Henry Wade

[Richard Price]

8 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Handy Hank in LBJ's time of need.

I don't think it was just "Handy Hank", LBJ was known as a master manipulator by almost everyone including his enemies.  He was completely amoral and held many such "Aces" up his sleeves.  I believe it has been said that he CONTROLLED most if not all of Texas through various cohorts.  Combine this with his many years in Washington and all the corrupt practices/people he controlled there through his seemingly endless flow of money and you have many avenues to explore.

[Paul Brancato]

9 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

There are more letters, and more to Henry himself. 

But it still amazes me, his power, position and connections at the time and place of the assassination and it's aftermath.  He was kind of the man in the middle so to speak.  In addition to his fawning obsession with LBJ consider:

His friendly relationship with the Zuroma club members, Civello and Campisi.  Attending dinner and drinks at their weekly illegal poker game, with Sheriff Decker.

Of course as DA he dealt with DPD Chief Curry  on a regular basis.

Then there's the Mayor.  The CIA contact, Earl Cabbell.  He likely knew Earl's brother Air Force General Charles, fired by JFK over the Bay of Pigs.

Then there's JR.

Handy Hank in LBJ's time of need.

I’m glad you are staying on top of this. It’s such a good point that you make regarding his mob ties. 

[Allen Lowe]

On 3/28/2022 at 10:17 AM, Richard Price said:

I don't think it was just "Handy Hank", LBJ was known as a master manipulator by almost everyone including his enemies.  He was completely amoral and held many such "Aces" up his sleeves.  I believe it has been said that he CONTROLLED most if not all of Texas through various cohorts.  Combine this with his many years in Washington and all the corrupt practices/people he controlled there through his seemingly endless flow of money and you have many avenues to explore.

I am not a fan of LBJ and consider him to be a war criminal, but to call the President who passed the most important and comprehensive Civil Rights Legislation of his time "completely amoral" is not accurate. Contradictory as it all may seem.

[Joe Bauer]

Want to repost my earlier one about Wade's ( Jack Ruby ) statements during this 11,24,1963 news conference.

Was hoping another member might weigh in with their own take on Wade's Ruby comments in this conference either agreeing with or disagreeing with mine.

Was Wade l---- about his true personal knowledge of and relationship with Jack Ruby in his conference comments about him?

And if Wade was l---- about this, what are the implications of his doing so? Why is this important?

The first time I watched Dallas DA Wade speak to the national press on TV the evening of 11/24/1963 I instantly got a gut feeling the guy was corrupt and probably a person of extreme right segregationist views.

He had that "Good Ole Boy" look and manner of speech.

When identifying the name of Oswald's killer Jack Ruby, Wade feigned ignorance of knowing Ruby as well as he did. 

He said to the press "his name is a ... Jack Rubenstein I believe?" with an unsure expression on his face.

COME ON!  Wade knew Jack Ruby as well as he knew anyone else in Dallas. Wade came in for drinks at the Carousel!

When Wade was reminded by a member of the press that Jack Ruby was present at the other earlier press conference of Wade's, Wade responded with this ridiculous comment that he noticed he ( Ruby ) shouted out to Wade something about Oswald's connection to "The Fair Play For Cuba" committee.

And that he ( Wade) thought Ruby was a member of the press. Again, please! 

Wade knew Jack Ruby well enough to know who he was looking at and listening to when Ruby was shouting back at him while he ( Ruby) was standing singularly and totally visible on the top of that table.

When another reporter told Wade he noticed Ruby personally talking to Wade at the end of that earlier news conference and it appeared to this reporter that he ( Wade )  looked as if he was quite friendly or familiar with Ruby, Wade didn't answer except to show an embarrassed "hand caught in the cookie jar" type smile on his face.

And Wade also knew at that close up, one-on-one, face to face conversation encounter time with Ruby that Ruby was at that conference and who he was.

You'd think someone of Wade's high responsibility position and in that unprecedented important circumstance of this world watching press briefing right inside the Dallas police department building might have thought..."What the heck is this sleazy strip joint owner doing here?" "How the heck did he even get in here?"

Ruby's presence there didn't seem to faze Wade.

Wade's press speech comments about Ruby were a phony charade on Wade's part to hide his true long time knowledge of and club visiting relationship with "his name is a ... Jack Rubenstein I believe?" Jack Ruby.

So, Wade was l---- from the get go.

And anyone brown nosing the totally corrupt LBJ for 15 years like Wade did was no boy scout leader - imo anyway.

 

Edited March 31, 2022 by Joe Bauer

[Greg Doudna]

6 hours ago, Allen Lowe said:

I am not a fan of LBJ and consider him to be a war criminal, but to call the President who passed the most important and comprehensive Civil Rights Legislation of his time "completely amoral" is not accurate. Contradictory as it all may seem.

Yes it does seem contradictory but agree, both can be true, well put. An article which gave me pause on Johnson was this by James Galbraith:  https://bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/. The first three-quarters of the article is argument that JFK had decided on a full exit from Vietnam (and that at first LBJ continued that policy). The final quarter of the article has the point of interest. I do not know fully what to make of it, but Galbraith's suggestion is that LBJ may have blocked a plan to exploit the JFK assassination to go for a first-strike nuclear attack wiping out the Soviet Union's infrastructure and people, the Dr. Strangelove option.

"There is no doubt that the danger of nuclear war was on Johnson's mind [following the JFK assassination]. It also explains important points about his behavior in those days, including his orders to Earl Warren and Richard Russell (the latter in a phone call, a recording of which has long been available on the C-SPAN website) as to how they would conduct their commission. The point to appreciate is that there is only one way a war could have started at that time: by preemptive attack by the United States against the Soviet Union."

"My father [John Kenneth Galbraith, advisor to JFK and LBJ] retains a distinct, chilling recollection of LBJ's words to him, in private, on one of their last meetings before the Vietnam War finally drove them apart: 'You may not like what I'm doing in Vietnam, Ken, but you would not believe what would happen if I were not here.'

"Heather Purcell and I documented these nightmares in an article published in 1994 entitled 'Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?' It is still available on the website of the American Prospect. When once I asked the late Walt Rostow if he knew anything about the National Security Council meeting of July 20, 1961, at which these plans were presented, he responded with no hesitation: 'Do you mean the one where they wanted to blow up the world?'

(Comment: although I do not have the links here, I have read criticism of the Purcell-Gabraith article just mentioned, with rather convincing clarification that the documents discussed were not formal planning to launch a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union in 1963, but were hypothetical or war-games or contingency plans. Nevertheless, 1963 was the "hypothetical" date of the "what-if" consideration discussed in 1961 for a first-strike nuclear attack--if some casus bellus and then escalation of tensions were to occur--in, say, 1963--making such necessary--speaking purely hypothetically. Given that real plans can be developed under cover of "what-if" planning, the criticisms of the article do not roll back the horror of what Men in Power in this world have considered behind closed doors.)

So when word came down Friday evening Nov 22, 1963 from LBJ aides to the Texas Attorney General and the offices of district attorney Wade and deputy district attorney Alexander to not charge Lee Harvey Oswald with being part of a communist conspiracy in the assassination as was reportedly being prepared in Wade's office, there may have been more of a back story to that than realized. Not a coverup of a real Castro hand in the assassination, but a coverup of internal attempts to manufacture a Castro hand in the assassination. That is what James Galbraith thinks.

[Joseph McBride]

Wade deputy Bill Alexander evidently was the one primarily pushing

the conspiracy charge. Alexander was later fired

for saying Earl Warren should be hanged. Alexander

is a person of interest in the assassination.

[David Andrews]

LBJ was - like most of us - a mass of contradictions.  He inherited racism from his upbringing and a recognition of the need for social change from FDR-era Progressivism.  He may just have reconciled accounts by figuring that civil unrest in wartime was a worse fate for the country, the presidency and the party than a set of outraged and uncooperative southern legislators.  Given the state of his health, early on he may have recognized that all parties were best off if his were a one-term presidency; the escalating disasters of the age, and the rise of political challengers, may have confirmed this for him.

But, the cost it took to bring him to these decisions!  What a price, what a price to pay --

[Joe Bauer]

Does anyone here actually believe that the Russians would have wanted LBJ in place of and instead of Russia/USA cooperation seeking JFK?

Only JFK held us off from a full scale air/sea and land invasion take over of their most strategically important Latin American satellite Cuba.

If LBJ had been President during the Bay Of Pigs invasion instead of JFK,  I think we all know he would have deferred to our most Cuba aggressive military and intel agency leaders with whom he shared a good-ole-boy bond , opposite of JFK.

[Ron Bulman]

On 3/28/2022 at 10:16 AM, Paul Brancato said:

I’m glad you are staying on top of this. It’s such a good point that you make regarding his mob ties. 

Thanks Paul.  His mob ties are important in proving his corruptness, his lack of prosecutions of mob related persons.  Including Ruby.  His lying about knowing him as Joe points out.  

I really wonder if he didn't get a call from say Walter Jenkins on LBJ's behalf along the lines of "Hank, He says stomp out this Commie aspect, we don't want a nuclear WWIII here.  The Mayor's wife down there said it must of been a lone nut, go with this Oswald." 

[Joseph McBride]

From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE on Dearie (Mrs. Earle) Cabell:

Why was there such contrasting haste to pin the Tippit killing on Oswald? “The Tippit charge, you had eyewitnesses,” former Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade told me in our 1993 interview.

That revealing statement thirty years after the fact, dubious as it was, suggests that the Dallas authorities actually hadn’t been sure if they had any eyewitnesses to the shooting of Kennedy. But Wade hastened to claim to me that they had “five at one time” (sic) who saw Oswald shoot the president. He couldn’t recall who they might have been, other than the mayor’s wife, Elizabeth (Dearie) Cabell. She was riding in the motorcade with her husband, Earle Cabell, five cars behind the presidential limousine. (Earle Cabell’s brother was the former deputy director of the CIA, U.S. Air Force General Charles P. Cabell, who had been fired by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, along with director Allen Dulles and the invasion planner, Richard M. Bissell, Jr.) Dearie Cabell was the person who presented Jacqueline Kennedy with a bouquet of red roses at Love Field that morning. In Life magazine journalist Theodore H. White’s notes for the “Camelot” interview on November 29, 1963, the president’s widow recalled,

 

Every time we got off the plane that day, three times they gave me the yellow roses of Texas. But in Dallas they gave me red roses. I thought how funny, red roses -- so all the seat was full of blood and red roses.

 

Dearie Cabell was never produced as an eyewitness to Oswald shooting the president. Wade admitted, “I never talked with her about it.” When she testified to the Warren Commission in July 1964, Mrs. Cabell said she had been facing the School Book Depository at the time the first shot rang out, as their car was making the turn from Houston onto Elm. “Because I heard the direction from which the shot came,” she “jerked” her head up and “saw a projection out of one of those windows” on the sixth floor. She was not sure which window and said she “did not know” what the “rather long looking” projection was, “because I did not see a hand or a head or a human form behind it.” In addition to not identifying Oswald as a shooter, Mrs. Cabell testified to some points that contradicted the official story: “I was acutely aware of the odor of gunpowder. I was aware that the motorcade stopped dead still. There was no question about that.” Her testimony about the motorcade coming to a complete stop jibes with that of numerous other witnesses but is not consistent with what is seen in the Zapruder film, so her testimony helps provide evidence that part of the film has been removed, most likely to cover up Secret Service activity after the shots and a fatal lack of sufficient protection at the time of the fatal head shot(s). Mrs. Cabell’s testimony about gunpowder suggested a shot or shots fired from ground level rather than a high window, and she also said that when she turned her head forward after the first shot, “I am completely aware of the people running up that hill [the Grassy Knoll]. I saw the man throw the child on the ground and throw himself. I saw a woman in a bright green dress throw herself on the ground. I saw the policeman running up the grassy slope.”

In his televised news conference shortly after midnight on the night of the assassination, Henry Wade was asked by a reporter, ”Can you say whether you have a witness who says he saw the man pull the trigger [i.e., against Kennedy]?” Wade replied, “No, I cannot.” When I asked Wade about that in our interview, he acknowledged, “I didn’t know of any” at the time, but he added, “Before it was over, by Sunday afternoon, I was told they had five witnesses, and they showed me statements some of ’em had made, and they said that they knew it was Oswald up there.” On the night of November 24, in his other televised press conference that weekend, Wade said, “[W]e have a number of witnesses that saw the person with the gun on the sixth floor of the Book Store Building.” But he added, “You put a man in the window with a gun. People cannot positively identify him from the ground. He fits their general description.”

Despite Wade’s claim to me that he had been told of five eyewitnesses to Oswald shooting from the window, the only witness the Warren Commission eventually claimed had identified Oswald as that shooter was Howard Brennan, who was watching the motorcade while sitting on a wall at the corner of Elm and Houston streets but refused to positively identify Oswald at a lineup on November 22. Brennan’s admittedly flawed eyesight and dubious physical description of the man he claimed to have seen firing a rifle in the window -- he told the commission that the man, in his early thirties, about five feet ten inches, was standing in the window as he fired, although a shooter in that position probably would have had to be kneeling -- make his belated identification of Oswald to the FBI on December 17 highly dubious. Speaking of Brennan’s original failure to identify Oswald, “which would weaken his testimony some,” Wade recalled that Brennan “felt he was afraid of the Russians.” To the commission, Brennan explained he had already seen Oswald on television by the time of the lineup, that Oswald looked younger than the man he claimed to have seen in the window, “And then I felt that my family could be in danger, and I, myself, in danger,” and that “since they already had the man for murder” (of Officer Tippit), there was no need at the time for his further identification. So they had no actual, credible witnesses who could identify Oswald in the window.

[Joe Bauer]

10 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE on Dearie (Mrs. Earle) Cabell:

Why was there such contrasting haste to pin the Tippit killing on Oswald? “The Tippit charge, you had eyewitnesses,” former Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade told me in our 1993 interview.

That revealing statement thirty years after the fact, dubious as it was, suggests that the Dallas authorities actually hadn’t been sure if they had any eyewitnesses to the shooting of Kennedy. But Wade hastened to claim to me that they had “five at one time” (sic) who saw Oswald shoot the president. He couldn’t recall who they might have been, other than the mayor’s wife, Elizabeth (Dearie) Cabell. She was riding in the motorcade with her husband, Earle Cabell, five cars behind the presidential limousine. (Earle Cabell’s brother was the former deputy director of the CIA, U.S. Air Force General Charles P. Cabell, who had been fired by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, along with director Allen Dulles and the invasion planner, Richard M. Bissell, Jr.) Dearie Cabell was the person who presented Jacqueline Kennedy with a bouquet of red roses at Love Field that morning. In Life magazine journalist Theodore H. White’s notes for the “Camelot” interview on November 29, 1963, the president’s widow recalled,

 

Every time we got off the plane that day, three times they gave me the yellow roses of Texas. But in Dallas they gave me red roses. I thought how funny, red roses -- so all the seat was full of blood and red roses.

 

Dearie Cabell was never produced as an eyewitness to Oswald shooting the president. Wade admitted, “I never talked with her about it.” When she testified to the Warren Commission in July 1964, Mrs. Cabell said she had been facing the School Book Depository at the time the first shot rang out, as their car was making the turn from Houston onto Elm. “Because I heard the direction from which the shot came,” she “jerked” her head up and “saw a projection out of one of those windows” on the sixth floor. She was not sure which window and said she “did not know” what the “rather long looking” projection was, “because I did not see a hand or a head or a human form behind it.” In addition to not identifying Oswald as a shooter, Mrs. Cabell testified to some points that contradicted the official story: “I was acutely aware of the odor of gunpowder. I was aware that the motorcade stopped dead still. There was no question about that.” Her testimony about the motorcade coming to a complete stop jibes with that of numerous other witnesses but is not consistent with what is seen in the Zapruder film, so her testimony helps provide evidence that part of the film has been removed, most likely to cover up Secret Service activity after the shots and a fatal lack of sufficient protection at the time of the fatal head shot(s). Mrs. Cabell’s testimony about gunpowder suggested a shot or shots fired from ground level rather than a high window, and she also said that when she turned her head forward after the first shot, “I am completely aware of the people running up that hill [the Grassy Knoll]. I saw the man throw the child on the ground and throw himself. I saw a woman in a bright green dress throw herself on the ground. I saw the policeman running up the grassy slope.”

In his televised news conference shortly after midnight on the night of the assassination, Henry Wade was asked by a reporter, ”Can you say whether you have a witness who says he saw the man pull the trigger [i.e., against Kennedy]?” Wade replied, “No, I cannot.” When I asked Wade about that in our interview, he acknowledged, “I didn’t know of any” at the time, but he added, “Before it was over, by Sunday afternoon, I was told they had five witnesses, and they showed me statements some of ’em had made, and they said that they knew it was Oswald up there.” On the night of November 24, in his other televised press conference that weekend, Wade said, “[W]e have a number of witnesses that saw the person with the gun on the sixth floor of the Book Store Building.” But he added, “You put a man in the window with a gun. People cannot positively identify him from the ground. He fits their general description.”

Despite Wade’s claim to me that he had been told of five eyewitnesses to Oswald shooting from the window, the only witness the Warren Commission eventually claimed had identified Oswald as that shooter was Howard Brennan, who was watching the motorcade while sitting on a wall at the corner of Elm and Houston streets but refused to positively identify Oswald at a lineup on November 22. Brennan’s admittedly flawed eyesight and dubious physical description of the man he claimed to have seen firing a rifle in the window -- he told the commission that the man, in his early thirties, about five feet ten inches, was standing in the window as he fired, although a shooter in that position probably would have had to be kneeling -- make his belated identification of Oswald to the FBI on December 17 highly dubious. Speaking of Brennan’s original failure to identify Oswald, “which would weaken his testimony some,” Wade recalled that Brennan “felt he was afraid of the Russians.” To the commission, Brennan explained he had already seen Oswald on television by the time of the lineup, that Oswald looked younger than the man he claimed to have seen in the window, “And then I felt that my family could be in danger, and I, myself, in danger,” and that “since they already had the man for murder” (of Officer Tippit), there was no need at the time for his further identification. So they had no actual, credible witnesses who could identify Oswald in the window.

Thank you.

[Paul Brancato]

I second that!

Joseph - is there a transcript ot the entire Wade interview? 

 

[Joseph McBride]

I haven't published transcripts but have quoted

my interviews in my books on the case.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Ron Bulman]

I have to say here, not kissing up or brown nosing but I respect his work.  Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit: McBride, Joseph: 9781939795250: Amazon.com: Books probably influenced my suspicions about Wade more than any other source.  I should re read it, it's been several years.

There are bits and pieces scattered elsewhere.  The original statements.  "Henry, It's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee".  "I think his name is Jack Rubenstein".  The Thin Blue Line and all the Wade cases turned over by DNA made me question him more 

The letters at the end of Mark North's Betrayal in Dallas, out of the LBJ Presidential Library between him and Wade got me to thinking about a bigger picture.  Read them yourself and more for $3.78 plus shipping.  Amazon.com: Betrayal in Dallas: LBJ, the Pearl Street Mafia, and the Murder of President Kennedy: 9781626361225: North, Mark: Books

At the moment I'm finally about to start Joe's book Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy: Joseph McBride: 9781939795618: Amazon.com: Books

But a little more on the Hank n LBJ letters in the next few days.

Speaking of Hank.

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Ron Bulman

[Paul Brancato]

Thanks for the yodel