Hugh G. Aynesworth and the Assassination of JFK

[Benjamin Cole]

28 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Maybe I've watched too many movies, but my understanding has long been that when it comes to political journalism, access is everything. You want access, you gotta play footsie. I know Johnson and Nixon cut people off if their reporting made them look bad. And we've seen that happen with Trump--where he essentially banned CNN from the press room for asking too many questions, and allowed people who scarcely qualified as journalists--internet super-patriots who echoed whatever he said--to fill up his press conferences with softball questions, which were clearly orchestrated. 

Veteran Reporter: "Mr. President, I think America would like to know if you had an affair with that porn star. Did you?"

Trump: "Sit back down. I didn't call on you. I am calling on you. (Points at someone no one has ever seen before.) Well, hello young lady."

Young Lady No One Has Seen Before or Since: "Why thank you Mr. President. I would just like to know what you plan to do about those anti-American criminals at the DNC, who broadcast messages 24/7 throughout the third world telling the world's vermin they should come here." 

Trump: "I'm glad you asked... I am going to..."

PS-

There was a vulgar expression in my day, and it went like this:

"Access? You lick their crack, and they excrete in your mouth." 

Well, it was even more vulgar than that.

Newsrooms used to be fun places to work. My understanding is they were even more fun in days of yore (before my time) when having a bottle in the desk was not considered a major infraction, among other activities.

I can't say I am an authority on how every reporter in DC has conducted themselves over the past decades. For sure, gaining access requires "joining a team," and some newspapers used to keep in the stable both red and blue horses to manage the situation. 

Whenever a publication goes all-red or all-blue...then read everything with a grain of salt. 

 

[Robert Morrow]

On 4/22/2013 at 8:57 AM, Michael Hogan said:

May 20, 1967 letter from Shirley Martin to Jim Garrison re Hugh Aynesworth: http://jfk.hood.edu/...ugh/Item 01.pdf

Hugh Aynesworth was bragging in 1964 to Shirley Martin about having sex with Marina Oswald and the FBI was onto his shenanigans as well.

From Jerome Weeks recent KERA obituary on Aynesworth:

Renowned Dallas journalist and bestselling author Hugh Aynesworth has died | KERA News

QUOTE

Hugh Aynesworth has been married to Paula Aynesworth, née Paula Kathleen Butler, since 1987. She worked for KERA for 34 years as a sales executive. Aynesworth was previously married to Paula Ruth Eby (1962-1977) and Leslee Marie May (1980-1983). He and Paula Eby had two daughters, Allyson and Allyssa, and a son, Grant, who died in 2016. Aynesworth has four grandchildren.

UNQUOTE

Aynesworth has had three wives, the last one and final one is also named Paula.

Aynesworth's first wife was Paula Ruth Eby who committed suicide in 1989 at age 49. I wonder why she did that?

Paula Eby Aynesworth (1939-1989) - Find a Grave Memorial

Edited December 29, 2023 by Robert Morrow

[Robert Morrow]

Hugh Aynesworth said that met Marina Oswald in February of 1964

As paparazzi stalk her, Kennedy assassin's widow lives quiet Dallas-area life (dallasnews.com)

QUOTE

"I think she's been a very good mother in raising those kids," said Hugh Aynesworth, author of the new book, November 22, 1963: Witness to History, who first met her in February 1964. Her children got a break, Aynesworth said, when she married Kenneth Porter in 1965. It allowed them to live their lives under a new identity.

“But still, going through school, they had some difficulties,” Aynesworth said.

All the while, their mother tried as hard as she could to live a normal life, working for more than 20 years, Aynesworth said, at the now-defunct Army Navy Surplus Store in the 4400 block of McKinney Avenue in the Uptown section of Dallas, just a few miles from where the president was killed.

UNQUOTE

The FBI field surveillance of Marina Oswald began on February 24, 1964.

The FBI was tapping the phone of Marina Oswald's home at 629 Beltline Road, Richardson, TX from Feb. 29, 1964 to March 12, 1964. The FBI also had an operational microphone inside the house from March 2, 1964 to March 12, 1964.

The married Aynesworth had a habit of bragging that he had sex with Marina Oswald (see Shirley Martin 1967 letter to Jim Garrison; she spoke with Aynesworth in 1964)

So what are the odds that the FBI was wiretapping married Hugh Aynesworth's affair with Marina Oswald. I put those odds at HIGH.

Hugh Aynesworth - 3.pdf This PDF file contains the date of the FBI's admitted wiretapping of Marina Oswald, both over the phone and with an operational microphone in the house.

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Robert Morrow
add more info

[Robert Morrow]

 

Bill Simpich on the Illegal FBI surveillance of Marina Oswald in February and March of 1964 (I wonder if this was done while the married Hugh Aynesworth was slobbering all over Marina Oswald in 1964. Aynesworth had just met Marina at that time.)

 

JFK Facts:  https://web.archive.org/web/20160715074519/https:/jfkfacts.org/why-marina-oswald-could-sue-the-fbi-for-illegal-surveillance-today/

 Original web link: 

https://jfkfacts.org/why-marina-oswald-could-sue-the-fbi-for-illegal-surveillance-today/

 Question: Why isn’t the FBI spying on Marina Oswald better known?

Answer:  Because much governmental effort has gone into making sure that it is not better known.

Why? Maybe because Marina Oswald and her children–alive and living in Texas–have solid grounds for a lawsuit.

Before my research, I knew vaguely about a 1975 New York Times report on how the FBI admitted tapping and bugging Marina’s conversations.  “Electronic surveillance,” the Times reported, was “based upon written approval of the Attorney General of the United States. The Government contended then that in national security cases, court approval was not required“.

That was true. It wasn’t until 1972 that the Supreme Court ruled in the US v. Keith case that “national security” was not a sufficient basis to conduct a search without a warrant.

But no one has ever seen transcripts of the surveillance of the wife of the accused assassin of JFK, a fact first noted by author Lamar Waldron in his book Legacy of Secrecy .

Nor has anyone has ever heard the tapes of this surveillance.

But we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the U.S. government spied on Marina Oswald after the assassination of JFK.

The results were not reassuring to Hoover’s insistence that Lee Oswald was solely responsible for JFK’s murder.

Dallas FBI agent Jim Hosty confirmed in his book that Marina was surveilled and he added a convincing detail:  His FBI fellow agent Anatole Boguslav translated the Russian comments into English.

The transcripts and the tapes are still missing — a scandal that needs to be addressed as the National Archives prepares to release 3,600 still-secret JFK documents by the legally-mandated deadline of October 2017.

Hosty’s account indicates that the Dallas FBI office initially had custody of the tapes, with orders not to erase them.

Where are the tapes now?  No one knows. I suspect that at least the transcripts are hidden inside informant files that have never been turned over to any investigative agency.

What the tapes revealed

 Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy approved the wiretapping of Marina Oswald’s phone in 1964

I unearthed some FBI documents that explain why these tapes and transcripts have not been turned over.

The surveillance of Marina recorded statements that went directly to the question of her husband’s guilt or innocence in the murder of JFK— yet the FBI halted the surveillance less than two weeks after it began, saying that the results were “insignificant”.

This evidence was not provided to the Warren Commission.

The documents also show that although Attorney General Robert Kennedy did provide approval to tap Marina’s phone, he never gave the FBI permission to plant microphones (“bugs”) inside her home.

This newly-discovered information gives Marina and her family the right to file a new suit against the FBI and certain officials for violation of their constitutional rights.

The contents of the newly-discovered files

On the Mary Ferrell Web site, I found three folders of FBI material that are highly relevant to the JFK story.

Folders U-10 and S-3 discuss the wiretapping and bugging of Marina Oswald’s home from February 27 to March 12, 1964. Folder O-11 is a file on Marina that begins during February 1964.

These three folders tell us that although the phone tap and bugs were revealing some important first-hand information–such as the doubts of Marina and Oswald’s brother Robert that Lee shot JFK– the surveillance was shut down based on the FBI’s inexplicable claim that nothing of significance was being learned.

On February 24, 1964, Warren Commission chief counsel J. Lee Rankin asked J. Edgar Hoover for a “stake-out” of Marina’s home with “discreet physical surveillance”. This memo, and others in this folder, are within Hoover’s famous “JUNE” mail file, conducted when he wanted to conduct technical surveillance.

(Note to researchers: See the second page of this FBI June mail file for “special storage”, and page 190 on “records management”).

On February 24 1963, field surveillance began, and agents surreptitiously monitored Marina’s movements.

RFK never gave the FBI permission to plant microphones inside her home .

The next day, February 25, we see Bobby Kennedy’s signature approving Hoover’s proposal for a wiretap on her home on 2/25/64.

Bill Sullivan, the head of domestic intelligence for the Bureau, wrote on the 25th that “the practical thing to do is to place the installation in her new home…and then give this coverage adequate time to see if anything relevant can be developed.”

However, for reasons unknown, the FBI exceeded the terms of RFK’s approval of the tapping of Marina’s phone.  On February 27, the FBI obtained “internal approval” to plant bugs inside Marina’s home–without asking the Attorney General.

The microphones were planted throughout the house- – from the attic to the bedroom — on the night of February 28, hours before Marina was going to move in to her new home. The phone tap was installed on February 29 by Special Agent Nat Pinkston.  The bugs became operational on March 2.

Although the plan was to conduct surveillance indefinitely, the whole operation was shut down for no plausible reason by March 12.

A decade later, an FBI memo admitted that the bugs installed by the FBI were never approved by RFK. The FBI justified its actions by citing “general authority then existing” for its action.

There was no such “general authority.” If he Bureau had no court order authorizing the planting of microphones inside Marina’s home, the bugging was clearly illegal.

If RFK had approved of the bugs, their legality would be a closer question. Without RFK’s approval, the FBI was clearly breaking the law as it was understood in 1964.

Robert Oswald was overheard doubting his brother’s guilt

A report by FBI special agent Milton Newsom discusses what was picked up on Marina’s phone and the microphones inside the house. The results were not reassuring to Hoover’s insistence that Lee Oswald was solely responsible for JFK”s murder.

Newsom’s report shows that:

–at that time Robert Oswald, Lee’s brother, was saying that he thought Lee was innocent. Later Robert Oswald would say he had no doubt about Lee’s guilt.

–Marina went back and forth on whether Lee was guilty.

–Marine said  that she didn’t remember the package that Lee’s neighbor and co-worker Buell Wesley Frazier claimed Lee brought with him to the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) that fateful Friday morning.

On March 11, Marvin Gheesling, a senior FBI counterintelligence agent in Washington, tipped off Lee Rankin, chief counsel of the Warren Commission, about some of what was learned about the conversation in Marina’s house.

Gheesling did not tell Rankin that the tap and the bugs were the source.

Gheesling took pains to avoid letting Rankin know about a conversation between Marina’s business manager (and paramour) James Martin with the Russian translator Ilya Mamantov.

Mamantov was brought into the case by Army Intelligence on the afternoon that JFK was killed. Mamantov believed Oswald was a Soviet agent. He proceeded to obtain a questionable statement from Marina on the night of November 22, 1963 that she recognized the rifle found on the sixth floor of the TSBD as belonging to Lee.

Martin told Mamantov that “Marina understands English pretty well” and that she didn’t need a translator. That news would have caused shock waves at the Warren Commission, which had been given the impression that Marina had little comprehension of English-language conversations going on around her.

The FBI claim that ‘no significant results’ had been obtained was nonsense.

The FBI claimed there was a major problem with the surveillance: it was picking up attorney-client communications between Marina and her attorney William McKenzie.

In the past, the FBI had not considered that as a problem.  McKenzie had already assured the FBI that he would assist them in “spot checking” her activities that were not direct attorney-client communications.

McKenzie also told Rankin that he would get a waiver of the attorney-client privilege from his clients about anything they knew about JFK’s assassination –and he had it in writing within days after the bugging began.

There is no denying that the information they were obtaining was of great importance.  The FBI claim that “no significant results” had been obtained was nonsense.

What can be done today?

A lot.

I will take action to see if these tapes or transcripts of Marina Oswald remain in the possession of the FBI’s “informant files“, as indicated in the documents I reviewed. The FBI did not turn over any such material to the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s.

I will also challenge the FBI’s refusal to provide these documents and the rest of the informant files to the ARRB or the other investigative bodies that have demanded that all relevant evidence be turned over.  This is part of a pattern that I will discuss in my follow-up article.

Warren Commission in the dark

Marina’s love life also was an area of potential embarrassment for all concerned. After her husband’s murder in policy custody, she became romantically involved with her business manager James Martin, with whom she discussed the pros and cons of marriage which might lessen the possibility of her deportation.   Marina was vulnerable to pressure due to her immigration status.

Chief counsel Rankin was informed that the surveillance of Marina would be ended.  The FBI recommended that Agent Newsom’s report not be given to the Warren Commission, in order to avoid public criticism of the Bureau for tapping Marina. Hoover wrote that the Commission was trying to embarrass his agency. The story remained hidden.

When the New York Times story broke the story a decade later, Warren Commission assistant counsel David Belin said that it was “horrible” that the Commission was not informed about the FBI’s actions.

Legal implications in 2015

Since the failure to obtain RFK’s permission to plant bugs in Marina’s home has been revealed for the first time, the argument can now be made that the FBI cannot claim reasonable belief of compliance with the law prior to the 1972 court decision that court approval is required in order to use hidden microphones.

The statute of limitations only begins to run in a setting where a reasonable person would learn about it.   Media publication is considered to be such a setting.

The time to sue on the telephone tap would have begun with publication of the Times story in 1975, and the statute of limitations has long since run on that subject.

The time to sue on the bugging of Marina’s home, however, has arguably just begun with the publication of this story revealing RFK’s failure to provide permission.

Dick Russell has written about how Marina has expressed interested about filing suit to try to take effective action in reaching resolution in the JFK case. I wonder if she is still interested?

My legal opinion is that Marina Oswald – and maybe even her two children, who resided with her at the time – are now free to file a lawsuit against the FBI and certain officials for the planting of the bugs.

 

[Joe Bauer]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10:55

 

[Robert Morrow]

Hugh Aynesworth Celebration of Life – 2PM tomorrow Saturday, January 27th at the Texas Theater https://obits.dallasnews.com/us/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/name/hugh-aynesworth-obituary?id=54162273

 

It is open to the public and a lot of Dallas media big shots might be there. I will be attending just to see what they are saying. If you live in the Dallas area, I encourage you to go to keep track of the historical record on this important person in the cover up of the JFK assassination.

[Joe Bauer]

GIVE EM HE** TOMORROW ROBERT!

[Robert Morrow]

8 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

GIVE EM HE** TOMORROW ROBERT!

I am not going to do anything. But I might talk after the memorial services to any reporters who are writing stories on Aynesworth, maybe let them know about DiEugenio's obituary and the Shirley Martin letter about Aynesworth.

[Joe Bauer]

2 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I am not going to do anything. But I might talk after the memorial services to any reporters who are writing stories on Aynesworth, maybe let them know about DiEugenio's obituary and the Shirley Martin letter about Aynesworth.

Right On!

[Robert Morrow]

Hugh Aynesworth: people in Dallas IMMEDIATELY suspected H.L. Hunt in the JFK assassination – in fact, someone came to Aynesworth’s home on the night of Friday 11/22/1963 with information purportedly indicting H.L. Hunt in the JFK assassination.

[“Hugh Aynesworth Has Spent His Career Debunking JFK Conspiracy Theories,” Malcolm Jones, Daily Beast, 11/22/2013]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/hugh-aynesworth-has-spent-his-career-debunking-jfk-conspiracy-theories

Somebody actually came to you on Saturday, Nov. 23, with a conspiracy theory explaining the assassination?

No, that Friday! As I came home that night, he was sitting on the steps. He thought that H.L. Hunt and some of the big companies there had been involved. He showed me a bunch of crap that was just ridiculous, and all crumpled up. He’d obviously been carrying it around for a long time. And I sent him to a friend of mine at the rival paper, the Times Herald. Because I told him I can’t do this, and he said, ‘Well, you obviously don’t know what you’re doing, I need someone more experienced.’ So I thought, OK, and I sent him to Bob Finley at the Times Herald.

 

As I sidenote, I would like to point out to people that Lyndon Johnson, by contrast to so many who immediately suspected a Dallas Right Winger in the JFK assassination was immediately blaming the JFK assassination on a COMMUNIST when LBJ spoke with Malcolm Kilduff between 1:20 and 1:26PM. Why would LBJ blame a communist for killing JFK? For signing the Nuclear Test Ban treaty which Russia wanted to do? For advocating that Congress authorize the selling of excess wheat to Russians who were starving in the winter of 1963?

 

 

 

[Robert Morrow]

Marina Oswald THREATENED THE LIFE OF HUGH AYNESWORTH.

Source on this: Hugh Aynesworth Nov. 29, 1966 letter to Holland McCombs [I corrected a misspelling of "Holland"] of Life Magazine.

Hugh Aynesworth: "I've even received death threats from Europe (and from Marina)."

Hugh Aynesworth had sex with Marina Oswald. Source on this is Hugh Aynesworth to JFK researcher Shirley Martin, 1964: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/A%20Disk/Aynesworth%20Hugh/Item%2001.pdf

 

 

 

Edited January 31 by Robert Morrow
add more info

[James DiEugenio]

Its Holland McCombs.

This is interesting because McCombs was the guy who was overseeing the Life magazine inquiry into the JFK case.

The one that Thompson talks about at length in his book Last Second in Dallas.

But here he is, at the outset, conversing with Mr. Cover Up artist about ways to sandbag it.

To anyone objective this would show that maybe the reinquiry was not meant to be one from the start.  I mean if the guy running it is in contact with flotsam like Hugh?

McCombs ended up canning the two best investigators on the case that he had, Kern and Thompson.  And the article Life published was so weak that it was essentially a blip on the screen.  But even at that, they let Specter reply to it in the same issue.

By this time McCombs had also been in contact with Clay Shaw and they exchanged  a few letters.

The fact that McCombs did this to Life and John McCloy did what he did at CBS shows just how compromised the MSM was on the JFK case.

Edited January 30 by James DiEugenio

[Robert Morrow]

Hugh Aynesworth's Celebration of Life was held at the Texas Theater on Saturday, January 27th, 2024 from about 2PM until 4:30PM. I attended it.

Here is the videotaping of the event: https://streamyard.com/watch/rPMss2U2EYDT?fbclid=IwAR1M2SBFGWW4Y8rOIE46UE-yBwGiMFoXQ56E8Vq9SafwXiVIOviL5lt1JAU 

[Joe Bauer]

Just watched the entire Hugh Aynesworth celebration of life video.

The man was certainly well liked, well loved and well respected by many.

STILL ... even such a man is not totally incapable of some transgressions. Some secrets.  Some temptation flaws. Maybe even lying about such things?

JFK included?

We see a photo of HA standing next to Walter Cronkite.

Did HA ever view the 1969 interview Cronkite did of LBJ?

The one in which LBJ stated ( on camera ) that neither he ( LBJ ) nor anyone else can ever be absolutely sure that others may not have been involved with Oswald?

With LBJ himself ( who would know more highest level secrets and truths than HA could ever imagine ) expressing this doubt ( again, in 1969 ) regards whether Oswald acted alone...HA didn't think this astounding LBJ statement was worthy of consideration in at least giving himself some pause in continuing to dismiss conspiracy talk as nothing more than the rantings of loons?

And what did HA think of Sylvia and Annie Odio and their Oswald introduction story?

And as the intrepid praised HA was such a superman in investigative journalism... why was it that it took another highly respected journalist (Seth Kantor ) to deep research Jack Ruby and tell the world more about him than anyone else? Kantor revealed incredibly important background information on Ruby that the WC and HA wouldn't even begin to search for on their own.

And, did HA think Kantor lied in his sworn oath WC testimony where he told the Committee he met and talked to Jack Ruby at Parkland hospital the afternoon of 11,22, 1963?

Seth Kantor was just as worthy as HA in so many professional ways...imo. And in the life-long integrity department as well.

Robert, I'll bet your sphincter tightened a few times during the testimonials.

The ceremony was tightly controlled and personal family emotionally reverent and somber to the degree that trying to shout out a question or two about some of the more gushing integrity claims about HA would have been danger risk out of place and probably resulted in a Trump Rally type pummeling physical attack.

Questions like..."did HA ever claim he bedded Marina Oswald?" 

And in the video there is a photo of HA standing next to one assumes is Fidel Castro? But the Castro figure in the photo appears to be toothless!

Does the photo prove HA's tale of having a one-on-one pickup basketball game with Castro?

And did HA ever think the reality of LBJ's massive personal and professional corruption was ever worthy of even one day's worth of investigation and reporting?

And how about the murder of Henry Marshall? Especially after a grand jury ruled that his death was not a suicide? 

Wasn't that big news of the day? With incredibly important incriminations such as Billy Sol Estes?

And how about the almost unbelievably corrupt and perverted justice case of Mac Wallace? Where LBJ's personal attorney John Cofer got him off from a murder with malice guilty finding by the jury? Wouldn't any big news investigative reporter be running after that big Texas news story? Not HA obviously.

I sense HA knew better than to ever investigate crime and corruption in his own state, especially involving LBJ and Ed Clark.

And how about some stories about Texas Big Oil? The wealthiest men on Earth at that time? And their JFK hating super extreme far right anti-communist fear mongering organizations they funded like the JBS and Minute Men? 

No, such realms of power and corruption were not HA's cup of tea...imo anyways.

 

Edited February 4 by Joe Bauer

[James DiEugenio]

Hugh was treated with respect in Big D for one main reason:  that city has been in denial about what happened there in 1963 from the time it occurred.

I mean just look at what they wanted to do with the TSBD, there was once a movement to raze it.

Look at the whole Bello corporation and what they did at the 50th, a true disgrace.

Hugh had been covering up and fabricating stuff since just about the beginning.

As I wrote, he was essentially blackmailing the Warren Commission while it was in progress.

As I also noted, he said on public TV that his job was to maintain the Oswald myth.  What kind of reporter says that kind of thing.  Then Gus Russo puts him on the Jennings special in 2003.