Flooring Crew in TSBD

[Glenn Nall]

A number of books make reference to the crew that had been replacing the flooring in the TSBD, in particular Glen Sample's The Men on the Sixth Floor, which a bit more extensively involves this crew in its proposed theory.

But I've not yet come across any in-depth research into this - has any real research been published on the men in this crew, the hiring of the crew (they were not TSBD employees, right?), their whereabouts immediately after the shooting, etc?

And along those lines, wasn't there office space in the building that was used by other, non-TSBD personnel? Is there anything available on this, esp. the flooring crew?

Edited September 22, 2016 by Glenn Nall

[Dan Doyle]

A number of books make reference to the crew that had been replacing the flooring in the TSBD, in particular Glen Sample's The Men on the Sixth Floor, which a bit more extensively involves this crew in its proposed theory.

But I've not yet come across any in-depth research into this - has any real research been published on the men in this crew, the hiring of the crew (they were not TSBD employees, right?), their whereabouts immediately after the shooting, etc?

And along those lines, wasn't there office space in the building that was used by other, non-TSBD personnel? Is there anything available on this, esp. the flooring crew?

I've also wondered about the who/what/why of this construction crew and the timing of the work and can find little if anything on the subject. And what about the commercial cleaning company, named something like "American Maintenance" who cleaned the TSBD on Thursday nights and therefore had a key to the building? Then there's the mother of all suspicious parties, what about Tex-Italia Films who contracts with Marina for $132,000 in Feb of 1964 and then disappears without a trace. Of course, we could just revisit the bullet wounds or the money order for the zillionth time and hope to find something there.

[Joe Bauer]

Just did a search for Tex-Italia Films / Marina Oswald.

Was the $132,000 actually paid to her? And if so, did she keep this huge (at that time ) amount of money?

Was this before or after her WC testimony?

First link listed in my search was an essay by a George Bailey titled "Oops."

Have read about these "Oops" points many times before but it's still unsettling to see them again even now.

[Dan Doyle]

from https://jfkennedy1963.com/2014/01/31/who-had-keys-to-the-texas-school-book-depository/

"The report which was in the file of Roy Truly ( TSBD Supervisor), showed in one of the paragraphs about a cleaning company that would come in each and every night and work inside of The Texas School Book Depository. The cleaning company which is named in the file as Acme Building & Maintenance would have 2 employees come into the building after hours and work inside of the building alone until about 12:00 in the morning. The most alarming part about the paragraph was that the Acme Building & Maintenance Company had two employees who had a key to the Texas School Book Depository."

[Glenn Nall]

This is from Richard Bartholomew's Rambler paper, 1996 (didn't remember just what he said 'til now):

It can be presumed therefore that, as researcher William Weston has written, "One of the most critical elements of this plot was the Texas School Book Depository." In addition to both the circumstances of Oswald's employment at the TSBD, and the routing of the motorcade by the building, Weston points out that there would have been a need for a team of plotters to make detailed plans inside the building well in advance of November 22, including firing angles, planting of false evidence, and getaway plans. This could have been done, Weston says, by six TSBD employees assigned to lay new flooring on the fifth and sixth floors from late October until November 22. It is a plausible argument, which brings up the concern that any long-term improvement to the property such as a flooring project would have to have been of interest to, if not directly initiated and contracted by, the building's owner.

Roy Truly, the "superintendent" who hired Oswald was "a building manager." In a story published the day after the assassination, Dallas Morning News reporter Kent Biffle referred to Roy Truly as "Superintendent of the textbook building...." The floor crew was supervised directly by William Shelly, "the assistant manager who was in charge of the floor laying project." These titles imply that they were building managers more closely associated with the landlord than with the private textbook brokerage firm which leased the building. The employment of these individuals would seem to be a relatively easy fact for researchers verify.

Weston writes, "The electrical power for the whole building and even the telephone stopped working about five minutes prior to the assassination. How two such entirely different systems as the electricity and the phones could go out simultaneously is beyond explanation, unless one can assume that the interruption was deliberate." Although this claim is currently in dispute, it cannot be denied that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy would have involved intimate knowledge of the TSBD building. Truly and Shelly were possibly employed to some extent by the building's landlord, David Harold Byrd.

I think what makes these "outsiders" more curious is the fact that so little information has either been found or been publicized to any extent. It only makes sense that Byrd would have been the one to order any building reconstruction. Certainly not any renters of the building.

And if they, or the cleaning company, are connected to DH Byrd, which is likely, then they are suspect by default.

Yet so little is known.

[Glenn Nall]

well, damn. this is SOME of what Weston says about this. I'm chopping it into points, for brevity - it's a LONG piece about this TSBD, and Guns and stuff. But it's darned interesting... https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.assassination.jfk/u40CSo4o0Gw

EDIT - oops. My bad. WW himself posted the whole thing here, in 2006: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6017

On the sixth floor [???] that day William Shelley and his crew of five men were adding new plywood to the old floor. How they failed to notice the lifting and moving of two dozen boxes, each weighing 55 pounds, to make the sniper’s nest at the southeast corner window has never been explained. Also unexplained is an incident after the assassination: Shelley spoke with Oswald just prior to the latter’s escape in a Nash Rambler. (Note: this was most likely the other Oswald, the Oswald impostor. RC)

A veil of secrecy conceals the company that employed these men. The Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) moved into the seven-story, 411 Elm Street building during the summer of 1963, but exactly when is unknown. Ruth Paine, while driving on the freeway, saw the company name on a four-story warehouse and thought that Lee worked there [ ], not realizing that a larger building, also within her view, was the place where he really worked. Evidently a new sign was added later, but exactly when is unknown. The difficulty of obtaining specific details is of course due to the building’s role as a shooting platform, but there is something else to consider. From clues derived from a variety of sources, we know that company executives used schoolbooks to disguise shipments of firearms and narcotics. Although the picture is still unclear, the story of Joe Bergin adds an important piece to the puzzle. It is a story he never would have told himself, but thanks to his son, it is told here for the first time.

Background

Born in Alvin, Texas on August 12, 1899, Joe Lyons Bergin was the son of a Methodist minister, John W. Bergin, who in his early years traveled the preaching circuit with his wife and children. After four years as a pastor in Corsicana, John went to Georgetown, where he served as president of Southwestern University from 1935 to 1942. His son Joe went to the same university in the fall of 1918, where he excelled as a football player. After graduation, he taught history and athletics at the Lake Forest High School in Dallas. In 1930 he went to Greenville (50 miles northeast of Dallas), where he became the principal of a high school. Two years later, he won a four-year term as superintendent of the school district. People admired him for his intelligence and courteous manners. He was also a delightful conversationalist. As superintendent, he worked hard to raise the academic standards back up so that its secondary schools could regain their accreditation. For this achievement he won the gratitude of the citizens of Greenville.

[...]

The Drugs and Guns Connection

[...]

After the communists took over the mainland in 1949 and Chiang Kai-Shek moved his government to Taiwan, Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave his blessing to a diplomatic mission to Taiwan consisting of businessmen and military officers, led by William Pawley, to facilitate the importation of drugs from Burma. Providing most of the funds for this mission was Texas oil man, H. L. Hunt. One of the points of entry for Chinese heroin was across the Mexican border into Laredo, Texas.

In a July 1959 report “The Narcotics Situation in South Asia and the Far East,” Garland Williams, a top official in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), accused the Central Intelligence Agency of encouraging the Chinese to produce drugs. According to Valentine, the CIA and its Nationalist Chinese allies operated the largest drug-trafficking syndicate in the world. [5]

Towards the end of World War II, Mexico became another source of drugs. In 1945, Eva Ruby and Paul Roland Jones were partners in picking up opium delivered to Dallas from the Durango area of Mexico and sending it to Hyman Ruby in Chicago via shipments of iron pipe. As a volunteer in the Texas Rangers, Bergin would have seen and heard much of the guns and drugs trade.

The Schoolbook Companies

In 1938, in the middle of his second term, Bergin submitted his resignation to “go into business,” according to a newspaper article. [6] He left the security, prestige, and lucrative salary of a school superintendent in order to go to Dallas and sell schoolbooks for Scott Foresman. [...]

Scott Foresman, the predominant publisher of elementary-level schoolbooks and best known for its Dick and Jane readers, had its headquarters in Chicago. Bergin was the manager of its Dallas office, located on the third floor of the Santa Fe building on Main Street. The staff, virtually all female, ranged from eight to ten employees to as many as twelve to fifteen during the summer when the demand for schoolbooks was high. Bergin’s assistant, Dora Newman, a small, frail-looking woman, yet full of energy, was adept at maintaining harmony and discipline in the office and even had a touch of class.

Sharing the third floor were the offices of other schoolbook companies, such as Bobbs-Merrill, Lyons & Carnahan, McGraw-Hill, and Southwestern. In spite of the competition, all the managers had friendly contacts with one another and took turns giving parties. Joe hosted parties with no alcoholic beverages, for he disapproved of drinking.

The main occupant of the third floor was the Hugh Perry Book Depository, a privately owned company, incorporated in 1927 and the predecessor of the TSBD. Hugh Perry acted as an independent agency for a group of publishers to warehouse and distribute textbooks to schools in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. Not far from the TSBD on 707 Browder Street was the Lone Star Schoolbook Depository, a rival company, which also warehoused and distributed schoolbooks.

As part of his job, Joe Bergin worked as a lobbyist at the state capitol, where he met with legislators and competed with other publishing companies in the politics of book adoption. In the state of Texas, the legislature had the authority to decide what books schools should have. A different practice was used in Oklahoma and New Mexico, which allowed principals and superintendents to decide what books to get. Bergin went to these states with a carload of books and basically functioned as a salesman. As his responsibilities grew, he hired others to do the business trips while he remained at the office to do the paperwork.

On October 29, 1945, Hugh Perry hired a mysterious clerk named William Shelley. According to news journalist Elzie Glaze, who met him in 1974, Shelley said he was an intelligence agent during the war and afterwards joined the CIA. [8] Since his previous job was a brief stint working in defense plants, it is possible that he served as an informant for some counterespionage unit. This undercover work carried over into Hugh Perry, where schoolbooks concealed clandestine shipments of guns and drugs. The second part of Shelley’s statement shows that, after the CIA came into existence in 1947, it took over this operation – and the agents assigned to it.

The Activities of Jack Ruby

Money generated by the sale of drugs required laundering, and gambling was one way to do that. In November 1946, Paul Roland Jones approached Sheriff Steve Guthrie and promised him a starting salary of $150,000 a year if he allowed his friends from Chicago to bring slot machines and floating crap games into Dallas...

damn.

Edited September 23, 2016 by Glenn Nall

[James DiEugenio]

Yes, real interesting about Shelly and the CIA.

BTW, according to GIlbride, there is no doubt, there was a power failure that day in the TSBD.

[Robert Prudhomme]

What evidence is there of a power failure? The elevators not working?

[Dan Doyle]

Glenn,

Wow, this is incredible. So this person, Shelley, who is leading the floor laying crew in the TSBD in the days and weeks prior to 11/22/63 just happens to have history with the CIA. Much food for thought here. Thanks

[Glenn Nall]

It's the first I've seen that, too. Without reading more of Weston's stuff and finding a little more background, that one sentence is to be taken at face value, at most, I think. The thing is, these writings of Mr Weston are pretty old - for there to be anything to this idea of Shelley being intelligence, I would think that someone would have grabbed the ball and ran with it by now.

I'm pretty sure this is part of The Fourth Decade, a long series of journals edited by some guy named Jerry Rose, and consisting of - well, see below*

But, even if he really did say that, that's a pretty big wrench in the works... what?

The Third Decade - edited by Jerry Rose, was the longest-running and perhaps the finest of the journals devoted to the study of the assassination of President Kennedy. Its first issue came out in November of 1984, and it ran through September of 1993, at that point continuing on under the new moniker The Fourth Decade.
The Third Decade contains essays by Jerry Rose, Gaeton Fonzi, Phil Melanson, Ed Tatro, Patricia Lambert, Paul Hoch, Anthony Marsh, Timothy Cwiek, Martin Shackelford, Richard Trask, Emory Brown, Harrison Livingstone, Scott Van Wynsberghe, Richard Sprague, Jan Stevens, Vince Palamara, David Perry, Jack White, Bill Kelly, Dennis Ford, Peter Whitmey, Sheldon Inkol, G. J. Rowell, Jim Lesar, Sylvia Meagher, Mary Ferrell, and others.

* The Fourth Decade - This well-respected journal, edited by Jerry Rose, continued on where The Third Decade left off. It ran 6 issues per year from 1993 through 2000, with the last issue appearing in January 2001. The Fourth Decade contains essays by Jerry Rose, Peter Whitmey, Gary Mack, Martin Shackleford, Peter Dale Scott, Jack White, Milicent Cranor, Dennis Ford, Ian Griggs, James Folliard, Richard Bartholomew, Christopher Sharrett, William Weston, Hal Verb, Hugh Murray, Vince Palamara, Barbara LaMonica, John J. Johnson, Harrison Livingstone, Bill Kelly, and many other contributors.

(I think I remember a 1st and 2nd, too, or maybe that's just my 55 yr old brain)

[James DiEugenio]

William Weston was a pretty reliable writer. And he does give a personal source for that info.

But uh Glenn, I would object to TTD being the finest journal dedicated to the assassination of JFK.

By about 1995, most people would give that nod to Probe Magazine I think. Nothing personal, that is just the way most people felt.

[Glenn Nall]

ha - - i was just reprinting that from Mary Ferrell's website. i forgot to mention that. I've not even had time to open that door, so i have no idea. as i pointed out, that's some old material.

[Larry Hancock]

For reference, other accounts describe the flooring crew as being TSBD employees pulled from regular duties and assigned to the work...including people from the second company building a few blocks away where the company had its headquarters. The big end of summer back to school shipping rush was over and employees were available for misc work...as I recall, the fact that there was even an opening for Oswald during what was normally the off season was because a "puller" had been assigned to the flooring and Oswald's job was most likely temporary.

As to the building itself, Ian Griggs interviewed employees in the building who made it clear it was unlocked through early evening because of the book company folks who had space

in the building and who came and went after hours on occasion. The same fellow told Ian that even that weekend when he came back to Dallas from vacation he found the place

unlocked and walked to throughout the place without meeting a policeman or seeing any security. Later the reason given for not further vetting prints was that the building had indeed

been open and uncontrolled all weekend so just matching to a list of employees was a waste of energy.

[Glenn Nall]

egads.

that's all. just egads. (and damn).

[Glenn Nall]

I know many of you have read "The Men on the 6th Floor" where these floorers are implicated in the TSBD scenario. What are some thoughts on that...? (It's a pretty audacious book, though not unbelievable at all. I'm sure there's a lot of accuracy to it. All of it...? hmmm...)