Gerry Down

One possible reason might be that the CIA wanted to use a detective agencies capability in screening new cuban exile recruits (which the CIA would not already have intel on) for their paramilitary operations against Cuba. Or perhaps to conduct surveillance on potential pro-castro spies that were trying to infiltrate cuban exile groups.

Hi Robbie, You should consider doing a show all on your own where you go through some of the latest released JFK documents that catch your eye and comment on them. Rob Clark of "The Lone Gunman Podcast" does a format like this. Below is his latest such video. Though he tends to go through little-known old documents decades old rather than the latest releases from 2017, 2018 or 2021 etc.

Thanks. The video i posted confused me as it was showing a center fold down rest in the backseat. Such a fold down rest was not in the Queen Mary as can be seen in the picture you posted.

I wonder what Hickey is sitting on in the Willis photo that rises him above everyone else in the Queen Mary? This video, of what I believe is a replica, shows a raised seat in the middle of the back seat but Hickey seems to be sitting on the far left of the back seat in the Willis photo.

I'm speaking from the viewpoint of your JFK related videos. I'm not familiar with all your other work. It made me wonder if it was hard to gain traction with JFK related videos. It wouldn't be surprising because the state of interest in the JFK case is quiet low especially with nothing really new coming out in years. Plus you cant blame young people for not being interested in the case because its such a complicated case to wrap your head around.

I wonder why Out Of The Blank videos get such few views. Its turning out to be a good youtube channel to the JFK research community.

You're a fountain of knowledge. I must start on both State Secret and Creating Chaos to get a better handle on these taps. I've heard of and own your other books (Tipping Point, Someone Would Have Talked etc), but Creating Chaos is not one I knew about.

Where is the best place to get the research Bill Simpich and you have done regarding the taps? Is it "State Secret" and "Creating Chaos"? Off hand - consider the situation that if someone in the Russian embassy tried to phone someone in the Cuban embassy (one direct phone number to another direct phone number), but the call did not go through - would the CIA monitoring station know that the Russian embassy had tried to make that call? Would the CIA tap pick that up? And would the CIA know from what phone number at the Russian embassy was trying to make contact with what phone number at the Cuban embassy even if the call never went through? In other words, did the CIA monitoring station only know if a call was made if the call actually went through? And would not know if someone had tried to make a call but the person a the other end never picked up the phone.

So the "U.S. Government Switchboard" as listed below could simply have been Oswald trying to get through to a department that could fix his undesirable discharge. The "City County Health Center" could have been Oswald trying to plan ahead for a place for Marina to give birth to Rachel. Also, Oswald was trying to contact two Courts building (The Federal Court Clerks Office in Fort Worth & The Tarrant County Criminal Courts in Fort Worth). Perhaps Oswald was trying to get info from these courts buildings to see if someone had a criminal conviction, could they get into Mexico City? Perhaps Oswald was worried being arrested in New Orleans over the Bringuier incident might act as a bar to him being able to travel to Mexico. If that's the case, then these numbers are potentially benign. On a separate issue, Oleg Nechiporenko said that the Saturday Sept 28th phone call (which was supposedly from "Duran and Oswald" after Oswald had already been to the Russian embassy that morning) to the Russian embassy could not have been made because the Russian embassy switchboard was not operational that day (Saturday being a day off). But as you said, if someone had the direct phone number of an office in the Russian embassy, then they could bypass the switchboard altogether. Therefore, Nechiporenkos assertion that the call could not have been made because the switchboard was not operational that day is false. All "Duran and Oswald" had to do was ring a direct phone number in the Russian embassy and bypass the switchboard. Is that the case?

Its nice to have such an intimate connection to a key building of the events of Nov 22nd 1963. I was surprised to see this building still existed. I had assumed it had long since been torn down. The hand railings even look like they are the originals from 1963. With so many balconies to cover from a security stand-point, the Secret Service and DPD probably had themselves over-stretched in trying to cover the motorcade route AND such a complex building with so many balconies.

Ok, i think i'm getting 1963 switchboards and exchanges mixed up. A switchboard is something like you might have in a hospital admin office. You would ring the admin office and the operator at the switchboard in the admin office would put you through to whatever office in the hospital you wanted (ie the heart consultant etc). An exchange is a stand-alone building with maybe 20 operators (usually women) who connect calls from one city to another city. So taking the above example, if i wanted to phone the heart consultant but did not have their direct number, i would first have to ring the exchange (the stand-alone building) and tell them to put me through to the hospital admin office. The exchange operator would put me through to the hospital admin office, and the operator there at that switchboard would put me through to the heart consultant. And that's how i would get through to them. If i did have the heart consultants direct phone number, i would still have to ring the exchange (the stand-alone building) and give them the heart consultants phone number and tell them to put me through to him. The exchange operator would then put me directly through to the heart consultant without ever going through the switchboard at the hospital admin office. Is that correct?

I was considering the hypothesis that Oswald didn't fully understand the setup of switchboards and thought he could achieve something (i.e. narrow down the location of someone who might have been trying to phone him) which in reality doesn't appear to have been something that was possible. But that hypothesis seems to be a long shot with not alot of evidence to go on. If someone with your experience of switchboards cant make sense of these numbers, then it sounds like these numbers will continue to be a mystery to JFK researchers.

So what do you think we are looking at with those numbers in his notebook? Do you think these numbers could have anything to do with him researching trying to get his undesirable discharge changed (i.e. offices to contact)? Or perhaps research as part of his journey to Mexico City? Or perhaps LHO was collecting phone numbers so he could submit these to the unemployment commission where he could pretend he had been looking for work in those offices to continue claiming his unemployment benefits?

Oswalds Notebook No.108 After the assassination, the DPD found a notebook among Oswalds possessions. They assigned No.108 to this notebook. Commission Document 735 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11133 ) pages 461 and 462 give details about this notebook): https://i.ibb.co/JzH8fG0/108.png In another section of Commission Document 735 (pages 395 to 398), further detail is given about these phone numbers: [img]https://i.ibb.co/NC1cknk/n1.png[/img] [img]https://i.ibb.co/dMG7vCg/n2.png[/img] [img]https://i.ibb.co/bQ0QVX1/n3.png[/img] [img]https://i.ibb.co/BLx3nLH/n4.png[/img] The document about Andy Anderson is interesting. This is the same name that appeared on a document regarding the CIA domestic contacts division apparently relating to Oswald. This document was highlighted in the 1993 documentary (Frontline: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?). See 32 minutes in on the below video: https://youtu.be/PYI4PqtIyE0 From notebook no.108, it appears that Oswald was gathering a list of switchboards. So why would Oswald do this? One possibility is that Oswald was working for intelligence agency and that intelligence agency had not identified itself to Oswald. And this collection of switchboard numbers in Oswalds notebook was Oswalds attempt to help locate the geographic location his handler was in and therefore help narrow down which intelligence agency was in that location. For example, Oswalds handler might have told Oswald to wait by a certain public telephone at a certain time. The phone would then ring and Oswald could talk to his handler. But before Oswald would talk to the handler, he would have to talk to the operator to accept the call. In talking to the operator, Oswald could have asked the operator what switchboard they were, asked for their number, and then jotted this down in his notebook. Oswald might have thought this would narrow down where his handler was based and calling from. This info would not have been particularly useful, but it might have been Oswalds crude attempt to try and identify the location that his handler was based from, and thus identify which intelligence agency the handler was working for. To learn more about these phone numbers, check out the following podcast from Rob Clark and Doug Campbell (2 minutes to 12 minutes): https://youtu.be/Q2vFOQ_fz7k I'm trying to fugure out more about switchboards of the early 1960's to help pint down the significance of these numbers in Oswalds notebook. Is anyone on here more familiar with how switchboards operated in the early 1960’s and perhaps could shed light on this issue? From the below video it would appear that switchboard operators when they would ring a phone (like a public phone) would not identify themselves to the person picking up the phone (ie Oswald). https://youtu.be/fywnyDqMN6U So from what I understand, Oswald would have had to ask the operator what their switchboard number was and would then jot that switchboard number down in his notebook as seen in notebook no.108.

In a recent interview, Dale Myers now discounts the Tatum sighting (See 57 minutes to 1 hour 3 minutes on the below video): I was surprised to hear him say this. Because for a 1993 documentary, he was supporting Tatums sequence of events (See the below video at 1 hour 30 minutes): I guess this just shows Myers is open to updating his beliefs on the Tippit shooting based on his re-studying of the evidence.

My name is Gerry. I’ve been studying the assassination for many years and amassed a large collection of JFK assassination books in that time. Looking forward to interacting with you all over the next while and hopefully being of some help.