Mark Ulrik

28 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

By Dec. 4 Sullivan was aware the DPD had officially stated it had found a steel-jacketed bullet at the Walker residence April 10 1963, but the FBI lab had ID'ed (easily and immediately) CE573 as a copper-jacketed bullet. 

It is fair to assume Sullivan found this arrangement of facts to be disconcerting.

Seems we're back to reading minds. Nothing in the memo suggests awareness of police reports or lab results concerning the bullet.

9 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I would not say pure speculation.

After all, the DPD reports unequivocally ID'ed the Walker Bullet as steel-jacketed, and the FBI reports on Norvell, McElroy and Tucker are a spaghetti of illogical non sequiturs.

Norvell found the bullet, but McElroy found the bullet. That's according to the FBI reports. 

A FBI guy might start to have some reservations about the Walker Bullet. You think?

Sullivan was aware of those things at 3:10 AM on 12/4/63? You're not being realistic.

3 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

That's what Chief Curry told the AP, Nov. 29.  He said he thought JFK had been assassinated with a steel-jacketed bullet and he was seeking to have that confirmed.

As the FBI had the JFKA bullets but had them under wraps...it makes sense Curry might have sent a letter or memo to the FBI. But, Curry might have just asked informally, of local FBI guys or on the telephone. 

I wouldn't say it was a wild goose chase. Maybe a middling long-shot. 

I was the one who originally posted the newspaper clipping that you keep misinterpreting.

10 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Chief Curry may have asked, in memo form of the FBI, if the JFKA bullets were steel-jacketed. 

That is something to look for, as long as you have your sub. 

Now, why would you send me on a wild-goose chase like that? I'll give you 1000-1 odds that such a memo doesn't exist and never did.

10 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

MU--

Fair enough--but really, Sullivan calling a bullet officially submitted by the DPD the "alleged" Walker bullet?

Seems a little strong to me. I cannot think of another FBI memo that treated similar officially submitted evidence thusly. 

Sullivan likely read or heard of a report that the Walker Bullet was steel-jacketed (as you know, we do not have records of ordinary phone calls. I worked in a congressional agency for a while.  We would often send a memo, and then follow up with a phone call in which we said what we really meant or wanted). 

So Sullivan had doubts about the Walker Bullet. Maybe he talked to someone on the phone, heard some scuttlebutt. 

We know Sullivan called the slug officially submitted by the DP the "alleged bullet" and wanted newspaper morgues checked ASAP (really ASAP, as in the crack of dawn) for info. 

That is interesting. 

You're reading an awful lot into "alleged" without even knowing if Sullivan used that word. We only have SA Loeffler's summary of the call:

Quote

Assistant Director W. C. SULLIVAN called at 3:10 AM and instructed he receive a return telephone call and be filled in on the details relating to the alleged bullet being shot into the home of General EDWIN A. WALKER.

Now, I might personally have structured the sentence a little differently ("... the bullet alleged to ..."), but it sounds like pretty neutral, guarded language to me. The remainder of the memo reflects that they were scrambling for detailed information on the Walker shooting since there was nothing in their Dallas files. It's pure speculation on your part that they had any doubts about the legitimacy of the bullet.

56 minutes ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

@Mark Ulrik   well at least you have some fraction of your mind open to consider a factoid that does not comport with your narrative. 

Multiple DPD officers wrote that they observed the bullet so this cannot be written off as the failure of a lone inexperienced officer. 

You are right that the FBI could have figured this out but Hoover had determined LHO was their man and it would have been a fatal career choice for any FBI agent to conclude anything to the contrary, Hoover was relunctantly forced to re-examine the Walker shooting at the request of Raikin. 

and regarding Sullivan, you are  once again reviewing what you consider ambiguous evidence through the light of your biased lens to reach a decison that supports your pre-ordanied narrative. The WC asked the FBI to conduct another investigation into the Walker incident. The Sullivan expressed urgency about the bullet. What concerns were there about the bullet? -its caliber, the inability to match it to the rifle, and the "steel-jacketed" issue. You cannot dismiss these concerns as ridiculous.  indeed, it is  ridicuous and absurd to dismiss these concerns. 

Lawrence, were you commenting on Tom Gram's post, mine, or both? In any case, it's gratifying to know that you think of him/me/us as somewhat open-minded.

Sorry, Tom. I was curious enough to do a little searching last night, but didn't really find anything. Perhaps I should think about renewing my MFF subscription.

36 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

One scenario I could maybe buy is if the bullet was misidentified by the inexperienced cop Norvell, and either no one corrected him or the other three cops forgot by the time they wrote their reports, or were going off notes on what Norvell said, etc. 

However, if something like that actually happened, the FBI could have figured it out in 10 seconds. The fact that not one of these guys was asked about the steel jacket description on the record suggests that the FBI either didn’t like the answers they received, or just didn’t want to know. 

We should find all the records on the Walker case in the FBI Dallas Field Office files that were not cc’d to HQ and request reproductions from NARA. I bet there are internal field office memos discussing the 5/20/64 Rankin letters with agent assignments, interview lists, etc., and other interesting stuff. 

Also, you were correct to point out that the redactions on that Sullivan memo are a bit strange, even in the MFF copy. Like why the hell would the FBI redact the name of a Field Office? I bet it’s the WFO - but I’m sure the doc is released in full now so we just need to find a RIF number. It might even be available online somewhere. It looks to me like Sullivan called a regular Special Agent directly - and the FBI at one point wanted to conceal the name of Sullivan’s back channel guy in the Dallas Field Office: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=145516#relPageId=27

I found it without redactions in Ernie Lazar's FOIA Collection:
12/4/63 FBI memo from SA LOEFFLER to DALLAS SAC

It seems to a relatively unbiased observer like me that Sullivan just wanted the FBI to be on top of the developing Walker situation. How can you guys read into the memo that Sullivan had "urgent concerns about the authenticity of the Walker Bullet" and thought "the true Walker Bullet might actually be steel jacketed?" I can agree with some of the points you're making, but this attempt (in your K&K article) to read Sullivan's mind is stretching it a bit.

Btw, this 1957 news item doesn't prove anything about anything, but it reminded me of the Walker case.

6 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

If you're referring to the DPD identifying the bullet they found as "steel jacketed" being a misnomer or mistake you should know in the US this kind of identification of ammunition by ALMOST ANYONE at that time is kindergarten kind of stuff. Almost all of us were taught how to shoot and care for firearms by the time we were 12 and this identification is not likely to be a mistake. Especially by professional law enforcement officers doing an investigation.

Maybe in other countries that could be reasonable (I don't know about where you're at - and I don't mean to sound condescending) but guns were very much enculturated in the US, especially after WW2. We actually were allowed to have small caliber guns like .22s but weren't allowed to have BB or pellet guns because our parents were afraid we'd think of them as toys (which seems to be the prevailing attitude about guns now thanks to video games IMO).

Ben's ten to one really should be more like fifty to one - he's being conservative.

I'm probably the one who should apologize—for having such low expectations of 60's country boys. But it doesn't have to be purely a matter of terminology. Not having high quality color photos of the bullet to rely on, perhaps the officers tasked with the paperwork were in doubt about the metallic composition of its jacket, and it only took one to suggest it may have been "steel-jacketed" for that term to stick. The bullet had, after all, pierced a thick wall. I think the article overstates the significance of all four officers signing reports containing the term.

12 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Mark, are you not forgetting something?

That TSBD rifle is not the one Oswald allegedly ordered.

Yeah, he received a slightly longer one. What a bummer.

1 minute ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Point out one glaring mistake in the Gram/Cole article, and I will immediately correct it. 

Are you contending that the ID of the true Walker Bullet, by four DPD officers and detectives as "steel jacketed" was a "glaring mistake"?  

Well, to say the least.

You very well know that "steel-jacketed" was the misnomer that I referred to. Bedtime now.

39 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

BN--

Thank you for your gracious comment.

There are few more memos to track down, perhaps some additional sources of info, but I think Tom Gram and I have produced the first draft of the definitive article on the Walker Bullet.

It could use some gentle editing, that's for sure. It's hard to disagree with Tom that more could and should have been done to resolve inconsistencies, not least the use of a certain misnomer, but there's also a lot to disagree with and some glaring mistakes.

4 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

That is, the Walker Bullet missed Walker, then passed through an interior wall behind Walker. The Walker Bullet then purportedly came to rest in-between bundles of paper.^[16]

 

^{I mean come on!}

It had to come to rest somewhere, and apparently the paper provided sufficient resistance (not unlike Connally's thigh). What do you think happened with the bullet that went through the wall? Just how many bullet switches do you guys imagine took place?

6 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

In a previous life I had an M1 carbine and an Uzi and there ain't no way I was wandering onto a bus OR into somebody's car without raising eyebrows. Even in Texas I imagine.

Well, someone got the rifle into the TSBD without raising eyebrows. Besides, in the Walker case, Oswald was careful not to travel with it on the same day he used it, but a few days before and after.

23 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Steve, I've attempted to log onto this Forum but keep getting error msgs.  Any chance you could cut & paste this info, it sounds interesting.

Also anything else you may have come across on the Anderson/McFadin story.

Duncan MacRae's forum crashed in late 2017, and all its content was wiped, so older links are not working anymore 🙄

10 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Mark,

      I shouldn't pass judgement without seeing the film, especially since David Mamet is writing the screenplay, but I'm picturing a guy walking out of the theater saying, "Gee, honey, I always thought Oswald and the Russkis killed Kennedy, but now I know it was an Italian job!" 🤥

No judgment intended. A lot of cinema goers also thought Stone's movie was accurate.

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Hallelujah!!

No wonder the mainstream media is so excited!!

At last a film telling the TRUTH about the JFK assassination-- unlike JFK and JFK Revisited... 😂

It's probably more like a counter-myth.

Three of my favorite actors in the same movie 😮

Have to confess that I know next to nothing about Blunt and his relationship with the ARRB and/or NARA. Is there a bio floating around somewhere? Just interested in the Reader's Digest version. How many other researchers had the level of access that he seems to have had? I assume he had proximity and time on his side, but perhaps academic credentials also helped?

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

What do you mean about Fritz David?

44 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Do you think Nobel laureate William Faulkner should be "cancelled" because he commented on how black men fought?

What gave you that idea? I'm not a fan of "cancelling" anybody, even someone as goofy as TC.

TC may have felt genuinely ashamed of his sadistic impulses and realized that it's probably wrong to murder people whose politics you don't approve of, but the "white men" remark is still pretty offensive.

10 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

MU-

Well...are you pulling my leg? 

OK, so the DPD searched LHO's belongings in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA.

LHO is purported to be an assassin of a major public figure, post-JFKA.

The DPD comes across the General Walker home backyard photograph in LHO's possession. LHO is no friend of Walker's. 

The Walker shooting on April 10 was a major event---Walker at the time was a national figure. The DPD guys remember the Walker shooting, as it was big stuff, headlines. Talk of the town. 

The DPD connect the dots---maybe LHO shot at Walker too. Also on Nov. 29, the German newspaper I cited tagged LHO as Walker's would-be assassin. 

Curry remembers, or reads the police report, that a relatively rare "steel jacketed" bullet was found in the Walker home on April 10.

So Curry opines that a relatively rare steel-jacketed bullet was used in the JFKA---LHO is the triggerman in both shootings, they believe--- and seeks confirmation of such from the FBI. 

BTW, police detectives and chiefs, FBI labs and so do not conflate the terms "steel jacketed and "copper jacketed." No one does, really.

Geez Louise. When is your novel coming out?

2 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Huh?

I am talking about the backyard photo of Walker's home, the famous one with the auto license plate cut out, found in LHO' s possessions post-JFKA. 

The photo is one of the pieces of evidence linking LHO to the purported Walker attempted shooting---cited by the WC and FBI and all lone-nutters. That and the letter he may have written that night to Marina, in pencil and in Russian. 

Surely you do not mean the backyard photo of the Walker home, found in LHO's possession post-JFKA, is "random." 

?

Why would anyone have any clue about its significance on 11/29? After the "Walker note" appeared and Marina talked is another story.