Exposing the FPCC, Part One

[James DiEugenio]

I truly think this is one of the most important articles K and K has ever posted.  How it stayed hidden for so long is kind of amazing.

Oswald was not assaulting the FPCC.  They were lying in wait for him.  It was like a Venus flytrap operation. From every direction.  It began with Stuckey way before and ended with Kent and his line, "Oswald was a useful idiot."  As you will see, he was.  This superb article could not have been written without the ARRB and Malcolm Blunt.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/exposing-the-fpcc-part-1

[James DiEugenio]

Here is Part 2, just as good.  Not to toot my own horn, but where do you find work like this except at K and K?

Malcolm Blunt is simply invaluable.  And Paul is building a backlog of first class literature.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/exposing-the-fpcc-part-2

Edited August 12, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

Of course I've not had time to read these yet but if they are based on the work of Malcom Blunt, Everything I've read from him is, invaluable.  I'd like to thank Bart Kamp for introducing me to his work.

[Pete Mellor]

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Here is Part 2, just as good.  Not to toot my own horn, but where do you find work like this except at K and K?

Malcolm Blunt is simply invaluable.  And Paul is building a backlog of first class literature.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/exposing-the-fpcc-part-2

Brilliant articles Part 1 & 2.  Your horn should be tooting!  I'm a little confused with the Veciana/Phillips/Oswald meet in Dallas that Paul cites, which John Newman seems to debunk.

I'm not too sure of Malcolm Blunt's plans regarding future research, as his file collection has been passed over to Bart and now DPUK are selling off his book and pamphlet collections.  I have already spent £s acquiring many items.  A full list of remaining collection has been put on DPUK's FB page.  

[James DiEugenio]

I did not know that about Malcolm.  The guy is still sending me stuff.  So I really hope he is not retiring.

Paul could not have written that wonderful article without him.  

By 1962, the FPCC was simply a set up.  I love the way Howard Hunt says, the DRE that was Dave Phillips's boys!  And Phillips also was in on the destabilizing of the FPCC.

In other words he was in on both ends of the charade. Plus, he had that meeting in Banister's office in 1961 or 62.

Poor Oswald.  The useful idiot. 

[Greg Doudna]

A small detail in the two articles calls for correction: in Part 1, p. 7 of printout, an anticipatory promise is made, "as we will see later Ruth Paine quite possibly was a provider of FPCC intelligence".

Looking for that, I found Part 2, a section titled "Ruth Paine (2 deliveries)". The basis for the suggestion that Ruth Paine was a provider of FPCC intelligence is a photo identified as "strange FBI notes that are at NARA", two photos of handwritten notes on pages of notebooks. The first, with a date of Dec. 2, 1963 on it, appears to be notes of Ruth Paine's explanation of the note in what the notes calls a "Russian cook book" that Ruth conveyed via Irving police to Marina. The second, in differently appearing paper and larger handwriting which also appears to be different, has notes with "F.P.C.C." and two or three names associated with "3114 Harlendale" and "Do you know these people are FPCC?"

Mr. Bleau (author) comments of these two handwritten notes:

"These have, to my knowledge, never been fully analyzed, so I can only give a personal impression: Ruth seems to have asked Barger to send a Russian cookbook and toyrs to Marina. In the same breath, there are notes identifying two, if not three, FPCC members in Dallas including two Dalmans who, on Harlandale Street, are a stone's throw away from an anti-Castro Cuban exile meeting place on that street where Oswald was said to have entered.

"We have long suspected that the Paines kept files on Communist sympathizers. Was this some of the fruit of their labor? Did Oswald help supply the names through his short-term Dallas activities?"

It is not correct that the second of those notes, the one dealing with FPCC, has "never been fully analyzed". That photo of those notes has been discussed as the Buddy Walthers report of a tip concerning the house on Harlendale, which Walthers reported to his superiors in the Sheriff's office and the Secret Service the next day after the assassination, Nov 23 (https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0276b.htm). This earlier Education Forum discussion from April 2020 discusses those notes as the Buddy Walthers report: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26469-oswald-the-cubans-and-the-house-on-harlandale/. 

In the second post on that thread, David Josephs shows the same photo of the notes with this comment:

"A point of interest has resurfaced again of late; that being a Nov. 23, 1963, report made by Dallas County Sheriff's Department Deputy E.R. "Buddy" Walthers. In his report to Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker, Walthers said that 'at a house at 3128 Harlendale, some Cubans had been having meetings on the weekends and were possibly connected with the 'Freedom for Cuba Party,' of which Oswald was a member.' Walthers got the name wrong. Oswald was a self-proclaimed member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC0, which he set up while in New Orleans in the summer of 1963."

In short, there is no basis for connecting Ruth Paine as the source of the names on Harlendale and the FPCC question about those names. Ruth Paine was not the source of the Buddy Walther information or report and there is no basis for identifying Ruth Paine with Buddy Walthers' report. 

The other details given by Mr. Bleau in the Ruth Paine section simply establish that Oswald was involved with the FPCC and had FPCC materials in Ruth Paine's garage among his other belongings, in keeping with an association of Oswald with FPCC otherwise known in New Orleans and apparently Dallas as well as brought out by Paul Bleau in the rest of the two parts. 

Therefore the suggestion that "Ruth Paine quite possibly was a provider of FPCC intelligence" has no basis in the documents claimed to support that suggestion.

Incidentally (slight change of subject), for those interested in the detail about the Harlendale house--nothing to do with Ruth Paine--this link given by someone in the earlier April 2020 thread is very interesting: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YX67SM7EXic3k3_Vs7O_0tuXvcNIBGlF/view. It includes photocopied pages 98-105 of a "chapter 10" of some published book which I cannot identify (can anyone identify that book?). A section is titled "Frank Ellsworth's Other Oswald". Frank Ellsworth, the Treasury Agent, investigated what he called an "Oswald double" who was Thomas Masen. Ellsworth identified this individual, Masen--not Oswald--as being the individual reported seen and associated with the Harlendale house Cubans. But more interesting--I have never seen this brought to light previously--Frank Ellsworth, who knew Masen well, is reported to have said that Masen personally confirmed to him, Ellsworth, that he, Masen, was the shooter at the shooting range (the Sports Drome Rifle Range) that has occasioned so many mountains of speculation concerning Oswald being at that shooting range. This does not appear in any of the known discussions of the Sports Drome alleged Oswald sightings to my knowledge.

"Ellsworth revealed to [Village Voice] reporter [Dick] Russell that reports of Oswald with alleged Minutemen at a Dallas area rifle range were actually of his look-alike [Masen] with known Minutemen friends. According to Ellsworth, he [Ellsworth] verified these rifle range appearances with his Other Oswald [Masen]. Warren Report supporters have challenged Commission critics to come up with a name to match the many credible sightings of a 'second Oswald,' and now a name and identity can be supplied. And the most crucial sightings: the rifle range observations, where the Oswald double [Masen] fired an 'Italian carbine] and in the company of others, can now be corroborated."

But here is the point--it was not Oswald, nor was it any double pretending to be Oswald either. That is total window dressing from people other than Masen. There is no indication Thomas Masen ever claimed or pretended to be anyone other than who he was, ever claimed to be Oswald, ever intended anyone to think he was Oswald. The "Oswald double" language is wholly the language and florid imagination of the tellers about Masen combined with the mistaken identifications of witnesses who saw Oswald on TV and thought they remembered him when they actually had seen Masen--who by total accident happened to somewhat physically resemble Oswald. But it was not Oswald. And Oswald's non-presence at the Sports Drome Rifle Range deepens the question of how could Oswald shoot JFK without ever practicing shooting in the runup to the assassination--Oswald was not at the Sports Drome practicing because, in addition to other reasons, the one who actually was there is now known--assuming this report is correct. And why not?--it is an elegant, completely satisfactory, simple solution closing out that rabbit hole which has consumed so many peoples' time.

The source cited for this Masen-confirmed identification of Masen as the Sports Drome rifle shooter is said to be an August, 1976 Village Voice interview of Frank Ellsworth by Dick Russell. 

 

[Jim Hargrove]

6 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

But it was not Oswald. And Oswald's non-presence at the Sports Drome Rifle Range deepens the question of how could Oswald shoot JFK without ever practicing shooting in the runup to the assassination--Oswald was not at the Sports Drome practicing because, in addition to other reasons, the one who actually was there is now known--assuming this report is correct.

Page after page of descriptions of witness sightings of “Lee Harvey Oswald” at the Sports Drome rifle range can be found in this file at the John Armstrong JFK Collection at Baylor University.  If you wish to download all the pages, click the download button and be sure “Full Asset” is checked in the subsequent menu.

https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/sightings-of-lho-nov.-1963-1963-11-17-sports-drome/691366

There are some duplications, but John’s "Sports Drome" file is 75 pages long.  Here are just two of the pages:

 

[Paul Brancato]

Thanks Jim for posting these two essays and for all your work.

I was glad to see that at the very end of Paul’s second essay he broached the idea that perhaps FPCC was in itself an Intelligence Operation. That seems very likely to me. It may be impossible to prove, especially given the fact that FPCC files are still hidden. But it has the earmarks of an Intelligence front, a lighting rod to draw subversives out, and to use against the members.

[James DiEugenio]

That is what I am beginning to think Paul.

If it did not start out that way, it did not take long for it to transform into that.

Sergio Arcacha Smith doing battle with the Tampa FPCC?

[Steve Thomas]

12 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The source cited for this Masen-confirmed identification of Masen as the Sports Drome rifle shooter is said to be an August, 1976 Village Voice interview of Frank Ellsworth by Dick Russell. 

 

Greg,

The "fellow" who Malcolm Howard Price saw at the Sports Drome on September 28, 1963 whom he "subsequently came to believe" was Lee Harvey Oswald, needed help sighting in his rifle.

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

Would Thomas Masen have needed help sighting in his rifle?

Steve Thomas

[James DiEugenio]

I don't think so Steve.

[Greg Doudna]

Found it. The story of Treasury Agent Frank Ellsworth's account that John Thomas Masen self-identified as the shooter at the shooting range identified by witnesses as "Oswald" is from George Michael Evica, And We Are All Mortal (1978), pp. 98-109.

Ellsworth in 1963 at the time of the assassination worked undercover investigating Masen, a "Minuteman gunshop owner". Not only did Ellsworth later report Masen was the spitting image of Oswald such that when Ellsworth saw Oswald in the Dallas Police station he first thought it was his man Masen, but Masen was one of only two gun dealers in Dallas known to have sold Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition. The shooter at the Sports Drome Rifle Range that witnesses later said they thought was Oswald (based on claimed physical recognition memory alone, never on a claim that the individual said his name was "Lee" or "Oswald")--just as Ellsworth himself, who knew Masen, when he first got a glance at Oswald in person thought he was seeing Masen--that shooter at the Sports Drome drove an old car (Oswald did not), wore a Marine baseball cap (no such cap known for Oswald), and was a crack shot, remembered as firing very rapidly with accuracy at the bullseye of the target, an accomplished shooter. Furthermore Masen was a JFK-hater, involved with the JFK-hating Minutemen, who possessed quantities of both military-grade and soft-nosed fragmenting Mannlicher-Carcano shells and was suspected by FBI of having been the source of the Mannlicher-Carcano shells found at the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the TSBD, though that line of investigation was dropped when Masen said he had never sold any of his Mannlicher-Carcano shells to Oswald nor did he, Masen, remember ever having met Oswald. All of this is consistent with gun dealer Masen firing Mannlicher-Carcano shells at the Sports Drome but inconsistent with what is known of Oswald. That witnesses who remembered the Sports Drome shooter with the unusual Mannlicher-Carcano shells were sure they recognized Oswald on TV as the man they had seen is also consistent with Masen, given Ellsworth's personal account of having experienced the same visual confusion.

Those who want to continue to believe that the Sports Drome shooter really was Oswald on the basis of nothing stronger than the later witness claims alone, witnesses none of whom knew or had met either Masen or Oswald previously, none of whom had any basis for the Oswald identification other than memory of claimed visual recognition after seeing Oswald on television, can take up the matter with Evica's book which found the Masen identification as the rifle range shooter credible. Or possibly, if Masen is still alive (I don't know), take it up with Masen himself and tell him your reasons for knowing that he, Masen, was wrong in saying it was he, Masen, the gun dealer known to possess scarce Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition, shooting Mannlicher-Carcano shells at the Sports Drome.

Evica concludes, p. 109:

"John Thomas Masen, under investigation by the Treasury Department, gunsmith, crack shot, Minuteman, H.L. Hunt and Edwin Walker friend, Alpha 66 associate, convicted violator of the Federal Firearms Control Law, and a source for both 6.5 mm. Mannlicher-Carcarno military rounds and 6.5 mm. soft-nosed fragmenting rounds, allegedly seen at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in the company of Minutemen and mistaken for Lee Harvey Oswald, and seen at a North Dallas house and again mistaken for Oswald ... these facts were known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and to the Warren Commission counsel, and they were either ignored--or suppressed."

Below are photos of Masen and Oswald. If after the assassination and the arrest of Oswald, witnesses remembered seeing the man on the left (Masen) firing Mannlicher-Carcano shells at the Sports Drome, how easy would it be for witnesses to be "certain" that the crack shooter they remembered had been Oswald? Imagine--if those witnesses had so testified in court against an Oswald brought to trial and then Oswald had been convicted in part on the basis of their testimony (used by prosecutors to establish Oswald had both planning and skill in shooting in the runup to the assassination), would JFK assassination conspiracy theorists be so firm in upholding those Sports Drome witnesses' Oswald-identification testimonies against all naysayers (including from the actual Sports Drome shooter himself)? 

 

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

17 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I don't think so Steve.

Jim, in your book, Destiny Betrayed, you criticize the Warren Commission for trying to present Oswald as a better-than-average marksman, when the research you correctly present from his military records and testimonies from those who knew him at the time indicate otherwise, that Oswald was a poor marksman (pp. 129-130). This is a pivotal issue obviously in the issue of whether Oswald shot and killed JFK, for Oswald as proficient marksman is a necessary condition for the Warren Commission conclusion that Oswald was the sole shooter.

But some conspiracy theorists are convinced Oswald was the shooter at the Sports Drome range who was remembered as a rapid-firing crack shot who repeatedly hit the bullseye. They say Oswald was, indeed, that excellent marksman, and did, indeed, practice up repeatedly on his shooting skills immediately prior to the JFK assassination. 

I am sure the FBI and Warren Commission, focused as they were on cinching the case against Oswald, would have dearly loved to have placed Oswald at the Sports Drome Rifle Range if they could. It would be smoking-gun evidence of Oswald's capability of excellent marksmanship skill, and dedicated practice prior to the assassination in use of the weapon of the type used in the assassination (as the case would be presented). A prosecutor's wet dream of evidence, if Oswald had ever come to trial. 

So why did FBI and Warren Commission not go that route, when that is exactly what they were trying to prove? That is fairly simple to understand: because the Sports Drome alleged Oswald sightings are irreconcilably contradictory to the timeline for Oswald's presence and movements established above all on the testimony of Ruth Paine, which is the foundation for the timeline accepted by the investigators of both major governmental investigations. 

So the Warren Commission's reason for not making use of the Sports Drome testimony, against interest, is fairly straightforward. 

But some here suppose the WC may have been incorrect in that judgement and that Oswald was witnessed at the Sports Drome Rifle Range being a crack shot with a Mannicher-Carcano, repeatedly practicing assassination skills immediately prior to the JFK assassination.

To such, all I can say is wow. Just wow. Talk about who is framing up Oswald on the basis of flawed eyewitness testimony!

(Referring to others here, not you, unless you too think that was Oswald at the Sports Drome.)

[David Andrews]

20 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Would Thomas Masen have needed help sighting in his rifle?

 

Steve, with all respect:

A guy I met in a bar asked me the rules of pool, then ran the table on me in the second and third games.  I'm out $50.

Sports Drome man might have wanted his rifle to be remembered.

Edited August 14, 2021 by David Andrews

[Jim Hargrove]

11 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Sports Drome man might have wanted his rifle to be remembered.

And what better way to be remembered than to shoot at other guys' targets?

The numerous sightings of “Lee Harvey Oswald” at the Sports Drome Rifle Range followed a familiar pattern in the lead-up to the assassination, activities designed to show “LHO” as a gun-toting fan of Fidel Castro.  My bet is it was all to set him up for the assassination and eventually provoke an invasion of Cuba.  Among the other activities….

• Offering absurdly high prices to buy rifles from Castro’s friend Robert McKeown
• The appearance at Morgan’s Gun Shop on Nov. 2 and the infamous visit to the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership later that same day
• Visiting Mrs. Hunter and Mrs. Whitworth at the Irving Furniture Mart looking for a gun part
• The ridiculous “Comrade Kostin” letter of Nov. 9
• The Southland Hotel visit looking for a roof with a good view of downtown Dallas,
• The Ralph Leon Yates encounter of Nov. 20 …

… and so on.  Setting up LHO was not a particularly subtle affair, and the Sports Drome appearances were just part of that now familiar pattern.