Hard Evidence Comes Full Circle

[William Kelly]

JFKcountercoup: Full Circle - the Hard Evidence Comes

In another thread on another subject Joe Backes wrote:

Bill,

In comparing your article and Reitzes,

BK: There is no comparison – Reitzes tries to debunk the idea that the phone call is significant and I try to figure out who made it, who received it and why it was made – I try to identify new witnesses and records and he tries to dismiss the whole thing.

Reitzes uses HSCA material, which you don't use at all. The HSCA volume IX is very thick, by far the thickest volume of the whole set, and is all about Ruby. Your lack of HSCA volume material weakens your post.

BK: Since I didn’t footnote it, how do you know I didn’t use HSCA volumes? I most certainly did, especially Meyers testimony before HSCA, and if you look at Reitzes footnotes, he uses My Work as a primary source.

You tell us Jack Ruby's phone calls were important and provided many leads, but THE MOST significant one was a phone call made by a friend of Rubys, Lawrence Myers to his girlfriend Jean Aase.

BK: No I say the significant call was from Gill’s New Orleans office to 20 E. Delaware Ave., where Aase lived and worked, and where Meyers called her, which establishes the connection with the phone call from Gill’s office. Get that straight.

I don't think there is a lot of there there. This episode is extremely thin, intriguing, but thin.

BK: You can think it thick or thin, your opinion doesn’t matter, what is significant is that there is a documented telephone record of the calls in question – evidence that establishes a concrete connection between two specific points – Gill’s New Orleans Office and 20 E. Delaware, Chicago.

Why was this phone call important?

BK: The phone call is important because it is not speculative – but concrete – like an automobile license plate or a fingerprint that can identify it with specific people – in this case – G. Ray Gill, possibly David Ferrie in New Orleans and Jean Aase and who ever else was at 20 E. Delaware Ave. in Chicago.,

Before you answer that you refer to Jim Garrison's two books, "A Heritage of Stone," and "On the Trail of the Assassins." You state that this phone call is mentioned in those two books. Yet, we get Garrison investigating not Jack Ruby's phone calls, nor this one by Lawrence Myers, but calls made by David Ferrie out of G. Wray Gill's office in New Orleans. This gets very confusing fast. You've moved the reader from Ruby's phone calls, to one Myers' phone call, to David Ferrie's phone calls.

BK: You seem to be the only person confused, Joe. All I am saying is that these phone records establish positive evidence of a connection between these places and the people there.

You need to spend some time giving better background and laying a proper foundation for why the phone call Lawrene Myers made was important.

BK: The phone call Lawrence (You spell it wrong Joe, come on, don’t correct me if you can’t get it right yourself) Meyers made is only important because it established the phone record of 20 E. Delaware in the WC records, which made it possible for Garrison to connect the later phone call to the same number by someone at Gills office. As for everything you write below makes me confused but I will try to straighten you out.

Here's the background that should be nearer to the beginning of your blog post. Garrison got a copy of the long distance telephone calls David Ferrie made while he worked for G. Wray Gill, an attorney in New Orleans. Gill fired Ferrie over these unauthorized long distance phone calls. Garrison then made a study of all of the Warren Commission exhibits listing phone calls made by, to, or otherwise connected with witnesses encountered by the federal investigation. And he finds something. David Ferrie made a phone call from G. Wray Gill's office in New Orleans to a Chicago number on September 24, 1963. Reitzes cites the HSCA, Volume IX, p. 499 which said it was Ferrie who made the call, though the HSCA did not state why it thought so.

The number Ferrie called was WH4-4970. In Warren Commission Exhibit number 2350 Garrison finds that someone else called that number, WH4-4970. WCE 2350 is a listing of phone calls from the Illinois Bell Telephone Company that were charged to ST 2-8920 (782-8920), which was the Ero Manufacturing Co., 7146 Monroe, Chicago, Illinois.

BK: Meyers worked for Ero.

On page 335 of WC Volume 25 we find that an unknown person called WH4-4970, at 9:09 on November 20th, 1963 using a credit card. Then I'm confused by the rest of the information which immediately follows "using a credit card," which is this, "Kansas City Missouri to Miss A. Asie Room 1405.”

BK: Meyers called Aase from Kansas City.

Ms. Aase, and Ms. Aise are the same person. She is also referred to as Ms. Jean West. I'll refer to her as Ms. A. Reitzes, quoting Peter Whitmey says that Ms. A used the name Jean West "as an alias specifically for this Dallas trip." The Dallas trip is a trip Myers took with Ms. A to Dallas a few days before the assassination.

Is the unknown person making the call at 9:09 on Wednesday, November 20th, 1963 to the Chicago number, WH4-4970, using a credit card, calling from Kansas City, Missouri?

BK: Larry Meyers made the call.

And is this person trying to speak with Miss A. in Room 1405? This sounds like someone is calling a hotel, and Ms. A is supposed to be in room 1405. Why would she be at this hotel room? Who owned the credit card? Well, in Reitzes article we learn that WH4-4970 is the main desk phone number for the apartment building where Ms. A lived at 20 East Delaware Street in Chicago. The place was known as the Delaware Towers.

BK: It is a hotel, I’ve been there, as I mention in the article, it is owned by the same White Russian family that owned it in 1963. They broke up the hotel into apartments and Aase worked at the hotel restaurant and lived in one of the apartments – Room 1405.

Garrison then finds more information on Miss A. in CE 2266 in WC Volume 25 p. 191. She accompanied Lawrence Myers on a business trip to Dallas, Texas where they arrived the evening of November 20th, 1963. It doesn't say how or when they left Chicago.

BK: Meyers says he met Jean Aase through the manager of the hotel – Les Barker, who Meyers owed money to because of a failed business deal. Barker encouraged Meyers to take Aase with him to Dallas. They flew from Chicago to Dallas Love Field and did not drive by car, so you are only confusing yourself with the whole next paragraph.

So, putting this altogether I think it's possible they went by car leaving Chicago sometime on November 19th, or earlier, and got to Kansas City the night of the 19th probably spending the night there. According to Mapquest.com this is about an 8 hour journey, perhaps it took longer in 1963. I think it's possible Miss A. used her own credit card to make a phone call from Kansas City, Missouri calling back to the office to check in, and then they continued to drive to Dallas which from Kansas City, MO, would be another 8 hour drive, arriving in Dallas on the evening of November 20th, checking into the Ramada Motel and then they went to the Cabana motel on the next night.

On November 21, 1963 Myers takes Miss A to the Carousel Club in Dallas and introduces her to Jack Ruby.

The problem with them traveling by car is Miss A. says they flew from Chicago to Dallas via Braniff Airlines. Myers also says they flew. I don't know if the FBI made any effort to verify the exact mode of travel to Dallas. David Reitzes, quoting Peter Whitmey, thinks Myers was in Kansas City on his own as a traveling salesman and was trying to call Miss A. charging the phone call to his credit card. That could be possible if the credit card for the phone call belonged to him.

However, there are indications, at least to me, that they drove to Dallas, and that they may have had more than a casual business relationship. In CE2267 which is an FBI report on Myers he refers to Miss A, as "Jean West," and as a "rather dumb, but accommodating broad." One wonders how accommodating? Perhaps very, for the next sentence says "He further pointed out that his association with Miss West is not known to members of his family or to his business associates." So, he's hiding her, and his "association," with her from his own family, and his business associates. They were having an affair. It sure reads that way.

BK: Well, Meyers met his brother at the Cabana lounge Thursday night and apparently didn’t take Aase with him, so you’re catching on Joe.

And CE2267 states that on Sunday he drove to McKinney, Texas (about 30 or 40 miles North from Dallas) where a factory of the firm is located. Was anyone really supposed to be there, working, on a Sunday, and the Sunday after a presidential assassination? Myers then stated he drove on to Sherman, Texas (about 35 miles North of McKinney) where he intended to play golf. No mention is made of where he got a car from, or where Miss West is supposed to be if not with him. But it could be he had a car all along because they really drove to Texas.

BK: Meyers played golf at an Air Force golf course that day while Aase spent the day with Betty McDonald, the stripper Ruby recruited from the failed State Fairgrounds attraction where Larry Crafard also worked.

So, the phone call in and of itself really isn't important, because we don't really know who made it, who was on the other end of the line in Chicago, or the content of the call, but, rather the paper trail to it that tenuously links David Ferrie through Miss A to Lawrence Myers and then through Myers to Jack Ruby is what's important. None of this seems extraordinarily sinister, though I would like to know more about Ero Manufacturing Co and the people who worked there.

BK: Well, if you read my article, in which I leave out many of these extraneous details so not to confuse things, I say that the phone call is important because it calls attention to Meyers and Aase, and they in turn call our attention to 20 E. Delaware Ave and the State Fairground attraction where Ruby took Meyers a few weeks before the assassination. Meyers wrote out a $500 check for Ruby to cash and pass on to those who worked there, including Betty McDonald the stripper Jean Aase later met and Crafard, who was often mistaken for Oswald.

Garrison thought that it was a "message center." So, is Miss A part of a "message center," or is Ero Manufacturing Co part of a "message center?" Or is the main number at the Delaware Towers apartment / condo complex part of a "message center?' Why would Ferrie call Miss A's apartment on Sept 24, 1963? WH4-4970 was the number for the main desk at Miss A's apartment. Was it a message center? Or, could Ferrie have been trying to reach person or persons unknown who were in a different room than Ms. A?

Joe Backes Edited by Joseph Backes, Today, 01:31 AM.

BK: Joe, I don’t believe it was a message center, it’s just a place where Meyers met Aase and the person who connected them – Les Barker may be important. But more significant is Larry’s brother Ed Meyers, whose son Ralph worked for the CTA with Cuban Homer Echevaria, and who lived and worked as a journalist in Mexico City after leaving the Army Security Agency, where he worked on Soviet radio intercepts at a U2 base in Turkey where Gary Powers was stationed. That’s the connection that I am investigating. While Reitzes tries to dismiss the significance of the whole thing, and you seem to be confused by it, I am trying to locate new, living witnesses who can help explain what really happened, and I have – as Vernon Main, Jr., Larry Crafard, Betty McDonald and Ralph Meyers are all alive today.

Also, there’s no mention of the second part of the equation, Jim Braden and his pals being registered at the Cabana and paying for the drinks at the same lounge at the same time Meyers and Ruby are there, and Braden leaving there and going not only to New Orleans, but to the same address – Pere Marquete Office building – same floor 17^th floor, just down the hall from Gill’s office where the call to Chicago was made. Some coincidence, hea?

Braden had also shacked up with Mrs. Little, the widow of the former President of Magnolia Oil, and it was at a Magnolia Oil party where the Paines met the Oswalds.

The Able Danger – Open Source data mining and record analysis came up with the outline of the 9/11 terrorists cell and named some of them – before 9/11 – now we should be able to do the same thing with the terrorist cell that was responsible for the Dealey Plaza Operation.

My purpose, once again, in rehashing the Larry Meyers/Jean Aase/Jim Braden material is my new interest in the activities at the Dallas State Fairgrounds - specifically the gambling operation centered there, the DPD SSB HQ there as well as the Dallas Civil Defense Bunker located there, and the fact that it was Larry Meyers who first called my attention to the State Fair.

JFKcountercoup: Shenanigans at the Dallas State Fairgrounds