Greg Doudna

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 

Further comment on the Jarnagin story as a possible accidental witnessed glimpse of a mob criminal conspiracy in process for the assassination of JFK

Carroll Jarnagin's story of what he saw and heard in the Carousel Club on Fri Oct 4, 1963 was rejected by the FBI not because of the polygraph (that came later from Wade at the time of the Ruby trial), but because the story of a Ruby-Oswald meeting as told by Jarnagin seemed so outlandish on its face. (There was also the dancer with Jarnagin, whom he never saw again, failing to corroborate overhearing talk of contract murder at the next table, which the FBI considered called into question that Jarnagin did since Jarnagin did not discuss it with her at their table that night.)

Here is what I see. This was a longstanding Dallas attorney writing to J. Edgar Hoover. Was this an attorney in good standing? Yes. Did this attorney have a track record of lying about something of this nature? No. Did this attorney seek publicity or financial gain from this story? No. Did this attorney have psychiatric issues or a history of hallucinations? No. Was this attorney aware of how serious--serious criminally, serious in terms of disbarment--it would be to fabricate a story like this to the head of the FBI? Certainly, yes. Did this attorney believe what he wrote Hoover was true? From what I judge, yes. Was the story reported timely, as opposed to first coming to light years later? Yes, written to Hoover within days following the assassination. Are there features of the story which are obviously outlandish, going beyond misunderstandings or mistakes of an honest witness? Arguably no, if it is understood to have been someone other than Oswald and that that person can be identified and is in agreement with what Jarnagin heard. Is Jarnagin's later claim that there was an attempt on his life which he interpreted as related to his story, credible? According to a family member, yes. Do his family members believe he was a truthful witness? According to a family member (a granddaughter), he was a truthful witness despite his story not being believed. Did Jarnagin ever retract his story in later years? No, he kept to his story to the end of his life, including in his years of sobriety after his victory over alcoholism. 

And so I questioned the standard view--from Warren Commission to conspiracy theorists alike, united in reacting in disbelief concerning a Ruby-Oswald conversation as described by Jarnagin—and therefore rejecting the Jarnagin story in its entirety as a total fabrication. I could see no obvious motive for Jarnigan to fabricate that story as a lying witness; it made no sense that a career attorney would jeopardize himself and his career by fabricating such a story in which he never sought publicity or financial gain and which brought only negative results to his life ... and then I began to see how the story begins to make sense once it is realized who that second individual other than Ruby must have been. And with that realization, things about the Jarnagin story which could not have been invented by Jarnagin to have been in agreement with a Curtis Craford identification, seem to corroborate the basic truthfulness of Jarnagin having overheard not Ruby and Oswald, but Ruby and Craford--that is, a flawed account of a truthful witness, not a fabrication out of whole cloth from a lying witness.

Below are specific features of Jarnagin's story which correspond to Curtis Craford, compelling in that Jarnagin did not know the person he saw and overheard that night was Craford. That is, the points of correspondence to Craford are unshaped testimony with respect to Craford, nor influenced or embellished so as to agree with Craford. In the following the person Jarnagin saw and heard with Ruby (whom Jarnagin mistakenly identified as Oswald) is referred to as “Y”. 

• Y arrives by hitchhiking to Dallas. ("Ruby: How did you get back? Lee: Hitch-hiked. I just got in.")  Craford was a hitchhiker--he had no car and hitchhiked to Michigan from Dallas starting Nov 23.
• Jarnagin describes Y’s appearance as unkempt (“his general appearance is somewhat unkempt”). This corresponds with descriptions of Craford.
• Y has some unknown, true name other than "H.L. Lee", even though he tells Ruby he is now going by "H.L. Lee". Craford is specifically identifiable at times in Oct.-Nov. as using the name of Oswald which was not his own name. As strange as it sounds that Craford made repeated sporadic use of Oswald’s name (with no sign of knowledge on Oswald's part that that was happening), the evidence on this is so convincing as to be certain. Note here that Jarnagin does not claim to have witnessed a man who said his true name was Oswald! Jarnagin says he witnessed a man not named H.L. Lee say he was going to use that name even though he himself had some unknown different true name. From the document Jarnagin sent to Hoover:

Jack Ruby: ----------- (some name not clearly heard or not definitely recalled by the witness)—what are you doing here?

Man who had been sitting alone: Don’t call me by my name.

Jack Ruby: What name are you using?

Man: I’m using the name of H.L. Lee.

• Y wants a job and money from Ruby, which exactly agrees with the relationship between Craford and Ruby, who provided Craford with both.
• Y discusses murder for hire with Ruby. Craford before connecting with Ruby had experience as a hitman (per Peter Whitmey interviews).
• Y considers himself a crack shot with a rifle. Craford was a gun afficionado (per Peter Whitmey). 
• Ruby discusses with Y that Y will be paid by mob money, with the prospect of repeat business if the mob likes his work. The picture is that Y will be doing this murder for hire as an independent contractor--Y is not a "made man" member of  mob family but a free-lance or independent contractor. This is exactly the picture of Craford.
• Much of the Ruby and Y conversation revolves around the physical premises and physical layout of the Carousel Club, consistent with Craford whom Ruby let live in a room at the Carousel Club.
• Y expresses interest in analysis of the best strategic building in downtown Dallas for a sniper assassination. A person using the name of Oswald but who was not Oswald, identifiable as Craford, applied to work in strategic tall buildings in downtown Dallas in at least three instances in Oct-Nov.
• Y tells a number of biographical details of Oswald as applicable to himself--this may in part be because Craford and Oswald in fact were similar in some respects (dropped out of high school; military service; wife and child in Dallas living separately; may both have recently been in New Orleans; ... or may be Jarnagin misunderstanding Craford rehearsing to Ruby the basics of his Oswald imposter identity to go with when he uses Oswald's name.
• Y notices Jarnagin has overheard and tells Ruby Jarnagin has "overheard everything" and must be killed. A number of witnesses in a position to identify or associate Craford to crime scenes in Dallas experience death threats or death. 

In conclusion, the Jarnagin story is straightforwardly Ruby and Craford, although Jarnagin did not realize it. Because of the importance of this testimony which if correct gives a glimpse of the most direct talk of a criminal conspiracy in the JFK assassination in advance of the assassination, which the FBI and the Warren Commission did not want to accept, there was powerful incentive to have Jarnagin's account rejected. That may have "caused" a cooked polygraph examination giving negative reported results, with no documentation surviving which would enable expert review (compare the HSCA's panel of polygraph examiners' blistering review of the Warren Commission's polygraph examination of Jack Ruby in a case in which documentation making review possible did survive). 

Remember, it is not necessary to the Marcello-Trafficante theory that the Jarnagin story be from a truthful witness. But this is how I see it, which some may or may not find of interest relevant to this discussion.

For more, see my earlier "Revisiting the Carroll Jarnagin story" (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27404-revisiting-the-carroll-jarnagin-story/). 

And a new find, an interesting Rob Clark podcast, Episode 57 of The Lone Gunman, "The Ballad of Larry Crafard" (June 18, 2015), https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-67-the-ballad-of-larry-crafard/id955267725?i=1000498147636.

 

On 3/18/2022 at 6:58 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

For those of you who are Marcello-did-it fans:

Robert Blakey, mob-hunter pursued the Marcello version at the HCSA, and dropped hints but no conclusions.

However, by 2018, Blakey was publicly stating that he suspected Herminio Diaz and Eladio Del Valle were in Dealey Plaza that day.  In other words, Cuban exiles and CIA assets. 

The Marcello theories, such as HSCA, Blakey, and everyone else, have it Marcello-Trafficante, in which although Marcello was in closest control of Dallas, police contacts and (via Ferrie and Banister) Oswald, the actual shooters likely came from Trafficante in Florida. Herminio Diaz was Trafficante's bodyguard (http://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0027-1.html). "Del Valle worked for Trafficante in the U.S. and was an associate of his in Cuba" (https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-cia-and-mafia-s-cuban-american-mechanism-and-the-jfk-assassination). 

What makes you sure that associates of Trafficante doing the shooting in Dallas (if so) were not sent by Trafficante?

16 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Greg - I’m finding it difficult to take your suppositions seriously. The last post is ridiculous on its face. If Jarnagin had anything real to share with Hoover it would not look like a transcript of a conversation. Even assuming a kernel of truth is problematic, because Jarnagin destroys any credibility he might have had with his embellishments. Quoting DA Wade in support of your assessment of Jarnagin isn’t very effective, is it? For obvious reasons. 
as for your arguments against Jim D’s point about the parade route and the Secret Service, Imwould call it missing the forest for the trees. You are very capable of making cohesive arguments in favor of your theory, but it’s the many objections taken as a whole, not parsed one by one, that is important . Thanks 

Paul B., just to be clear, what District Attorney Wade said has nothing--nothing--to do with why I assess partial credibility to Jarnagin's testimony.

The Jarnagin story is not essential to a mob-did-it theory. Jarnagin is not a perfect witness. There are memory issues; he was drinking that evening; he was overhearing conversation at another table imperfectly subject to mishearing and misunderstanding. Also, no matter what Jarnagin thought, the person he said he saw and heard talking with Ruby cannot have been Oswald. Those are givens. The fundamental prior question is, was this a lying witness. Or was this a flawed truthful witness who misunderstood and misinterpreted some things overheard of potential significance.

You say he is discredited because he embellished, meaning dishonestly embellished. Is that accurate description of what Jarnagin wrote to Hoover--the cover letter and attempt to convey what he heard in the form of a reconstructed conversation? 

The most prominent claim that Jarnagin embellished is a claim that Jarnagin also was responsible for the Mark Lane story of a witness who saw Ruby-Tippit-Weissman meeting at the Carousel Club. That claim has no substance according to what I have been able to find. Claims attaching Jarnagin to that story quote other secondary sources none of whom quote a primary source or interview, like an urban legend impossible to verify. I think it probably started as someone's guess and is no more substantial than that.

Does Secret Service action with the parade route rule out the assassination as a mob hit? (Part 2 of 2) 

The JFK assassination in Dallas that happened does not require an assumption of control over the parade route, simply knowledge that there would be a parade and that the Trade Mart was the likely destination. After that all it takes is having persons with legitimate reason to be in a building at some opportune location to carry out the hit or give entrance and assistance to someone else carrying out the hit. Someone at LBJ's level to ensure that a JFK visit to Texas and a parade in Dallas happens, and then some communication of insider knowledge of such trip planning could assist in a mob hit the planning of which could get underway as much as two months earlier.

Compare this claim of a conversation between Jack Ruby and (as I have argued elsewhere [https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27404-revisiting-the-carroll-jarnagin-story/]) Curtis Craford at the Carousel Club, reported by attorney Jarnagin who wrote J. Edgar Hoover in early Dec 1963 saying this is what he heard on the night of Oct 4, 1963:

"[Craford]: 'I'm sure. I've got the equipment ready.'

"Ruby: 'Have you tested it, will you need to practice any?'

"[Craford]: 'Don't worry about that. I don't need any practice; when will the Governor be here?'

"Ruby: 'Oh, he'll be here plenty of times during campaigns...'

(distraction)

"[Craford]: 'Where can I do the job?'

"Ruby: 'From the roof of some building.

"[Craford]: 'No, thats too risky, too many people around.'

"Ruby: 'But they'll be watching the parade, they won't notice you.'

"[Craford]: 'But afterwards, they would tear me to pieces before I could get away.'

"Ruby: 'Then do it from here (indicating the North end of the Carousel Club) from a window.'

"[Craford]: 'How would I get in?'

"Ruby: 'I'll tell the porter to let you in[.]'

"[Craford]: 'But won't there be other people in the place?'

"Ruby: 'I can close the place for the parade, and leave word with the porter to let you.'

"[Craford]: 'But what about the porter?'

"Ruby: 'I can tell him to leave after letting you in, he won't know anything.'

"[Craford]: 'I don't want any witnesses around when I do the job.'

"Ruby: 'You'll be alone.'

"[Craford]: 'How do I get away. there won't be much time afterwards.'

"Ruby: 'You can run out the back door.'

"[Craford]: 'What about the rifle, what do I do if the police run in while I'm running out?'

"Ruby: 'Hide the rifle, you just heard the shot and ran in from the parade to see what was going on; in the confusion you can walk out the front door in the crowd.'

"[Craford]: 'No, they might shoot me first; there must be time for me to get out the back way before the police come in; can you lock the front door after I come in, and leave the back door open?'

"Ruby: 'That would get me involved, how could I explain you in my club with a rifle and the front door locked?'

"[Craford]: 'You left the front door open, and it was locked from inside when somebody slipped in while you were outside watching the parade.'

"Ruby: ---(distraction---)

"[Craford]: 'But what about the money, when do I get the money?'

"Ruby: 'I'll have it here for you.'

"[Craford]: 'But when? I'm not going to have much time after the shooting to get away.'

"Ruby: 'I'll have the money on me, and I'll run in first and hand it to you, and you can run on out the back way.'

"[Craford]: 'I can't wait long, why can't you leave the money in here?'

"Ruby: 'How do I know you'll do the job?'

"[Craford]: 'How do I know you will show up with the money after the job is done?'

"Ruby: 'You can trust me, besides, you'll have the persuader.'

"[Craford]: 'The rifle, I want to get away from it as soon as its used.'

"Ruby: 'You can trust me.'

"[Craford]: 'What about giving me half of the money just before the job is done, and then you can send me the other half later?'

"Ruby: 'I can't turn loose of the money until the job is done; if there's a slip up and you don't get him, they'll pick the money up, immediately. I couldn't tell them that I gave half of it to you in advance, they'd think I doublecrossed them. I would have to return all of the money. People think I have a lot of money, but I couldn't raise half of that amount even by selling everything I have. You'll just have to trust me to hand you the money as soon as the job is done. There is no other way. Remember, they want the job done just as bad as you want the money; and after this is done, they may want to use you again.'

"[Craford]: 'Not that it makes any difference, but what have you got against the Governor?'

"Ruby: 'He won't work with us on paroles; with a few of the right boys out we could really open up this State, with a little cooperation from the Governor. The boys in Chicago have no place to go, no place to really operate, they've clamped down the lid in Chicago, Cuba is closed; everything is dead, look at this place, half empty; if we can open up this State we could pack this place every night, those boys will spend, if they have the money; and remember, we're right next to Mexico; there'd be money for everybody, if we can open up this State.'

"[Craford]: 'How do you know that the Governor won't work with you?'

"Ruby: 'Its no use, he's been in Washington too long, they're too straight up there; after they've been here awhile they get to thinking like the Attorney General. The Attorney General, now there's a guy the boys would like to get, but its no use, he stays in Washington too much.'

"[Craford]: 'A rifle shoots as far in Washington as it does here, doesn't it?'

"Ruby: 'Forget it, that would bring the heat on everywhere, and the Feds would get into everything, no, forget about the Attorney General.'

"[Craford]: 'Killing the Governor of Texas will put the heat on too, won't it?'

"Ruby: 'Not really, they'll think some crack-pot or communist did it, and it will be written off as an unsolved crime.'

"[Craford]: 'That is if I get away with it.'

"Ruby: 'You'll get away, all you have to do is run out the back door.'

"[Craford]: 'What kind of door is there back there, it won't accidentally lock on me will it?'

"Ruby: 'No, you can get out that way without any trouble.'

"[Craford]: 'It doesn't open onto an open fire escape, does it? I don't want to run out onto an open fire escape with a rifle in my hand right after the shooting.'

"Ruby: 'No, its a safe way out, I'll show you, but not now.'

(distraction------)

"[Craford]: 'There's really only one building to do it from, one that covers Main, Elm, and Commerce.'

"Ruby: 'Which one is that?'

"[Craford]: 'The School Book Building, close to the triple underpass.'

"Ruby: 'What's wrong with doing it from here?'

"[Craford]: 'What if he goes down another street?'

Obviously there are questions about this witness (Jarnagin). He was reported to have failed a polygraph examination given by the Dallas police, though District Attorney Wade testified to the Warren Commission that he did not believe there was deception or lying on the part of Jarnagin. (Wade oddly interpreted the polygraph as indicating attorney Jarnagin, an old law school classmate of Wade's, believed he was being truthful but had imagined the whole thing--this of an attorney with no known history of mental illness or delusions or track record of making false police reports or any other criminal record, with his worst sin being an admitted problem with alcohol.) Against prevailing conceptions I have given my reasons elsewhere for judging Jarnagin was truthful in that I believe he did overhear two persons one of whom was Ruby, was mistaken in identification of the other as Oswald, may have had other mistakes or confusions—but with those caveats it was a real and not fabricated witness account, contrary to the claim of the polygraph examination. I believe this is an underappreciated early witness account of an aspect of mob preparation for the assassination. (The mob connection of Craford comes from Peter Whitmey’s later interviews of Craford telling of his mob connections in California and prior experience as a hitman before his connection with Ruby in Dallas; as for Ruby’s mob relations, one has only to read Seth Kantor’s book.)

The point of interest is at the end above about the parade route and the Texas School Book Depository. Of course it could be anachronistic, filled in by Jarnagin either wilfully or unwittingly under the influence of news reporting after Nov 22, 1963. But I would like to suggest that what Jarnagin says he overheard the Craford individual say about the Texas School Book Depository could predate Nov 22 and would work for the Oct 4 date, and even if Jarnagin’s witness testimony is impeached on this point, the substance of the point remains correct: that the TSBD was strategic from the point of view of an assassination by sniper given a state of knowledge of reasonable anticipation of a parade route but before the exact parade route was known.

With Oswald employed in the TSBD the rest of the criminal conspiracy of the assassination in terms of logistics of the shooting could proceed around that location, provided the parade route in its final form turned out as anticipated, which it did. Even though the exact parade route was not known before Nov 14, it could well be anticipated in advance of that date, that the parade would come through the downtown area via either Elm, Main, or Commerce, and no matter which of those, in any of those cases it would come out into Dealey Plaza to an open line of fire accessible from a window of one of the upper stories of the TSBD (or other Dealey Plaza building if logistics and access were arranged). So the TSBD was strategic in advance of knowledge of the exact parade route. Also, the hypothesized planning around the TSBD in advance of final details of the parade route does not require (though also does not exclude) cooperation on the part of the parade-route decision-makers or decision-influencers. All that is necessary or helpful would be “intelligence”—some mechanism by which the on-the-ground plotters knew what was being decided and when, so that there could be timely adaptation and modification of plans as necessary. All of this is compatible with a mob hit.

Oswald himself was “stung” by being blamed for the assassination based on a rifle associated to him, even though he was innocent. Oswald was killed before his role as an informant could become known and that he was not a wilful party to the assassination. By this interpretation, during his time of employment in the TSBD Oswald might have been paid a little from his agency, not enough to lift him and Marina out of poverty, but with promise of more substantial money and a better job (at, say, Collins Radio) shortly to materialize.   

Does Secret Service action with the parade route rule out the assassination as a mob hit? (Part I of 2))  

On the Secret Service route, the argument as I understand it according to James DiEugenio above drawing from Palamaro is that the Secret Service route-planners routed the parade route at the last minute with that dog-leg turn past the Texas School Book Depository purposely in order to enable the killing of President Kennedy. ("Now, Larry says that the way people discredit the Mob as the main engine is through the autopsy. Not accurate. Vince Palamara has proven the motorcade route was changed the night before. The cyclist crew was cut back also and the formation was really weird according to the riders themselves. This facilitated the sitting duck aspect of the victim . . . There is good reason that most researchers do not consider the Mob as the engine driver in the case.")

This is an extremely serious accusation to level on the part of Secret Service route-deciders. No one inside the Secret Service or in any of the investigations that happened afterward interpreted Secret Service agents' role in the fixing of the parade route as being intent to murder JFK and foreknowledge of the assassination. Note that this is different from issues of negligence or criminal negligence. If negligence or criminal negligence was all that was meant in the point, why bring it up at all as excluding that the assassination could be a mob hit? The point only works if the claim is that there was criminal conspiracy inside the Secret Service to murder JFK--career Secret Service who, perhaps offended at JFK's womanizing?, decided to join in a career-risking (to put it mildly) plan to murder a popular elected president, without anyone blowing the whistle upon learning of the plan, either before or after the assassination. There is no proof that what happened on the part of Secret Service security was worse than criminal negligence at worst, and although it is possible to imagine scenarios of worse, it just is not necessary or very likely.

And yet this is cited as if it excludes that Marcello/Trafficante sent the shooters and did the hit in Dealey Plaza that day. Otherwise why raise the route-selection at all as if that routing is exculpatory of Marcello and Trafficante--or anyone else other than the Secret Service by the same logic--from having done the shooting in Dealey Plaza. 

The argument is not logical because the premise is not soundly established--the premise that having the route go past the TSBD (probably decided before Nov 21 but for security reasons not advertised or publicized much until the last minute making some Dallas police confuse when they first learned of it the night before as if that was a change [see discussion at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24927-who-changed-the-motorcade-route/#comments]) reflected intent to murder Kennedy on the part of Secret Service agents tasked with presidential security. It is simply not the given fact that seems assumed.

I have been giving thought to the matter of the route and the setup of the assassination. I am convinced the assassination criminal conspiracy that did happen (per hypothesis) in Dallas simply involved knowledge of likely parade route, and planting of mob operatives in buildings on the likely parade route, without necessity to assume control over that parade route or that any Secret Service agents in Dallas that day had intent or foreknowledge of the horrible assassination that happened. 

Although I believe Buell Wesley Frazier was innocent of criminal wrongdoing and as decent and was even then as decent and real as he comes across in his videotaped interviews today, the fact is Wesley Frazier was from a Dixie Mafia home. His stepfather was a Dixie Mafia hoodlum. Frazier says the Dixie Mafia attempted to recruit him at the time of his move to Irving. Frazier knew and feared Dixie Mafia killer Charles Harrelson who later went to prison over a murder he carried out for the Marcello organization.

“Frazier’s stepfather was not the only frightening individual in the young man’s life. He also knew ‘Pete’ Kay, who was, along with his father, an important figure in the Dixie Mafia. According to Frazier, they offered him the chance to become a member of the ‘family.’ By then, Frazier had already met one group member, a man so heartless that locking eyes with him made his blood run cold. Frazier identified this man as Charles Harrelson; others who knew Harrelson also commented on how coldly he could stare down someone. Frazier decided to take his sister’s advice and not take up the offer.” (Sara Peterson and K.W. Zachry, The Lone Star Speaks [2020], p. 185)

Therefore this was not just anyone gaining employment in the Texas School Book Depository at that point, in mid-Sept 1963. This was, not to put too fine a point on it (and without meaning Wesley Frazier himself was involved in criminal activity), someone essentially from the Dixie Mafia in the sense of a family member who could be useful, now inside the TSBD. And it is reasonable to suppose a relationship between the Dixie Mafia of Wesley Frazier's circles of south Texas and the Marcello crime organization based in New Orleans:

“[Carlos Marcello’s] brother Joe, long the family’s underboss, lacked the energy and ambition to manage an enterprise as complicated and diverse as the one Carlos had controlled for almost forty years [before going to prison in 1983]. He himself [Joseph Marcello] had only recently been under pressure as a result of an investigation. In June 1982, he was indicted on charges of lying to a grand jury investigating the killing of a Texas judge. Joe had been overheard on a BRILAB tape discussing his involvement in the killing of Judge John H. Wood, Jr., who was shot dead outside his San Antonio home on May 29^th, 1979. 

“Three years later, Charles V. Harrelson (the father of movie and television start Woody Harrelson) was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The murder contract had been placed by Texas drug czar Jimmy Chagra, (awaiting trial before the judge, notorious for his heavy sentencing on drug traffickers) who was close to the Marcello family. Chagra’s wife, Elizabeth had allegedly handed over $250,000 in cash to Harrelson to carry out the murder.” (https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-story-of-new-orleans-mafia-boss-carlos-marcello-4)

The point being it was not just anyone who was the recent arrival to the Texas School Book Depository in mid-Sept 1963 so instrumental in Oswald getting his job there a month later. There is the possibility that there was a mob hand in Frazier's employment in the TSBD and in Frazier's role in Oswald's hiring rather than simply a case of a random citizen and random timing. Furthermore, Frazier as an existing employee in good standing was in the most opportune position of anyone to assist Oswald in also gaining employment at the Texas School Book Depository simply by ability to put in a favorable word to Truly on Oswald's behalf, which is what happened. In other words, although it has not been looked at in such light, Oswald got his job at the Texas School Book Depository through the assistance and recommendation of a recent hire from Dixie Mafia/Marcello circles.  

All that needs further to be assumed is that Oswald was set up to be blamed for the assassination, but Oswald thought he was part of the group in the role of a government informant informing on the group. Without certainty, some things suggest to me that one agency with which Oswald could have been in a paid informant relationship while at the TSBD, might be ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, branch of the Treasury Department), renewing or continuing a prior relationship in which Oswald was involved in a federal mail-order firearms sting investigation.

That there was pre-assassination interest on the part of mob operatives and Oswald himself in employment in strategic buildings on the likely parade route in Dallas may be alluded to in two testimonies in addition to being a reasonable conjectural reconstruction and supported by (separate subject) a series of applications of persons falsely claiming to be named Oswald applying for work in tall buildings in downtown Dallas along possible parade route arteries (three such cases at least). The first of the two possible testimonies is in the account of Laura Kittrell of the Texas Employment Commission who told of dealing with Oswald in Oct 1963. Kittrell tells how Oswald told her what kind of job he wanted. From the Laura Kittrell manuscript:

“. . . his sudden notion that he should have an office job, downtown.

“’I used to sell shoes,’ he said. ‘That is what you call experienced, isn’t it?’

“’Well, do you want to sell shoes, then?’ I asked crossly.

“’No, he said, ‘I want an office job, downtown.’"

An office job downtown. Where the parade route would be going through? Laura Kittrell is here telling of the real Oswald, apparently seeking the same kind of strategic building as the three cases, unknown to Oswald, of persons applying for work in tall buildings in downtown Dallas falsely using his name.

[continued]

On 3/15/2022 at 9:45 AM, James DiEugenio said:

When Aaron Good interviewed Peter Scott for his fine series about Stone's  documentary, he said that Chomsky and Zinn did not want to print his early essay on Kennedy's withdrawal attempt as part of the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers.

They said, it will make it look like president's matter.

That is not writing history, its writing ideology.

When Ray Marcus struck up a dialogue with Zinn back in 1993 over Stone's feature film, he said that if the Pentagon had a role in killing Kennedy, they judged him wrong.

This is why I find it so difficult to argue with these kinds of what i call doctrinaire/Pacifica styled leftists.  How does one deal with that kind of logic and reasoning?

I am glad Aaron will be moderating the debate. I would not meet Buzzanco on his own show.

Are you sure about the Chomsky part of that? There is a rumor that Peter Dale Scott has said differently (source is hearsay so unfortunately unable to confirm--I tried to find the Aaron Good podcast to which you refer to check but could not find it). Represented as from Peter Dale Scott:

"James DiEugenio misquoted me. I said that Zinn tried to dissuade me from submitting the essay. Chomsky, who had been out of the country, was happy to print it. (Perhaps, I speculated, so he could later write a whole book attacking it.)" 

14 minutes ago, Ken Davies said:

Having read extensively about the mob in government reports, having represented  various people in criminal courts over 40 years,  having had more than one person confess a murder to me,  having heard many first hand accounts from other lawyers and judges and  having had a mobster murder in a nearby neighbourhood, I am satisfied that mob hits are for the most part as I indicated. The mob, under various names, is a prevalent force in some places.  It has killed many prominent judges and prosecutors in Italy over the past 40 years via explosives. The book titled "The Good Mothers" lists prominent ones.

OK.

14 minutes ago, Ken Davies said:

Charles Harrelson was a mob member by what definition?

I am getting that from Sara Peterson and K.W. Zachry, The Lone Star Speaks [2020], p. 185:

“[Wesley] Frazier’s stepfather was not the only frightening individual in the young man’s life. He also knew ‘Pete’ Kay, who was, along with his father, an important figure in the Dixie Mafia. According to Frazier, they offered him the chance to become a member of the ‘family.’ By then, Frazier had already met one group member, a man so heartless that locking eyes with him made his blood run cold. Frazier identified this man as Charles Harrelson; others who knew Harrelson also commented on how coldly he could stare down someone. Frazier decided to take his sister’s advice and not take up the offer.”

Also this: 

“[Carlos Marcello’s] brother Joe, long the family’s underboss, lacked the energy and ambition to manage an enterprise as complicated and diverse as the one Carlos had controlled for almost forty years [before going to prison in 1983]. He himself [Joseph Marcello] had only recently been under pressure as a result of an investigation. In June 1982, he was indicted on charges of lying to a grand jury investigating the killing of a Texas judge. Joe had been overheard on a BRILAB tape discussing his involvement in the killing of Judge John H. Wood, Jr., who was shot dead outside his San Antonio home on May 29^th, 1979. 

“Three years later, Charles V. Harrelson (the father of movie and television start Woody Harrelson) was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The murder contract had been placed by Texas drug czar Jimmy Chagra, (awaiting trial before the judge, notorious for his heavy sentencing on drug traffickers) who was close to the Marcello family. Chagra’s wife, Elizabeth had allegedly handed over $250,000 in cash to Harrelson to carry out the murder.” (https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-story-of-new-orleans-mafia-boss-carlos-marcello-4)

21 minutes ago, Ken Davies said:

These points aside, the mob has not stonewalled government records, controlled the mainstream media, and on and on ....for the past 59 years.

Agreed. But I do not see how that logically exculpates Marcello and Trafficante from having carried out the hit, given that there has never been clear evidence of a gunman that day not associated with Marcello or Trafficante. I am not comprehending the logic which others are expressing as if there is just something obvious about this.

The reason for the coverup would be well explained if the on-the-ground part done as a mob hit indeed functioned as part of a coup--or rather a variant form of recall election involving no election--i.e. Marcello and Trafficante not acting alone. And as for coverup--the last major government investigation did directly conclude basically nailing Marcello and Trafficante in the criminal conspiracy that did the JFK assassination, so it is not as if it can be said the conspiracy to kill JFK even remains fully covered up; it has been partly already uncovered and many facts and a major investigation's findings are out there, all out there in public waiting to be further developed and pursued. It just has not won acceptance from a number of conspiracy theorists who while unable after sixty years to come to consensus on identification of any other gunmen in Dealey Plaza not mob, for some reason seem resistant to this particular criminal conspiracy solution.

It is easy to find fault with this or that in the Blakey mob solution argument as HSCA/Blakey presented it but the real question is not the existence of specific problems in the HSCA/Blakey solution but whether those problems are fixable (improve the theory) or not (reject the theory and revert by default to no-consensus solution status quo concerning identities of gunmen who carried out the assassination on the ground). I am in the camp of "fix it"/"improve it" concerning the Blakey/HSCA/Scheim mob solution. 

And all of these so-called reasons or objections why the mob could not have done the shooting of JFK because they were not in J Edgar Hoover's position to be able to control the investigation covering up their own role, etc., or because they could not control the autopsy (so what?--why would shooters care about controlling any autopsy?--what do people think, that the shooters are going to want to cover up that JFK died from being shot?) . . . all of this is just to me hardly sensible.

Although others argue for the mob acting alone in mob-did-it theories, I do not think that is accurate. I think the role of Oswald as setup for casus bellus against Castro and Cuba implies a CIA/Mob "understanding"--as I interpret it--that even though the hit is carried out as a mob operation, it will set up Oswald as the one blamed. That is, the mob in this case is not operating in a vacuum. And I find it difficult to believe that any mobster would conspire to assassinate a president if there was not a green-light or knowledge of sympathetic support from some faction of the government who also wanted that president out. Starting a war with the entire US government by killing a president, a stand-alone Mob assassination, does not make sense.

But saying that Marcello and Trafficante did not act on their own is not an argument that Marcello and Trafficante did not do it. That is the logical circuit-breaker that I see keep being repeated and repeated, when it is not logical. 

8 hours ago, Ken Davies said:

 Has there ever beena documented mob hit involving a rifle from 200 feet away?  Close range pistol shots, bombs, machine guns, strangulation, poison, etc.  are common.

• Bugsy Siegel: "On the evening of June 20th, 1947, Siegel was relaxing in a palatial Beverly Hills mansion, reading the Los Angeles Times, when a hitman riddled him with bullets fired through the window with an M1 rifle". ((https://historycollection.com/20-significant-mafia-hits/) 
• "The Only Man Al Capone Feared": "[Hymie] Weiss was about to enter his headquarters, when a squad of hitmen opened fire from the windows of a nearby second floor building. Weiss was fatally injured, and died in the ambulance en route to the hospital." (https://historycollection.com/20-significant-mafia-hits/)
• Montreal mob boss Nicolo Rizzuto: "was killed by a sniper who snuck up to his house through a forested area and shot him through double-paned glass with a high-powered rifle, killing him instantly. (https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/man-who-might-have-murdered-nicolo-rizzuto-shot-dead-in-toronto-1.1365877)
• Charles Harrelson, Dixie Mafia, south Texas: "U.S. Judge John H. Wood Jr. was murdered by an assassin armed with a high-powered rifle Tuesday morning. The judge was shot once in the back as he stepped up to his auto in the parking area of his fashionable North Side condominium complex at 8:35 a.m." (San Antonio Light, 5/29/79, (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/woody-harrelsons-father-killed-a-federal-judge-in-san-antonio-42-years-ago/ar-AAKDgec)
• Gregory Scarpa, serial mob killer, "one night [Scarpa] surprised a rebel [of rival mob faction] who stwood on a ladder, with his back turned, hanging Christmas lights on his ouse. Scarpa rolled down his car window, stuck out his rifle, and picked the man off with three shots." (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/12/16/the-g-man-and-the-hit-man)

There is the story of Jimmy Hoffa discussing killing Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy by plastic explosives in his home. One might as well logically ask, has there ever been another documented mob hit using plastic explosives. Maybe the issue was what was needed to accomplish the job. In JFK's case the opportunity--the security vulnerability--was an open window from a building on a parade route, not so easy to get up close to JFK. I do not see this argument that the fact that the JFK assassination was done by a rifle from a window is exculpatory of a mob role.  

On 4/13/2021 at 7:28 PM, Denis Morissette said:

I informed Frazier about the complete audio of his HSCA interview I posted on my YouTube channel. He was pleased by that. He said he neither have any copy of it or any transcript of it. Yet some of those who know that I do and worked with him with his book never informed him of it. I’m used to have my material ignored, so I’m not surprised nobody wanted to let him know. I asked him if he remembers Warren Caster or anyone else with a rifle in the TSBD in the days prior to the assassination. He does not.

That is odd. In the context of a discussion of the Mauser vs. Carcano issue on the sixth floor, page 317 of The Lone Star Speaks (2020), eds. Sara Peterson and K.W. Zachry (bold added, italics not added):

"Buell Wesley Frazier shed a little light on this confusing situation when he told the authors in May 2015 that he recalled seeing a Mauser in the School Book Depository on November 20, 1963, two days before the assassination. It belonged to Warren Caster, an employee with Southwestern Publishing Company. Southwestern Publishing Company was then located on the second floor of the Depository. Caster was proud of his rifles and brought in both a Mauser and a .22-caliber rifle to show to Frazier's supervisors, William Shelley and Roy Truly, as well as to some of his fellow workers two days before the assassination. Other workers verified seeing Caster displaying these two rifles on November 20, 1963."

An endnote following the first sentence above reads: "Frazier, Buel [sic] Wesley. Interview in person with the authors on May 15, 2015 and via telephone on May 30, 2015. All of his information and quotes are attributes [sic] to these interviews."

I wonder what the explanation is to these diametrically opposed claims reported from the same witness.

2 minutes ago, Richard Price said:

Greg, just for information you can find the current "handling procedures" for the different classifications of mail in the Domestic Mail Manual(DMM), as we who work(ed) for the USPS call it.  Though the names of the mail classes has change over time, the general handling is much the same today as it was in 1963.  First Class mail and the premium services for it (Priority & Priority Express) are NEVER to be disposed of unless damaged to an exent that it is indecipherable or it is unclaimed on both the receiver's end and upon return to sender afterward.  You group a lot of mail as "Standard" that are handled differently.  The main issue with this is your assessment of magazines/newspapers as standard mail.  That is not the case.  Magazines, newspapers and periodicals are what used to be called 2nd Class mail.  They are forwardable for a short period of time after someone moves.  Once this period of time expires, if the person has not notified the publisher, they are returned (or a notice of the recipients new address is sent to the publisher.  Once that scenario has played out, they are destroyed.  The mail once called 4th Class, has a few groupings now, but then as now they were handled according to the "endorsement" made by the original mailer.  Just a short sampling of endorsements:  1) NO Endorsement, DO NOT FORWARD-DO NOT RETURN Or DO NOT FORWARD - item is trashed  2) RETURN TO SENDER - item is returned to the original mailer (postage due is charged)  3) ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED - a notice of the recipients new address is sent to the mailer for a set fee & the item is destroyed .

I know these rules because I worked at USPS for 30 years from 1987 to 2107 as a clerk and was first trained as a forwarding clerk before learning the "scheme" in order to sort mail.  To my knowledge, it has never been a punishable crime to destroy/throw out anything in the Fourth Class genre of mail even with the endorsements (unless you are employed by USPS).  If you are employed by USPS, you might face disciplinary measures if you are knowingly disposing of mail which is supposed to be handled otherwise, but not charged with a crime.

Richard Price, thank you for speaking from your experience and knowledge with the US Postal Service clarifying some points, especially the clarification that Oswald's newspapers would be considered "second-class" not fourth-class, though as I understand it all non-first-class mail is by definition "standard class" (I hope I do not have that wrong). THANK YOU for giving real information. All I know of the Post Office and carriers is I value and appreciate their work every day, salt of the earth, the heart of America.

The one point of interest I would like to draw out for the attention of others reading this--without intent to embarrass--is this, which I believe illustrates how little-known US law applicable to the issue of Ruth Paine's destruction of Oswald's newspapers is--so little known that (please excuse Richard, citing you as the example here, you are a good person)--not even an experienced retired Post Office person right here and now has been aware that relevant US law forbids destruction of all mail of all classes by anyone other than the U.S. Post Office itself, i.e. legally, it is a crime for anyone other than the USPS to destroy mail addressed to someone else of any class. Your comment proves the point of how little known this aspect of the law is, in that not even a veteran US Post Office personnel such as yourself realizes it.

13 minutes ago, Richard Price said:

I know these rules because I worked at USPS for 30 years from 1987 to 2107 as a clerk and was first trained as a forwarding clerk before learning the "scheme" in order to sort mail.  To my knowledge, it has never been a punishable crime to destroy/throw out anything in the Fourth Class genre of mail even with the endorsements (unless you are employed by USPS).  If you are employed by USPS, you might face disciplinary measures if you are knowingly disposing of mail which is supposed to be handled otherwise, but not charged with a crime.

I hesitate to go against 30 years of experience but the legal sites I look at say differently: that there is no exception as to class of mail; that according to U.S. law no individual person may destroy any class of US mail addressed to any other person on their own, without exception, and it is a federal crime to do so. I wonder if you could be getting what you say based on, in your life of experience you have never seen a citizen prosecuted for destruction of someone else's 4th class mail. That as policy of the USPS I do not doubt is reflected accurately in your description. But the law is so little known that not even career US Postal Service employees understand the law being quoted to crucify Ruth Paine. Again thanks for your comments Richard.

https://law.justia.com/codes/us/1994/title18/parti/chap83/sec1703

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/52349/is-it-illegal-to-throw-away-the-previous-tenants-standard-mail

"As indicated here, throwing away mail is the crime of obstructing mail. There is no exception for "junk mail" i.e. standard mail. It is possible (virtually guaranteed) that an individual postmaster or the USPS has a different disposition of the two kinds or mail when returned, but that is about USPS and not you. It is highly unlikely that you will find an official statement to the effect that it is "okay" to violate the law in the case of disposition of returned standard mail, even if in fact there is virtually no chance of being prosecuted for recycling."

I did not realize in my entire life until two weeks ago that it is a federal US crime to not forward junk mail--what used to be called fourth class or bulk mail, now called "standard" mail, which includes catalogs, magazines, newspapers, bulk mail advertising, commonly known as "junk mail"--that comes to an address after someone moves. I learned that for the first time from reading Tom Gram on this Ruth Paine/Oswald-newspapers issue, and seeing the law quoted and verifying it, to my amazement saw that is right, it is against the law. 

US post offices by policy have never forwarded such mail that I have ever heard (unless proactive provisions are made to pay additional postage) but simply destroy such mail, and according to reports, post offices and local carriers have no interest in people transporting other people's junk mail to them for them to shred and destroy, though that (I now understand) is the law. This law concerning this class of mail is so little known that I would estimate 80-90% of the American public if asked would be unaware of the existence of this law concerning illegality of destroying junk mail (standard class, bulk mail, formerly known as 4th-class) of someone who used to live somewhere rather than a legal requirement to turn it in to the post office (which the post office will destroy rather than forward). About 100% of Americans do understand that first-class mail should be preserved and forwarded and there is nearly universal compliance with that. But "standard" class mail--catalogs, newspapers and magazines, bulk advertising--that non-forwarding or destruction of that is against the law is so little known that open and public informational sites on the internet often do not have a clue. To give just one example of many, this from a site called "Lifehacker" which gives practical and sensible advice to readers, in response to the question: "How Can I Stop Getting Mail Addressed to Someone Else?":

"You might just be tempted to toss it in the trash. Don’t do it. It’s probably fine for things like ads, flyers or other missives that are clearly junk, but you’re not helping yourself or the other person by just tossing everything not addressed to you in the garbage." (https://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-stop-getting-mail-addressed-to-someone-else-1444875925)

That is what I always thought (in the bold), and pretty clearly what Ruth Paine thought at the time too. The Lifehacker site has no more awareness of the law on this than I did until two weeks ago. 

Here is a discussion of the law on this point that enlightened me. From the comments one can see the popular confusion and lack of awareness of Americans over this issue: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/52349/is-it-illegal-to-throw-away-the-previous-tenants-standard-mail.  

As for when Ruth Paine destroyed those newspapers: her testimony says it was "after" late Saturday night without saying it was Saturday night. It is likely Ruth Paine destroyed those newspapers at some point after Oswald's death on Sunday morning. Nothing in her testimony conflicts with that, and it makes more sense.

In the case of a deceased person, mail legally is supposed to be forwarded to the deceased person's estate, which in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald presumably would be Marina Oswald or someone designated by Marina to handle Lee's estate. Ruth could personally convey the deceased Lee's newspapers to Marina or Marina's representative, or Lee's newspapers could have been returned to the post office where the newspapers would normally be destroyed without forwarding (since not first-class mail).

There are some people involved in JFK assassination conspiracy theories who have been merciless toward Ruth Paine. When Ruth Paine DID forward property of Marina Oswald to Marina in the days and weeks after the police searches, Ruth Paine has been maliciously and bitterly attacked for doing that--for what is called "producing a steady stream of incriminating evidence" used to make Lee Harvey Oswald look bad. The venom directed against Ruth Paine on this accusation (of producing a "steady stream of incriminating evidence" against Oswald) has been astounding. This would have been one more such case if Ruth Paine had done so. Ruth Paine would have been condemned in vicious ways as she already has been, if she had conveyed those newspapers to Marina. It is always argued in such vile attacks upon Ruth Paine that the police in their searches could not have missed such things in two thorough searches, therefore Ruth forged or planted or maliciously created or caused or invented the things Ruth conveyed to Marina or authorities. This would have been one more such case cited, added to the shameful abuse which has long and undeservedly been heaped on Ruth Paine.

To be clear, Ruth Paine is here being maliciously attacked for NOT doing what she would have been maliciously attacked for if she HAD done.

But the fact is correct: according to the law, which nothing indicates Ruth was any more aware of that law's existence at the time than I have been in my life before now, legally she should not have tossed those newspapers, but should have conveyed them to Marina as Lee's heir, for Marina to process or dispose of, or else to the post office to dispose of. However if Marina had indicated, including verbally, to Ruth that Ruth was authorized by Marina to manage mail for her or Lee after Lee's death, then that action of Ruth with Lee's newspapers would have been legally proper.  

The header of this topic also confuses the issue. The mail-destruction law has nothing to do with whether mail is evidence in a criminal case. Ed LeDoux asks the question in the topic header whether Ruth destroyed evidence, which is a different issue altogether. Unless Ruth had been advised by a lawful authority that further property in her house not taken by police in their searches was criminal evidence--unless Ruth had been advised or notified of that--or unless she had cause to know it bore materially on commission of a crime--there is no "destruction of evidence" issue there legally. And if there was, that would have nothing to do with the mail-destruction issue, distinct issues.

Ruth showed no awareness of legal impropriety at the time she threw out those newspapers. When asked why, she said "why not?" I do not know whether ignorance of the law would be a legal defense or not in this case, whether wilfulness (awareness of committing wrongdoing) would need to be established to convict Ruth in court of destruction of a deceased person's bulk mail instead of returning it to the post office for the post office to destroy it, or conveying to the deceased person's estate or heirs for processing by that estate or heirs. In all of her other affairs Ruth showed herself to have been law-abiding or seeking to be law-abiding, with the sole exception known to me of wilful refusal to pay war taxes on grounds of conscience in later years.

I have had plenty of moves and post office boxes and mail forwardings of myself and housemates in my life, and I never knew until two weeks ago that tossing junk mail--bulk-mailed catalogs, magazines, newspapers, advertising flyers--that kept arriving for other people after they moved away, was illegal. Have I myself done that, as is done millions of times daily across America to the present day? I think I better take the Fifth Amendment! 🙂 

12 hours ago, Jon Pickering said:

It's clear the perps ran a phony parallel plot designed to leech attention from their commanding role in John Kennedy's murder, and, bring the righteous ire of Americans onto the heads of any sap and sucker who could be plausibly construed as a civilian 'Kennedy hater' local to Dallas or New Orleans. The mob, rejects from Castro's Cuba, the oilmen, the cadet leaders, the Eastern pilot, various hustlers, mercenaries, Agency boobs, undercovers, the whole of New Orleans' gay community, some of them willing, even eager, some not - but all were to become 'guilty' parties to the eye of many citizens, yet, more wasteful to the reader, the carefully crafted legends of sponsored JFKA 'researchers'. Oswald was merely one of a gaggle of patsies in the JFKA. 

Jon--who do you think the perps were on the ground in Dealey Plaza given that you seem certain that the perps were not the overwhelming associations in the background of Ruby's silencing of Oswald as part of the on-the-ground cleanup? 

Pat Speer's comment sounds pretty sensible--what not to like as a basic explanation?

On 3/12/2022 at 7:49 AM, David Boylan said:

What is the source that Herminio Diaz-Garcia was Trafficante's bodyguard? I have him as a CIA asset and later working for Army Intel.

David--Fabian Escalante, http://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0027-1.html (about halfway down on the page). 

Ruby

Paul Brancato--you raise several good questions or points and I will try to respond the best I can one at a time. Your point or question on Ruby in his Warren Commission interview suggesting the John Birch Society and Walker, but not a mob role, took me back to restudying that testimony of Ruby. I think Ruby did have a mob role he wanted to tell... as follows. 

First I admit it is possible to read Ruby in several different ways. Here is what I see as the facts concerning Ruby:

• Ruby was fearful for his life and the lives of his family members if he spoke what he believed was the truth (as opposed to him not being fearful and making that up to bluff Earl Warren into moving him to D.C.). Earl Warren thought Ruby's fears were imaginary and that Ruby was in no more danger in police custody than Oswald. oh wait...
• Ruby alternated between sticking to his standard story of spontaneous action without premeditation in killing Oswald, and claiming that he had been "put in this position" by others. 
• There was hardly any attempt by the Warren Commission questioners at cross-examination or follow-up questions to Ruby's account as was the case with the lengthy questioning of, for example, Curtis Craford. No in-depth questioning of Ruby's associations, who he recognized in photos, nailing down his travels, his contacts, if and how well he knew the relevant mob bosses in his circles such as Civello, Marcello, and Trafficante (just wasn't of interest to ask). Earl Warren's position basically was, "we are here to let you say whatever you have to say" without cross-examination or further followup, and that would be that. 
• Ruby had sought earnestly to be questioned and polygraphed by the Warren Commission early on, two or three months before Earl Warren and crew arrived to Dallas to question him just as they were wrapping up their investigation on their timeline. Ruby's earnest early requests had been ignored. Warren explained that had been out of consideration for Ruby in light of Ruby's trial in process, so as not to prejudice the outcome (for which Ruby was found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair). But the trial had ended, and still there was lackadaisical delay, which Warren explained as being partly out of concern for Ruby in not wanting to bother him (!)--the witness wanting to be questioned. The rest of the reasons, Warren explained, were they had other things to attend to and just hadn't gotten around to it. ("And I wish we had gotten here a little sooner after your trial was over, but I know you had other things on your mind [!], and we had other work, and it got to this late date. But I assure you, there is no desire on our part to let this matter go to any late date for any ulterior purpose...") (Further comment: after Oswald was killed, Ruby himself was just about the single potentially most important witness there was, if his unconvincing alibi story was NOT as presented. If Ruby had been interviewed early and questioned thoroughly Ruby's testimony could have produced further leads which would have required running down. Those leads could reasonably be anticipated to have been in large part underworld or mob leads. Having Ruby interviewed for the first time by the Warren Commission at the tail-end of the WC's investigation, when there was no time to run down leads Ruby might newly raise, no interest in doing so, and no further questioning or followup of the things Ruby did speak of, seems in agreement with Hoover's policy taken over by the Warren Commission that mob-role questions in investigation of the assassination were not to be pursued.)  
• Ruby said time after time in the most direct way that he could not speak fully and openly there out of fear for his life and that of his sisters and brothers, and that he had more to tell if he could be transferred into federal custody where he would be safe. Warren's response was to very considerately offer to end the interview if Ruby felt it was unsafe for him to continue speaking (!). Ruby asks to be taken to Washington, D.C., just as many other Warren Commission witnesses were subpoened to come to Washington. Warren: "No; it could not be done ... we have no place there for you to be safe when we take you out, and we are not law enforcement offices, and it isn't our responsibility to go into anything of that kind." Ruby: "my life is in danger here ... I can't say it here, is with authenticity, with sincerity of the truth of everything and why my act was committed, but it can't be said here... Chairman Warren, if you felt that your life was in danger at the moment, how would you feel? Wouldn't you be reluctant to go on speaking, even though you request me to do so?" Warren (sympathetically): "I think I might have some reluctance if I was in your position, yes; I think I would. I think I would figure it out very carefully as to whether it would endanger me or not. If you think that anything that I am doing or anything that I am asking you is endangering you in any way, shape, or form, I want you to feel absolutely free to say that the interview is over." Ruby: "What happens then? I didn't accomplish anything." Warren: "No; nothing has been accomplished." Ruby: "Well, then you won't follow up with anything further?" Warren: "There wouldn't be anything to follow up if you hadn't completed your statement." 
• Ruby believed he was going to be killed immediately after Warren left because he already had said too much. That did not happen--the immediate part that is. Ruby told Earl Warren if he did not take him, Ruby, to Washington, D.C. he would not see him alive again. Warren assured Ruby he did not think that was the case. As it happened Ruby, a nonsmoker, developed an extraordinarily rapid onset of lung cancer which killed him just before he was to be transferred where his new trial would begin. Ruby, his attorney, and a number of Dallas police thought Ruby's cancer was foul play. 
• Ruby believed he was going to be blamed by history for the JFK assassination and that that was part of a plan to blame Jews, through him, as a whole and would trigger a new holocaust or pogroms against Jews. Ruby claimed John Birch Society types were already saying that--that he, Ruby, had killed Kennedy. 
• Ruby was insistent that he be polygraphed or given truth serum, and pleaded with Earl Warren first to be able to testify in a safe space in federal custody not in police custody in Dallas (since polygraph testing does not develop a story but checks a witness's story already developed for truthful vs. lying). As is now known, the later panel of nine polygraph experts convened by HSCA in the late 1970s to review the polygraph that was done on Ruby just ripped it to shreds and found the examiner's procedures in some ways indistinguishable from if an examiner was trying to create polygraph measurements deemed truthful from a lying witness. Whether or not that was the case the panel found the Warren Commission polygraph examination worthless in determining whether Ruby's answers to the relevant questions were truthful or lying. The unanswered question of course is whether Ruby's insistence on being polygraphed was because he wanted his alibi story of no premeditation judged truthful, or whether Ruby wanted it discovered that he was lying causing further inquiry and federal witness protection for him to spill as-yet-unspilled beans. As Matt Allison and Paul B. have mentioned, at least two of the questions Ruby was asked to which he answered "no", judged truthful in the Warren Commission polygraph examination, were fairly clearly dishonest on the basis of other information, namely did he ever do business in Cuba, and did he go to Parkland Hospital after the assassination (where Seth Kantor, who knew him, told of seeing him and talking to him there). 

To answer your question Paul B., I think the John Birch Society and Walker were raised by Ruby because, first, mentioning those names would not get him killed (his life was not threatened by either of those), but second and more importantly, not knowing who exactly ordered the assassination or what the game-plan was after Ruby saw himself becoming the blamed patsy for the assassination of Kennedy, he focused on anti-semitism as that larger game plan as the "why" he, Jewish, had been selected to be set up. Ruby believed he had been set up by others (which he said repeatedly--inconsistent with a claim to have acted spontaneously on his own without prompting from others, if one thinks about it). Ruby did not raise LBJ as responsible for the JFK assassination in his Warren Commission testimony which he did in his secret notes smuggled outside of jail--indicating he was not telling everything he thought he knew in that Warren Commission interview--and he also did not speak of organized crime which defined the circles in which he had lived and breathed his entire life. Therefore my interpretation of Ruby's mentions of the John Birch Society, Walker, and (elsewhere apart from his WC testimony) LBJ, were unsubstantiated conclusions or beliefs on Ruby's part, not based on knowledge.   

But I think Ruby was trying as hard as he could to get the dense Earl Warren to quit being so gullible in believing his very unconvincing alibi story (of the spontaneous unplanned decision to walk to the Dallas police station and try to shoot Oswald, eighty minutes after he says he believed Oswald would already have been moved, and by an extraordinary freak accident of history, succeeded)--and that he did attempt to point Earl Warren to a mob role, in the way he kept trying to focus Earl Warren's attention on McWillie. Not that Earl Warren expressed interest or curiosity or had followup questions. But Ruby kept talking about McWillie. 

Ruby starts talking of McWillie. Warren responds as if Ruby is rambling; Warren has no questions or interest in what Ruby is saying about McWillie and when Ruby comes to a pause, tries to return Ruby's focus to Oswald. 

Warren: Well, I will go back to the original question that I asked you. Did you ever know Oswald?

Ruby: No; let me add--you are refreshing my mind about a few things. Can I ask one thing? Did you all talk to McWillie? I am sure you have.

Voice: Yes. 

(Unclear who in the room answered "yes".) Ruby continues talking more about McWillie from the past. Ruby asks Secret Service agent Elmer Moore who was in this room in the Dallas jail as the interview is conducted, if he had talked to McWillie in person. Earlier when Ruby asked Elmer Moore why he was there, Moore replied: "Well, I am assigned to the Commission, Jack." Ruby: "The President assigned you?" Moore: "No; my chief did. And I am not involved in the investigation. I am more of a security officer." 

Ruby: did you meet McWillie?

Moore. I didn't.

Rankin: He was checked by the Commission in connection with this work.

What was so important to Ruby that he felt the need to keep on talking about McWillie? From Spartacus Educational on McWillie:

"Lewis McWillie worked as a professional gambler in Memphis, Tennessee (1932-36). Later he worked in Jackson, Mississippi, and Dallas, Texas (1940-58). Then he moved to the Deauville Casino in Cuba. A fellow worker at the casino was John Martino. McWillie was also a business associate of Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky and later ran the Tropicana Casino in Havana. In August 1959 Jack Ruby visited McWillie. When Fidel Castro took control of the island McWillie was arrested and then deported to the United States. After a period in Miami Meyer Lansky placed him inside of his Tropicana Casino in Las Vegas. In 1961 Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli recruited McWillie to look after Frank Sinatra's Cal-Neva Lodge in Nevada."

 Seth Kantor, The Ruby Cover-up, 61:

"Meanwhile, the [Warren] Commission's chronicle for [Ruby on] Sunday, November 17 [1963], failed to include a reported trip made by Ruby to Las Vegas even though the FBI spoke to witnesses who confirmed Ruby's presence in Las Vegas. [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57014#relPageId=30] Ruby's special Las Vegas connection was Lewis McWillie, the syndicate gambler Ruby had visited in Cuba in 1959. Ruby made a series of phone calls in 1963 to McWillie, who was closely associated with Meyer Lansky's hoodlum empire and was installed in Las Vegas as pit boss at the Thunderbird casino. On May 10, 1963, Ruby had a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Centennial revolver shipped to McWillie, according to the records of Dallas gun dealer Ray Brantley. Ruby didn't want his personal Las Vegas mission to become known, and Ralph Paul, a back-room business associate of Ruby's, told the Warren Commission that Ruby could be very secretive about his comings and goings. Ruby didn't want his club employees to know when he slipped out of town, in order to keep them from stealing his profits, Paul said (. . .) Two days after the Las Vegas trip Ruby turned up in [tax attorney Graham] Koch's office on November 19 and said he had a connection who would supply him money to settle his long-standing government tax problems..."

A psychiatrist examining Ruby reported that Ruby claimed to him he had been "framed into killing Oswald" and "they got what they wanted on me", an odd way to express spontaneous sympathy for Jacqueline and Caroline as being what prompted him (Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy, 341 citing an unpublished "Examination of Jack Ruby" of psychiatrist Werner Tuteur). Summers also quotes from a letter Ruby smuggled out of jail in which Ruby wrote, "Don't believe the Warren Report, that was put out to make me look innocent" (Summers p. 341 citing Ramparts Feb 1967, p. 26).

In summary, I think Ruby did not fully know who was behind the JFK assassination but did know of and believe he had been used by mob figures who had him kill Oswald and perhaps help in several other ways. It is always possible (and this is what Warren Report supporters will say) that if Earl Warren had, say, "humored" Ruby by taking him to Washington, D.C. and into safe federal custody, that it would have been for nothing: Ruby would have had nothing concrete to say, just more unverifiable claims that LBJ did it and impending holocaust against the Jews. But the claim of impulsive overwhelming sympathy for Jackie and Caroline combined with absolutely extraordinary freak accident in timing renders Ruby's alibi story lacking credibility on its face--it simply is just not to be believed--no matter how Ruby gave an appearance of sticking to that story during his various interviews, all the while in the custody of Dallas county sheriff's deputies whom he believed were not able to protect him or family members from what he understood to be the most direct threat to his and their lives if he told what he actually did know. What he actually did know, of course, was the true circumstances of why he killed Oswald--that part of the JFK assassination plot at least--and any speaking of that on Ruby's part would go to very dangerous Mob figures, which would mean certain death unless he could get federal witness protection. 

Finally, see this powerful article from a reporter who was in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963, making the mob connection to Ruby and the Hoover/Warren Commission coverup of Ruby's mob connections about as plain as can be: http://evesmag.com/jfkassassination.htm.

14 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

The problem with saying "the mob did it" is that it only takes a modicum of digging before realizing that if they had anything to do with this, there were other non-mob people that had far more to do with it.

I don't think Marcello saying "kill him" makes him responsible, if that even happened. Marcello didn't plan or do anything himself, so putting all the blame on him just doesn't hold water.

The Bay of Pigs is why JFK was murdered. I don't really feel like there's any mystery about that.

Strange to say Matt I agree with every word of what you say here with the exception of the one clause "Marcello didn't plan or do anything himself". But take out those words and I agree on everything else. Marcello was responsible, and he wasn't responsible. Like Lieutenant Calley and My Lai. Or like James Earl Ray and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the top level I believe JFK was removed because he crossed certain political lines. A sense that "JFK has gone too far" and "something needs to be done". But in Dallas and Dealey Plaza, what is seen in terms of evidence is a Mob hit combined with a patsy with intelligence-agency history, a Castro-linked communist, himself to be killed immediately and set up to make Castro look responsible, the ultimate casus bellus for the desired removal of Castro in Cuba and end to the threat of an end to the Cold War that JFK represented. That sense at top levels is followed by a fact on the ground, in Dallas in Nov 1963, in which JFK is killed and CIA disinformation is immediately begun implicating Castro, e.g. the "Pedro Charles" letters, the arrest and interrogation of Silvia Duran, and so on.

The evidence of the assassination that happened, that fact on the ground, goes to Marcello and Trafficante. This is just fact--at least what the partial facts that are known indicate. Cannot speak of all the facts since there are significant unknowns, but the knowns.

Specifically by looking at who is known to have been involved. Ruby--mob linked to Trafficante and Marcello. Craford, if the argument is correct that Craford was the killer of Tippit, would-be killer of Oswald in the Texas Theatre, and the individual earlier seen and overheard by attorney Jarnagin on Oct 4 meeting and talking with Ruby at the Carousel Club. Craford is mob from California, now Teamsters Dallas and Ruby. 

Who else--go to less-certain but possible to likely figures: Brading of the unusual movements and Dal-Tex Building presence, mob. David Ferrie of the unusual likely plot-associated driving to Houston and Galveston, Marcello operative. David Ferrie of the attempt to get access to Oswald's former room in New Orleans by the bogus "lost library card" claim (John Canal's interpretation of the circumstances of that). 

The shooters themselves other than Oswald, identities remain unknown in terms of hard evidence with a lot of bogus and unsubstantiated claims, but two names that rank high in terms of given serious consideration and possible credibility come from Fabian Escalante's account of information from captured prisoner Tony Cuesta claiming Herminio Diaz and Eladio del Valle were in Dallas as part of the hit team. They are mob (Trafficante). As brought out in the article by Paul Bleau on Kennedys and King, "The CIA and Mafia's 'Cuban American Mechanism' and the JFK Assassination" (https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-cia-and-mafia-s-cuban-american-mechanism-and-the-jfk-assassination), "Robert Blakey had the Diaz story corroborated by another Cuban exile. Diaz was Trafficante’s bodyguard and a hitman. Del Valle worked for Trafficante in the U.S. and was an associate of his in Cuba".

There is John Martino, one of the more possibly credible instances of one involved who "talked": he was mob (Trafficante). 

If Oswald's own Marcello organization associations via Ferrie and Oswald's uncle are acknowledged (even though Oswald had a history with and was used by intelligence agencies as well), that makes mob fingerprints on 100%, every single one, of this short list of known and/or likely/possible persons involved in the assassination that happened.

Therefore that is the case for Marcello and Trafficante carrying out a mob hit of Kennedy in Dallas. Because just on the face of it, to the extent named individuals can be identified involved in the assassination, they are all mob figures who did it, or so it appears. One can speculate involvement in Dallas of non-mob assassins or operatives without a Marcello or Trafficante connection, but that is all that is--speculation and imagination (or questionable confession claims). To the extent of the limited information that is known, it looks like a Marcello and Trafficante hit. 

The article just cited of Paul Bleau is an excellent discussion developing information and understanding of a "nexus" (to use Larry Hancock's term) between what is strongly suspected to have happened at top level--"something needs to be done" kind of discussions--and then through unknown specific mechanisms in due course a translation of   such discussions into what concretely happened on the ground that day in Dallas--an appearance of a mob hit as HSCA found. Or as HSCA put it:

"The Assassinations Committee established that Jack Ruby was a friend and business associate of Joseph Civello, Carlos Marcello's deputy in Dallas.  ... The committee had little choice but to regard the Ruby-Campisi [#2 Dallas mob below Civello] relationship and the Campisi-Marcello relationship as yet another set of associations strengthening the committee's growing suspicion of the Marcello crime family's involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy or execute the President's alleged assassin or both."

It is not credible to suppose the silencing of Oswald by killing him was not integral to the assassination plot. The only reason it took two days to happen was because attempts to kill Oswald the same-day afternoon were unsuccessful. The killing of Oswald was mob, and that argues the killing of JFK preceding the intended killing of Oswald minutes or hours later also was mob. At least that is how it looks. Without claiming that Marcello and Trafficante "acted alone".

So Marcello and Trafficante may have been responsible for the assassination, and not responsible for the assassination, at the same time depending on perspective. Just as in the cases of Lieutenant Calley, and James Earl Ray.

Well put Pat. Oswald worked for Marcello and grew up with family in the Marcello organization. Oswald also was mixed up in US intelligence in murky ways. Oswald was useful to both.

It is just obvious Ruby tried to talk, tried to get to a position where he could talk safely, sought the equivalent of Federal Witness Protection, and Earl Warren and co. just had no intention of doing anything more than going through pro forma motions at the last minute of interviewing Ruby to check that off the checklist. 

It is just obvious that district attorney Garrison was going every which way with accusations of JFK assassins except for the elephant in his front yard, the crime boss of 3-1/2 states. Ferrie, Banister, and Oswald all were connected to Marcello, as well as, according to street talk in New Orleans, Garrison himself (Vaccara, 178-180 citing New Orleans attorney Fritz Westenberger). 

For crime bosses who had nothing to do with the JFK assassination according to some here, there sure was a lot of effort to keep people from looking at such innocent parties, crime bosses who had motive, connections, and working relationships inside governments at all levels, federal, state, and local. If anyone questions whether there was witting coverup of a mob connection of Ruby on the part of FBI (not meaning every individual in the FBI but policy from the top), take a look at Warren Commission Exhibit 1536, FBI interview of Bobby Gene Moore of 11/26/63, as it was submitted to the Warren Commission: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1139#relPageId=59. Then look at the same document as it appeared in the earlier FBI report of Dec 1963 in the National Archives (Commission Document 84--FBI Clements Report of 06 Dec 1963): https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10486#relPageId=92.

The comparison shows, as cannot be seen by looking at CE 1536 alone, that the copy of that document submitted by the FBI to the Warren Commission has had the bottom half of the page literally papered over in photocopying and then the traces whited out so as to conceal all traces that part of the text of that document had literally been disappeared. In the part intentionally disappeared is: "Ruby was also a frequent associate of Cirello and La Monte", that is, a witness telling that Ruby was a frequent associate of Joseph Civello, the mob boss of Dallas under Marcello.

16 hours ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

the Two John Davis books paint a convincing picture to me that Marcello was behind the assassination and the most sensible explanation. I would even suggest that for those Lone Nut defenders who like to misquote Occam's Razor as support for the official story, the marcello theory is actually the best argument.  

I agree. Occam's Razor--when given a choice between two explanations, all else being equal, the simpler explanation is to be preferred--points to Marcello. Or to put it a different way, Occam's Razor suggests who was behind Ruby killing Oswald, was behind the killing of the president Oswald was accused of killing.

 

9 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Greg, You have quoted the John Canal book in this and another thread.  It is one publication that I haven't got in my library. So, I now have it on order from Amazon @ £5. Thanks for the recommendation.

Canal makes the unusual argument that Oswald was a lone-nut assassin, but that Marcello had Oswald killed to silence Oswald concerning things Oswald knew re Marcello's crime operations apart from the assassination. I do not agree with that, however Canal makes some interesting and original arguments and analysis nevertheless. One does not have to agree with every argument in a book to recognize high-quality analysis at points. 

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

As for Marcello, why would the US government cover up an assassination carried out by the Mafia? And continue to actively to do so for sixty years? It simply makes no sense. In contrast, it makes perfect sense to continue covering up the fact that the CIA did it. As much as many people hate the CIA, even many of those folks are afraid what might happen if it were dismantled for its crimes while the KGB's successor agencies' continue operating.

You ask why would there be a coverup of a mob role in a killing of a US president? Perhaps because of where that would go from there. Questions of why it was not investigated. Who was involved and who knew what when... better to leave some skeletons in the closet. The official response to the credible report known to the FBI in 1986 of a confession by Marcello, case in point. 

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Another sixty years of mystery? What are you talking about Greg? The JFK assassination was solved decades ago and the solution has only gotten more refined since then. The CIA did it with apparently some military, Secret Service, and DPD compliance. Only the CIA could have orchestrated the fake Mexico City trip that was used to create a Cuban/Russian false flag operation and to frame Oswald.

It is a matter of record that elements of the US government cooperated with mobsters in assassinations of foreign public figures in Latin America. Why rule out the same in the assassination of Kennedy?

If the identity of the killer of Oswald could be known, might that be a clue as to who killed Kennedy? 

10 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

It's because the mob did not have the power to go into the Bethesda autopsy room. Period.

What is it going to take for you to understand that basic fact?

What about the Bethesda autopsy specifically do you see that is exculpatory of Marcello? What is the train of logic there? Why is control of the autopsy of a murder victim a necessary component of a conspiracy to murder, in a case in which there is no attempt to disguise it was murder caused from gunshot wounds? 

What has blocked the Marcello-Trafficante solution to the JFK assassination? The legacy of Garrison?

Could it be that the John F. Kennedy assassination already has a basic solution, with no need for another sixty years of mystery? That solution being that it was not a nut acting alone, and was not Castro behind it despite CIA machinations at the time and since trying to make it look that way. Nor is there necessary reason to suppose the extremist-right plotting according to the talk of Milteer reported by Miami police informant Somersett, succeeded.

What happened was: mob boss Marcello of New Orleans who also controlled Dallas, with the assistance of Trafficante of Florida, got Kennedy. Its all there: motive, means, opportunity, silencing of witnesses, coverup by Hoover and by the Warren Commission and by the successor president, "somebody would have talked" witnesses who did talk, and confession. 

To put it simply, Kennedy was whacked by Marcello and Trafficante as part of a coup which removed Kennedy as president and replaced him with a president more amenable to the interests of those who favored a removal of Kennedy. The objections raised are straw men and not substantial upon examination. Straw man: Marcello was incapable of carrying out mob-compromised Hoover's coverup, therefore Marcello did not do it. (Conclusion does not follow from fact cited.) Straw man: no mob figure would hire someone as unprofessional as Oswald to do a hit, therefore Marcello did not do it. (Conclusion does not follow from fact cited; the hit was not done by Oswald.) Straw man: the mob never used patsies, therefore Marcello did not do it. (Premise not correct according to mob authorities, therefore conclusion does not follow.) Straw man: Marcello could not control the autopsy, the photos and the medical, could not forge and plant all the physical evidence etc and etc., therefore Marcello did not do it. (By that logic nobody killed Kennedy; false premises.) Straw man: there were interests served by the removal of JFK from office which did not concern Marcello, therefore Marcello did not do it. (Conclusion does not follow from fact cited.) Straw man: it has been debunked that the mob killed JFK because of ingratitude after helping JFK win the narrow election of 1960. (Yes that story involving Joseph Kennedy Sr. and Giancana of Chicago has been largely discredited. But it has nothing to do with the roles of Marcello and Trafficante in the JFK assassination.) Straw man: the Justice Department had wiretaps on major mob figures across the US at the time and those wiretaps did not pick up knowledge of the JFK assassination, therefore Marcello did not do it. (As Blakey explains in the Talbot article, those wiretaps did not extend to include Marcello, and Marcello did not need or seek approval from the national committee to carry out the JFK assassination.) Straw man: John Martino and Cubans from Florida were involved in the assassination, outside of Marcello's organization, therefore Marcello did not do it. (According to sources, Marcello's m.o. was to import hitmen from outside on loan; the involvement of John Martino and others involved with Trafficante's crime organization in Florida is consistent with that pattern.) Straw man: the Secret Service was involved and Marcello did not control the Secret Service, therefore Marcello did not do it. (Whether there was witting active assistance to the assassination by Secret Service personnel such as in choice of parade route, intentional security stripping, tipoffs to mob intelligence of security vulnerabilities without causing such vulnerabilities, unassisted dereliction of duty or security failures are issues but in none of the possible answers to these questions does it logically follow that Marcello did not carry out the assassination.)

The books are there with the information: David Scheim, Contract on America; Seth Kantor, The Ruby Coverup; Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy; John Canal, Silencing the Assassin; John Davis, Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Dan Moldea, The Hoffa Wars; Stefano Vaccara, Carlos Marcello: the Man Behind the Assassination; Frank Cellura, The Last Nail in the Warren Commission Coffin, and many more. There is the HSCA report on Carlos Marcello, and this short article by David Talbot, “The man who solved the Kennedy assassination” (Blakey) (https://www.salon.com/2003/11/22/conspiracy_6/).

The Marcello-Trafficante solution was the partial conclusion of the second major governmental investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination carried out by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), and the full conclusion of that investigation’s chief counsel, though the force of that conclusion was weakened by Blakey's assumption that Marcello had Oswald carry out the shooting which is not sensible (since Oswald was not a professional and it is doubtful that he had ability to ensure confidence of success in an assassination attempt). But that and other flaws can be remedied by correcting those flaws.

Here is the question: what is the block among what seem to be a majority of JFK assassination conspiracy researchers, from going for closure of the case in terms of a framework of this solution? Is it because of the legacy of Garrison? 

Marcello controlled politicians, judges, public officials throughout Louisiana, part of Texas including Dallas and two other states as well. Marcello's crime organization was the biggest employer in Louisiana. Yet New Orleans district attorney Garrison professed unawareness that Marcello in his city was involved in crime, let alone the JFK assassination. Here is who New Orleans district attorney Garrison publicly accused of involvement in the assassination of JFK. These accusations directed public attention away from Marcello (references at https://www.jfk-assassination.net/suspects.htm).

• a team of Cuban guerillas trained secretly in St. Tammany Parish; JFK killers are "definitely among the Cuban trainees"
• "big business, Texas style, financed the assassination"
• "paramilitary right wing units which were financed and encouraged in their training and given weapons by the Central Intelligence Agency"
• "it was the Military-Industrial Complex that put up the money for the assassination"
• "the conspiracy was limited to the aerospace wing. I've got the names of three companies and their employees who were involved in setting up the President's murder. Do you have a pencil?"
• "you have within the Dallas police force, you have an element, essentially the Minute Man element, the extreme militant right-wing group, which is actively involved in assassination"
• "an element of big business in Dallas, Texas, big business was involved. Oil money helped finance it ... the Dallas individuals, Minute Men, and so forth, and a handful of White Russians who got control of Oswald actually started this as early as 1962"
• "individuals of the Dallas police force helped kill Jack Kennedy ... It is clear that individuals on the Dallas police force were involved in the assassination and involved in the continuing protection of the assassins"
• "it was a homosexual thrill-killing, plus the excitement of getting away with a perfect crime"
• people with "Neo-poopoo" political views such as Clay Shaw killed Kennedy
• "there are elements of the Dallas establishment that are deeply involved"
• The assassination was sponsored by “oil millionaires”

Following are excerpts from several of the authors named addressing the puzzle of why Garrison did not go after Marcello of New Orleans for the assassination of President Kennedy. 

Seth Kantor:

"Among the questions that went unanswered was this one by [HSCA counsel] Sprague: 'Mr. Trafficante, did you ever discuss with any individuals plans to assassinate President Kennedy prior to the assassination?' The witness replied, reading the words from a card, 'I respectfully refuse to answer that question pursuant to my constitutional rights under the first, fourth, fifth and 14th amendments.' Translated, the answer was, 'Drop dead.' And, translated, the question had been, 'When are you going to tell us what happened at Carlos Marcello's meeting at Churchill Farms in September, 1962?' That was the meeting of select mafiosi in which Marcello, the New Orleans boss of bosses, had demanded blood-letting revenge against his sworn enemy, Bobby Kennedy, and the Kennedy power base. Within days, Trafficante was confiding in Miami that President Kennedy was to be hit. There is no doubt that Marcello and Trafficante were tough enough and close enough to make such plans. They were seated next to each other in a private basement room of La Stella, a New York restaurant in Queens, with 11 other mobsters, including the leaders of the Genovese, Gambino and Colombo Mafia families, when the police raided their business meeting, three years after the Kennedy assassination. They were arrested for consorting with mobsters." (pp. 402-403)

Dan Moldea:

"Marcello and Trafficante, who had long been business associates in the drug traffic, had bcome closer than ever. They even shared the same New Orleans doctor, according to law enforcement agents. When they were not in direct communication with each other, David Yaras served as respected go-between for them. Marcello and Trafficante were arrested together on September 22, 1966, along with other mob figures, during a meeting at La Stella restaurant in New York. Also present was Frank Ragano, the Hoffa-Trafficante attorney. 

"Edward Partin [witness to Marcello pre-assassination threats against the life of President Kennedy], still in Marcello's territory at great risk, was offered several bribes--including one for a million dollars from a New Orleans municipal judge--in return for a signed affidavit admitting that he had perjured himself in Chatanooga. One of Marcello's bagmen, according to Partin, was Hoffa's 'foster son,' Charles O'Brien, who allegedly was among those offering large sums for help. Later, during an interview, Hoffa denied that Marcello was his chief money man: 'They said my good friend Carlos Marcello called the mob together and put up $1,000,000 to get Hoffa outta jail. What kind of bullshit is this? Where'd they get those figures from?...'

"When Partin refused to yield, his enemies got tough. In early 1967, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison opened his own investigation of the Kennedy assassination, which became an ideal means of intimidating Partin.

"One of Garrison's first 'revelations' was that David Ferrie had conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald to murder the President. Claiming that the CIA was directly involved in the conspiracy, Garrison was taken seriously after Ferrie was found dead in his apartment, on his first day of freedom after being in protective custody for four days. The coroner determined that Ferrie had died from a massive brain hemorrhage. Earlier that same day, a close friend of Ferrie, also active in the anti-Castro movement, had been murdered. However, there were at the same time other revelations that Garrison had actively protected Marcello's rackets. Aaron M. Kohn, director of the city's crime commission, said before a U.S. House subcommittee, 'We have been in repeated public conflicts with Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison who denies the existence in our city of provable organized crime. He and his staff have blocked our efforts to have grand juries probe the influence of the Cosa Nostra and other syndicate operations.'

"The obvious question was: If Garrison is protecting Marcello, why would he implicate a Marcello man in the conspiracy? ‘It is quite possible that Garrison didn't realize Ferrie's relationship with Marcello,' says one assassination investigator. 'Garrrison, who later claimed to know Marcello and a Marcello lieutenant from whom Garrison had purchased his home, said that he had received little cooperation from the FBI. And it was the FBI which had the information that Ferrie was a Marcello aide. Marcello probably had a fit when Garrison started throwing Ferrie's name around. It is conceivable, considering their relationship, that Marcello, through his middlemen, let Garrison know that he didn't like what was going on. This quite possibly happened, because it wasn't long before Garrison began flying off walls in his investigation.'

"Later, on June 23, 1967 Garrison, according to WJBO in Baton Rouge, claimed, 'We know that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were in New Orleans several times .. . there was a third man driving them and we are checking the possibility it was [Edward] Partin.'

"Sensibly, Partin was scared. Not only was he being pressured by Jimmy Hoffa and Carlos Marcello, now he was being implicated in the Kennedy assassination. ‘Soon after that, Frank Ragano called me,’ Partin says, 'and he said he could get Garrison off my back. In return he wanted a signed affidavit saying that I lied in Hoffa's trial. Naturally, I didn't sign. But later it came out that Ragano was in touch with both Traficante and Marcello during that period of time.'" (pp. 178-180)

Anthony Summers:

"Years earlier, summoned before the Assassinations Committee to answer questions about the Kennedy assassination, Marcello had told congressmen his business in life was selling and distributing tomatoes. Comic dialogue aside, Marcello gave his answers to allegations that he schemed to murder the President. He acknowledged that David Ferrie had worked on his deportation case and for one of his lawyers. He denied, however, that Ferrie actually worked for him. Asked if he had ever spoken of murdering the President, Marcello replied, 'Positive not--never said anything like that.' (. . .) 

"In 1979 Congress' Assassinations committee announced that 'extensive investigation led it to conclude that the most likely family bosses of organized crime to have participated in such a unilateral assassination plan were Carlos Marcello and Santo Traficante.' The Committee found--as we have noted--that both Mafia leaders had 'motive, means and opportunity.' It observed dryly that 'it was unable to establish direct evidence of Marcello's complicity.'

"The emphasis, as the reader knows from this book should be on the word 'direct.' A mass of information ties key characters in the assassination story to Marcello or his organization. The FBI that put Marcello behind bars in the 1980s, is a very different organization from J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau. As a result of its undercover operations against Marcello we now have some further fragmentary knowledge. Joseph Hauser, a controversial key witness at the Marcello trial in New Orleans, has claimed that he managed to lure Marcello into discussing the assassination.

"According to Hauser, an FBI plant, the conversations took place in the spring and summer of 1979. They arose from discussion with Marcello of New Orleans press stories about the assassination--including coverage of the Assassinations Committee Report. According to Hauser, Marcello readily admitted having known Oswald and his uncle Charles Durrett. He said Oswald worked as a runner in his betting operation during 1963. (. . .) In summary, there is compelling circumstantial evidence indicating Marcello's possible involvement in the Kennedy assassination. To say otherwise is to reject at least nineteen witnesses and informants as fabricators, and so reject the web of interconnections between the Marcello apparatus and Oswald and Ruby. Yet that is what the Justice Department did." (pp. 363-365)

Stefano Vaccara:

"Just two days after the Kennedy assassination, the mystery man that Garrison was told was involved in the assassination, David Ferrie, was named, but instead of paving the way to Carlos Marcello, as one would expect, the DA avoided any investigation of the Mafia chief. Garrison steered the investigation in a different direction. Why?

"David Ferrie was a former airline pilot who years before had a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald as his pupil in an air national guard training camp. Ferrie reappeared in 1963 as a very well paid investigator for Marcello to assist his attorneys in his legal defense against Robert Kennedy's federal agents seeking to deport the Mafia boss from the United States.

"The same David Ferrie was also an instructor for anti-Castro Cubans and spent the summer of 1963 in the company of his young friend Lee Harvey Oswald, who had returned to his home town of New Orleans. Americans often forget that the former marine was born and raised in the narrow streets of the French Quarter where everything revolved around entertainment and gambling under Mafia control and where Marcello was king.

"But neither in the Oliver Stone film [JFK] nor in Jim Garrison's inquiry does one find any trace of Carlos Marcello and his connection to David Ferrie or to Oswald's uncle Charles 'Dutz' Murret who had married Marguerite's sister.

"Kennedy's assassin was born without a father and Murret had played that role. Lee, with his mother Marguerite, was to live in his uncle's house for extended periods. How could Dutz Murret support two families? The Warren Commission never asked the uncle and father figure of Lee Harvey Oswald that question.

"Actually Dutz made his living collecting illegal gambling debts for Carlos Marcello, allowing him to support his kids, and occasionally his nephew Lee. Therefore, just a few days after the Kennedy assassination, it would have been a simple matter to connect Marcello to Oswald through both Ferrie and his uncle Dutz. (. . .)

"Stone actually manages to come up with a worse performance [in JFK] than the Warren Commission in ignoring Marcello. He actually makes the Mafia boss look innocent in a city where the simple question 'Who would instantly benefit from Kennedy's demise?' found a ready answer. The truth about Dallas is in New Orleans, but not through Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone: unfortunately an Oscar-winning film that could have cleared up world opinion about such a confusing criminal act riddled with conspiracy theories fell into yet another trap. 

"This writer believes that Garrison, while putting the spotlight on New Orleans, added even more confusion when the facts should have been clear and the truth about the plot organized by Carlos Marcello would have been easy to demonstrate. In 1968 Garrison was questioned by the Select Committee that was attempting to find out whether or not Marcello was involved in the Dallas assassination. He was asked why he had not concentrated on the Mafia boss in the course of his investigation, since many people in New Orleans were well aware that he was the sworn enemy of the Kennedys and that in order to survive sooner or later he would have attempted to 'get the pebble out his shoe'. Garrison gave an evasive answer, repeating what the FBI legal office in Washington had been saying for years: Marcello was not a powerful Mafia boss controlling Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. He was just a tomato salesman.

"At that point could Marcello, having had police chiefs, governors, senators, and judges on his payroll for years, be suspected of also having influenced Jim Garrison? The ironclad DA, who was ready to take on the White House to solve the JFK assassination, would never even get close to the Louisiana boss in the course of his investigation." (pp. 4-6)

John Davis:

"[I]t can be said with some assurance that the underworld and its political pawns and supporters knew early in 1967 that Edward Becker had pointed a finger at Carlos Marcello and Johnny Roselli had pointed a finger at Marcello's friend Santos Trafficante as possible conspirators in a plot to kill President Kennedy.

"Then who comes along at about this time but New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, an admitted acquaintance of Marcello's, with his explosive allegations suggesting not an organized crime conspiracy but one involving principally the CIA.

"Scholars of the Kennedy assassination have since pointed out that Garrison had good reason not to implicate organized crime in the assassination, for he had always enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with Carlos Marcello. Garrison had made Marcello happy by publicly insisting that organized crime did not exist in New Orleans and by consistently ignoring Marcello's vast and blatantly open gambling network. And Marcello had contented Garrison by doing him such favors as having his Las Vegas associate Mario Marino provide him with free hotel accommodations and substantial casino credits whenever the New Orleans DA sought weekend amusement in Nevada, and arranging for him to buy an expensive home in an affluent New Orleans suburb at a cut-rate price from one of Marcello's major business associations, Frank Occhipinti. 

"So how was it that Garrison decided to launch an investigation of the Kennedy assassination precisely when serious allegations were being made that organized crime was involved in the murder?

"There are strong indications, never confirmed by the parties concerned, that Jim Garrison was persuaded to reopen the case by two Louisiana politicians close to Carlos Marcello: Representative Hale Boggs and Senator Russell Long. According to former Justice Department official Walter Sheridan, Long induced Garrison to believe that either the CIA or the Cuban government might have had a hand in the assassination by telling Garrison of certain privileged information he claimed to have acquired as a senator from confidential intelligence sources linking Oswald to both pro-Castro Cubans and the agency. Congressman Boggs, who had been on the Warren Commission, is said to have voiced suspicions of CIA complicity to Garrison based on his conviction that the CIA had withheld vital information from the commission. Was it a mere coincidence that both Senator Long and Congressman Boggs enjoyed close personal relationships with Carlos Marcello and had benefitted considerably over the years from Marcello's generous contributions to their political campaigns?

"True to Boggs's and Long's suspicions, Jim Garrison directed his reinvestigation of the Kennedy assassination toward the possibility of CIA complicity by eventually indicting, to nearly everyone's bewilderment, Clay Shaw, a prominent New Orleans business man with past connections to the CIA, for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy with no hard evidence to back up his charges. (. . .) [W]hat did Marcello think about Garrison's pointing a finger at David Ferrie? We can only speculate that if Marcello had been involved with Ferrie in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy, he would have been very disturbed over the prospect of Ferrie being cross-examined in a courtroom. 

"David Ferrie was found dead in the early morning hours of February 22 (. . .) Dr. Nicholas Chetta, the New Orleans Parish coroner, performed the autopsy on Ferrie and reported that he had died of natural causes, specifically from a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a 'berry aneurysm,' or weak point on a blood vessel, at the base of the brain. Ferrie's cerebral hemorrhage, Dr. Chetta speculated, had probably been brought on by stress. (. . .) The press, both national and international, was almost unanimously skeptical of the autopsy report. Most serious observers of the case Garrison was unfolding in New Orleans believed David Ferrie had been deliberately silenced, just as Lee Harvey Oswald had been silenced a little over three years before. (. . .) [skipping over description of a known method used by a Latin American professional in the assassination business causing exactly this manner of death without detection because gruesome—gd] (. . .) Aaron Kohn was in New Orleans in 1967, pursuing his impending investigation of Carlos Marcello, and recalls today that he too was very skeptical of the official version of Ferrie's death. 'Coroners in Louisiana are almost all corrupt,' he told me, 'and Ferrie's coroner, Dr. Nicholas Chetta, was no exception. Chetta had already produced several dubious autopsy reports. Whoever had reason to kill David Ferrie could easily have paid Dr. Chetta to report that Ferrie died of natural causes.'

"But who would have had reason to kill Ferrie on the eve of his testimony at Garrison's trial of Clay Shaw? The CIA? Not likely. Garrison's case against the CIA was known to be weak, and Ferrie had never had strong ties with the agency. At the most, he had been an occasional informant; the agency denied it had ever had anything to do with him. No, if Carlos Marcello and David Ferrie were involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, then Marcello would have had the most to lose from David Ferrie on the witness stand or David Ferrie plea bargaining for his freedom. Marcello would have had little difficulty finding someone in his organization willing to do the job on Ferrie, and he would have known the right man to approach Dr. Chetta about falsifying the autopsy report. It is worth noting that Dr. Chetta himself died at age 50, a little over a year after Ferrie's death, from an apparent heart attack. (. . .)

"In the end, though, Garrison's counterfeit investigation of the Kennedy assassination accomplished what its instigators probably hoped it would. It all but wrecked the movement to get to the bottom of the Kennedy assasination, and it successfully diverted attention from Carlos Marcello. With the Garrison case in ruins and J. Edgar Hoover refusing to investigate the Becker and Roselli allegations, eleven more years would have to elapse before the Kennedy assassination case would be reopened and Carlos Marcello singled out as a prime suspect in what had by then become known as the crime of the century." (pp. 367-375)

David Scheim:

"By the year 1967, the lone-nut theory of the Warren Commission had been trampled to a new low of credibility by an onslought of independent critical research. A Congressional resolution calling for a reexamining of the Warren Commission findings had been introduced with the support of several prominent Americans. And the American public, which had accepted the lone-assassin hypothesis almost universally in 1963, rejected it by a three-to-two margin in a 1966 Louis Harris poll.

"But critical review of the Kennedy case was put on hold in February 1967, following the dramatic announcement of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that he had uncovered an assassination conspiracy. In the wake of Garrison's sensational allegations, Congressional calls for a new investigation were soon forgotten. And thinking the D.A. had a genuine lead, many leading assassination probers rushed down to New Orleans to jump on his bandwagon.

"Through the efforts of these researchers, a good deal of legitimate information was exchanged and disseminated from Garrison's office. Yet as Garrison's case unfolded, his specific accusations became increasingly outlandish and the thrust of his efforts increasingly questionable. Especially bizarre was Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw, who became his prime culprit. A retired director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart, Shaw was a soft-spoken liberal who devoted most of his time to restoring homes in the Old French Quarter and writing plays. It took the jury less than an hour to find Shaw innocent of Garrison's extravagant accusations. As summarized by Walter Sheridan, a former aide to Robert Kennedy who investigated the New Orleans probe for NBC, Garrison's effort was 'an enormous fraud,' involving 'bribery and intimidation of witnesses.' The particulars were reported by Newsweek, the New York Times, Look magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, an NBC News special, and the book Counterplotby Edward J. Epstein. The methods, as documented in these sources, included promised or transacted bribes of cash, gifts, an airline job, financing for a private club, heroin and a paid vacation in Florida. Garrison and his aides also resorted to threats of imprisonment and death, a plot to plant evidence in Clay Shaw's home and indoctrination of witnesses to parrot invented charges under the influence of hypnosis and drugs.

"Although Garrison made extravagant charges against an assortment of Cuban exiles, CIA agents, Minutemen, White Russians and Nazis, he conspicuously avoided any reference to one prime assassination suspect: the Mafia. For example, in discussing testimony concerning Ruby's anti-Castro activities, which he quoted at length, Garrison described Ruby as a ‘CIA bagman’ and an 'employee of the CIA.' But Garrison said nothing about Ruby's organized crime involvement. The cited testimony, in contrast, contains not one allusion to the CIA. Yet it is replete with references to the 'Mafia' and the 'syndicate' in connection with both Ruby's Cuban activities and his night club operations. Amazingly, Garrison also refrained from mentioning the close and portentous ties of his key suspect, David Ferrie, to Mafia boss Carlos Marcello.

"But such ties were of little concern to Garrison, who declared on national television that Marcello was a 'respectable businessman' and who stated that there was no organized crime in New Orleans. According to Garrison, 'people worry about the crime "syndicate," but the real danger is the political establishment, power amassing against the individual.' Skeptical of Garrison's professed ignorance about organized crime, a team of Life magazine reporters once asked him about Frank Timphony, a notorious Syndicate figure in Garrison's own district. Garrison claimed never to have heard of him and, carrying the act further, placed a call to an aide in the reporters' presence. The Garrison aide 'promptly assured' his boss that Timphony was 'one of the biggest bookies in New Orleans.'

"It became apparent, however, that the district attorney's knowledge of organized crime was quite direct and intimate. Garrison's hand-picked chief investigator during his first years as district attorney was Pershing Gervais, an admitted associate of Carlos Marcello. Gervais was formerly a New Orleans policeman but was fired after twice stealing the payoff money awaiting distribution to his fellow officers. In 1967, Life magazine reported that Garrison had been given free lodging and a $5,000 line of credit on three trips to the Mob-controlled Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. One of Garrison's tabs was personally signed by Marcello lieutenant Mario Marino, who took the Fifth Amendment when questioned about the matter. And on June 1969, as Life subsequently reported, Marcello bagman Vic Carona died after suffering a heart attack in Garrison's home during a political meeting. 

"Throughout his career, Garrison demonstrated his fidelity to his reported friend, Carlos Marcello. This loyalty was exhibited in the early 1960s, when Garrison conducted a cleanup of the Bourbon Street night club district after being elected district attorney as a reform candidate; his raids deliberately avoided the clubs controlled by Marcello. From 1965 through 1969, Garrison won just seven cases against Marcello gangsters. Yet he dismissed 84 such cases, including one charge of attempted murder, three of kidnapping and one of manslaughter. 

"In 1971, Garrison was on the receiving end of an indictment--on the federal charge of accepting $50,000 a year in payoffs to protect illegal gambling. The tax evasion case against Garrison became 'airtight,' as evaluated by U.S. Attorney G. Gallinghouse, when six of Garrison's codefendants turned state's evidence against him. The jury was presented with first-hand bribes to Garrison and with actual tape recordings to the bribe transactions. But Garrison was acquitted, possibly with the help of reported bribes of $50,000 and $10,000 offered to rig his trial and swipe evidence. The outcome was reminiscent of Marcello's acquittal on a fraud charge on November 22, 1963, after a juror had been offered a $1,000 bribe and the key witness against him set up to be murdered.

"Although Garrison, now a judge, vigorously denies any corrupt links to organized crime, his congenial relationship with the Marcello fiefdom has been repeatedly demonstrated in both his conduct and contacts, as reported in several sources. Indeed, as recently as 1987, Garrison was seen dining at La Louisianne restaurant in New Orleans with two of Carlos Marcello's brothers, Sammy and Joe, Jr. The latter is allegedly the acting Mafia boss of Louisiana now that Carlos is in jail.

"Given Garrison's coziness with the Marcello Organization and his strange blindness toward Mob leads in his Kennedy assassination probe, it is reasonable to question his motive in pursuing it. Indeed, the possibility that Garrison deliberately tried to obscure Mafia ties to the case is indicated by his false charges against an Edgar Eugene Bradley of California, described in Los Angeles files as 'the man Garrison mistook for Eugene Hale Brading.' There were enough similarities between Bradley and Brading for Garrison's accusations to confound reports about Brading. But to a professional investigator, the distinction between Bradley, an uninvolved Caliornian, and Dal-Tex felon Brading was apparent.

"A further incident raised the possibility of Mob input into Garrison's Kennedy probe even more sharply. On March 3, 1967, during a campaign by the Mob and Teamsters to spring the latter's former boss, Jimmy Hoffa, from prison, James 'Buddy' Gill tried to bribe government witness Edward Partin to invalidate his testimony against Hoffa. Gill, the intermediary in this Mob ploy, had been an administrative assistant and close associate of former Senator Russell Long. Long, in turn, was an old political ally of Garrison who assisted the Marcello-coordinated effort to spring Hoffa.

"During Gill's approach to Partin, apparently to apply additional pressure, Gill informed him that Garrison was going to subpoena Partin in his assassination probe. And on June 23, 1967, Baton Rouge Radio Station WJBO broadcast that Partin had been 'under investigation by the New Orleans District Attorney's Office in connection with the Kennedy Assassination investigation.' The station quoted a Garrison assistant as saying that a man drove Oswald and Ruby during alleged encounters in New Orleans and that Garrison's office was 'checking the possibility it was Partin.' 

"Garrison thus exhibited the same underworld affinity as assassination suspects David Ferrie, Lee Oswald and Eugene Brading." (pp. 70-74).

Sandy, I notice on the Costella Zapruder film, that background focus such as you cite goes in and out of focus as a recurring phenomenon (blurry --> sharp --> blurry --> sharp), not simply the one instance you cite. I noticed this by quickly starting and stopping the moving film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBJFT-OyDEc

 

Not knowing better, I would just assume as a first reaction some anomaly in the camera or photography or processing of the frames, since it recurs.

How does Zavada explain that? 

You say you are using the Costella Zapruder frames. Do you know if Costella modified those frames from the original?

What does this mean when John Costella writes on his website:

"In 2003 I put together a reference set of all 486 frames of the extant Zapruder film. In 2006 I improved the processing steps and reissued the full set of frames" (http://www.johncostella.com/jfk/). 

What kind of "processing steps" is he talking about? Do those "processing steps" mean the Costella frames differ from or are modified from the unprocessed original?

Would those "processing steps" have affected deblurring, such as the blurring background south of the grassy area beyond (south of) the limousine that is out-of-focus in the original Zapruder due to Zapruder's telephoto being in focus on the limousine?

On a different page Costella tells of his own proprietary development of an "unblurring" program or technique for film frames called "UnBlur: Image deblurring", which he says he developed between 1999 and 2001 (http://johncostella.com/unblur/).

So the question is, is it possible Costella's "processing steps" on the Zapruder frames which he says he carried out in 2006 involved use of his image deblurring program (or some other image processing program)? Could that account for the anomaly you show with the change in blurriness of background figures in the frames?

Have you investigated that, so as to first rule out a mundane explanation for the anomaly before going to conclusion of extraordinary? 

1 hour ago, Norman T. Field said:

Let us remember that LHO had a negative test for GSR after being arrested. Therefore; he did not fire a bolt action rifle once, let alone three times. 

True Norman. Anyone who is in doubt on this should read Pat Speer's article on his website (https://www.patspeer.com/chapter4fcastsofcontention). Somewhere else on the same website Pat Speer has a discussion of shirts of Oswald either not examined for gunshot residue or if they were the outcome was not disclosed.  

I follow Flip de Mey's analysis that the 6th floor Mannlicher-Carcano had been linked to Oswald and was used in the assassination and shooting of JFK, but was not fired by Oswald.