Cunningham Exhibit 1

[Steve Thomas]

7 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Most of the Texas Employment Commission records about Lee Harvey Oswald disappeared while in FBI custody.  A few were published in the Warren Volumes as Cunningham Exhibits,

 

 

 

Jim,

 

One person who is missing from that list (unless her name is included on a following page you didn't include in your post) is Louise Latham.

 

I believe in the possibility of coincidences as much as the next guy, but there are some coincidences that are kind of eerie. In this area, there are several that I can think of:

 

Ofstein and Oswald

 

• Oswald and Ofstein were the same age. They were both born in 1939

• They both worked at Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall

• They were both referred to JCS by Louise Latham at the Texas Employment Commission

• Ofstein went through the Monterey School of Language and the possibility exists that Oswald may have as well.

• Ofstein was in the Army Security Agency, Oswald may have had something to do with the U2 base in Japan

 

Mr. OFSTEIN. I was laid off by Sinclair Refining Co. and I registered with the Texas Employment Commission.
Mr. JENNER. Did anybody in particular handle that over there at the Commission?
Mr. OFSTEIN. I don't recall who the person was at the time.
Mr. JENNER. A lady or a gentleman?
Mr. OFSTEIN. I'm fairly certain it was a young lady and they sent me to Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.
Mr. JENNER. Does the name Latham--Louise Latham trigger any recollection?
Mr. OFSTEIN. The name is familiar--whether she was there or not--I don't know.
Mr. JENNER. Is that name familiar in connection with the Texas Employment Commission?
Mr. OFSTEIN. Yes, sir.

 

Out of the blue, Jenner asks Ofstein if he knew Lousie Latham.

 

John Graef testified before the Warren Commission on March 30, 1964.

 

Mr. GRAEF. That's correct--I'll have to recall as best I can.
“In about October 1962, as director of our photographic department we found ourselves in need of another man, so at this time I called the Texas Employment Commission and spoke to them about sending me someone having as close as possible the abilities that might work out in our photographic department.”

”Mr. JENNER. Would you tell us what you told her in that connection, as best as you can reconstruct it, giving us her name--it was a her?
Mr. GRAEF. “I believe I remember--yes--Louise Latham”. “They have a larger pool to draw from, so I called--in the course of my dealing with them they have various departments and in the course of dealing with them, I became familiar with one person.” “... So, I called this person repeatedly--after the first call or two--this has gone on now over several years and she knew the type person I was looking for and the type of experience that I was looking for, so I called her, and her name was Louise Latham.”

 

 

Perhaps someone can explain to me why Louise Latham would send someone who has a background in sheet metal work qualifies as a photographer.

 

Steve Thomas

[Jim Hargrove]

Louise Latham apparently was not included on Kittrell’s list.  The next (and last) page of Fonzi’s memo lists just two additional names from her handwritten list: Harlan Brown and Pauline Hendrickson. Latham filled out some of the surviving paperwork on Oswald, and that may be how Jenner came up with her name when questioning Ofstein, though I’m just guessing.

Your info on Dennis Ofstein is interesting, and I hadn’t paid any attention to him until now.  John wrote that Oswald “brought Russian newspapers to work, read them during his breaks, and spoke Russian with coworker Dennis Ofstein. Apparently, no one at JCS was concerned.” (H&L p. 416)

4 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Perhaps someone can explain to me why Louise Latham would send someone who has a background in sheet metal work qualifies as a photographer.

It would have been helpful, perhaps, if the WC had bothered to interview Latham, or Kittrell, or ANYONE from the TEC who actually remembered Oswald, but they didn’t.  Kittrell’s recollection of meeting Oswald and an Oswald impostor may not have been the only TEC-related problem for the FBI and the WC. A lot of TEC paperwork on Oswald disappeared after the FBI confiscated it.  All this happened in October ‘63, just a few weeks before the assassination of JFK.

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Your info on Dennis Ofstein is interesting, and I hadn’t paid any attention to him until now. 

Jim,

 

You might be interested in looking at these two past threads in the Education Forum:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23289-cia-and-walnut/?tab=comments#comment-339791

 

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23111-ofstein-and-oswald/

 

I think there is a road that flows through the Military Intelligence - TEC - Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.

The 507th ASA Group is interesting.

 

Steve Thomas

Edited April 2, 2018 by Steve Thomas
misspelled word

[Jim Hargrove]

Steve,

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it could be proved that there were U.S. military connections to the Kennedy hit, even outside of specific military intelligence channels. But I don’t know any way to approach this case other than to examine the evidence, as compromised and incomplete as it may be, and the evidence for military entanglements, at least in my opinion, pales in comparison to that for CIA involvement, despite work on the military by a number of competent people on this forum.

A thread about the Texas Employment Commission and the WC’s Cunningham Exhibits probably isn’t the place to discuss this in depth, but I’d just like to point out that, without getting into ANY specifics, the virtual war between the CIA and the Kennedy Administration weeks before the President’s assassination had even spilled over into several American daily newspapers.  Until the Trump era, that was simply unheard of, was it not?

Edit: OK, I can’t resist adding just one specific.  J.J. Angleton’s assistant Ann Egerter virtually admitted  to the HSCA that “Oswald” worked for the Agency.  The questioning was indirect and undoubtedly done to keep it out of the news, but the evidence is right there on the now-public record.

Edited April 3, 2018 by Jim Hargrove

[Paz Marverde]

On 1/4/2018 at 11:15 PM, Michael Clark said:

If anyone else is tired of this kind of stuff from Tommy, please speak-up to the mods or admin. I don't want to get myself in trouble with them and I am sure there are others who have had enough of it as well.

Here I am

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Steve,

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it could be proved that there were U.S. military connections to the Kennedy hit, even outside of specific military intelligence channels. But I don’t know any way to approach this case other than to examine the evidence, as compromised and incomplete as it may be, and the evidence for military entanglements, at least in my opinion, pales in comparison to that for CIA involvement, despite work on the military by a number of competent people on this forum.

 

Jim,

 

It is my opinion that the reason that people have focused on the CIA and the FBI over the years is because there is a paper trail to follow.

I've found two difficulties in attempting to follow military intelligence links:

# 1 is that the Army and other branches of the armed forces underwent a purge of their files in the 1970's. Colonel Robert Jones alluded to this in his testimony before the HSCA.

You can read up on Christopher Pyle's January, 1970 article in the Washington Monthly here:

http://www.cmhpf.org/Random Files/senator sam ervin.htm

"Instead of answering Ervin's concerns, the Army chose to cover up.  Robert E. Jordan III, Army General Counsel, froze all responses to congressional inquiries.  Agents received orders to gather only "essential elements of information," and not to discuss the CONUS operation with any civilian.[14]  Behind the scenes intelligence officers at Fort Holabird removed from the files the embarrassing items to which Pyle had referred in his article.[15]  Officers also telephoned agents across the country telling them to hide, but not destroy, any files until the controversy blew over.[16]  To organize its response to the crisis, the Pentagon formed a "task group" which met in the "Domestic War Room" deep in the basement of the Pentagon.  As one member of that group later recalled: "[We] proceeded from the start to deny any and all charges, factual or otherwise."[17]  "

"At some bases they destroyed the data but kept the "input" (the computer keypunch cards), or copied the information onto microfilm before destroying it.[20]  As one clerk later recalled, "The order didn't say to destroy the information, just destroy the Compendium [a computer data bank]."[21]  Typical were the actions of the officers in the 116th Military Intelligence Group at Fort McNair in Washington D.C. who classified all of their files and threatened anyone disclosing anything about their domestic surveillance would be court‑martial or prosecuted in civilian court for violation of national security."[22] "

 

# 2 is the speed and frequency with which military units changed their names, locations, and chains of command. You can be following a particular unit, only to find they don't exist anymore. Their unit was "deactivated", only to be "reactivated" later under a different name or unit number. Their records might be located here, or maybe over there halfway across the country. It's very frustrating.

 

I believe that the Army's domestic intelligence operations dwarfed that of the CIA's, and the FBI's. Read up on Christopher Pyle and Sam Ervin's Hearings on Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights.

 

Here's a couple of examples:

 

https://archive.org/stream/militarysurveill00unit#page/176/mode/2up

pp 177+  Statement by Christopher Pyle submitted for the record

Military surveillance. Hearings .., Ninety-third Congress, second session, on S. 2318., April 9 and 10, 1974

by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights

Chaired by Sam Ervin

 

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal71-1254557

 

February 24^th

 

The genesis of the Army spying stories was a January 1970 story in the Washington Monthly magazine by Pyle. He said the Army got most of its information from state and local police forces and from the FBI. But it also infiltrated groups and meetings and posed as newspaper people to gain information, he said.

Intelligence reports were distributed over a nationwide wire service to all U.S. troop commanders, beginning in 1967, according to the ex-GI. He said the Army also published a “blacklist” of profiles on persons intelligence officials thought might “cause trouble for the Army.”

He predicted the Army would in the future link its teletype to a computerized data bank, to be installed at the Army Intelligence Command, Fort Holabird, and that federal agencies such as the FBI, Secret Service, State Department Passport Office, Civil Service Commission and others would have access to it.

Six months later, in a followup article in the same magazine, Pyle said that despite some reforms by the Army, the situation was pretty much as before. The Army still was infiltrating civilian groups and keeping dossiers on individuals, he maintained.

 

 

Christopher H. Pyle, attorney and former Army intelligence captain, whose magazine articles disclosed the extent of Army intelligence-collection on civilians:

The United States today has the “intelligence apparatus of a police state.” The apparatus is a loose coalition of federal, state, local and military agencies collecting and exchanging information on individuals.

The Secretary of the Army saw very little of the intelligence data collected by the Army. The Under Secretary saw much of it, but intelligence reports were “sanitized” by the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence before they got to the Under Secretary, so they did not appear to have been gathered by the Army.

Efforts initiated by the Secretary of the Army and the Army's general counsel to halt the spying have not been successful. The order to stop intelligence-gathering on civilians was ignored or uncommunicated to lower levels. “I've heard of efforts to hide these files” or insert them into other legitimate files. No Pentagon inspection teams ever reached the region level to investigate activities there.

Army intelligence officials never told local units the limits of their authority. Volume, production and speed were the collection criteria, not content. To end the program, intelligence officers on lower levels must be controlled.

 

Even though Pyle's emphasis was on military intelligence gathering in the late 1960's, I personally believe it was around for a lot longer than that.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

 

[Jim Hargrove]

Steve--You make a compelling case that IF members of military intelligence were directly involved in planning and executing the Kennedy assassination, any incriminating paperwork that might have existed certainly could have been destroyed.  But I did not see any direct evidence at all of military involvement in the assassination of JFK.  Did I miss something?

Even assuming all the physical evidence was destroyed, where are the voices of military personnel, comparable to CIA-connected  people like James Wilcott, Antonio Veciana, Donald Norton, Richard Case Nagell, Ann Egerter and others I'm undoubtedly forgetting at the moment whose testimony or other communications directly implicate the Agency in one way or another? Can you cite similar accusations from military people? 

Edited April 3, 2018 by Jim Hargrove

[Steve Thomas]

7 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Steve--You make a compelling case that IF members of military intelligence were directly involved in planning and executing the Kennedy assassination, any incriminating paperwork that might have existed certainly could have been destroyed.  But I did not see any direct evidence at all of military involvement in the assassination of JFK.  Did I miss something?

Can you cite similar accusations from military people? 

Jim,

 

Nope, you didn't, and nope, I can't; unless you want to drag up the Kirknewton and Eugene Dinkin stuff again, which I really don't. *smile*

 

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

11 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Steve--You make a compelling case that IF members of military intelligence were directly involved in planning and executing the Kennedy assassination, any incriminating paperwork that might have existed certainly could have been destroyed.

Jim,

 

The only thing I would point out, is that not only records could have been destroyed, Pyle and Robert Jones tell us they were destroyed.

Couple that with how little the military provided to the ARRB. For all intents and purposes, they just blew the ARRB off.

As to why no one from the military stepped forward with any first hand knowledge, I just don't know.

 

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

WC testimony of Max Clark

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/clark_m.htm

 

Mr. LIEBELER - I want to ask some detailed questions about that but before we get into that, so I don't forget, I want to go back. You said Oswald had told you he had gotten your name from somebody in the Texas Employment Commission -
Mr. CLARK - Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER - is that your recollection or in fact, did Oswald tell you that be had gotten your name from a man by the name of Peter Gregory at the Fort Worth Public Library?
Mr. CLARK - Of course, I had no communication with Oswald at this time. When he talked with my wife over the phone he indicated to her that he had gotten my wife's name and Peter Gregory's name from the employment commission. Now, I could be mistaken but apparently Mr. Gregory and my wife's name were given to him as people that spoke Russian. Of course, we know Mr. Gregory and then after, immediately after this came about, why, my wife - we talked with the Gregorys. Which came first, I do not know. I don't know who saw Oswald first. I believe Mr. Gregory saw them before we did.
Mr. LIEBELER - Do you know who it was in the Texas Employment Commission that gave Oswald the name of Peter Gregory and your wife?
Mr. CLARK - No. I don't but I can understand fairly well, why. My aunt had been employed by the Texas Employment Commission for 20, 25 years up until her death a few years ago and then my sister still works there. I know it wasn't my aunt because she was dead at the time but my sister, and I have talked with her since, and it was not her and she said it could have been any one of several. I was under the impression she said my wife said that he had said someone by the name of Smith at the employment commission but we don't know anybody by the name of Smith.
Mr. LIEBELER - This is the Texas Employment Commission office in Fort Worth, is that correct?
Mr. CLARK - Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER - is there just one office of the Texas Employment Commission in Fort Worth? Mr. CLARK - There may be some branches but I don't think so. I think this came out of the main office. Whether he called us or he called the Gregorys first, I don't know.

According to Clark, Oswald called Clark via the TEC.

 

WC testimony of George Bouhe:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/bouhe.htm

Mr. LIEBELER - Did Mr. Gregory tell you how he came to meet Lee Oswald?
Mr. BOUHE - Of course.
Mr. LIEBELER - Has he told you, in effect, that Oswald came to him at the Fort Worth Public Library and asked him for a letter attesting to his competence as a translator or interpreter of the Russian language?
Mr. BOUHE - Mr. Gregory did tell me, and maybe I am not a hundred percent accurate, that he met him at the Fort Worth Public Library where, if my information is correct, Mr. Gregory teaches, I think, a free class of the Russian language.

 

Steve Thomas

[Jim Hargrove]

Yeah, there appears to have been a connection between TEC employees and Oswald’s introduction to Peter Gregory.  Another TEC employee who may have been involved in steering Oswald toward Gregory was Mrs. Annie Laurie Smith. But there is, naturally, a complication even to this relatively simple story....

In the fall semester of the 1954-55 school year, both Oswald and Peter Gregory’s son, Paul Gregory, attended Stripling School in Fort Worth.  The fact that LHO attended Stripling School for a time was common knowledge among area residents both in 1963 and today, but the Stripling attendance is totally denied by WC loyalists because records published by the WC indicate that LHO attended Beauregard junior high school in New Orleans at the same time.  Nevertheless, there is a tremendous amount of evidence that LHO attended Stripling.  Peter Gregory’s home was just a few blocks from the school, on Dorothy Lane.

Evidence from 1962 indicates that LHO was closer to Paul Gregory than to Paul’s father, and this may well trace all the way back to 1954 at Stripling.  

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Yeah, there appears to have been a connection between TEC employees and Oswald’s introduction to Peter Gregory.  Another TEC employee who may have been involved in steering Oswald toward Gregory was Mrs. Annie Laurie Smith. But there is, naturally, a complication even to this relatively simple story....

In the fall semester of the 1954-55 school year, both Oswald and Peter Gregory’s son, Paul Gregory, attended Stripling School in Fort Worth.  The fact that LHO attended Stripling School for a time was common knowledge among area residents both in 1963 and today, but the Stripling attendance is totally denied by WC loyalists because records published by the WC indicate that LHO attended Beauregard junior high school in New Orleans at the same time.  Nevertheless, there is a tremendous amount of evidence that LHO attended Stripling.  Peter Gregory’s home was just a few blocks from the school, on Dorothy Lane.

Evidence from 1962 indicates that LHO was closer to Paul Gregory than to Paul’s father, and this may well trace all the way back to 1954 at Stripling.  

Jim,

 

Thank you. That's interesting.

 

We're told that Oswald "became acquainted" with the White Russian Community. It's more specific than that. He established contact with White Russians involved in the petroleum engineering community, and even more specifically with Russian petroleum engineering interests.

WC testimony of Peter Paul Gregory:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/gregoryp.htm

Mr. LIEBELER - You are presently self-employed in Fort Worth, is that correct?
Mr. GREGORY - I am presently chairman of the Yates Pool Engineering Committee which is a group of engineers supervising activities in the Yates oilfield in Pecos County, Tex., and I am also a consulting petroleum engineer.

 

WC testimony of George Bouhe:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/bouhe.htm

 

Mr. BOUHE - For 9 1/2 years I was employed as a personal accountant of a very prominent Dallas geologist, and probably capitalist if you want to say it, Lewis W, MacNaughton, senior chairman of the board of the well-known geological and engineering firm of DeGolyer & MacNaughton, but I was MacNaughton's personal employee.

Take a look at who DeGolyer was.

 

Bouhe, Gregory, DeMohrenschildt, Jack Crichton, Jake Hamon... the list goes on.

 

I'm seeing this nexus of military intelligence, the TEC, Russian petroleum interests, and when you couple that with the question I asked in the Forum about whether Oswald was promised a job when he came back from Russia, and to learn that the early records of his employment with Leslie Welding through the TEC had been destroyed, it becomes pretty suspicious.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim Hargrove]

Steve,

The petroleum connections are interesting, though I'm not sure where they lead. I'm not sure either how military intel fits into the White Russians Oswald was hanging with in Dallas, though we surely can't rule it out.

What seems much more obvious with a number of these ex-Russkies was their apparent CIA affiliations.  DeMohrenschildt and his so-called South American walking trip, his close association with Operation Zapata, his friendship with CIA's J. Walton Moore and attorney Max Clark, who also just happened to be Peter Paul Gregory's attorney.  DeMohrenschildt couldn't seem to remember whether it was Moore or Clark who told him "Oswald was OK," or words to that effect, despite our boy's sterling commie pedigree. How were they supposed to know he was OK? 

Then there's Declan and Katya Ford, who brought the Oswalds and so many of the Dallas White Russians together at a post Christmas party at their home in 1962.  Just a coincidence that, according to the HSCA, Declan Ford's brother was the subject of an applicant investigation for the CIA in 1947. Small world down there among the White Russians in Dallas.  And to my mind, at least, the obvious connections all point to a certain Agency.

This post was a little rushed.  Sorry....

[Steve Thomas]

13 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Steve,The petroleum connections are interesting, though I'm not sure where they lead. I'm not sure either how military intel fits into the White Russians Oswald was hanging with in Dallas, though we surely can't rule it out. And to my mind, at least, the obvious connections all point to a certain Agency.

Jim,

 

Petroleum connections equal financing. Who paid, and who benefitted? Follow the money.

I think the people who had the most to gain were the people who were trying to control the natural resources of undeveloped countries. (land, oil, uranium, heavy metals, etc.)

Military intel?  Do you think Oswald's insertion into Russia was CIA, or ONI? Also, Colonels in the U.S. Army Reserves seem to crop up in almost every aspect of this case.

Obvious connections? Rather than a straight line, the JFK makes me think of more like a spiderweb of interconnecting threads and overlapping interests.

 

Steve Thomas

[Robert Harper]

1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said:

Rather than a straight line, the JFK makes me think of more like a spiderweb of interconnecting threads and overlapping interests

I feel the same after decades of reading about the case. You may have heard of the artist Mark Lombardi. He started in the Dallas area in the 1980's and drew beautiful interlocking circles of individuals connected with the Savings and Loan scandal. He found many intraconnections with George Bush. Post 9/1,1 there were reports (PR) that FBI agents viewed his work then hanging at the Whitney Museum in New York City. Shortly after having his first burst of fame in a 30 years career, he was found hanging in a SoHo loft. I thought of the word suicided.

His work is hard to find. A 2015 book by Patricia Goldstone is a very good read I think.