Creating the Oswald Legend : Part 6

[James DiEugenio]

14 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Greg and Steve, before you waste so much of our time and we get into Ruth and Michael's deeep WC testimony, can you riddle me this?

Why were The Paine's Files deep sixed?

The Paine Files - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum (ipbhost.com) 

I don't think Greg understood the question.

What Ron is asking about is the whole episode about the files on Cuban sympathizers that Buddy Walthers said he saw at the Paine household in portable file packages. Originally they were chockful of text and map materials. When the WC got done with them, they were virtually empty and Walthers had backtracked on his story.  Both John Armstrong and Larry Hancock had reported on this and Max Good has done some work on it also for his film.

[Larry Hancock]

I highly recommend Eric Tagg's self published book on Walthers, very hard to get these days....I got a copy long ago and talked with Tagg and then with Walther's long time partner and friend who was a bit guarded but with only good things to say about Walther's credibility.

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30358529064&cm_mmc=ggl-_-COM_Shopp_Rare-_-naa-_-naa&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3vudotCo7gIVl-bjBx2higF0EAQYASABEgID3vD_BwE

https://www.amazon.com/Brush-history-personal-journey-into/dp/B0006RU1OW

[Ron Bulman]

On 1/18/2021 at 10:39 PM, Greg Doudna said:

Run Bulman--you mean why were the Paines' personal property returned to them because it was not part of the search warrant for Oswald's things? I don't know, why don't you do the research and check that out. Why do police return people's property to them that was taken by mistake? Good question.

That's Run Forrest Run, Grog.  A surprising two key slip for someone who makes so many loong grammatically correct posts.  Random I suppose.

But I don't think you know what I'm talking about.  Six or seven of these, taken by the Dallas County Sheriff's Office from Ruth's house on 11/22/63, given to Fritz of the DPD.  Then contents reported, disappeared.

  

[Greg Doudna]

12 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

That's Run Forrest Run, Grog.  A surprising two key slip for someone who makes so many loong grammatically correct posts.  Random I suppose.

But I don't think you know what I'm talking about.  Six or seven of these, taken by the Dallas County Sheriff's Office from Ruth's house on 11/22/63, given to Fritz of the DPD.  Then contents reported, disappeared.

  

What evidence that contents disappeared from Ruth Paine's metal boxes like the one you show above? I read through the pages of the link you gave and while there is discussion of this claimed fact, I never saw a link or document that established that fact exists in the first place. Could you provide that? Are you claiming Dallas police, or the FBI or Warren Commission, never returned to Ruth contents of her boxes that were in them after they were through reviewing, i.e. destroyed or disappeared her property?

[Greg Doudna]

16 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I don't think Greg understood the question.

What Ron is asking about is the whole episode about the files on Cuban sympathizers that Buddy Walthers said he saw at the Paine household in portable file packages. Originally they were chockful of text and map materials. When the WC got done with them, they were virtually empty and Walthers had backtracked on his story.  Both John Armstrong and Larry Hancock had reported on this and Max Good has done some work on it also for his film.

Buddy Walthers said he saw notecards of Cuban sympathizers in metal boxes which Dallas police took, taken mistakenly since it turned out those metal boxes belonged to Ruth Paine. In other words they were wrongly taken. Ruth Paine has said numerous times what were in those metal boxes--college papers, folk dance organization records, and so on. You dismiss that as Ruth Paine lying. None of the other officers in the search of the Ruth Paine garage that day--Rose, Adamcik, Moore and so on--although they confirmed the metal boxes, none confirmed the detail about addresses of Cuban sympathizers. You dismiss all that and conclude that Ruth Paine was a spy operative and condemn her, based on Buddy Walthers' account. You assume the worst of Ruth Paine prior to the fact, then by confirmation bias uncritically believe the report of Walthers to be true since it agrees with what you are predisposed to believe. 

Has it not occurred to you how flimsy a basis this is to condemn Ruth Paine? The issue is not that the metal boxes belong to Ruth Paine--no dispute on that point--but whether there were "files on Cuban sympathizers" in those metal boxes of Ruth Paine. Has it not occurred to you that Buddy Walthers was simply wrong in that assumption? First question: what do addresses and files of "Cuban sympathizers" look like? Ruth Paine said she had folk dance organization records, names and so forth. If Walthers saw records of names and addresses, are they going to be labeled "Cuban sympathizers"? How did he know that? Was he ever asked? No. Did he ever say? No. Did he even stick to his story when under oath? No (as you note). Do any other of the police officers, or any other testimony of all the law enforcement officials who saw and reviewed the contents of Ruth Paine's metal boxes say anything about records of "Cuban sympathizers" among those contents? No. But no matter, you believe.

Buddy Walthers claimed he was present in the theatre at Oswald's arrest--says he entered the theatre with a shotgun, first going up into the balcony, speaking to a manager instructing to turn on the house lights, then coming downstairs and joining the officers in the scuffle with Oswald and having his own hand on the hands on Oswald's pistol. But according to his partner that day, Bill Courson, Walthers arrived to the Texas Theatre in his car just as officers were taking Oswald, already arrested, out the front door through the crowd (Sneed, No More Silence, 486). In all of the officers' accounts who were involved in the arrest of Oswald that I have seen, no one mentions Walthers there with the other officers and Oswald. Myers' book on the Tippit killing, which is pretty exhaustive, does not have Walthers present at the Oswald arrest. I may have found a further reference to Walthers out front, not inside, the theatre. From Myers, With Malice, p. 227, telling of the arrival of FBI agent Barrett to the Texas Theatre:

"'When we ran in,' Barrett recalled, 'this little guy was in front of me--he heard it over his CB or something else, and he had a twelve guage shotgun going in the damn theater. He was a short little guy, he was only about five foot two; the gun was as big as he was (...) And I saw him, and I could just see somebody turning loose a shotgun in there, and I said, 'Where are you going?' And he said, 'I'm going in and get that son-of-a-bitch.' And I said, 'Well, wait a minute, why don't you just stand here and don't let anybody come out unless I tell you.' I told him who I was, and he said, 'Oh that's great. I'll do that.' Well, we came out later and I never went back and told him he could cease and desist. As far as I know he may still be standing there.'"

In a photo at Myers, 240, of the crowd at the front of the theatre, Walthers is identified in that photo and looks short, like he could be 5'2" matching Barrett's description.

Al Maddox, who was also a partner with Walthers, says Walthers "at one time he did show me a bullet that he claimed he found in Dealey Plaza which he may have eventually given to his son" (Sneed, 515). Was this a bullet which was never turned in as evidence or a tall tale of Walthers to his friend? Hard to know for sure.

Again returning to Walthers' claim--alone among any of the other officers in the Ruth Paine garage search--of not only seeing addresses but identifying the names and addresses as being "files of Castro supporters". Never verified, never corroborated, never explained how Walthers concluded that, and how would names and addresses be recognizable as "Castro supporters" in the first place?

Therefore I think you are acting like a hanging judge, condemning Ruth Paine solely on the grounds of uncritical belief in Walthers' words. Not only is this extremely slim evidence to condemn someone which you do so influentially to your wide readership, it just is not credible, for this reason: if it were true, it would have been noticed and reported from others in the DPD who looked through all of Ruth Paine's materials in those boxes, which they did, and reported what was there, and it was not "addresses of Castro supporters". FBI agents also looked at the material and here is what they reported:

"It should further be noted that several metal cases of correspondence of Ruth Paine's were inadvertently taken by the Dallas Police Department on November 22, 1963, under the mistaken impression that they were correspondence of Lee Oswald's. This correspondence was examined by Specail Agents Ronald E. Brinkley, Ben S. Harrison, and Leland D. Stephens. This correspondence was examined again on December 5, 1963, by Special Agents James P. Hosty, Jr., and Warren C. De Brueys at the Dallas Police Property Room. This correspondence reflected that Mrs. Ruth Hyde Paine is apparently a sincere Quaker and believes in God. Mrs. Paine, in one letter, made a statement that we should help Latin America to prevent Latin America from becoming Communist controlled. This correspondence also showed that Ruth Paine was concerned with aiding persons less fortunate than herself." (https://www.maryferrell.org/archive/docs/145/145598/images/img_145598_4_300.png)

That is the real Ruth Paine. Not the sinister caricature you have in your head in part on the basis of uncritical belief in the really questionable words of Walthers. I think what happened is this: Walthers told of first finding "Fair Play for Cuba" literature in a barrel. We know those to be Oswald's left-over printing from New Orleans. Then Walthers next sees the metal boxes, which at that point he thinks are associated with the pro-Cuba literature. He sees correspondence, documents, files ... and concludes: those must be files associated with the "Fair Play for Cuba" literature of Oswald. Walthers does not realize the papers and materials in the metal boxes are not associated with the pro-Cuba literature which looked in immediate association. He did not realize the one (pro-Cuba literature) belonged to Oswald, whereas the other (the metal boxes with files and papers) belonged to Ruth Paine and were unrelated. Walthers simply was mistaken. Not any more complicated than that.

On the Mary Ferrell site I traced what became of those metal boxes and their contents. Warren Commission staff asked the FBI to seek to obtain correspondence between Ruth and Marina which they had learned was in those contents. That was the Warren Commission interest. FBI then asked the Dallas Police Department. However all of that was Ruth's property and never should have been taken by DPD in the first place since that was not in the search warrant nor was Ruth under criminal investigation nor had Ruth given permission for her property to be taken and kept. Ruth was then asked and agreed. She did not have to but she did. To have all of those materials turned over to the FBI to convey to WC for review. The DPD then formally released all of those things to Ruth Paine and then, apparently the same event at the same time, with Ruth's consent FBI then immediately took possession of everything, and the FBI then conveyed the materials to the Warren Commission. Ruth agreed to let the WC see everything, and asked that her property be returned to her when they were through reviewing, which was done. That is why the metal cases came back to Ruth, and are not in the National Archives. When one later turned up for sale on ebay, being sold by someone who had obtained it from Ruth, some people on this forum, maybe including you, spoke disparagingly of Ruth Paine over that, as if Ruth Paine had no right to her property, and that Ruth Paine was somehow to be condemned for the action of the Warren Commission/FBI in returning her property to her.  

This is all so unreasonable I can hardly believe it, and if you step back and think about this, perhaps you may come to see so too. This is how innocent people are railroaded. 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

Although this is slightly off topic, I would like to make a correction concerning Buddy Walthers, out of fairness to Walthers. The way Walthers' partner, Bill Courson, told it, Walthers never was in the Texas Theatre or part of Oswald's arrest inside the building--that Walthers just made that up in his report and testimony. In the Eric Tagg book, Brush With History, recommended by Larry, Roger Craig also said that Walthers never was inside the Texas Theatre. Craig would not have had personal knowledge, but endorsed Courson's story over Walthers'. I would just like to say that after studying this some more I think it more likely Courson and Roger Craig were wrong, and that Walthers was not making up his story. Whether every detail of Walthers' account is correct may be another matter since details vary in all of the officers' and sheriff's deputy reports, but I doubt Walthers simply fabricated it out of whole cloth. 

Here is why, in this case of basically he says vs. he says: Courson has extreme dislike for Walthers, a dislike that Courson and Craig say was shared by the rest of the sheriff's deputies. Courson indicates Walthers was a favorite of Sheriff Decker, and Courson's complaint was that Walthers was something of a snitch on other deputies to Decker concerning officer wrongdoing. Courson says Walthers "would have made a better thief than a cop" (Sneed, 497). "Buddy was disliked as a police officer" (Sneed, 498). The other officers were "afraid of him because of his ties to Decker" (p. 498). According to Al Maddox, Walthers received "special favors from the sheriff which aggravated the tar out of many of the other officers" (p. 514). Courson tells his version of a fight he got into with Walthers in the sheriff's office one night, in which Courson says "we were getting on each other's nerves. First one thing led to another, and Buddy made like he was going to swing at me, and I popped him on the ear, or somewhere near there. I don't remember exactly where I hit him, but he was hurt pretty badly. Buddy tried to pull his gun on me, then I became frantic and had my hand on his hand which held the gun while I was trying to beat him down with the other" (p. 499).

I do not know what size Courson is but Walthers was a short guy and, not having Walthers' side of the story, one could easily imagine Walthers reaching for his gun in self-defense after Courson admittedly started the physical assault. Decker sided against Courson in that altercation and Courson lost his job over that. So there is some motive in the background for badmouthing Walthers, or claiming Walthers never went in the Texas Theatre like he said he did. 

Could the hard feelings of other deputies toward Walthers over reporting of officer corruption or wrongdoing have proven lethal to Walthers? Walthers was killed in 1970 in a shootout in a motel room, supposedly by a criminal, Walter Cherry, sought for arrest, but Courson seems to suggest all may not have been as it seemed there, seeming to hint that maybe it was a bullet from fellow deputy Al Maddox that killed Walthers that day. Courson:

'It's been said that Al [Maddox] shot Buddy accidentally. In the frantic struggle, falling on his back and shooting around, Al claimed that Cherry shot him through the bottom of the foot. The man who did the ballistics and had Al's shoes said, 'No, the bullet went in the top of the foot and came out the sole. Al shot himself in the foot!'" (p. 500)

Back to the Texas Theatre, the FBI agent Barrett's story of encountering the short man with the shotgun whom I believe was Walthers, and having him stand guard outside the Theatre as Barrett himself went in, actually verifies, against Courson, that Walthers was present at the Theatre prior to the arrest rather than driving up just as Oswald was being taken out the front door in handcuffs as Courson said--because Barrett was part of the scuffle and arrest, that is well attested, and therefore Walthers was at the front of the Theatre before that happened. The only thing that needs to be assumed is that Walthers said "OK" (according to Barrett) that he stay outside, then Walthers entered anyway. As for lack of witness statement corroboration that Walthers was inside the Theatre, that does not seem especially strong given that the DPD officer reports focus on listing and movements of fellow DPD officers present, and by all accounts the Texas Theatre was simply crawling with large numbers of officers both uniformed and plain-clothed. Therefore it seems to me more likely Walthers' account of going inside the Theatre was not invented out of whole cloth (not normal behavior for an officer writing reports of a crime scene witnessed by other officers), and the allegations of his ex-partner Courson that he did and the readiness of others such as Roger Craig to believe that may be attributed to the known general dislike of Walthers by other officers, i.e. motive behind Courson's badmouthing of Walthers.