Oswald, Tippit, and Carl Mather: connecting some dots

[Greg Doudna]

Oswald, Tippit, and Carl Mather: connecting some dots

Establishment of a fact calling for explanation

At about 2:00 pm on Nov 22, 1963, a car with a man sitting in it was in the parking lot of the El Chico restaurant on E. Beckley of Oak Cliff. The car aroused the suspicion of mechanic T.F. White who crossed the street, approached the parked car and wrote down the license plate number and year and make of the car. The driver noticed and drove off. (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=84#relPageId=40).

From the license plate number the car was a 1957 Plymouth four-door sedan registered to one Carl Mather, an employee with a security clearance at Collins Radio Company, a company heavily involved with CIA machinations and operations against Castro in addition to its legitimate business operations, and a company at which Oswald had told his Oak Cliff landlady six weeks earlier he was working on being employed (CE 1985).

It turned out the registered owner of that car, Carl Mather, was friends with officer Tippit, a seemingly unlikely (given different social and professional backgrounds) but real relationship.

There is no mistake in the identification of the car. It does not matter that mechanic White told the FBI in mid-December that he thought the car might have been a red 1961 Falcon, when the car whose license plate number he had written down was the blue 1957 Plymouth registered to Carl Mather. It does not matter, because the license plate number was no mistake. It was no mistake because if it had been a random error the license registration would have gone to someone random, not to a friend of officer Tippit. 

Wes White’s original information obtained from mechanic White’s written note was both the license plate number and car make, hand-recopied by Wes Wise on Wise’s speaking program brochure, Texas PP 4537 and “1957 Plymouth” (not 1961 Falcon). Mrs. Mather told the FBI the Mathers had never owned a red car. The “red” therefore is some confusion with some different car in White’s memory, and has nothing to do with, is irrelevant to, the 1957 Plymouth of the license number and make of car of mechanic White’s written note, copied by Wes Wise and obtained before Wes White turned that information over to the FBI.

No, the license number was correct and is a fact. The registration of that car to Carl Mather is a fact. And the identity of the man in Carl Mather’s car, who left home in Garland that morning, drove that car to work at Collins Radio in Richardson, and then was seen in that car at 2 pm in Oak Cliff, will have been Carl Mather.

That the man was Carl Mather is corroborated from a description mechanic White gave of the man’s face: he said the man looked like Oswald. Compare this photo of Carl Mather and see how Mather from a distance could be seen as resembling Oswald by someone who did not know better: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/112039484/carl-amos-mather. Mechanic White's notice of resemblance to Oswald therefore serves to corroborate the man was Carl Mather, the identity of the man in Carl Mather's car that would be expected. 

The presence of Carl Mather in his car in Oak Cliff not far from the Texas Theatre at about the time of Oswald’s arrest is therefore a fact.

It is an odd fact, because Mrs. Mather denied Carl Mather or the 1957 Plymouth was there, denied any reason why her husband or the car would have been there. 

Yet Carl Mather was there. If ever there was a fact in need of an explanation in the Tippit case, this is one. Why was Carl Mather there, what was he doing there, and why the denial (perhaps genuine on the part of Mrs. Mather if she did not know he was there)?

The lack of questioning of Carl Mather

Although the FBI investigated, the FBI never interviewed Carl Mather (the FBI did interview his wife), nor, according to William Kelly, did the Warren Commission or any other investigation question Mather under oath. HSCA did interview Mather, and as reported by William Kelly, HSCA issued a subpoena to compel Mather’s testimony under oath for which Mather requested and received immunity from prosecution (unclear for what), but according to Kelly there is no record that HSCA questioning of Mather under oath occurred. Mather was interviewed, not under oath, by HSCA on 3/20/78, along with his wife Barbara, in Plano, Texas, the only known interview of Mather on this matter by an investigative body, fifteen years after the event. 

The full text of the HSCA written report of this interview is given by William Kelly here: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/02/carl-mather-collins-radio.html. A curious thing I noticed in reading the report is there is no direct denial from Carl Mather that he or his car was in Oak Cliff at about 2 pm that day. Is it possible, in this only known interview of Mather from an investigative body concerning a report that a man resembling Carl Mather was seen in Carl Mather’s car in Oak Cliff at about 2 pm, that investigators would fail to ask Mather if he or his car was in Oak Cliff at about 2 pm? The closest Mather gives to a denial is this, which upon examination is no denial at all:

“He [Mather] does recall the date of 11-22-63. He worked all day at Richardson, Texas, Collins Radio Shop.”

Is that a denial from Mather? It depends on what is meant by “all day”. Mather did not work “all day” if by that is meant normal full working hours, for all employees at Collins Radio were dismissed for the rest of the day following news of the assassination, according to Mather’s former boss at Collins Radio, James Pickford. Also, both Mather and wife Barbara were at the home of Mrs. Tippit in Oak Cliff (driving there from Garland in a different vehicle) from ca. 3:30 to 5 pm that day. Clearly Carl Mather was not at work at Collins Radio “all day” the day of the assassination in the sense of 9 to 5. However, his statement would be true in the sense of meaning all hours of that work day for Collins Radio employees. That work day ended about 1 pm for all Collins Radio employees. However, working a full work day at Collins Radio that ended 1 pm does not address whether he was in Oak Cliff at 2 pm. According to the HSCA interview published by Kelly, there is no record Mather was asked or answered that question, which was sort of the whole question of interest in the first place.  

So these two facts can be juxtaposed: Mather’s car was in Oak Cliff about 2 pm with a man in it who can only have been Mather. And although the FBI investigated, that investigation did not include questioning Mather. Mather never was questioned under oath about it nor is there record that Mather denied it not under oath in the only instance in which an investigative agency interviewed him concerning the question. However his wife Barbara did deny any knowledge of it, which could be truthful but also not answer the question.

That is the status of the evidence. Neither denied nor confirmed by Carl Mather to any law enforcement or investigative body. Not asked under oath. Not asked not under oath.

HSCA also interviewed Mather’s boss at Collins Radio, James Pickford:

“Outside Contact Report, HSCA, 12/1/78. (. . .) With regard to Carl Mather, Pickford can’t recall where he was at the time of the assassination. He knows he didn’t have lunch with him. His job at the time concerned electro-mechanical assembly, which is the mechanical portion of working with electronic equipment. They worked in a shop atmosphere but it was not an assembly-line type function. There was more moving around than in an assembly-line production (. . .) Pickford was unable to say whether Mather even worked that particular day. (. . .) Pickford’s impression of Mather is that he was the most competent, dependable man deserving of the highest trust. He considered him outstanding.”

Timeline of Carl Mather that day

Barbara Mather was interviewed by the FBI on 12/14/63 and this is her account:

“Mrs. Carl A Mather, 4309 Colgate Street, Garland, Texas, stated she and her husband own the light blue over medium blue 1957 Plymouth automobile bearing 1963 Texas License PP 4537 which was parked in the driveway at this address. Mrs. Mather stated on November 22, 1963, her husband left his work at Collins Radio Company in Richardson, Texas at approximately 2:00 or 2:30 P.M. in the afternoon at which time he came to their home at 4309 Colgate Street, Garland, Texas. Mrs. Mather stated she and her husband were friends of former Dallas Policeman J.D. Tippit who was shot on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. Mrs. Mather said shortly after her husband arrived home, they took their two children with them in their 1954 Ford station wagon at which time they proceeded to Dallas, Texas to the Tippit home to express their condolences to Mrs. Tippit, and to assist her in any way possible. Mrs. Mather said she and her husband and the children remained at the Tippit home together until around 5:00 P.M. They arrived at the Tippit home at approximately 3:30 P.M. that afternoon. Around 5:00 P.M., Mr. Mather left the Tippit home with the two Mather children and drove to the Mather home in Garland where he fed the two children and put them to bed.”

According to supervisor Pickford, employees of Collins Radio in Richardson had been told the work day ended and most employees left after the news of the assassination which was 1 pm. At 2 pm Mather is seen in Oak Cliff. According to his wife, Mather returned home in Garland at 2:30 or 3.

According to an online driving time calculator, driving time between Richardson (Collins Radio) and Oak Cliff is 30 minutes (21 miles). Between Oak Cliff and Garland (Mathers’ home) is 43 minutes (24 miles). Rough reconstruction of timeline:

Leave Collins Radio, Richardson, ca. 1:15 pm. 

Arrive Oak Cliff, ca. 1:45.

Leave Oak Cliff, ca. 2 pm. 

Arrive Garland, ca. 2:45.

Mather would not have been in Oak Cliff long. There is no sign he met anyone, or did anything other than sitting in the El Chico parking lot perhaps listening to a car radio. Why would someone drive all that way to Oak Cliff to do that? Then drive away again?

But he did.

There must have been a reason that makes that sensible.

What was going on with that?

A planned meeting in the Texas Theatre that was called off

Up to now has been establishment of facts. From this point forward is proposed explanation of those facts. Carl Mather went to Oak Cliff to meet someone. His waiting in the parking lot was waiting to appear nearby for an appointment whose time had not yet come (he had arrived early). His departure was because something came up and the meeting could not go forward.

Mather’s meeting was to be with Oswald in the Texas Theatre. But the meeting was called off when Mather learned Oswald was arrested.

Inside the Texas Theatre Oswald had been observed engaged in unusual seating behavior, according to theatre patron and witness Jack Davis who was there that day. The account of Jack Davis telling of Oswald oddly sitting down in the seat immediately next to Davis for a moment, then leaving, then sitting next to another, then moving again, in a nearly empty theatre, is recorded in the Sixth Floor Museum’s oral history collection. I have obtained and listened to the hour-long video. I think Jack Davis is very credible. 

As many have noted, the odd behavior of Oswald witnessed inside the theatre appears to be that of someone looking to meet someone, trying to find a contact. If there is some other interpretation of that behavior of Oswald I do not know what it would be. Those who deny Oswald was in the theatre to meet someone must arbitrarily reject the testimony of the credible witness, Jack Davis, or else find some other interpretation for the unusual movements of Oswald described. It is not how normal moviegoers behave in a nearly empty theatre. 

Another witness inside the theatre, usher and concessionaire Warren Burroughs, in later years directly and unambiguously said that Oswald arrived before the movie started, before 1:20; that he, Burroughs, had sold popcorn to him; and for those reasons Oswald could not have been the man who later ran into the theatre without buying a ticket.

Not one witness inside the theatre has testified to having seen Oswald enter that main seating area on the ground level later than the time the movie started at around 1:20 following the opening clips, or contradicted the accounts of Burroughs and Davis concerning Oswald’s timing and movements.

The man who took tickets that day at the Texas Theatre up to the time the movie started, general manager John Callahan, was never asked whether he took a ticket from Oswald. There is no record the DPD, FBI, or Warren Commission questioned him. 

The idea that Oswald entered the theatre about 1:36 pm without paying for a ticket came about after a man did that—ducked in through the theatre doors when Julia Postal’s attention was diverted (the 1:36 time estimate is from Myers). The man had been seen by Johnny Brewer in front of his shoe store, then seen to go past Julia Postal into the theatre alcove where he would have gone into the theatre. Julia Postal told Brewer to have Burroughs assist him in trying to find the man. Brewer and Burroughs looked throughout the theatre but could not find him. Because Burroughs said he would have seen the man if the man had entered the main seating area, but could have missed him if he had gone up a stairs into the balcony, Julia Postal and Burroughs concluded the man must be in the balcony, which is what Postal told the police. 

When police arrived, Oswald, in the main area, stood up and then sat down again. That movement caught Brewer’s eye and attention from the front stage. In the distance from the stage, in the darkened theatre, Brewer identified Oswald to officers as the man he had not been able to find, and officers arrested Oswald.

No witness other than Brewer identified the man who ran into the theatre at 1:36 with Oswald seated in the main seating area. Brewer did not make that identification on the basis of having seen either man up close, but from a distance in both cases. There is more than a little reason to suppose Brewer was mistaken in that identification of the two as the same man.

• When Julia Postal first sent Brewer with Burroughs’ help to look for the man who had run in, the search was throughout the theatre. Brewer reported back to Julia Postal that they could not find the man anywhere, including after Brewer had looked at the patrons in the main seating area where Oswald was seated. There are only two possibilities. One is that Brewer saw the man who ran into the theatre sitting in the darkness during that first theatre search but did not recognize him, but then after the police arrived, when Oswald stood up and in so doing caught Brewer’s eye, Brewer, not having noticed him the first time, now recognized him. It is not the most secure basis for an uncorroborated eyewitness identification. The other possibility is that the man actually was in the balcony as Burroughs and Postal were certain, and Brewer and Burroughs had missed him there; however, that would mean he was not Oswald.
• Julia Postal told the Warren Commission the description she told the police dispatcher of the man she had seen before he went behind her into the theatre. Julia Postal named three details she had told the police: brown sports shirt, medium height, “ruddy looking”. Oswald was light complexioned.
• Usher Burroughs, who was perhaps the witness in the best position to know, by 1987 was saying openly and unambiguously that Oswald was not the man who had run in without paying for a ticket. “In a 1987 interview with this author, Burroughs, who then had become assistant manager at the Texas Theater, reiterated his story of someone slipping in the theater about 1:35 pm that day. However, Burroughs claimed that it could not have been Oswald because Oswald entered the theater shortly after 1 p.m. Burroughs said Oswald entered only minutes after the features started, which was exactly at 1 p.m. He said several minutes later, about 1:15 p.m., the man later arrested by police and identified as Oswald came to his concession stand and bought some popcorn. Burroughs said he watched the man [Oswald] enter the ground floor of the theater and sit down next to a pregnant woman. About twenty minutes after this, the outside doors opened and Johnny Brewer arrived” (Marrs, Crossfire, 2013 edn, 342). Some discount this from Burroughs on the grounds that Burroughs only spoke publicly of this later; Burroughs was not asked about and did not say this in his Warren Commission testimony. Is this a case of Burroughs changing to fabrication later, or clarifying what the truth was, later? I am partial to the latter. And Burroughs’ account is corroborated from another witness; see next.
• Theatre patron Jack Davis told of Oswald in the theatre consistent with Burroughs, that is, Burroughs’ 1987 account is independently corroborated from Jack Davis. Davis’s account of Oswald’s movements is even consistent with the popcorn purchase detail told by Burroughs: “[Davis] recalled seeing the opening credits of the first film, which occurred a few minutes past the 1 p.m. starting time for the feature movie. He was somewhat startled by a man who squeezed past him and sat down in the seat next to him. He found it odd that this man would choose the seat adjacent to him in a nine-hundred seat theater with fewer than twenty patrons in it. Davis said the man didn’t say a word but quickly got up and moved across the aisle and took a seat next to another person. Then shortly, the man got up and walked into the theater’s lobby. A few minutes later, Davis, whose attention had return to the movie, vaguely remembered seeing the same man enter the center section of the theater from the far side. Twenty minutes or so after this incident, according to Davis the house lights came on… [Oswald arrest description follows]…” (Crossfire, 343) 

For these reasons, Brewer as the sole witness basis for identifying the man who ran in without paying and went into the balcony at about 1:36, as Oswald who was seated in the main seating area all along, is not only uncorroborated but counterindicated by two other witnesses. Not only is it possible Brewer could have been mistaken, on the strength of witnesses Burroughs and Davis, all else being equal, he was mistaken. They were two different individuals.

(As to what became of the man who ran into the theatre and went into the balcony at 1:36, he may be the unidentified man deputy sheriff Courson described who passed him coming down from the balcony as Courson was going up, at Sneed, No More Silence, 485. Courson may have been the first officer to enter the theatre. The man Courson passed could have walked out before the building was sealed by arriving officers. Conceivably this could be alluded to also [I am not sure of this at all] in a cryptic comment of Burroughs half-told by Julia Postal at one point in her WC testimony. The transcript reads: “Ah, he [Burroughs] said at first that he had seen him [the man who went into the balcony], and I says, ‘Now, Butch, if you saw him come in—’ says, ‘Well, I saw him go out.’ But he didn’t really see him. So, he just summarized that he ran up in the balcony, because if he had come through the foyer, Butch would have seen him.”)

The reason this matters is: the man who ran into the theater without paying is not the behavior of someone going into a theatre for a meeting. But Oswald in the theatre known to witnesses Burroughs and Jack Davis not only was in the main seating area all along but was observed behaving as if he was looking for someone.

Oswald at the Texas Theatre for a meeting is not consistent with Oswald having been the killer of Tippit. For if Oswald went to the theatre for a meeting, it means Oswald will have gone directly from his rooming house on N. Beckley at about 1 pm to the Texas Theatre (after feinting for the benefit of housekeeper Earlene’s eyes by pretending he was taking a northbound bus, then out of her eyes taking a southbound to the Texas Theatre). Oswald will not have gone to the Tippit crime scene where he never had any known reason to go in the first place. Instead Oswald will have gone to the Texas Theatre from his rooming house, will have paid admission like any other customer that day, and have done so to meet someone there. His meeting would have been with Carl Mather, observed nearby behaving in agreement with someone waiting for a meeting.

Oswald and Tippit as victims of the same killers who killed Kennedy

Oswald’s portrayal as the assassin of President Kennedy sealed Oswald’s fate in the Tippit case so overwhelmingly that Brewer’s identification—the slender reed at the outset—was perceived as unquestionably correct. The charge that Oswald killed Tippit appeared conclusively confirmed on the basis of an FBI lab finding that hulls found at the Tippit crime scene matched exclusively to the revolver found on Oswald’s person at the time of his arrest, and witnesses at the Tippit crime identified Oswald out of lineups.

But taking the eyewitnesses first, there are problems with the Tippit crime scene witness identifications of Oswald in the light of findings reported by the Innocence Project which will not be taken up here. For the moment consider only the implications of this: mechanic White’s identification of Carl Mather as Oswald: “he believed the man he saw at the El Chico Restaurant parking lot was identical with Oswald” (FBI report of interview with T.F. White, 12/13/63). The point: how easily eyewitnesses on the basis of brief glances at a distance and without prior knowledge (the genre of mechanic White and of all of the Tippit crime scene witnesses) can mistakenly identify a person as someone else, in this case Oswald--witnesses who mean to tell the truth and feel certain of it. As it was with mechanic White, so it could be with the Tippit crime scene witnesses. 

And the hulls have serious chain-of-custody issues suggesting the Dallas Police substituted hulls from shells fired from Oswald’s revolver for the hulls found at the crime scene, before sending those hulls to the FBI to find out whether those hulls had been fired from Oswald’s revolver. (Substitution is the explanation suggested for the unusual fact that not one of the five officers who marked the four hulls found at the crime scene, testified under oath in their Warren Commission questioning or in any other form under oath, that they positively identified their mark on any of those four hulls sent to the FBI lab for examination.)

The relationship of Oswald to the JFK assassination is an entire different set of issues. The JFK assassination is both related and unrelated to the question of whether Tippit was killed by Oswald—or alternatively, as should be considered, whether Tippit was killed on Friday by the ones who had Oswald killed on Sunday. These are formally distinct questions. Yet because Oswald as JFK assassin overwhelmingly colors perceptions of the Tippit killing, and because the Tippit killing necessarily is related to the JFK assassination (because of timing; because Tippit appears to have been searching for Oswald before Tippit was killed), let the following be emphasized: Carl Mather’s intended meeting of Oswald in the Texas Theatre was not because either Carl Mather or Oswald or Tippit were involved in killing President Kennedy.

Larry Hancock in Someone Would Have Talked told the story of John Martino, a case of someone who appears to have had peripheral knowledge of the assassination plot and played some support role in it though not as gunman. I believe Hancock is correct that the John Martino story is credible.

A basic idea supported from the Martino story—an idea that has been developed in various ways by several authors as well—is the idea that there were basically two distinct things going on, the so-called two-plot hypothesis. The one involved covert activity which would not involve harm to President Kennedy but would look incriminating to Castro. This would be in keeping with a context of covert operations and false flag provocations designed to overthrow Castro. This would not harm Kennedy but would incriminate Castro such that it could justify an overthrow of Castro from power.

The issue of interpretation of Oswald’s true sympathies unavoidably arises here. The interpretation accepted here is that Oswald was from day one, from the first day he enlisted as an underage Marine to the end, working for the US, not a right-winger but a Kennedy supporter in his true sympathies, loyal to the US underneath appearances, a false defector to the Soviet Union, a double agent whose loyalty was to the US. Two things about Oswald I see as distinguishing him from a real communist are a lack of impassioned denunciations against U.S. imperialism or capitalism in his writings and rhetoric, and lack of even a single friend who was an actual communist.

Understood within this context, Oswald would not have been involved in any plan to kill President Kennedy unless it was to inform on it or subvert it, nor would he have killed President Kennedy on his own. 

The so-called “second plot” would be the assassination, done by different malevolent characters. In this background Oswald, a witting operative in infiltrating and discrediting targeted leftist organizations as part of US operations against Castro and in the Cold War, became the patsy in the “second plot”. An operative in the “first plot” (no harm to JFK; destabilization of Castro) was made a patsy in the second (the assassination), blamed for the assassination, with his leftist persona used as a mechanism for incriminating both Castro and himself. The mechanism of setup of Oswald as patsy, and via Oswald, Castro, was by linking the assassination to Oswald’s rifle. The idea is that Oswald was innocent of the assassination but set up to be blamed for it by those who carried out the assassination.

It can be assumed Oswald had a handler. The specifics of what agency or agencies Oswald worked for and to whom he reported, how that worked, have been one of the enduring puzzles in the Oswald story. All of this is preamble to suggest that:

• Oswald went to the Texas Theatre on Nov 22 for a meeting with a contact related to his covert operative status.
• Carl Mather of Collins Radio was Oswald’s contact or handler (or Mather was a cutout or intermediary for someone who was).
• The man who went into the Texas Theatre at 1:36 into the balcony was not Oswald. 
• It should be considered that the man who went into the Texas Theatre at 1:36 pm either was the gunman who had just killed Tippit or was working with the same ones who had just killed Tippit, and entered the theatre with intent to kill Oswald.
• Oswald was innocent of the JFK assassination and Tippit killing. Carl Mather was innocent of the JFK assassination and Tippit killing. Tippit was innocent of the JFK assassination.
• The identification of Carl Mather of Collins Radio as Oswald’s intended contact in the Texas Theatre on Nov 22 is a breakthrough in being a virtual smoking-gun glimpse at a name and identity of an Oswald intelligence contact, in this case an intelligence contact seen interrupted in real time. This would have been of extraordinary importance to the JFK assassination if it had been recognized and investigated, but it was missed. 
• In this light, the “social friendship” of Carl Mather and his wife and the Tippits may be a benign public story of an actual relationship of Tippit as an informant or asset in which Mather was Tippit’s handler as well as Oswald’s. (If Tippit was paid, this also could explain Tippit appearing to live beyond his means and remove that basis for supposing Tippit was a “bent cop” or involved with narcotics in keeping with the idea Dulles planted, for which there is no evidence.)
• Upon news of the assassination, Mather would have contacted Tippit urgently to find Oswald and deliver some message to Oswald. Lacking confirmation that Tippit was able to find or contact Oswald, Mather planned to proceed with meeting Oswald according to a previous arrangement for a certain time in the Texas Theatre.
• Dallas Police dispatcher Murray Jackson’s unexplained order at 12:55 pm to Tippit to be in Oak Cliff, to “be at large for any emergency that comes in”, when than was not Tippit’s normal area, at a time nearly all other patrol cars were being summoned to Dealey Plaza, has always been a puzzle. The explanation proposed here starts from the background of long friendship between Tippit and Jackson in which as a teenager the younger Jackson had admired and wanted to become a police officer in part because of Tippit. The suggestion here is that Tippit asked Jackson to assign him to Oak Cliff, with Jackson not needing to know or ask why, just accustomed to doing an occasional favor for Tippit if asked. This is the simplest explanation of how that happened. Tippit asked, and Jackson assigned Tippit to Oak Cliff.
• Tippit then tried in vain to find Oswald but could not. Mather and Tippit meant no harm to Oswald and, whether they knew it or not, were trying to save Oswald’s life. 
• The ones who did the assassination of JFK are the ones who had Tippit killed, and would have killed Oswald in the Texas Theatre had Oswald not been arrested. The man who entered the theatre at 1:36 worked for the ones who had Tippit killed, likely was the gunman who had just killed Tippit and entered the theatre to kill again, to kill Oswald. The ones who had Tippit killed on Friday had Oswald killed on Sunday. 
• For obvious reasons Mather would not disclose his role with Oswald or his presence in Oak Cliff that day at 2 pm. The FBI was likely quietly asked not to inquire too closely of Mather about the report of he and his car having been sighted in Oak Cliff, “for national security reasons”.

 

[Benjamin Cole]

I will have to read this one a few times. Interesting presentation. 

I support the speculation that a false flag, intentionally unsuccessful JFKA was planned (my guess by David Atlee Phillips). LHO was in the mix somehow.  This is my "pet" explanation of the JFKA.  The most likely perps for the real JFKA are exiles and the Miami Station. 

....

The Carl Mather license plate story appears to be true, and endlessly curious. 

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/04/rex-blows-collins-radio-cia-cover.html

There is also a connection between Collins Radio and the boat named "the Rex." 

BTW, Larry Hancock has amplified the topic of who might have had foreknowledge of the JFKA. Hancock tracked down details regarding a Cubano airline mechanic who apparently forecast the JFKA, and who was working on a C-147 (C-130?) at Love Field on 11/22.  

The aircraft left Love Field shortly after the JFKA, but Hancock says the craft was likely not related to the JFKA. 

Like everything about the JFKA, there seems to be endless coincidences and improbabilities. 

 

[Tom Gram]

Was it normal for witnesses to the HSCA to get immunity and subsequently not give immunized testimony? I know this has been discussed before, but are we 100% positive that Mather was never deposed? It’s not like missing testimony is unheard of in this case e.g. the Church Committee INS stuff, but I don’t know of any examples from the HSCA.

That part stood out because why the hell would the HSCA grant immunity to this guy unless they had reason to believe that he had knowledge of Oswald or something. There should also be a paper trail discussing the immunity deal negotiations beyond just the “no objections” sheet - where are those documents? It just seems like something doesn’t add up and there should be a hell of a lot more information from the HSCA than just an outside contact report on Mather, and maybe even a deposition. 

[Paul Cummings]

5 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

Was it normal for witnesses to the HSCA to get immunity and subsequently not give immunized testimony? I know this has been discussed before, but are we 100% positive that Mather was never deposed? It’s not like missing testimony is unheard of in this case e.g. the Church Committee INS stuff, but I don’t know of any examples from the HSCA.

That part stood out because why the hell would the HSCA grant immunity to this guy unless they had reason to believe that he had knowledge of Oswald or something. There should also be a paper trail discussing the immunity deal negotiations beyond just the “no objections” sheet - where are those documents? It just seems like something doesn’t add up and there should be a hell of a lot more information from the HSCA than just an outside contact report on Mather, and maybe even a deposition. 

If I'm not mistaken you had people who were given immunity (HSCA) pleading the 5th during testimony. How that didn't kick off fireworks or have their immunity pulled is a wee bit curious. IMO the HSCA couldn't and wouldn't stand up to the bullies.

[David Boylan]

48 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I will have to read this one a few times. Interesting presentation. 

I support the speculation that a false flag, intentionally unsuccessful JFKA was planned (my guess by David Atlee Phillips). LHO was in the mix somehow.  This is my "pet" explanation of the JFKA.  The most likely perps for the real JFKA are exiles and the Miami Station. 

....

The Carl Mather license plate story appears to be true, and endlessly curious. 

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/04/rex-blows-collins-radio-cia-cover.html

There is also a connection between Collins Radio and the boat named "the Rex." 

BTW, Larry Hancock has amplified the topic of who might have had foreknowledge of the JFKA. Hancock tracked down details regarding a Cubano airline mechanic who apparently forecast the JFKA, and who was working on a C-147 (C-130?) at Love Field on 11/22.  

The aircraft left Love Field shortly after the JFKA, but Hancock says the craft was likely not related to the JFKA. 

Like everything about the JFKA, there seems to be endless coincidences and improbabilities. 

 

Ben,

Not to distract from Greg's excellent work here but the initial legwork on the Cuban mechanic was done by Matthew Smith in his interviews with Wayne January. This was the Red Bird Airport.

Quoting January's talk with the Cuban:

“[Wayne], I tell you. I was a mercenary pilot, hired by the CIA. I was involved in the Bay of Pigs planning strategy which was operated by the CIA. I was there involved with many of my friends when they died, when Robert Kennedy talked John Kennedy out of sending in the air cover which he agreed to send. He cancelled the air cover which he agreed to send. He cancelled the air cover after the invasion was launched. Many, many died. Far more than was told. I don’t know all that was going on but I do know that there was an indescribable amount of hurt, anger and embarrassment of those involved in the operation. … They are not only going to kill the President; they are going to kill Robert Kennedy and any other Kennedy that gets into that position. …You will see…They want Robert Kennedy real bad.” - Cuban pilot.

We believe that this was Manuel Villafana who was the nominal head of the Commando Mambises run by Grayston Lynch who was tasked by David Morales.

 

He [the Cuban] became comfortable with January after working with him over several days of working together and spoke further about his experience. He was particularly outspoken in relating that his friends had died during the Bay of Pigs landings because JFK had not delivered the promised air cover for them. During their conversations, talk of the President coming to Dallas apparently agitated the Cuban, and he related to January that JFK would be killed in revenge for his comrades' deaths. He stated that “they” were also going to kill RFK because he had convinced his brother not to send planes to support the landings at the Bay of Pigs, and because the Kennedy’s were now in the way of efforts to overthrow Castro. 

January did note to Smith that there was an absolute need to have the aircraft ready to depart on Friday, and when work had not been completed Thursday, they had worked into the evening to make sure that would happen.

[Benjamin Cole]

DB-

Thank you for your excellent corrections and enhancements to my comments. Yes, Red Bird, not Love Field. 

Also, as I recall  the Cubano mechanic, also a pilot, made specific comments that JFK would be assassinated during his (JFK's) visit in Dallas. 

http://dealeyplazauk.com/jfk-assassination/red-bird-airfield-leads/

For readers who want to pursue....paper by Hancock and Boylan. 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

52 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

Was it normal for witnesses to the HSCA to get immunity and subsequently not give immunized testimony? I know this has been discussed before, but are we 100% positive that Mather was never deposed? It’s not like missing testimony is unheard of in this case e.g. the Church Committee INS stuff, but I don’t know of any examples from the HSCA.

That part stood out because why the hell would the HSCA grant immunity to this guy unless they had reason to believe that he had knowledge of Oswald or something. There should also be a paper trail discussing the immunity deal negotiations beyond just the “no objections” sheet - where are those documents? It just seems like something doesn’t add up and there should be a hell of a lot more information from the HSCA than just an outside contact report on Mather, and maybe even a deposition. 

Great questions.

Unfortunately, the HSCA was hobbled at the start by the deposing of Richard Sprague and then Blakey's agreement to more or less exonerate the CIA from the get-go (which Blakey later in life publicly regretted). Blakey was a mafia-hunter (I think he wrote the RICO Act). A worthy man, but exactly the wrong man for the job (IMHO). 

Recently, we have seen what a House select committee can do to someone who does not honor a subpoena, with Steven Bannon. The 1/6 committee plays hardball and Bannon is going to prison. Fine by me.

What if the HSCA had played hardball, and started throwing people into prison who did not cooperate? 

 

 

 

 

[Pete Mellor]

19 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Establishment of a fact calling for explanation

You astound me (again) Holmes!

Like Benjamin, I'm going to have to re-read this piece a few times.

[David Boylan]

Greg,

If my memory is not failing, I think Martino mentioned that Oswald was supposed to meet his contact the theatre and was to be flown out of the country where he was supposed to be disposed of. 

There were some indications that Oswald was had two torn in half dollar bills when he was arrested. This form of contact identification was currently being used by the SAS/SO (Special Operations Staff/Special Operations) branch headed by Dez Fitzgerald and in use by Henry Hecksher as part of the AMWORLD project. We suspect that LHO was to be flown out of Red Bird airport. Now was he supposed to end up in Houston? Is that why David Ferrie was there on the phone but was called off because, according to Martino "a cop was killed" messing up the whole plan.

[Tom Gram]

Another thing that’s interesting is that in Mather’s contact report, his wife mentions that he frequently traveled abroad in his job for Collins Radio. Can you think of a better job for the CIA Central Cover Staff to place agents in than installing electronic equipment overseas? I somehow doubt it’ll be spelled out in any document in the JFK Collection, but I would bet the farm that Collins was utilized by CCS in some capacity.

There are a bunch of CIA documents on Collins at MFF that might be worth going through for clues. 

[Joseph McBride]

From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE:

THE MATHER INCIDENT

 

Another puzzling but suggestive loose end of the Tippit murder and the flight of Oswald is the Carl Mather incident. According to the 1979 HSCA staff report “OSWALD-TIPPIT ASSOCIATES,” around the time of the hunt for Oswald in Oak Cliff, when “there were sirens blaring and police cars ‘all over the area,’” a veteran auto mechanic named T. F. White saw a suspicious man sitting in a car in the parking lot at the El Chico Restaurant at 110 West Davis Street, the corner of Davis and North Beckley Avenue. This central location for the fast-moving events of that afternoon in Oak Cliff was six blocks south of Oswald’s rooming house at 1026 North Beckley, eight blocks from the Texas Theatre, and six blocks from the scene of Tippit’s murder. White, who was working near the restaurant at the Mack Pate Garage at 114 West Seventh Street, “was also a part-time deputy of some nature,” as the HSCA put it with undue casualness in a 1978 report.

White had seen the car driving rapidly on Davis before it turned into the parking lot. According to the HSCA staff report, White “noticed a man sitting in an irregularly parked car in the restaurant parking lot; the car was slightly hidden by a billboard. The man in the car appeared to be hiding, according to the mechanic. All of the circumstances seemed so suspicious that the mechanic went across the street to get a better look. When he was about 10 or 15 yards from the car, the man turned around. The mechanic was able then to get a good look at his face; he saw also that the man was wearing a white T-shirt. He made a note of the license number of the car.” According to an FBI interview with the mechanic, “WHITE said he observed the man driving the car from the side of his face, and when he saw television pictures of LEE HARVEY OSWALD on the night of November 22, he believed the man he saw at the El Chico Restaurant parking lot was identical with OSWALD. He said the man sat in the car for a short period of time and then left at a high rate of speed, going west on Davis Street.” White said he had not reported what he saw because he was afraid at that time.

The incident, according to White, took place around 2 p.m., at a time when he said he see and hear police throughout the area; that, however, would have been around the time Oswald was being arrested at the theater. But White also said the incident occurred when he was hearing radio reports about a suspect being sought in Oak Cliff, so he might have been mistaken about the time of the incident, which could have taken place earlier than 2 p.m. White seemed a reliable source with both law enforcement experience and an expert knowledge of cars; he took the initiative to record the car’s license number on a piece of paper. This story was passed on by White’s employer, Mack Pate, to Wes Wise, a broadcaster for KRLD-TV (a CBS affiliate) in Dallas and a future mayor of the city from 1971-76. Pate approached Wise when he was giving a sports talk at the El Chico Restaurant on December 4, 1963. Wise looked into the story, persuaded White that it was his civic duty to cooperate with the assassination investigation, and discovered that the license was registered to Carl Amos Mather of Garland, Texas, a city in Dallas County northeast of Dallas. The information was passed on by Wise to the FBI, which investigated Mather. What they and others learned was extraordinary.

The HSCA found that Mather had been a “close friend” of Officer J. D. Tippit since 1958, when the two families had lived on Glenfield Street in Dallas. Mather told the HSCA that he and his wife, Barbara, had socialized with J. D. and Marie Tippit. The Mathers, who had moved to Garland in 1961, went to see Marie on the afternoon of the officer’s death “to express their condolences to Mrs. TIPPIT, and to assist her in any way possible,” the FBI reported on December 14, 1963, after interviewing Barbara Mather. She said her husband left work at 2 or 2:30 p.m. on November 22 and came home to pick up her and their two children. They arrived at the Tippit home about 3:30, and Carl stayed there until about 5, when he went home with their children. According to the HSCA’s March 1978 interview report by investigator Jack Moriarty, the Mathers’ “impression of J. D. was that of a hard working man determined to provide for his family in spite of the lack of potential for advancement. Knew he took various odd jobs to augment his income and seemed to spend what little free time he had with his family. Marie helped out by babysitting for 5 to 7 children on somewhat of a regular basis. On occasion, the Mather kids would be included.”

The question of the identification of the car seen in the El Chico parking lot became an issue in the HSCA investigation. When T. F. White initially described the incident to Wise, Wise made a note that the car White saw in the parking lot was a 1957 Plymouth four-door with Texas license number PP 4537. The FBI determined on December 14, 1963, that the Mathers owned a blue 1957 Plymouth with that license number. But FBI interviews that month clouded the description of the automobile. In one, Wise was reported to have said that the mechanic described the car as a red 1957 Plymouth; in another, White was said to have described the car as a red 1961 Falcon. There were a number of red cars drawing notice around Oak Cliff that afternoon, including the red 1964 two-door Ford Galaxie driven by Tippit murder witness Jack Ray Tatum. It seemed that the FBI’s excuse for dropping its brief investigation of the El Chico incident was that the color of the car mysteriously changed from blue to red, supposedly eliminating Mather as a subject of interest in the bureau’s investigation. Some have tried to explain this discrepancy with the unlikely theory that Mather’s license plate was borrowed for use on another car on November 22. But could there be a simpler explanation, that the FBI itself conveniently changed the color of the car in its reports? This would not be the only time the FBI tampered with or lied about evidence in the case.

Beyond his friendship with Tippit, Mather was no ordinary neighbor. He had eye-opening connections with the U.S. government in his job with Collins Radio. That Richardson, Texas, company (now part of Rockwell Collins) by 1963 had long been an important defense contractor. Collins provided much of the radio equipment for the U.S. military during World War II and the Cold War and supplied radio equipment for NASA. At the time of the assassination, Collins had close connections not only with U.S. intelligence but also with anti-Castro Cubans.

The HSCA interview of Carl Mather in 1978 reported, “Not that Carl isn’t used to being interviewed by government agents; he has a security clearance -- and has had since he started traveling with his company -- he’s been with them for 21 years now. Has traveled overseas. His specific function deals with the installation of special electronics gear in aircraft. One such assignment caused him to be quartered in Brandywine, Maryland as he worked for some period of time at Andrews Air Force Base working on ‘Air Force Two’ -- Vice President Johnson’s plane at the time.” That plane was a duplicate of the Boeing 707 President Kennedy had used on November 22 and Johnson took back to Washington, supposedly with Kennedy’s body.

Shortly before the assassination, at the end of October 1963, Collins Radio angered President Kennedy by supplying the ship, the Rex, that launched an unsuccessful assassination raid against Fidel Castro of the kind Kennedy was then trying to discourage. The Rex, a decommissioned U.S. Navy submarine chaser, was the flagship of the CIA’s JM/WAVE fleet.  The Miami-based JM/WAVE station coordinated the highly provocative Cuban exile and CIA raids against Cuba that were putting pressure on Kennedy to escalate hostilities with Castro’s government during the still-tense period of diplomacy following the Missile Crisis of October 1962; the Joint Chiefs of Staff was applying similar pressure on the president to take military action over remaining Soviet weapons and forces on Cuba. Kennedy‘s moves to seek a rapprochement with Castro, following his pledge not to invade Cuba, were among the flash points of the animosity against the President among members of the Joint Chiefs and other militantly anti-communist rightwingers who considered him an appeaser and thought he had betrayed the anti-Castro cause. Kennedy’s tentative attempts to deescalate the guerrilla war in Vietnam were another cause of the military and other rightwing hostility toward him in the fall of 1963.

Furthermore, Collins Radio had been awarded a lucrative contract from the United States Information Agency in March 1963 to build nine short-wave transmitters in Southeast Asia, but the work was postponed when Kennedy cut the agency’s funding. The Wall Street Journal reported that April that Collins was planning to construct a radio communications system to link Laos, Thailand, and South Vietnam. “Collins also held the government contract for installing communications towers in Vietnam,” reports James W. Douglass in his 2008 book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters. “ . . . In November 1963, Collins was at the heart of the CIA-military-contracting business for state-of the-art communications systems.” Following Kennedy’s murder, Collins Radio would become one of the defense firms benefiting from President Johnson’s widening of the Vietnam War.

A Collins vice president, retired Rear Admiral Henry Chester Bruton, a three-time winner of the Navy Cross and a former director of Naval Communications, may have met Lee Harvey Oswald, the former Marine and “defector” to the USSR, in Dallas in October 1962, the month of the Missile Crisis. Oswald’s CIA handler, George de Mohrenschildt, claimed that he took Oswald to Bruton’s Dallas home. But it is striking what differing accounts of Bruton’s knowledge of Oswald are given in de Mohrenschildt’s self-justifying manuscript I AM A PATSY! I AM A PATSY!, which he was writing at the time of his death in 1977 (it was published as an appendix in the HSCA volumes), and in Edward Jay Epstein’s 1978 book Legend. Both are clearly works of disinformation, but the fact that Oswald’s possible connections with Bruton and Collins Radio are presented so differently in these two competing works of disinformation may be a signal of the importance of this aspect of Oswald’s career and the need by various parties to obfuscate that history.

Epstein writes that de Mohrenschildt had insinuated himself into the social world of Admiral Bruton and his wife, Frannie, in the summer of 1962, visiting “almost every day to use the pool. . . . Towards the end of the summer, De Mohrenschildt [Epstein, unlike the HSCA and others, capitalizes the ‘De’] had told Bruton about a young ex-Marine he knew who had defected to the Soviet Union, become disillusioned with communism and returned to the United States. He hoped that Bruton might become interested in Oswald and help place him in a job in the electronics field. According to De Mohrenschildt’s recollection, Bruton abruptly changed the subject, so De Mohrenschildt did not press the idea. It was obvious to him that Bruton would not help. After this rebuff, De Mohrenschildt decided to introduce Marina to Mrs. Bruton as someone desperately in need of assistance.” According to Epstein, it was during a visit by de Mohrenschildt with Marina to the Bruton home on October 1, 1962, that Lee Oswald unexpectedly showed up. But Epstein claims that “Admiral Bruton was away in Europe on business for Collins Radio”; de Mohrenschildt’s manuscript, on the other hand, reports that Bruton was there and had an unpleasant encounter with Oswald. Epstein writes, “Bruton has no recollection of discussing Oswald with De Mohrenschildt, though he states that is certainly possible that he did. De Mohrenschildt claimed to vividly recall once even bringing Oswald over to meet Admiral Bruton and Bruton saying something to the effect of ‘Get this man away from me.’ Following the assassination, neither Admiral nor Mrs. Bruton were questioned by the FBI, Secret Service, Warren Commission, or any other investigation agency.”

If the meeting between Oswald and Admiral Bruton actually occurred during the crucial month of U.S.-Cuban tensions, it and the earlier overtures to the admiral on Oswald’s behalf may have been an attempt by de Mohrenschildt to place the ex-Marine with Collins as an employee or undercover CIA or Naval Intelligence agent. Or perhaps it was a way for Bruton to gain intelligence information from Oswald, who had worked in a radio factory in the USSR and had access to the top-secret U-2 spy plane program while serving with the Marines in Japan. Among Bruton’s specialties was electronic surveillance. Describing his career, Epstein writes,

 

He had been a lawyer in Virginia before becoming a submarine commander. Eventually he had risen to be director of naval communications. In this capacity he had undertaken to reorganize the global system which the Navy uses to communicate with and control the movements of all its submarines, surface ships, airplanes and missiles and also to pinpoint the location of enemy vessels. He had supervised this top-secret project until 1960, when he retired from the Navy and, as a vice-president, joined Collins Radio in Richardson, Texas, where he continued to work on modernizing and refining the communications system.

 

According to Peter Dale Scott, there was an Oswald connection with Collins’s October 1963 Rex mission. The renegade assassination/sabotage operation was sponsored by the MDC, the Movement Democrato Christiano, whose commando training camp near Lake Ponchartrain in Louisiana Oswald had tried to infiltrate, apparently on behalf of a U.S. government intelligence or investigative agency.

De Mohrenschildt portrays the supposed Dallas meeting between Admiral Bruton and Oswald as simply a social occasion to which George and his wife, Jeanne, brought the former Marine and his Russian wife to meet the admiral and his wife, Frannie (Jeanne LeGon de Mohrenschildt, who had been a dress designer, had worked with Abraham Zapruder in a Dallas clothing company). George de Mohrenschildt claims his “good friend” Admiral Bruton was disgruntled with his job with Collins. According to the Baron’s manuscript, Bruton “began talking disgustedly of his new job with Collins Radio, actually an important position he took after his early retirement from the Navy. He did not like the commercial aspects of his work. ‘I should have stayed in the Navy a bit longer,’ he said irritably, ‘I am made to be a salesman.’" That quote is suspect in itself because it seems a major distortion of Bruton’s actual position at the time with Collins Radio.

De Mohrenschildt’s account also claims that Oswald was in a rude, sarcastic mood in the presence of the retired admiral (“Here I saw for the first time [Lee’s] profound dislike for the military and especially for the brass”), and Bruton in turn was incensed by the ex-Marine’s antimilitary talk. “He is somewhat of a rebel and a little bit a Marxist,” De Mohrenschildt contends he apologetically told the admiral, who “could hardly restrain himself from telling Lee to stand at attention first and then to order him out of the house.” Four years later in Arlington, Virginia, the manuscript goes on, when de Mohrenschildt told the “absolutely flabbergasted” Brutons that the former Marine they had met in Texas was Kennedy’s alleged assassin, Frannie Bruton “became quite excited that she had entertained ‘that horrible individual,’” but the admiral, “being an adventurous man, was rather amused than appalled by this fortuitous acquaintanceship. ‘Well,’ he said jokingly, ‘we met Nixon and we also met Lee Harvey Oswald . . .’”  De Mohrenschildt somewhat gratuitously adds that the Brutons were “incidentally long-time enemies of [former Navy man] Richard Nixon, whom they knew from his California days when he made his career ruining good citizens’ reputations.”

In Epstein’s starkly different account, Oswald’s unwelcome arrival at the Bruton home in the admiral’s absence disrupted George de Mohrenschildt’s plans to put Marina under the wing of Frannie Bruton. The reason for that scheme is not made clear in Legend, but perhaps de Mohrenschildt was already trying to dissasociate himself from the Oswalds; George and Jeanne left for Haiti in the spring of 1963 and never saw the Oswalds again after that. Oswald’s visit to the Bruton home, in Epstein’s version, disconcerted Frannie Bruton, who found him a “sleazy person,” but Oswald had a relaxed discussion over drinks with U.S. Army Captain Philip Weinert, a friend of Mrs. Bruton’s son who found Oswald unexpectedly thoughtful. But Epstein portrays de Mohrenschildt’s plans to put Marina under Frannie’s wing as dashed by Lee Oswald’s uninvited entrance on the scene, since he had “undermined all the efforts De Mohrenschildt had made to portray Marina as a wife who had been deserted by her husband. . . . Mrs. Bruton never saw Marina or Oswald again, nor did De Mohrenschildt ever again bring up the subject. When Admiral Bruton heard the story of the curious visit, he just shrugged; De Mohrenschildt had always seemed a bit odd to him.”

Beyond these obscurely dueling works of disinformation and Oswald’s possible intelligence connections with Collins Radio, much remains conjectural. Why Carl Mather, who worked for Collins, a man with such close connections to U.S. intelligence and links to Oswald and anti-Castro Cubans, was a “close friend” of Tippit, an obscure Dallas policeman, is unclear. It could suggest a possible Oswald-Tippit connection through Mather, and even a possible involvement by Mather in the events surrounding Oswald’s escape (with Mather’s Plymouth as a possible getaway car) and the Tippit murder. But since we know that Tippit was pursuing Oswald in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, why would Tippit’s friend be involved in helping Oswald escape? Could Mather’s political connections provide an explanation? If that were the case, could it lend credence to the theory that Tippit’s pursuit of Oswald was part of an Oswald escape plan somehow gone awry? The fact that another man was being taken into custody in the back of the theater around the same time Oswald was arrested might tie in with the incident of T. F. White witnessing a man resembling Oswald in a car not far from the theater. Perhaps the man White saw was the Oswald “double” (whether or not Oswald could drive a car is still a matter of dispute).

Since Carl Mather was said to have been a close friend of Tippit’s, why would he have had a connection of some kind, however indirect and perhaps unwitting, with Tippit’s murder? Wes Wise told the HSCA in 1978 that when he had dinner with the Mathers and a New York reporter shortly after the assassination to discuss the incident allegedly involving their car, Carl Mather was “so upset” and “agitated” that he was “too nervous to eat.” We know that Oswald had intelligence connections and with the CIA in particular. The fact that both he and Collins Radio were involved with anti-Castro Cuban exiles is suggestive, as is the link between Mather and Lyndon Johnson. In yet another of the many strange “coincidences” surrounding the case, Marina Oswald even went on to marry a Collins Radio employee, Kenneth Porter. But we are missing some key information and linkages that would make more sense of this obviously important piece of the November 22 puzzle.

Exactly how and why these interests and connections intersected during that climactic period in Oak Cliff, and whether they had to do with the Oswald double seen being escorted out of the Texas Theatre by the Dallas police (under “arrest”) while the other Oswald was being taken into custody is only partially clear. Was Collins Radio involved in communications linkages for the conspiracy operations that day, including helping transmit messages to and from and about Officer Tippit?  And perhaps, as the incident with the car in Oak Cliff might suggest, could Collins Radio also have been involved at even deeper levels with the patsy, his double, and Officer Tippit? Roger Craig’s account of learning quickly at the School Book Depository, via a non-public radio, that an officer had been shot in Oak Cliff is a further piece of evidence suggesting that such a link, involving unofficial radio communications, might have existed. When Mather’s boss at Collins at the time, James Pickford, was interviewed by the HSCA’s Jack Moriarty in December 1978, Pickford pointed out that Collins Radio until 1959 had a subsidiary at Redbird Airport, the small airport southwest of downtown Dallas, where some have speculated Oswald might have been trying to get to in order to escape.

In JFK and the Unspeakable, James W. Douglass offers the following speculation in an attempt to sort out the mysterious incident in Oak Cliff reported by White: “The Oswald double, after having been put in the police car in the alley, must have been driven a short distance and released on higher intelligence orders. Unfortunately for the plotters, he was seen again soon.” Since White’s report of spotting the man in the car in the El Chico parking lot places the incident around the same time Oswald, under arrest, was being driven downtown in a squad car from the Texas Theatre under arrest, the man White saw, in Douglass’s analysis, must have been the Oswald double. Wise, the former Dallas mayor, in a 2005 interview with Douglass, reflected on the situation and asked, “Well, you’re aware of the idea of two Oswalds, I guess?”

Douglass further speculates:

 

After the Oswald double’s quick release following his Texas Theater arrest by the Dallas Police, he may have been given a Mather car to use that had a state-of-the-art Collins Radio for effective communications. The Oswald double keeping a low profile in the El Chico parking lot was apparently waiting to receive an order. Thanks to T. F. White’s jotting down the license plate that was on the double’s car, the government then had to disassociate that license as much as possible from Mather. But fortunately it was done clumsily, and White’s documentation of the license plate provided a trail that led back to the CIA.

 

It is extremely frustrating that the FBI failed to follow up on these solid and possibly critical leads that might have helped supply some of the rumored but elusive connections among Oswald, Tippit, and elements of the U.S. intelligence and military. The Mather incident is an unresolved nexus of involvement that might have helped unravel the assassination and the murder of Tippit. A portion of an HSCA staff memo on “Oswald and Tippit” released in 1994, listing “Areas requiring further research and investigation,” discusses the Mather automobile incident in the context of asking, “was there any relationship between Tippit and LHO? . . . The authorities traced the license to a car belonging to good friends of the Tippits. Has this lead been checked?”

The HSCA sought testimony from Carl Mather in 1978. G. Robert Blakey, the HSCA’s chief counsel and staff director, applied to U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell for an order compelling Mather’s testimony and inexplicably “conferring immunity upon Carl Amos Mather” for that testimony, in which Mather could not explain how his car’s license number could have been seen on a car in the El Chico parking lot with a driver resembling Oswald. In addition to some possible connection with the fleeing patsy and Mather’s acknowledged friendship with the dead policeman, perhaps the connections between Collins Radio and various matters relating to national security also could help suggest why Mather felt he needed immunity and why it would have been granted by the U.S. government even during such an important investigation.

By giving Mather immunity and evidently not pursuing the matter further, the HSCA, like the Warren Commission before it, showed that it did not want to know too much about Oswald or Tippit.

[Greg Doudna]

Thank you Joseph McBride for the collection of research you compiled on this which sets it all out. I am struck with your discussion of the contact with Bruton. Could that be where an ongoing contact in Collins Radio developed for Oswald even if not Bruton personally. If Mather was a contact for Oswald on Nov 22, 1963, how long was that relationship, when did it begin. 

I consider my contribution to be identification of the man in Carl Mather's car as Carl Mather. Although you touch on that as a possibility, no prior discussions I have seen identified the man in Carl Mather's car as Carl Mather to my knowledge, as opposed to talk of Oswald doubles and so forth, anything but Carl Mather's car driven by Carl Mather. The other contribution I consider in my proposal is in making a connection between Oswald in the theatre for a meeting, and Carl Mather in his car nearby as waiting for a meeting--T.F. White accidentally stumbling upon the other half of Oswald's theatre meeting that did not come to pass. 

By not realizing the man in Carl Mather's car was Carl Mather, and that Carl Mather makes sense as the person Oswald was to meet in the theatre, a lot of opportunity was missed for better understanding of both the JFK and Tippit cases over a period of decades. There were enough facts available to come to those two conclusions but for some reason it was missed. That is what I see here. 

[James DiEugenio]

It has always been  mystifying how the Oswalds met up with Bruton and his wife of Collins Radio, and then, on the afternoon of the murder, someone resembling Oswald is seen in Mather's car, and Mather works at Collins Radio.

 Just a coincidence? I mean, really.  And then Mather ends up at Tippit's house later that afternoon.

Did Mather give a deposition under immunity?   If so that should have been in executive session.

Or was it just an oral interview? If that was all, then why make the request?

Does anyone have the deposition, has anyone seen it?

[Joseph McBride]

And then Marina marries a guy working for Collins Radio . . .

[James DiEugenio]

LOL, forgot about that one.