “Interview with Dean A. Andrews, Jr.” Newcomb and Adams conducted many original interviews. It sounds as if they personally interviewed Andrews. Is there a possibility that a tape of that interview could somewhere still exist? 

That is all I see in Newcomb and Adams on this. Now I return to my own narrative. 

Lane Bertram as intermediary in a conveyance of a message from Marguerite Oswald to Clem Sehrt

The way SAIC Lane Bertram of Houston gets into the phone call to Dean Andrews goes like this. As is well known, Oswald, arrested early Fri afternoon Nov 22, still remained without legal counsel on Sat Nov 23 through hours of questioning and grilling. For Lee’s family members, such as his mother Marguerite and his brother Robert, getting Lee legal counsel would have been a priority. This is supported by the testimony cited earlier that there was an attempt of Marguerite to reach longtime family friend and attorney Clem Sehrt in New Orleans that weekend with exactly that request.

But how and when would that attempt by Marguerite have happened?

The Oswald family at the Dallas Police station on Sat Nov 23

In Dallas that Saturday, Marguerite and Robert Oswald were concerned about getting legal counsel for Lee. Marguerite from a hotel phone that morning had called Captain Fritz asking if the family members could visit Lee. Fritz told her they could see Lee at 12:00 pm, noon. From Marguerite Oswald’s Warren Commission testimony, speaking of Sat morning Nov 23:

Mrs. [Marguerite] Oswald. I said, 'It is no good to tell my daughter-in-law, because my daughter-in-law is not leaving here with you, Mr. Odum [FBI agent], without counsel.' And I had been telling Marina, 'No, no.' She said, 'I do, Momma,' she kept saying. Just then my son, Robert, entered the room, and Mr. Odum said, 'Robert, we would like to take Marina and question her.' He said, 'No, I am sorry, we are going to try to get lawyers for both she and Lee.' So he [Odum] left. We went to the courthouse and we sat and sat, and while at the courthouse my son, Robert, was being interviewed by—I don't know whether it was Secret Service or FBI agents--in a glass enclosure. We were sitting—an office, a glass enclosed office. We were sitting on the bench right there.

Mr. Rankin. Where was this?

Mrs. Oswald. In the Dallas courthouse, on Saturday. So we waited quite a while. One of the men came by and said 'I am sorry that we are going to be delayed in letting you see Lee, but we have picked up another suspect.' I said, to Marina, 'Oh, Marina, good, another man they think maybe shoot Kennedy.'

Mr. Rankin. Did you ask anything about who this suspect was?

Mrs. Oswald. No, sir; I did not. He just give the information why we would be delayed. We sat out there quite a while. The police were very nice. They helped us about the baby. We went into another room for privacy, for Marina to nurse Rachel. It was 2 or 3 hours before we got to see Lee. We went upstairs and were allowed to see Lee. This was in the jail--the same place I had been from the very beginning, and we were taken upstairs. And by the way, they only issued a pass for Marina and myself, and not Robert. And Robert was very put out, because he thought he was also going to see his brother. Whether Robert saw his brother or not, I do not know, Mr. Rankin.

Marguerite and Marina returned to their hotel after they had seen Lee, while Robert remained. Robert Oswald, in Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by his Brother (1967), 135-48, continues the story of that Saturday. According to Robert, after further delay he did finally get to see his brother that afternoon—but only after intervention on his behalf from Secret Service agents who were present with him. Robert’s book mentions the names of Howard, Kunkel, and Kelley as Secret Service agents who assisted him in this.

The impression given is that if it had not been for Secret Service agents pressing the matter with the Dallas police, Robert would not have been allowed to see Lee at all that afternoon. The appearance is that the Dallas Police did not want Robert seeing Lee, or were doing their best to delay as long as they could, all while Lee, alone and without counsel, continued to undergo grueling questioning from Fritz and the agencies. Did the police fear that Robert would advise Lee to stop answering questions until a lawyer arrived?—and that would be the end of Lee talking? From a police interrogation point of view, the more delay in Lee getting an attorney the better, for the first thing attorneys tell clients accused of a serious crime is don’t talk to the police, at all. From the police point of view, the more Lee could be kept talking the better (in the best cases, though it was not happening with Lee, skilled interrogation and a suspect talking can lead to a confession). Even Marguerite and Marina were delayed over two hours beyond their promised time, while questioning of Lee continued. 

But sympathetic Secret Service agents intervened on Robert’s behalf so that Robert was able to see Lee. Here is Robert talking to his brother that afternoon of Sat Nov 23 from Robert’s book. Robert is concerned about Lee having a lawyer:

“’What about this attorney you tried to contact in New York?' I asked. 'Who is he?'

"'Well, he's just an attorney I want to handle my case.'

"'I'll get you an attorney down here.'

"'No,' he said, 'you stay out of it.'

"'Stay out of it? It looks like I've been dragged into it.'

"'I'm not going to have anybody from down here,' he said very firmly. 'I want this one.'

"'Well, all right.'”

Here is the slight conjectural leap that renders everything sensible. Instead of Marguerite, or Robert on Marguerite’s behalf, going to a phone and trying to dial to Clem Sehrt in New Orleans without knowing a current phone number for Sehrt, and this on a Saturday, Marguerite, perhaps after seeing Lee at the police station that Saturday afternoon but before leaving the building, asked a Secret Service person for help, or a Secret Service person offered to assist Marguerite—in getting a message to Sehrt on Marguerite’s behalf—Secret Service agents being the most personally supportive and considerate agency to the Oswalds at that moment in time. The suggestion is that the actual phone call was placed by a Secret Service agent who, quietly in the background, assisted in making a Marguerite-requested telephone contact to Sehrt in New Orleans re the badly needed legal counsel for Lee, just as Secret Service agents quietly but effectively intervened with the Dallas police to get Robert access to his brother in custody. On Sun and Mon Nov 24 and 25 Secret Service agents assisted Robert in making cemetery and burial arrangements for Lee. They did many small things to assist. All that needs to be supposed is that some sympathetic Secret Service agent said to Marguerite that he would see what he could do to get a message from her to Sehrt in New Orleans.

But, possibly as a tactic of distancing, due to the sensitivity of the Secret Service interjecting themselves even in this small way in assistance with a phone contact to a potential legal counsel for the accused assassin of the president, without any overt untruth about it, but as a way to be able to deny if asked if they personally had made a phone call to New Orleans for an attorney for Oswald, an agent or agent in Dallas made that call, not direct to Clem Sehrt in New Orleans, but to their colleague, Houston SAIC Lane Bertram. 

Or maybe a Dallas Secret Service agent was in contact with SAIC Bertram of Houston anyway and, needing to return to pressing duties in Dallas rather than the unknown amount of time it would take to track down Clem Sehrt by phone on a Saturday, simply for practical reasons gave the information to Lane Bertram and asked if he would do that, to get a message from Marguerite to Clem Sehrt.  

In any case—so the reconstruction goes—a Dallas Secret Service agent asked Lane Bertram to get a message to Clem Sehrt from Marguerite. Lane Bertram then made that call to attorney Sehrt, identified himself, explained the situation, passed along the plea from Marguerite for legal help for her son. Sehrt, not in a position to go to Dallas personally to do that, does what he can to get the needed legal assistance Marguerite has asked. He calls attorney Dean Andrews (it is practically certain Sehrt would have known him). All of this happens that Saturday afternoon of Nov 23, one phone call following another. Clem Sehrt tells Dean Andrews of the request from Marguerite including the name of Lane Bertram who had called Sehrt. 

(continued)

Part 1 of 3

The phone call to attorney Dean Andrews in New Orleans on Sat Nov 23, 1963, asking him to represent Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas

Around 4 pm on Sat Nov 23, 1963, attorney Dean Andrews in a hospital room in New Orleans received a phone call asking him to go to Dallas and represent Lee Harvey Oswald. Andrews then phoned his secretary at home, Eva Springer, and told her he had been retained to represent Oswald in Dallas, whereupon Eva said she would not go to Dallas to help in that purpose. That moments-later phone call to Eva Springer, as well as Dean Andrews’ calling another attorney the next morning, Sam “Zonk” Melden, to ask him to go to Dallas on his behalf since he would be delayed due to being in the hospital, confirms the call to Dean Andrews concerning legal counsel for Oswald in Dallas was real, such that a later attempt on Dean Andrews' part to convince investigators he had imagined the whole thing is not credible.

As Eva Springer confirmed, she asked Dean Andrews in that phone call who had asked him to represent Oswald. Andrews had answered a single word, "Bertrand", a name that meant nothing to her. That answer of Dean Andrews locked in a name which thereafter Andrews could only try to explain in various ways but could not alter in terms of the name itself.

As the story came to the attention of investigators, Dean Andrews covered up and dissembled, for some reason unwilling to identify who had called him other than the name. He gave contradictory and unbelievable testimony concerning the identity of "Clay Bertrand", one unconvincing story after another, tried to convince investigators he had imagined the whole thing—why? To Mark Lane he was reported to have answered that question: “they told me if I said anything I would have a hole blown in my head” (quoted in William Turner, “The Inquest”, Ramparts 5/12 [June 1967], 24, cited Mellen, Farewell to Justice [2007 edn], 197 and 464), paraphrased to others as “I love to breathe”, as the reason for his dissembling. Who were "they"? A friend of Dean Andrews’ son writes in 2012:

“Dean's son has told me someone did put out a contract on his father's life, but that Carlos Marcello, according to him a personal friend of his father's, intervened. Even after the Shaw trial, Dean Andrews grew more paranoid as time went on, and his family clearly understood he was afraid and believed the assassination was the result of a high level conspiracy.

“I think Andrews was genuinely baffled about being contacted to represent such a celebrated client. My interest in him has been rekindled because of my friendship with his son. I do think that phone call he received was significant and I do not believe we know the whole story behind it.” (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/19485-why-did-clay-bertrand-call-dean-andrews/)

In sum, there was a real phone call; Dean Andrews covered up who had called; there may have been a name “Bertrand” associated with that phone call; and finally, there is the hint of Marcello of New Orleans, mob boss of 3-1/2 states, in the background.

Marcello tells Dean Andrews that he has learned that “others” want to put out a contract on Dean Andrews but not to worry; Marcello, not wishing to see such an unfortunate thing happen to his good friend Dean Andrews, will see that that doesn’t happen, OK? In the movie version it would end with “I’m glad we had this little chat”. Something like that?  

Dean Andrews’ coverup

On Sun Nov 24 Oswald was shot and killed, rendering planning of Dean Andrews and Sam “Zonk” Zelden to represent Oswald in Dallas irrelevant. On Sun Nov 24 Andrews contacted the Secret Service in New Orleans and on Mon Nov 25 Andrews was interviewed by both the Secret Service and FBI. Andrews disclosed to those agencies that his law office had had a relationship with Oswald who was interested in appealing a military discharge status, as well as the phone call of Nov 23 asking Andrews to provide legal counsel to Oswald in Dallas which Andrews said had come from a “Clay Bertrand”. Andrews soon told the FBI, never mind, the phone call never happened. Andrews told the FBI that under the effect of his medications at the hospital he had imagined the whole thing. Andrews would go on to explain that despite his and his staff’s best efforts, no records of Oswald could be found at the office. Andrews first claimed to the FBI there never were files of Oswald started even though he said Oswald had been to the office several times; then later explained to the Warren Commission that a burglary of his office had removed those records.

For having done business with “Clay Bertrand” of New Orleans over a period of quite some time as Dean Andrews claimed under oath in his Warren Commission testimony, the likeable, rotund, jive-talking Dean Andrews, with his hilarious turns of expression, seemed astonishingly poorly informed concerning that individual. He had no idea where Bertrand was located, did not know how to reach him, had no phone number or address or workplace for him, knew no one who knew him, and although he claimed he had met him in person, gave conflicting physical descriptions all over the map. No such person described by Andrews was ever found or identified by investigators. In Dean Andrews’ testimony to the Warren Commission Andrews returned to saying a phone call from Clay Bertrand had happened but gave no helpful or reliable information: 

“I wish I could be more specific, that's all. This is my impression, for whatever it is worth, of Clay Bertrand: His connections with Oswald I don't know at all. I think he is a lawyer without a brief case. That's my opinion. He sends the kids different places. Whether this boy is associated with Lee Oswald or not, I don't know (. . .) this boy Bertrand has been bugging me ever since. I will find him sooner or later."

In light of Andrews' other prevarications, the unverified claim of the break-in which had stolen his office files on Oswald (but apparently no files of other clients) is questionable. One wonders whether Andrews himself caused Oswald records to disappear. Also, all that Dean Andrews said about “Clay Bertrand” other than the name itself should be presumed unreliable (given the evidence and motive of coverup on the part of Andrews). All—all—of Dean Andrews’ claims and descriptions concerning “Clay Bertrand” are well understood as fabrications with intent to deflect and prevaricate.

“At their historic lunch [Oct 1966], Jim Garrison thrust a copy of Whitewash [by Harold Weisburg] under Andrews’ nose. What he wanted, what Andrews would not yield, was the real identity of ‘Clay Bertrand.’ You’re worse than the Feebees, Andrews told Garrison. But Garrison persisted, threatening to summon Andrews to the grand jury and charge him with perjury. Andrews begged to speak ‘off the record’. Garrison refused. According to Garrison, Andrews then grew frantic. It would mean ‘a bullet in my head,’ he pleaded.” (Mellen, Farewell to Justice, 29-30, from Garrison’s account in On the Trail of the Assassins [1988]). 

Those who are certain Dean Andrews’ caller that day was Clay Shaw, the managing director of the New Orleans Trade Mart, may not be interested in reading further. The following is for those who realize that "Clay Bertrand" was not an alias of Clay Shaw, while at the same time realize that the phone call was real. What follows in this three-parter is a proposed explanation of the phone call to Dean Andrews and of the name “Bertrand” in answer to his secretary when she asked who had called.

Background: the innocence of Clay Shaw

The debunking of the several witness claims purporting to show that Clay Shaw used "Clay Bertrand" as an alias has been done elsewhere and will not be rehearsed here. Suffice it to say there is no "there" there when that witness testimony is looked at case by case. Probably the best online rundowns and analyses of these witnesses showing the claims that Clay Shaw used that alias are insubstantial, are Reitzes, https://www.jfk-assassination.net/shaw2.htm and Litwin, https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/jfk-revisited-was-clay-shaw-the-elusive-clay-bertrand, in agreement with the judgment of Mark Lane who worked closely with Garrison and realized Garrison was mistaken there (“Was [‘Clay Bertrand’] really Clay Shaw, Garrison wondered. Shaw consistently denied that he had ever used that pseudonym. I never saw credible evidence which convinced me that he had ever used the alias” [Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, 1992 edn, p. xxxi]). 

Once those witness testimonies are deconstructed, Clay Shaw is seen as truthful in denying he was the caller to Dean Andrews arranging legal counsel for Oswald in Dallas. It remains however to explain the name "Bertrand" associated with the phone call Andrews received.

Who would be the most likely caller to Dean Andrews to obtain legal representation for Oswald in Dallas (setting aside the meaning of "Clay Bertrand" for the moment)?

The present proposal develops an earlier suggestion of Peter Whitmey that the phone call to Dean Andrews at issue came from Clem Sehrt, a senior attorney with links to the Marcello crime organization and childhood friend of Marguerite Oswald. Clem Sehrt did legal work for Marguerite and Lee in the 1950s when Lee joined the Marines. The HSCA reported that Sehrt privately said he had been contacted with a request to provide Oswald with legal counsel the weekend of the assassination. From Peter Whitmey, "The Curious Connections of Clem H. Sehrt", Fourth Decade 2/1 (Nov 1994), 46-47:

"Although [Clem] Sehrt recalled [in an FBI interview of 12/24/63] having been in contact with LHO's mother in connection with a disputed estate involving some property 'over twenty years ago', he indicated to SA Kennedy that he had not had any further contact with Mrs. Oswald since then. He went on to state that 'it was not until he saw her photograph in a magazine that he recognized her as the person he had known in his youth and as a young, practicing attorney.' Finally, Sehrt 'advised' that he had never 'seen...Lee Harvey Oswald...did not know Jack Ruby', and had no knowledge of any associates of either one.

"However, much of what Sehrt had stated was contradicted two months later when Marguerite Oswald testified before the Warren Commission, as she described her attempt to help Lee Oswald obtain a false birth certificate in October, 1955, so he could join the Marines before he turned seventeen. Marguerite stated that her son had tried to convince her to 'falsify his birth certificate', which she initially refused to do. She did, however, contact '...a very good friend, Mr. Clem Sehrt, who is an attorney in New Orleans, La. I called him and told him I had a personal problem. I had not seen Mr. Sehrt since early childhood. I knew the family. That Lee was not of age and he wanted to join the Marines. And he quit the school and told them we were going out of town.' In response, Sehrt indicated to her that it would be 'unethical' for him to give her any advice, although he did suggest that ‘...a lot of boys join the service at age 16’. Mrs. Oswald indicated to the Warren Commission having been encouraged to let her son join up, despite being underage, by Dutz Murrett, along with an unnamed colonel and a recruiting officer. She described visiting Sehrt's office with five dollars in hand, planning to claim having lost Lee’s birth certificate (. . .) Even though Sehrt had indicated to the FBI two months earlier that he hadn't seen Marguerite Oswald in over twenty years, the Warren Commission did not seem to feel it was worth interviewing Sehrt himself, in order to resolve the conflicting accounts. The matter was simply left in limbo. 

"When the HSCA investigated Marguerite Oswald's links to associates of Carlos Marcello, Clem Sehrt's name came to their attention through Aaron Kohn of the New Orleans Crime Commission. First, one of Sehrt's law partners had served as an attorney for Carlos Marcello. Second, Sehrt had been closely associated with a banking official named Louis Russell for many years, particularly in the 1950's, who, in turn, had been closely linked to Carlos Marcello. Kohn informed the Committee that both Sehrt and Russell had been ‘...long involved in a number of highly questionable undertakings, both business and political.’ (Sehrt was elected president of the National American Bank in 1963, having served on the board of directors since 1958, and previously had been general counsel to the state banking department and the Orleans Levee Board during the 1950's, in addition to practicing law for thirty years.)

"The most intriguing information about Sehrt, provided to the HSCA by the New Orleans Crime Commission, was derived from a ‘former associate of Sehrt’s, a source it regarded as highly reliable.’ Sehrt had told the unidentified associate prior to his death (no date given) that ‘...some party had contacted him soon after the assassination to request that he go to Dallas to represent the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Sehrt's associate could not recall any further information.’ Unfortunately, given the fact that Sehrt was no longer alive [d. 1974], and the additional fact that the information was not provided until Dec. 7, 1978, shortly before the HSCA ended their investigation, there was no further inquiry. It is possible that Marguerite Oswald contacted Sehrt to represent her son through her brother-in-law, Dutz Murret, given his links to Marcello and possibly even Sehrt (they had both been boxers) (. . .)

"It is conceivable that Sehrt and [Dean] Andrews knew each other professionally and/or personally, and that Sehrt attempted to pass on a request for Oswald's representation to him. Given the fact that Sehrt's law office was in the Pere Marquette Building, it is also possible that he could be linked to [Marcello attorney] G. Wray Gill, David Ferrie and even Eugene Hale Brading (a.k.a. Jim Braden), although not necessarily to the assassination itself. If there is ever another investigation of the JFK assassination, the curious connections of Clem Sehrt should certainly command more attention than was the case in 1964 and 1978." (https://www.jfk-assassination.net/whitmeysehrt.htm)

The logical source of the request to Clem Sehrt would be Marguerite Oswald, who grew up with Clem Sehrt and had called upon Sehrt for legal help in the past regarding Lee. And that is confirmed by this testimony that indeed Marguerite did call Clem Sehrt in Louisiana at some point the weekend of the assassination seeking legal help for her son Lee in Dallas.

"Memorandum: October 14, 1968

"From: Andrew J. Sciambra, Assistant D.A.

"To: Jim Garrison, District Attorney

"Re: Interview of Joseph Cooper, Baton Rouge, La. Relative to Lee
Harvey Oswald

"I interviewed Cooper who informed me that he and Marguerite Oswald communicate with each other by telephone from time to time. He said the last time he talked to Marguerite Oswald was about a month ago after he got out of the hospital.

"Marguerite Oswald's private telephone number in Dallas, Texas is: A/C 817-732-6839. 

"Cooper said that he has established a fine relationship with Marguerite and would be glad to go to Dallas and talk to her for us.

"In addition to some of the information which he has given us in the past, Cooper said that Marguerite told him that she called Clem Sehrt after the assassination and asked him to help her son. Sehrt informed her that he no longer practiced law. She said she had known Sehrt and Victor Schiro when she was living in New Orleans." (https://www.jfk-assassination.net/weberman/jcooper.htm)

Clem Sehrt declined to become Lee’s legal counsel himself, but Sehrt’s response to the appeal from his childhood friend may not have ended with that turn-down. The reconstruction is that Sehrt did what he could, contacted Dean Andrews whom he likely knew, who already was doing legal work for Oswald. This becomes the sensible source of the phone call to Dean Andrews at ca. 4 pm Sat Nov 23 (apart from the name “Bertrand” which calls for explanation). Dean Andrews' repeated expressed fear for his life--which was surely serious underneath his hilarious external demeanor--as his reason for refusing to be forthcoming concerning who had called him, is explicable in terms of mob in the background, Marcello crime organization in the background, consistent if Dean Andrews’ caller had been Clem Sehrt. If it had been requested of Dean Andrews that Sehrt’s identity be kept in confidence, and Dean Andrews had given his word that he would, that, plus knowledge of the dangerous people he was dealing with, would account for Dean Andrews' dissembling to the point of perjury under oath.

But although this analysis may make reasonable sense up to this point—that the logical trajectory of the request for legal counsel for Lee would be Marguerite Oswald to Clem Sehrt to Dean Andrews—there remains the puzzle of the name "Bertrand". What is to be made of that?

(continued)

6 hours ago, Allen Lowe said:

I am not a fan of LBJ and consider him to be a war criminal, but to call the President who passed the most important and comprehensive Civil Rights Legislation of his time "completely amoral" is not accurate. Contradictory as it all may seem.

Yes it does seem contradictory but agree, both can be true, well put. An article which gave me pause on Johnson was this by James Galbraith:  https://bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/. The first three-quarters of the article is argument that JFK had decided on a full exit from Vietnam (and that at first LBJ continued that policy). The final quarter of the article has the point of interest. I do not know fully what to make of it, but Galbraith's suggestion is that LBJ may have blocked a plan to exploit the JFK assassination to go for a first-strike nuclear attack wiping out the Soviet Union's infrastructure and people, the Dr. Strangelove option.

"There is no doubt that the danger of nuclear war was on Johnson's mind [following the JFK assassination]. It also explains important points about his behavior in those days, including his orders to Earl Warren and Richard Russell (the latter in a phone call, a recording of which has long been available on the C-SPAN website) as to how they would conduct their commission. The point to appreciate is that there is only one way a war could have started at that time: by preemptive attack by the United States against the Soviet Union."

"My father [John Kenneth Galbraith, advisor to JFK and LBJ] retains a distinct, chilling recollection of LBJ's words to him, in private, on one of their last meetings before the Vietnam War finally drove them apart: 'You may not like what I'm doing in Vietnam, Ken, but you would not believe what would happen if I were not here.'

"Heather Purcell and I documented these nightmares in an article published in 1994 entitled 'Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?' It is still available on the website of the American Prospect. When once I asked the late Walt Rostow if he knew anything about the National Security Council meeting of July 20, 1961, at which these plans were presented, he responded with no hesitation: 'Do you mean the one where they wanted to blow up the world?'

(Comment: although I do not have the links here, I have read criticism of the Purcell-Gabraith article just mentioned, with rather convincing clarification that the documents discussed were not formal planning to launch a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union in 1963, but were hypothetical or war-games or contingency plans. Nevertheless, 1963 was the "hypothetical" date of the "what-if" consideration discussed in 1961 for a first-strike nuclear attack--if some casus bellus and then escalation of tensions were to occur--in, say, 1963--making such necessary--speaking purely hypothetically. Given that real plans can be developed under cover of "what-if" planning, the criticisms of the article do not roll back the horror of what Men in Power in this world have considered behind closed doors.)

So when word came down Friday evening Nov 22, 1963 from LBJ aides to the Texas Attorney General and the offices of district attorney Wade and deputy district attorney Alexander to not charge Lee Harvey Oswald with being part of a communist conspiracy in the assassination as was reportedly being prepared in Wade's office, there may have been more of a back story to that than realized. Not a coverup of a real Castro hand in the assassination, but a coverup of internal attempts to manufacture a Castro hand in the assassination. That is what James Galbraith thinks.

The LeMay Part Two of Litwin sure reads convincing to me that LeMay was not there at the autopsy. The most convincing point to me, apart from the weakness of the claim of the only witness to put him there, O'Connor, who according to William Kelly told Kelly he wasn't sure it was LeMay (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/10724-curtis-lemay-and-john-f-kennedy/page/5/#comment-165361 "I talked to Paul about that, over a beer at the hotel bar in Dallas and then again on the phone at length. Paul said he remembers a four star general in the room with a cigar, and one of the doctors telling an aide to have whoever is smoking a cigar removed from the room, but when told who it was negated that order. Paul was suspicious that it was LeMay but wasn't sure.") . . . is that a listing of names present at the autopsy in the Sibert and O'Neill report does not include LeMay (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=625#relPageId=3&search="ARRB_MD 44"), and that LeMay would easily have been recognizable to most others in the room but no one else put him there. Litwin cites this interview of O'Neill from William Matson Law, In the Eye of History (2015):

Law: I've been told that there were officers of high rank in the autopsy room that night. Is that true?

It is a little like a single witness saying he thought he saw Elvis at a dinner party but wasn't sure and no one else noticed Elvis there--how likely is it Elvis was there. Litwin has got this one right--this story of LeMay at the autopsy puffing away on a cigar gloating at his slain nemesis makes a great story but looks like an urban legend. How it looks to me. 

4 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

Looking at the Groden copy and the MPI copy I don't see any difference at least in the frames I have compared. For this thread I have used the Groden copies and other than not being pincushion corrected they seem to be the same.

OK thanks. I withdraw the question to Sandy.

On 3/12/2022 at 4:30 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

I  trust that John Costella didn't do anything that would add or remove motion blur. I am confident that if you get a pair of Z310/Z311 frames from any copy of the Z film, it will show the motion blur exactly as we see in John Costella's copies.

Sandy, in light of your saying blur has been added at Z311 in a frame you are showing that is from the Costella edition, and David Healy referring above to Costella enhancing his copy's frames including with motion blur, and Costella himself saying he wrote software to add motion blur and has a whole discussion telling of his adding motion blur to photos, and Costella says he enhanced the frames of his copy of Zapruder . . . what is the basis for your trust and confidence that Costella did not add that motion blur at Z311?   

Paul B. -- thanks for your comments and obviously much is uncertain. 

On Craford’s involvement

On Craford as involved in the assassination, the strongest argument is the argument that Craford, not Oswald, was the killer of Tippit. I have produced probably the most developed argument on that that has yet been done (not completed), https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27367-an-argument-for-actual-innocence-of-oswald-in-the-tippit-case/.

The Tippit case is potentially solvable for real. The killer left his fingerprints on Tippit’s car. Those fingerprints still exist. They have been excluded by expert latent fingerprint analysis as coming from Oswald, i.e. exoneration of Oswald. However, no serious attempt has been made to determine who is the identification of those prints, if possible. I argued that that there is record of finding of the Tippit murder weapon which was covered up and that item of physical evidence—a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 Special found abandoned in a paper bag with fruit, found on a street not far from the Carousel Club by a citizen early Sat morning Nov 23, 1963—that revolver existed, but no known record of its forensic examination or present whereabouts, it is just disappeared, disappeared in law enforcement custody because it was the murder weapon of the only handgun murder that occurred immediately prior to the night of Nov 22/23 requiring abandonment of the murder weapon, the Tippit killing which was done with a .38 Special.

That Craford was confusedly identified as Oswald by witnesses other than the Tippit crime scene witnesses is known and not disputed by anyone, and that removes the force of those witnesses who identified Oswald out of police lineups as the Tippit killer. Other witnesses’ descriptions of the Tippit killer gave descriptions which disagreed with Oswald but agreed with the ca. 1-2 inches shorter and ca. 10 pounds heavier, and darker or ruddy complexion (“medium complexion” versus Oswald’s “light complexion”), as well as the killer’s jacket of “M” size in agreement with the non-thin Craford in disagreement with the size used by the thinner Oswald of “S”.

As for the physical evidence of the four shells found at the Tippit crime scene turned in to the FBI late the next week and found by the FBI lab to be matched to Oswald’s Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver—a different weapon than the one found abandoned (because just used in a crime) not far from the Carousel the night of Nov 22/23, Craford’s last whereabouts before Craford fled Dallas the same night the abandoned snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special used in a crime was found, the same night of the Tippit killing—that can be reconstructed:

The Dallas Police already had screwed up two important items of physical evidence in the sense of irregularities or bungling in processing of evidence that would be cause for defense counsel to have the evidence rejected: the processing at the TSBD of the rifle, the shells, the paper bag allegedly associated with the rifle, and the photographs of the boxes at the window. The pressure was such that the resident FBI liaison with the DPD in Dallas, Vincent Drain, as well as Warren Commission counsel and the facts of the matter, questioned and in Drain’s case believed straight-out that DPD Crime Lab chief Day had fabricated a palm print of Oswald on the rifle in order to have a piece of clear evidence in reserve if needed at trial. 

Consequently there was enormous pressure to nail Oswald on the Tippit killing, as Leavelle put it, we want to wrap him up real tight on the Tippit killing. But in the Tippit killing, the find of the killer’s jacket had a serious processing problem, for it had been found and handled by a citizen before handed over to police. That was covered up in the police reporting of its find but if it came out in court would have compromised its use as evidence. 

I believe DPD found mixed brands of Winchester and Remington shells among the first three of four found at the Tippit crime scene, but found original to Oswald’s revolver six Winchester live cartridges which agreed with five spare bullets found in search of Oswald’s person in his pocket, five Winchesters. Immediately, by mid-afternoon it was realized there was a problem, and I believe the problem was solved, in the context of pressure to nail the physical evidence to Oswald, by removing that contradiction in the shells by substituting three live Remington cartridges for three of the Winchesters found in Oswald’s revolver, making 3 + 3. The choice of three was arbitrary since it was known only that the killer had used two brands without knowing the percentage of the ratio. Then four bullets fired from Oswald’s revolver had their shell casings exchanged for the ones found at the Tippit crime scene, and those were turned in to the FBI and the FBI lab accurately found that those shell casings came from bullets fired from Oswald’s revolver.

The inability of the Warren Commission to produce a single one of the officers who originally processed the shell casings found at the Tippit Crime scene and initialed them, to identify their own initials on those shell casings, along with the parallel example of a likely fabricated rifle palm print of Oswald on the rifle by the same DPD Crime Lab, makes the substitutions in this physical evidence of the Tippit shell casings more plausible than simple ad hoc speculation. The point being it is the FBI’s match (accurate) of the shell casings turned in by the DPD to it to Oswald’s revolver which is the linchpin of the case against Oswald, and it is impeachable, not simply in terms of what would be admissible in court, but in terms of actual innocence of Oswald.

There are the issues of timing, no reason for Oswald to be at Tenth Street, the coup de grace final shot of the Tippit killer to the head, not a matter of reliance upon witness testimony for that but a fact found in the Tippit autopsy (indicating a professional hit or killing consistent with a mob killer). There were the two supposed Oswald figures not one at the Texas Theatre and the DPD’s “losing” of names of theatre witnesses and never interviewing highly relevant witnesses there. All that needs to be supposed is the person Brewer saw at his shoe store, and then he and Julia Postal reported enter (without paying for his ticket) the theatre, was not Oswald already in the theatre, but the killer of Tippit, Craford, and a mistaken identification on Brewer’s part. The Tippit killer going to that theatre intent upon killing Oswald after having killed Tippit, but that intent being interrupted by the police arrest of Oswald saving Oswald’s life (for the moment from that one). 

In sum Oswald was not the Tippit killer and Craford is the identification of the killer’s actual identity that makes sense.

Of course whether Oswald is exonerated, and Craford identified as the Tippit killer, will remain a matter of further development of argument and peer review and long-term verdict of Innocence Project type expert analysts. But it follows without much dispute that if the killer of Tippit was Craford, that makes Craford involved in the JFK assassination no less than Ruby who did kill Oswald, that is, minimally working for the ones who did the JFK assassination. And we know Ruby was mob, Craford was mob, and Craford was hosted in the Carousel Club by Ruby in the two months runup to the assassination before he fled Dallas hours after the assassination and Tippit killing.

Aaron Kohn on Garrison and Marcello

I was struck by this interview of Aaron Kohn, of the New Orleans Crime Commission, a private citizens' crime-fighting organization in New Orleans which started in the 1950s, sort of a watchdog against corruption in municipal government and police as its purpose. So far as I can tell both the Crime Commission and Aaron Kohn were honorable in reputation. Apparently they worked well with Garrison at first when Garrison was elected, but that did not last. This is from an interview of Aaron Kohn in Kirkwood, American Grotesque (1970), pp. 528-31:

"Aaron Kohn laid out a theory that I had heard from several other sources, the fulcrum of which is the existence of organized crime in New Orleans. A strong branch of the Mafia is firmly entrenched in the Mardi Gras city. It owns bars, motels, vending machines, sightseeing tours, and, apparently, quite a few politicians. The head of the local Mafia is reputed to be Carlos Marcello, described in the confidential records of the New Orleans police as "one of the most notorious underworld figures in the country."

"Frank Occipinti, a partner with Marcello and his brother in several business ventures, built the house that Garrison lives in and, in fact, lives right next door to the District Attorney. Occhipinti also happens to own the Rowntowner Motor Inn, which happened to be picked as the domicile of jurors in the Shaw case and is also a favorite and almost nightly watering hole of Judge Haggerty. The coziness of the Occhipinti family, the Marcello family and Jim Garrison gives off a heady odor indeed. The FBI knows all about Marcello and the Mafia in New Orleans, the Internal Revenue Department and the police know about him and the Immigration and Naturalization Service has been trying to deport him for years. In fact, Jim Garrison would seem to be the only person in town who denies the Mafia's existence. He once described Carlos Marcello as "a respectable businessman".

"Such indifference would be ludicrous if it weren't so damnably blatantly frightening. If the man who denies the existence of organized crime is the very man elected to fight same, you have a situation rather like an exterminator refusing to acknowledge the existence of termites. One would think he should get into another business. And this is precisely what Aaron Kohn believes Garrison did--the other business being the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy,

"KOHN: He was under considerable attack at the time from our Crime Commission about a pardon he had forced the Governor to grant, which the Governor admitted he should not have granted, and would not have granted other than owing Garrison political favors, for an employee of one of the Cosa Nostra-connected joints on Bourbon Street. And then Garrison lied about why he did it. He lied about it, was caught in the lie, perhaps for the first time since he had been in office. He had been in office by then over four years. There was a television editorial ridiculing him, making him look silly ... In the meantime a grand jury probe was started to investigate organized crime ... and there were a great deal of inconsistencies ... Anyhow, there was all this pressure ... Oh, and incidentally, the press is on the neck of the D.A.'s office all the time. So it was right at this time, the fall of '66, this is when Garrison's assistants, particularly Charles Ward, start leaking to the press, confidentially--when they heard we were trying to probe into what he's doing in these other matters--"Well, he's working on a very important thing. Tremendously important." And then a little bit more. "Has to do with the Kennedy assassination." And this was all being leaked out. Incidentally, all the press representatives up at the Criminal Court Building knew that he was working on this before the States-Item story broke it. In January of '67. You remember he also made statements when things started getting hot that the press handicapped him by breaking the story. The fact is his office had leaked it to all the news media prior--at a time when he's under pressure about organized crime. So it may well be, and again it would not be inconsistent with the pattern of Garrison, because he has said to me so many times, "The best defense is an offense." ...

"He's a man who easily feels threatened. No matter how unreal it might look to other people, to him he is alarmingly threatened. And it may well be that he engages in extravagant diversions when he's threatened. If, in fact, this thing was tossed into his life by Russell Long on that air trip that he talks about, this may have become for him an opportune suggestion for diverting massive attention away from his vulnerability in the organized crime area.

"Q: Because he has stated flatly that there was no organized crime--

"KOHN: He completely denounced those who said there was [organized crime] as having ulterior motives...

"Every time you tried to do anything thereafter, about the inadequacies of the performance of Garrison's office, his major purposes and objectives, and that is the investigatory and prosecutive responsibilities in dealing with the real and present crime problem ... it was always then attacked as being an attempt to handicap his efforts to accomplish this thing of worldwide importance. And I can tell you, the record is clear, of his accusations against everybody that was critical as being a part of a conspiracy and we were included, a vast conspiracy of the 'Eastern Establishment' and the Federal government to keep him from proving the Warren Commission report was wrong.

(. . .)

"KOHN: ... [E]ven a good many of our judges around here are afraid of Garrison. We've got to give them--we realize that if anything is to be done, in the face of the tyranny of this man, which is only in part real, but which is perhaps 80 per cent in the eyes of the beholders, that we're confronted with a real touchy situation. The battle between the Crime Commission and Garrison is a matter of public knowledge. It hasn't changed popular belief in his hates, which is what, really, his supporters believe in. They don't believe in Garrison. They believe in the things he vocalizes for them. He vocalizes popular hates. Hate for Washington, hate for the Supreme Court, hate for law enforcement structures. And therefore he is their man...

"It is frightening ... You must remember that a corrupt governor like Jimmy Davis was re-elected. That a man like Earl Long was re-elected. Let's not forget the mayor of Boston, who went to prison and was then re-elected ... Garrison could be elected to the United States Senate. And make this combined clever intellect with destructive emotional disturbance felt on the national scene...

"You probably see it in my face as I talk. My concern is so deep about this because I have long had the feeling that I have been sitting at the ringside of the evolution of Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, any tyrant who has successfully taken over total control of a massive part of society. With the cooperation of that society. I no longer see this as a matter of Garrison and New Orleans. I see it as the problem which repeats itself through the history of man, civilized man. The willingness of the public, given the right personality, the right demagoguery, and a sufficient amount of almost insane compulsion to use these qualities--they can be led to slaughter. And I'm watching it happen...”

3 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

So maybe he was scared of his Mafiosi friends too. Maybe he knew too much, maybe they forced him into killing the Patsy. That may suggest prior involvement, but it’s definitely not proof. Would you agree?

I think it is at the level of proof of prior involvement of whoever told Ruby to kill Oswald.

On 3/3/2022 at 9:54 AM, Pat Speer said:

The original film has been studied and the "frames-were-removed-to-speed-it-up" theory has been rejected, even by John Costella, if I'm not mistaken. The key, as I recall, was that each frame has a "ghost image" in the sprocket hole section, that connects it to the frame before. IOW, each of the available frames is linked to the frame before.

Addressed to anyone who believes alteration by means of removal of frames occurred or is possible to have occurred: please excuse if this has been answered elsewhere, but simple question: is there a published (or unpublished) response to this objection cited by Speer above drawing from Zavada (http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/Z Disk/Zapruder Abraham Film Authenticity Controversy/Item 06.pdf)? On the ghost image in sprockets refuting possibility of frame removal? Zavada:

"There is no possibility that any frames could have been cut out of the film. Every time a frame was exposed, part of the background scene was exposed onto the next frame and the previous frame in their sprocket hole area. The ghostlike images in the sprocket hole area are double exposures ... "

I have Fetzer, ed., The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, if anyone can point me to page numbers where this point of Zavada is addressed and (arguably) refuted. I am not finding a refutation in this book easily. Thanks--

Paul B., on Souetre et al I realize you may see this differently but I can only say what I think: I consider the Souetre in Dallas story a red herring based on Larry Hancock's analysis which to me is very convincing in showing that is a non-issue, should just be dispensed with. https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/jean-souetre/.

And with the Souetre story gone goes that tenuous connection to Skorzeny as well. The Lafitte diaries aside which I consider of no credibility, the Skorzeny/JFK-assassination argument has nothing substantial that I can see, only blizzards of rabbit holes and scattershot chains-of-weak-association which go nowhere but which are presented in thick books with great energy and volume of detail. My take on it: nothing there and the thick books with blizzards of unrelated details are a distraction, as concerns the JFK assassination.

On William Harvey and QJWIN, first of all I am not aware of any basis or evidence to connect QJWIN with Souetre as speculated or claimed (if actual evidence could be shown on this that would alter it for me, but unsupported speculation on this point is all I see in the thick books with blizzards of irrelevant detail to wade through asserting a QJWIN/Souetre et al connection). I am a little unclear (referring to my own lack of reading in this area, i.e. unclear if others have solved it or not) on QJWIN, whether QJWIN's identity is known and unrelated to Souetre or Skorzeny or whether QJWIN's identity still remains a mystery, but either way I am not aware of evidence connecting to Souetre or Skorzeny.

The William Harvey and QJWIN itself was real enough, as I understand it basically a case of CIA assassination operational capability with the only issue being whether it was operational and if so how much (I doubt the claims that it was never operational). Also William Harvey did not like JFK and his friends did not like JFK. So there is means and motive for a suspect in the JFK assassination. I follow that to that point, but the problem is although open to evidence if there is any, I am not aware of evidence taking it beyond suspicion beyond that point. Then there are questions of plausibility--how do Harvey in Italy, or foreign contract assassins with QJWIN, relate to a lot of indication and evidence that there was ca. 2-3 months of runup in Dallas involving police and street knowledge, in which Ruby and Craford were involved in certain ways, and Ruby and Craford were domestic mob through-and-through, nothing to do with QJWIN. And with the Souetre-in-Dallas idea gone, off the table (per Hancock in the link), either the idea of a foreign team of assassins was the perfect crime in leaving no known trace (travel documents, names, hotel registers, witnesses), or else it did not happen (the simpler interpretation of no trace of evidence). The idea of an invisible team of foreign assassins who arrived in town for a few days, did the assassination, then left, presupposes no 2-3 months runup (or else increased and unnecessary complexity), and leaves hanging what I regard as the known fact of involvement of Ruby and Craford, however uncertain working out the specifics of Ruby and Craford's movements and roles may continue to be. And Ruby and Craford, the known involved in Dallas on-the-ground, are not foreign, simply glimpses of a homegrown domestic US mob assassination focusing on Marcello (and Trafficante). Which is what according to Sorenson Robert F. Kennedy privately thought, that Marcello had gotten his brother. But he could not do anything about it unless or until president himself. 

On not seeing Oswald as mob, I understand that and regard Oswald's role in the assassination as strong evidence, not that the mob did not do it, but that the mob did not do it autonomously. I have heard a clip of Marina in one of the TV network interviews (was unable to locate a link on this to cite this moment, and do not remember which one specifically it was, so speaking from memory) in which Marina gave her own (later) view in which she repudiated her earlier support for Lee's guilt and now believes he was innocent. The newscaster asked her how she could say the mob did the assassination when she had talked instead of spy/CIA involvement and history of Lee. She answered that she was being misunderstood and clarified: she thought the mob did the assassination, but that Lee, of spy/CIA history, did not do the assassination but had been wrongly blamed for the assassination (which had been done by the mob).

As a basic structure that is the best theory of the case that I can see. Marcello/mob not acting autonomously but with a go-ahead from allies inside the government which involved an arrangement to have Oswald blamed. This is not pulled out of the air; if you accept a David Ferrie/Oswald and Banister/Oswald connection in New Orleans summer 1963, there is Oswald's contact with the Marcello organization in the summer of 1963. That Oswald's uncle and mother and Oswald's own childhood had historical roots in the Marcello crime organization simply adds to the plausibility though there is no reason to suppose his uncle and mother had anything to do with a setup of Oswald for being blamed for the assassination. The plausible mechanism for connecting Oswald with the Marcello organization in summer 1963 would be Ferrie and/or Banister. Incidentally when Marcello told van Laningham (if he did) that Oswald the kid used to work for him, Marcello, in running numbers, I do not interpret that as summer 1963 as some do, but if there is anything to that would think that was before Oswald joined the Marines, at a time when he was a teenager and his uncle Dutz Durrett was doing exactly that in the Marcello crime organization.

On LBJ moving the body out of Texas which enabled military control over the autopsy where all the argument and issues of coverup and alteration of evidence come into play, I do not know what to make of the medical and autopsy alteration of evidence arguments but suggest this: that if there was alteration of evidence in order to rig up a single-assassin shooting only from the rear interpretation (i.e. Oswald)--and I agree without personal clarity on these issues that some things look like that could be--I seriously suggest questioning the premise always therefore concluded that that was planned prior to the assassination. 

No, prior to the assassination there was no prior plan to have Oswald as the lone shooter, or to not have a conspiracy. The plan internal to the plotting of the assassination in the actual criminal conspiracy was to have a criminal conspiracy run by and blamed falsely on Castro by means of Oswald. That was the setup and was going to be used as casus bellus, forcing a U.S. president (in this case LBJ now the new president) into the desired military move into Cuba that the Bay of Pigs invasion had failed to do with JFK. The simplest explanation for why that was called off at LBJ's level before the day was out of the assassination (Nov 22, 1963) is probably because LBJ realized this was happening and did put a stop to it (perhaps thereby for all of his many and real sins, should be recognized as saving the world from world war 3, not entirely rhetorical on LBJ's part when he was telling people privately that that was exactly what was at issue--this is the suggestion of James Galbraith anyway). 

But here is my direction of thinking: forget the idea that the single bullet theory and coverup of the massive exit wound in the back of the head (if so) involved pre-assassination preparation, or was involved in the criminal conspiracy that did the assassination. Interpret those things instead as rapid opportunistic reaction in response, once a decision within hours following the assassination was made to see if the entire thing could be interpreted as done by Oswald alone shooting from behind, and that became the narrative. Not because that narrative was originally planned as part of the hit, but because that became the possible and arguably assisted interpretation after the hit was a fact. 

In this picture, all the real chaos and messiness of the physical evidence of the JFK assassination becomes a matter of real chaos and real messiness combined with basically an extension of a familiar law enforcement phenomenon of what is called in the UK "stitching someone up", in which police either know someone did it or don't care, and simply find ways to have the physical evidence cooperate in putting that person away by hook and by crook. These "stitch ups", to use the UK idiom, most commonly start happening after the arrest, not preplanned before the arrest. That would be the analogy to the JFK assassination.

It could be someone's decades-ago memory of seeing Beverly Oliver present a slide show to a church group some evening--or whatever. That would account for the seeing of the "dozens of old pics" of gun-toting John Dillinger and other Texas local history lore, etc. 

I know the dates don't work for Beverly Oliver. I am presuming that he heard stories from Beverly Oliver--perhaps telling of family members or people she knew or tall tales--which the hearsay-teller decades later confused on the timeline, as if the storyteller had been telling of herself. 

Beverly Oliver's stories have credibility and embellishment issues. The important point is there is no mystery witness here.  

It must be a garbled version of Beverly Oliver, based on the final paragraph, mixed with some stories the author heard from her of Depression-era days that the author has got a little confused. Beverly Oliver was in Texas in the years since the assassination; said she was in the Zapruder film as the Babushka lady; claimed to have seen Roscoe White on the Grassy Knoll with suggestion he was the shooter; told of her frequent visits from the club across the street where she worked to (not from) Jack Ruby's club where she would sit with Ruby and dancers such as Jada. The Ruby talking about a plot to assassinate JFK "with a couple of creepy looking guys at the diner" a week before the assassination sounds like a version of the Mark Lane Ruby with Tippit and Weissman a week before the assassination story; the reports to authorities who rejected what she reported sounds related to Beverly Oliver's story of having her film confiscated after the assassination by FBI agents with no record of that.  

Therefore, this sounds like some hearsay going back to Beverly Oliver. Presumed not an unknown mystery witness who never came forward. Beverly Oliver has published her story.

Does anyone know who this witness is?

The final paragraph sounds a bit like Beverly Oliver. But the first three paragraphs--not so sure. Anyone know who this is?

https://www.quora.com/Did-the-assassination-of-JFK-have-ties-to-LBJ-or-the-Mafia; #18 of 93, "Greg Miletti" (July 20, 2019). 

"Years ago I knew a woman who knew Jack Ruby — the guy that shot Lee Harvey Oswald. She owned a bar, a motel, and ran a brothel in Mineral Wells, TX. (just west of Dallas). She was a fair weather freind of John Dillinger. The notorious bank robber from the great depression era. She would hide him out after one of his heists. She had the pictures to prove it too. Dozens of old pics showing Dillinger toting his sub-machine guns and other hardware of the time.

"In return for her trouble Mr Dillinger always dropped a few large bundles of cash in her lap. Bear in mind this was an era in history when the economy was extremely bad. The time just before World War II. People were lucky to get a square meal every couple of days back then. Nevermind a lot of cash dropped in their lap by a bank robbing freind. So if someone gave you a ton o money for letting these guys hide out on your property then Jesus slept in the outhouse for the next few days.

"At any rate Jack Ruby was a regular customer at her place. He'd come in often. Always with a new girlfreind on his arm. This woman knew about Ruby's mafia ties. About a week before the assasination she had overheard Ruby talking about a plot to kill Kennedy with a couple of creepy looking guys at the diner.

"She called the proper authorities but they ignored her report. She went to the local sheriff - no result. They laughed her off. A few days later JFK was hit. She's in the backround in the Zupruder film -- the home movie showing JFK taking the actual kill shot. She saw the shooter in the distance behind the wall as he took the shot from the top o the infamous grassy knowl. Her own first person account. Later on she was followed for awhile by a black caddy. And got some threatening pbone calls telling her to keep quiet or else. Many people did. Several witnesses later came foward about what they saw ; and caught a bullet for their trouble. Their bodies found in alley ways, dumpsters, underneath highway overpasses, etc."

Paul B. -- your mention of your experience on the case since 1963 contrasts with me as much more of a late-comer. I was in the fourth grade when JFK was assassinated and felt the grief when a messenger from the principal's office came into our classroom and told us. I would read newspaper and magazine articles over the years that followed with some interest, about Mark Lane and so on, but that was about it. I had an inchoate idea as I would tell friends if asked, I think it was a hit but hold to no theory how it happened, that is, it looked like a hit but all of the back and forth on the conspiracy theories was just confusing. In Santa Barabara in 1977 I was able to read the manuscript of Newcomb and Adams in Perry Adams' living room and talk to him about it--the editor of Probe magazine--prompted by my calling him cold after reading a feature article in the local weekly newspaper about his work on the JFK assassination. In about 1982 I did business in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a retired Dallas Police Department officer who talked at length to me about having been there at the time of the assassination and told me quite a bit of police gossip and humor (to my extreme frustration I long ago lost his name--he told me he once returned a lost dog his family had found, which turned out to be Sheba to Jack Ruby, who was overjoyed almost to the point of tears to get Sheba back). In 2001-2003 I got to know Ruth Paine in the Saint Petersburg (Florida) Friends Meeting. What she said of the JFK assassination was the same as what she tells in the Sixth Floor Museum talks, Mrs. Paine's Garage and so on. During that period I went to Denmark for a year and while there Ruth sent me one or two emails exchanging telling about a Buddhist writer of whom she thought highly and recommended (unfortunately I do not remember the name). In 2018 I learned an old friend in Texas knew John Curington, the aide to H.L. Hunt, and I had the opportunity to visit and interview Curington which I did. I debated whether to make the trip but decided this was a voice of history (he was 91 yrs old) and the Kennedy assassination was important in history so I should do so. That was when I started serious reading of the JFK assassination in preparation for my interview of Curington so as to ask intelligent questions.

Also, my best friend going back to college days told me at the time (early 1970s) that his father, who had left his mother when he was two, was some kind of secret agent and they did not know where he was but thought he might be in Africa. It turned out his father was Vasia Gmirkin of the Soviet Division, CIA, characterized in Tom Mangold's book as the closest thing America had to James Bond. He turns up in the Mary Ferrell site documents as accompanying the defector Nosenko in Nosenko's testimony. He was also one of the CIA agents outed by Philip Agee, which is what ended his time in Africa. Russ (the son) told me how his father, who had tried to renew some contact with his son, told about the great life he had in Mauritania, house with swimming pool etc., and then woke up one morning to read the local newspaper headline emblazoning his name as resident CIA chief instead of "State Department" at the embassy, whereupon his great life there came to an end and he and family had to return to the states. He never forgave Agee for the loss of that nice home with the swimming pool apparently. In about 1990 Russ's father was featured on a 20-20 program (the TV investigative program) as a whistleblower of sorts telling how he had been one of the victims of Angleton blocking promotions of people in the Soviet Division because of Angleton suspecting everyone there of being double agents. The program was aired just after Russ's father died of a brain tumor. 

Your comment caused me to remember Mark Lane was rejecting the mob-did-it idea prior to Garrison. I should correct what I said about Garrison partisanship being the most important factor in blocking a Marcello-Trafficante solution from wider acceptance and development. The #1 factor must be a certain cluster of assumptions widely held. Namely many people (irrespective of the Garrison legacy) assume a necessity of a project manager with the ability to call up the heads of the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, Navy, autopsists, and so on (or alternative means of contact) in order to recruit needed personnel from these various agencies to carry out necessary tasks of a plot to assassinate the president and alter evidence afterward. The plot would have multiple shooters but preparations must be made in advance to, after the assassination, alter all the evidence to make it look like there was only one shooter. Persons across multiple states and agencies would need to be read in, briefed, backup contingency plans made, perhaps legal indemnification guarantees given to certain civil servants who, after talking it over with concerned wives or husbands or consultation with their attorneys, might request such legal security before proceeding. Since Marcello and Trafficante were in no position to organize that scale of multi-agency cooperation across the federal bureaucracy (so the logic goes), it is obvious Marcello and Trafficante could not have done the assassination of Kennedy.

This reasoning or some form thereof (caricature aside)--an honest perception of people of a certain necessary scale of multi-agency pre-assassination coordination, an issue of paradigm in thinking--would be the actual #1 block, which is bigger than the legacy of Garrison even though that played a contributing role.

On this: "If you were willing to find more culpability in the National security state I wouldn’t be here objecting." -- I have this idea of some bad men at high level discussing Kennedy as a "problem", "not a team player", and concluding "something needs to be done", and then the cleanest, most efficient, and deniable way to get something done was one present has a backroom few words exchanged with the right persons, and a Marcello-Trafficante hit is on. (But I also realize this is guessing in the dark.)  

On Chicago, I do not know what to make of that, good question. 

Paul B., by "blocked" I do not mean prevented from publishing, but blocked in understanding. 

Who is doing the blocking? Partisans of Garrison is who.

Garrison saw no role of Marcello in any form in the JFK assassination. Because Garrison was not clean, he was a corrupt demagogic southern pol, on a continuum with Huey Long populist demagoguery. The evidence on Garrison's corruption is published, but it is in books and critical websites that Garrison partisans will tell people are not to be trusted or cited. Criticism of Garrison's investigation was interpreted as malevolent forces discrediting Garrison because of the truth of the JFK assassination Garrison uncovered, that truth being that thousands of perpetrators involving dozens of agencies combined to do this plot EXCEPT--EXCEPT! Garrison insisted--Marcello of New Orleans, the mob boss of 3-1/2 states including Dallas. According to Garrison Marcello was as uninvolved in the assassination as an innocent man could be, not involved in organized crime at all, just an honest grocery produce wholesaler with at most a few local ordinance infractions on his record.

Instead of ever questioning Marcello, Garrison focused and channeled the resources at his disposal on Clay Shaw, not Marcello connected--pursued an almost non-existent legal case against an innocent man, even when his own staff knew it was a losing case before it was even brought. Why did Garrison do that? I did not think so originally but I do now: because Garrison was misdirecting away from Marcello, to whom Garrison was beholden. 

The block against looking at a mob role in the JFK assassination started with Hoover and the Warren Commission. That the FBI and the Warren Commission did not investigate and covered up mob leads is simple fact. The FBI/WC/LBJ/CIA narratives were focused around either lone-nut Oswald or Castro-did-it (using Oswald) explanations, either one of which did not go to a domestic coup, as a mob investigation (if it bore fruit) could have or would have. Neither of the two proffered acceptable solutions were correct. Both are falsified by Ruby's killing of Oswald. 

For conspiracy researchers, the Marcello-did-NOT-do it dogma started with Garrison. Garrison went after David Ferrie without even once sending someone from his office to question Ferrie's BOSS Marcello. Why? The answer is pretty wide open if looked at from a distance--Garrison was not going to go there because Garrison was compromised, Garrison was corrupt. That does not mean Garrison did not stumble across a few things of interest, the way a Huey Long or a Donald Trump railing against powerful interests or a deep state in Washington, D.C. or broken clocks twice a day get some points right. Garrison's investigation generated a wealth of leads of varying quality, but he just made a mess of things and the mess was so bad and so singularly focused away from Marcello by design (there is no other reasonable interpretation) that I no longer can avoid the obvious conclusion that 2 + 2 = 4 and that Garrison was deflecting from Marcello because Garrison was a Marcello man like so many other public officials across Louisiana and other southern states.

Why then did Garrison go after Ferrie at all, it is asked (and I too have wondered). It looks like Garrison may not have realized at first how close Ferrie was to Marcello. Marcello may have solved that problem by having Ferrie killed, then having Garrison come to understand that any touching of Marcello in Garrison's investigation would not be appreciated. Garrison complied.

It is not that anyone today any longer denies that Marcello was involved in organized crime. Nor is it denied today among conspiracy researchers that Marcello and Trafficante could have played a minor role in the assassination, so long as that is kept to minor. But people keep saying, as if a mantra, that the scale of the coverup makes no sense if it was "just" a Mafia operation. But that is a red herring. Why the "just" ? Well, some mob-did-it authors do argue forms of "just" Mafia, but the true question should be around that "just" qualifier. The "just" qualifier is a straw man objection. To some extent there is some talking past each other here.

The present thinking is, Marcello and Trafficante are allowed to have minor parts in the hit but it is believed they could not have planned and carried out the hit. Why? The reasons start pouring in. Because autopsy. Because LeMay's plane movements Nov 22. Because parade route, etc. and etc. (I have addressed above the “because parade route”).

Nothing in the autopsy, the autopsy photos, the illegal removal of the body from Texas according to Texas state law, or the removal of bullets from the body, was necessary to plan in advance as part of any JFK assassination conspiracy. Those are all red herrings, should just be tossed out as bearing on whether the mob organized the shooting in Dallas. The autopsy would find that JFK was killed by gunshot wounds--no surprise there, why should anyone care about covering that up? If Oswald's rifle was used in the shooting which a lot of evidence says it was, that would show up in the ballistics and implicate Oswald, whether or not Oswald was the shooter of that rifle. There is no need to preplan manipulations in the medical or the autopsy or the ballistics.

Of course a truly massive amount of planned falsification of the medical, photos, autopsy, ballistics et al, forgery of all sorts of evidence, would be necessary if there was a preexisting necessity to have an assassination done by multiple shooters blamed on only one shooter. But why assume that as a necessary advance part of any assassination plot? There is just no basis or grounds to assume that a multiple-shooter assassination was intended in advance to have all evidence forged to make it look like a single shooter. That is just conspiracy theorist hallucination run amok--that that had to have been the advance plan or that there is any reason why there should be such an advance plan. The very complexity of such a plan is staggering, and all for what? Why assume its necessity at all? Because there is no reason why such an assumption is necessary. 

A lot of reasons indicate the original pre-assassination plan was to have it look falsely like a Castro-associated Oswald connected to a rifle used in the shooting as part of a Castro plot. That's it! Nothing about single shooter, Oswald alone, or possibly even Oswald as shooter. Just Castro-connected Oswald associated with a killing rifle, Oswald as part of a conspiracy which killed Kennedy and that conspiracy credited to Castro, q.e.d, ballgame (war on Cuba) ON!!! No vast complexity of needing to have witting doctors and military personnel all read into parts of the plot prepared to do their assigned individual dishonest bit parts in a gigantic forensic and medical and ballistics and photography coverup--and then from those baseless assumptions assumed as premise, object to an otherwise reasonable Marcello/Trafficante-organized-and-did-it argument by saying "but autopsy!" "but missing brain!" "but removal of the body from Texas!" "but faked casket photos!" and on and on. All logical non sequiturs.   

Some combination of messiness in evidence processing and real coverups for various reasons happened after the assassination-not disputing that--only that it had to have been or was pre-planned in those areas prior to the assassination. That is inconsistent with evidence indicating the original plan was not to blame Oswald acting alone, but to use Oswald to blame Castro. For some reason a decision was made at LBJ's level not to go that direction. Why what appears to have been an original intent to false-flag blame Castro was called off at LBJ's level sometime that weekend of Nov 22-24 can be debated--there could be several good possible reasons in explanation--but that that happened is not too controversial any more. 

And yet if that point is clearly understood, it means there was no advance plan to frame Oswald as the sole shooter, and there goes the supposed need to account for including in the assassination plot control over the autopsy room and a lot of other complex matters all of which vanish as objections to the mob doing the JFK assassination in Dallas.

I think small circles within CIA or the Joint Chiefs might have been aware of rumors of an assassination plot in the works which would frame Oswald, and some could have planned, if it was successful, to have that become a Castro-did-it plot, a false flag blaming of Castro. 

But that only requires knowledge, intelligence of a rumor of a mob plot involving Oswald. It is no argument that Marcello and Trafficante could not have organized the assassination in Dealey Plaza--the killing and cleanup of witnesses. If friends in dark places--mobsters in the gangland world enmeshed in civil society and the local political worlds in southern states--were capable of pulling off a full-service Dallas operation, why complicate things? They had the contacts, the resources, the knowhow, the corrupt police and pols, knowledge of the pulse on the street. Why not just let them go ahead and do what they know how to do, and let them do it? 

Garrison went after the CIA. But he did so in a way that was scattershot, with all the logic and precision of a Trump railing against mainstream media organizations as "enemies of the state", or rhetoric demonizing and attacking an ill-defined "deep state". Garrison's investigation channeled southern regional anti-Washington, D.C. sentiments. It sounded good to blame the CIA and LBJ and a long list of other villains as all at the same time having killed Kennedy (except for mob boss Marcello, who in Garrison's investigation was considered as clean of involvement in the assassination as Snow White). But it went nowhere--think about it! It went nowhere! Some well-justified suspicions of Dulles by some authors other than Garrison, some scrutiny of Angleton by John Newman (not Garrison), those went a little somewhere. But although Garrison’s accusations that the CIA killed JFK looked like a courageous assault on all that was corrupt in Washington, D.C., the reality was more like Garrison throwing allegations and suspicions against the wall almost at random, except for the very non-random omission of Marcello. 

Garrison's denial that Marcello was involved in crime or the JFK assassination has been modified among Garrison partisans today to this extent, that it is now acceptable to acknowledge that Marcello was involved in crime, and it is acceptable to acknowledge that the mob may have been involved in a supportive minor role in what happened at Dealey Plaza so long as many other non-mob groups, non-mob people and agencies also and more heavily are involved in a vastly complex and complicated plot, so vast and complex that nobody to this day has a theory as to names and specifics capable of convincing most other other conspiracy theorists let alone the thinking public.

This present status of mystification--this legacy of the Garrison investigation--blocks ability to solve this crime. For how can a crime be solved if the real perpetrator is mistakenly declared exculpated from having a major role, and all that are left as suspects are persons who did not organize any assassination in Dallas? 

The positive argument that the mob did it is that the killing of Oswald was a mob hit integral to the assassination, therefore the default assumption is that the assassination was a mob hit. The question should not be whether Marcello and Trafficante are likely to have done the assassination, but whether if they did, as seems likely, it was done autonomously. I think Blakey got it right in principle on Marcello and Trafficante. However I do not believe this was an autonomous mob decision or operation. I believe somebody had to have given a green light, a favor or two asked among friends in back rooms at high level, a go-ahead, an ask that Oswald be set up as the one blamed, but other than that let the mob take care of how that got done, which they knew how to do, and did.

Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing

It happened so quickly--so quick by surprise

Right there in front of everyone's eyes