Who was Jack Ruby?

[Sandy Larsen]

I don't understand. Why would anybody looking at this photo think, "Hey, that's jack Ruby!" Do people think he looks like Jack Ruby?

His eyebrows (or seeming lack thereof) are the same. Anything else?

Or has someone with knowledge of the photo said that the guy is Ruby?

[Chuck Schwartz]

Chris, Jack Ruby was crazy like a fox. What he was telling Earl Warren was that I know you do not know Gordon McLendon, but you should. After Jack Ruby mentions Gordon McLendon, Dallas Police Officer Bill Decker, Rep. Gerald Ford and Warren Commissioner Arlen Spector enter the room and all talk about McLendon ceases. When Earl Warren left that jail cell without giving Ruby an out of Dallas card, he knew his days on this planet were numbered.

[Chris Newton]

It all screamed " SET UP " ... and bi-polar wannabe or favor owing or threatened and coerced Jack Ruby was the fall guy picked to get rid of the other more dangerous fall guy.

Joe,

I think most reasonable people on "the outside looking in" suspected immediately that there had been a "hit" and that Oswald had been silenced. In 1964, the WC and their minions frantically pulled out every stop to prove any Ruby anterior motive false. But immediately after the assassination, on the ground in Dallas, Joe Campisi made a show of visiting Ruby and I think this visit was meant to be a signal and it scared a lot of people.

[Paul Brancato]

Sandy - I am bothered by the same question - is that Jack Ruby? The photo always appears with the caption from 1947, but the photo is supposed to be from 1953. What is the connection between the photo and the caption accompanying it?

[Chris Newton]

Paul,

For some, it's a validation of Ruby as a CIA asset/agent if he can be connected to NIxon. The document about "Jack Rubenstein' in 1947 is connected to the Nixon/Bush Photo taken in 1953 by 6 years, 2000 miles and probability factor of 150 Million to 1 (population) but never mind the details.

PS I can see confusion being sown by those that constantly post those two items together. The document is NOT a "caption" to the photo.

Edited October 9, 2016 by Chris Newton

[Jim Hargrove]

The photo and the HUAC document do NOT always appear together. I've posted both independently before on this forum. I also put them side-by-side on my public Dropbox folder and linked them here, which Sandy copied. Here they are separately from my website; first the picture:

And then the HUAC affidavit:

John Armstrong and I usually post them together because the guy in the picture looks like Jack Ruby (standing next to Richard Nixon and Prescott Bush), and the affidavit says "Jack Rubenstein of Chicago ... is performing information functions for the staff of Cong. Richard M. Nixon of California."

We also make note of the fact that Nixon aide and confidant Roger Stone said that in 1982 Nixon told him: "The damn thing is, I knew this Jack Ruby. Murray (Chotiner) brought him to me in 1947, said he was one of 'Johnson's boys' and that LBJ wanted us to hire him as an informant to the Committee. We did.”

Now, you all can say the photo doesn't look like Ruby (a number of people here think it is Ruby, including me), and you can say the document is a forgery, and you can call Roger Stone a xxxx, but will no one consider the other possibility: that Jack Ruby DID work for Nixon?

[Paul Brancato]

Jim - I don't dismiss any of this. I'm just trying to understand the details in so far as they are known. How do we know the photo is from 1953?

[Chris Newton]

How do we know the photo is from 1953?

It's a press photo of an event staged by Prescott Bush to give hats to several incoming rookie GOP Senators and VP Nixon.

Edited October 9, 2016 by Chris Newton

[Chris Newton]

Note that the caption says it took place "this week", so presumably sometime between May 3rd and May 8th, 1953.

Edited October 9, 2016 by Chris Newton

[Paul Brancato]

See next post

Edited October 9, 2016 by Paul Brancato

[Paul Brancato]

I see - he was vp. Thanks Chris.

Was Prescott Bush instrumental in supporting Nixon's entry into elected politics and quick ascent to the vice-presidency? That's the context that makes this either historically important or just incidental.

[Chris Newton]

Weird - didn't Nixon win the senate in 1950?

I think the beginning of the 83rd Congress (incoming in '53) marked a transition to GOP control.

[Paul Brancato]

Chris, Jim, anyone else reading this,

I know what is bothering me about the picture and the 'caption', which as Chris pointed out is not a caption. By continually showing the photo from 1953 of Prescott Bush and Richard Nixon with someone standing in between and in the background that might or might not be Jack Ruby, the question on everyone's mind is naturally 'is that a younger Jack Ruby'? We could compare notes on that forever. But that photo was taken in 1953, and we have an affidavit (and some hearsay to back it up) that says Jack Ruby worked for Richard Nixon 6 years earlier in 1947. So the more pertinent questions about the relationship between Nixon and Prescott Bush, and about the real Jack Ruby working for Nixon in 1947, take a back seat to whether this 1953 photo actually caught Jack Ruby. I think we would be better off deciding that the photo is of someone else, and then move on to examining the affidavit, and to Nixon's early career.

[Paul Brancato]

I recall that there was another Jack Rubenstein who some think is the one that worked for Nixon. I also recall he was not from Chicago and therefore is not the man referred to in the affidavit.

This reminds me of the other 'George Bush of the CIA'. That 'other' George Bush gave a sworn deposition saying he was most certainly not the George Bush that Hoover's 1963 memo was addressed to.

In both cases, seeds of doubt are sown.

Jack Ruby was born in 1911, making him 36 in 1947.

George H W Bush was born in 1924, and was 39 years old in 1963.

[Jim Hargrove]

The first time I saw the picture of the three men in the hats was when John Armstrong emailed it to me some time ago when he was working on his Ruby write-up for my website. I think it came without comment from John, but I took one look at it and thought, “Wow, that’s Ruby standing next to Nixon.” (I couldn’t identify Prescott Bush yet). Not only did the face look right, though perhaps a bit younger, but the height looked right too, at least in comparison to Nixon.

We’re all, of course, free to make our own conclusions.

As for the affidavit, here’s the clearest image I have of the full sheet, apparently including the cover sheet at top:

I’ve referenced this before, but here’s what Jefferson Morley wrote about the 1947 affidavit at

http://jfkfacts.org/fact-check-did-richard-nixon-know-jack-ruby/ :

Long ago, when Hoch was more conspiratorially minded than he is now, he wrote that he thought the letter was a forgery.

In 2006 Gary Buell posted a detailed commentary on questions about the document’s authenticity. One key point of dispute is the letterhead on the document that includes a five-digit Zip Code — a system not adopted until 1963.

“Even if it’s real,” Davison says, “the Jack Rubenstein mentioned is almost certainly a different person, a prominent member of the Young Communist League in the 1920s whose death was reported in the New York Times, July 8, 1989, p. 29. (“Jack Rubenstein, 81, Labor-union Official.”) This Jack Rubenstein helped organize a textile workers’ strike in New Jersey in 1926, when “our” Jack Ruby would’ve been 15. He later broke with the CP — which would explain why the Nixon letter says he was “a potential witness” for the HUAC.”

Davison says the 1947 memo refers to the communist Jack Rubenstein, not the Jack Rubenstein who changed his name to Jack Ruby. But the disputed memo refers to “Jack Rubenstein of Chicago,” which is where the Dallas Jack Ruby hailed from. The communist Jack Ruby was from New Jersey and there is no mention of Chicago in his obituary.

Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor museum endorses Davison’s view — that the document refers to the communist Jack Rubenstein, not the Jack Rubenstein changed his name to Jack Ruby. Mack says a Chicago newspaper reporter debunked the story that Nixon knew Ruby a long time ago. I’ve asked him to provide a copy of the debunking, and he says he will try to track it down.

Meanwhile, I asked Stone for comment.

:The document is not forged,” he said by email. “The zip code is on a cover-sheet that was attached in 1978 and copied atop the original document. I reviewed records from the Clerk of the House to determine this.”

Stone also said he has “a direct quote from Nixon who acknowledged in 1989 that his aide Murray Chotiner brought Ruby to him in 1947 and told him LBJ wanted Ruby hired as an informant for the House UnAmerican Activities Committee,” otherwise known as HUAC. At this point I think the preponderance of evidence favors Stone. That is to say, I think the document is a genuine HUAC record from 1947. Per Occam’s Razor, I think that the explanation that the more modern letterhead with the zip code was copied along atop the original document is a simpler, less conspiratorial explanation than forgery.

I also think that the note refers to Jack Rubenstein from Chicago who would change his last name to Ruby and who would change history by killing Lee Oswald. Unless Davison and Mack have some evidence that the communist Jack Rubenstein lived in Chicago in 1947, I doubt he is the person referenced in the note.

A more definitive pronouncement would be premature. The possibility of forgery cannot be ruled out until the original document can be located and examined. The newspaper article cited by Mack may also have important information.

It should be noted that Gary Mack died recently.

It would be nice to locate the original, or closest to an original, copy of this in the HUAC collection at the House of Representatives. In doing anything like this, however, I’m always cognizant of one of the first things John Armstrong told me during one of our many phone talks. It went something like this: “Whenever you research anything about Oswald, especially if its with a government agency, you can’t let them know it’s about ‘Lee Harvey Oswald,’ or everything will get weird.” Sometimes it’s easy to do that, and sometimes it seems downright impossible.