The Nov 20th Janitor Phonecall

[Gerry Down]

In her book “Me And Lee” Judyth Vary Baker talks about a “Call Wheel” system she and Lee would use to communicate. The way it worked was as follows:

Judyth would wait by a payphone at a set time on a set day. She uses an example of a payphone by a 7-11 store at 11pm. Lee would ring her and they would talk. At the end of the call he would end by saying something like “I’ll call back in a few days” which she says meant he’d call her back 3 hours later that same night on that same pay phone. If she missed such a call, which she described as breaking the wheel, then she would have to wait until the next pre-arranged time for them to talk.

In the case of an emergency, Lee gave her an emergency number to call to get in touch with him. The number she says he left her was the number to the TSBD. The system they had set up was that she would ring the TSBD and ask for Lee Oswald the “new Janitor”. The phrase “new Janitor” was a code for Oswald to refuse the call, but then phone her that night at 11pm at their usual payphone which was at the 7-11 payphone.

Judyth claims that an operator remembered such a call coming through to the TSBD on Wednesday Nov 20^th 1963, and that this operator reported the call to investigators. She says this in the end notes of the book. Does anyone have the documents which prove that such a call was made to Lee Oswald the "new Janitor" and that such a call was investigated by authorities after the assassination?

On a recent interview on "Out Of The Blank", at 13 minutes on the interview, Gerald Posner says that the FBI checked the phone records of 1026 North Beckley and the TSBD to see if anyone suspicious had been trying to contact LHO. Does anyone happen to have offhand the FBI docs that describe this part of the investigation?

 

 

Edited September 7, 2022 by Gerry Down

[Gerry Down]

On a July 27th 2020 Facebook post Judyth Vary Baker also says that there is a record of Lee making two long distance calls from the gas station across from 1026 North Beckley. Has anyone seen such a claim in the official records?:

 

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by Gerry Down

[Tom Gram]

I think I found a couple sources for the janitor call:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267#relPageId=3

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57682#relPageId=189

The teletype references two other teletypes on the topic from 11/28. The first one should be in the FBI JFK HQ file since it was sent to Director, the second might only be in the NOLA and Dallas field office files and not online. I bet you can find the file number in the Dallas JFK and/or Oswald file cross reference sheets though: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1943

 

[Gerry Down]

11 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I think I found a couple sources for the janitor call:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267#relPageId=3

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57682#relPageId=189

The teletype references two other teletypes on the topic from 11/28. The first one should be in the FBI JFK HQ file since it was sent to Director, the second might only be in the NOLA and Dallas field office files and not online. I bet you can find the file number in the Dallas JFK and/or Oswald file cross reference sheets though: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1943

 

Thanks Tom.

So the woman at the Covington exchange making this claim was a Yvonne Cooper. Here is the Mary Ferrell page on her:

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/marysdb.php?id=2637&search=yvonne%20cooper  

There seems to be nothing about her anywhere else online. I did a quick search of the index of “Harvey & Lee” and no sign of her name either.

The claim she made, as laid out in the FBI report, is very convincing. Lots of detail to it:

 

 

But it would seem that the toll ticket at the Covington exchange of the alleged call could not be located which damages Mrs Coopers claim. But there is an apparent incongruity here. Southern Bell did not need to search for Covington toll tickets for Nov 21st and Nov 22nd as these were right there for them at the exchange to check. Toll tickets prior to this had to be located as they had been sent off to the Accounting Department. For some reason, this search of toll tickets at the Accounting Department only covered the dates from October to Nov 19th (no mention of Nov 20th):

The problem here is what about Nov 20th? The only toll tickets available on site at the exchange were for Nov 21st and Nov 22nd:
 

 

Was there a blunder in the search where they thought the toll tickets for Nov 20th , Nov 21st and Nov 22nd were available on site at the exchange and had been searched and therefore there was no need to search for the Nov 20th toll tickets at the Accounting Department? And as a result only toll tickets at the Accounting Department up to Nov 19th had to be checked? 

This link as you posted appears to be the final say from the FBI that the toll ticket could not be located but there is no mention of the actual dates that were checked:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267#relPageId=3&search=Janitor_and%20new%20and%20call

Could the FBI have hid such a toll ticket that threatened to upset the FBIs report to the Warren Commission at the time in which they were trying to wrap up the whole affair as Oswald being a lone nut with no contacts? Presumably this would be a difficult thing for the FBI to do as they would need to get the company Southern Bell, who were searching for the toll ticket, to stay quiet upon finding the ticket. And I’m not sure the FBI would be able to get Southern Bell to do that. A simple answer is that Southern Bell made a mistake in their search and left out Nov 20th and the FBI did not spot this mistake.

By the way, where can the NOLA and Dallas field office files be found if they are not online? Is there a physical location that one must go to to retrieve them? Judyth Vary Baker said in her book that the call was refused by Mr. Oswald. I don’t see that detail in any of the links you provided. I wonder if she is getting that from some other file, perhaps one of the two teletypes you suggest.

[Tom Gram]

3 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

Thanks Tom.

So the woman at the Covington exchange making this claim was a Yvonne Cooper. Here is the Mary Ferrell page on her:

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/marysdb.php?id=2637&search=yvonne%20cooper  

There seems to be nothing about her anywhere else online. I did a quick search of the index of “Harvey & Lee” and no sign of her name either.

The claim she made, as laid out in the FBI report, is very convincing. Lots of detail to it:

 

 

But it would seem that the toll ticket at the Covington exchange of the alleged call could not be located which damages Mrs Coopers claim. But there is an apparent incongruity here. Southern Bell did not need to search for Covington toll tickets for Nov 21st and Nov 22nd as these were right there for them at the exchange to check. Toll tickets prior to this had to be located as they had been sent off to the Accounting Department. For some reason, this search of toll tickets at the Accounting Department only covered the dates from October to Nov 19th (no mention of Nov 20th):

The problem here is what about Nov 20th? The only toll tickets available on site at the exchange were for Nov 21st and Nov 22nd:
 

 

Was there a blunder in the search where they thought the toll tickets for Nov 20th , Nov 21st and Nov 22nd were available on site at the exchange and had been searched and therefore there was no need to search for the Nov 20th toll tickets at the Accounting Department? And as a result only toll tickets at the Accounting Department up to Nov 19th had to be checked? 

This link as you posted appears to be the final say from the FBI that the toll ticket could not be located but there is no mention of the actual dates that were checked:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267#relPageId=3&search=Janitor_and%20new%20and%20call

Could the FBI have hid such a toll ticket that threatened to upset the FBIs report to the Warren Commission at the time in which they were trying to wrap up the whole affair as Oswald being a lone nut with no contacts? Presumably this would be a difficult thing for the FBI to do as they would need to get the company Southern Bell, who were searching for the toll ticket, to stay quiet upon finding the ticket. And I’m not sure the FBI would be able to get Southern Bell to do that. A simple answer is that Southern Bell made a mistake in their search and left out Nov 20th and the FBI did not spot this mistake.

By the way, where can the NOLA and Dallas field office files be found if they are not online? Is there a physical location that one must go to to retrieve them? Judyth Vary Baker said in her book that the call was refused by Mr. Oswald. I don’t see that detail in any of the links you provided. I wonder if she is getting that from some other file, perhaps one of the two teletypes you suggest.

I only have a couple minutes so I can’t address everything here, but I have a few comments for now.

I don’t think it would be very difficult for the FBI to get Southern Bell to stay quiet. Chandler Josey was a Southern Bell Security Officer (possibly Chief - I forget) in New Orleans and he was prolific FBI informant who assisted with phone tap operations, investigations, you name it. William Walter actually alleged in the 70s that Josey was directly involved in bugging Jim Garrison’s office during the Shaw case, but there is no corroboration of that that I know of. The point is the FBI had a very close relationship with Southern Bell, and Josey is just one example of several Bureau collaborators. 

Also, all the FBI field office files currently can only be found at NARA. You can request reproductions of any documents though and they’ll email them to you, but it’s like a buck or two per page and takes about four months. NARA is supposedly working on digitizing the entire collection to comply with Biden’s order, and put out a very aggressive estimate for when it’ll be online (I think it was the end of 2023). I think it’ll take a lot longer than that, but when it finally happens it’ll be a complete game changer for research. There is so much stuff that’s been released for years that basically no one has ever looked at, and I bet that new discoveries will happen at the fastest pace since the ARRB. 

[Gerry Down]

1 hour ago, Tom Gram said:

Also, all the FBI field office files currently can only be found at NARA. You can request reproductions of any documents though and they’ll email them to you, but it’s like a buck or two per page and takes about four months. NARA is supposedly working on digitizing the entire collection to comply with Biden’s order, and put out a very aggressive estimate for when it’ll be online (I think it was the end of 2023). I think it’ll take a lot longer than that, but when it finally happens it’ll be a complete game changer for research. There is so much stuff that’s been released for years that basically no one has ever looked at, and I bet that new discoveries will happen at the fastest pace since the ARRB. 

I’m a bit lost. I don’t have much experience using NARA. After reading the “Research Tools” on the NARA website I was still unable to locate the FBI field office files.

As you previously stated, the below teletype references two other teletypes:

SOURCE: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267#relPageId=3&search=Janitor_and%20new%20and%20call

1. Teletype 1: This teletypes was sent to the FBI director and so should be located somewhere in the FBI HQ file at this link: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1196  . There are over 250 sections however in that file.
2. Teletype 2: This teletype was a communication from the Dallas FBI Field Office to somewhere unknown. To get the reference number for this teletype, you suggest I would need to find it in the lists on this page: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1943  . However those lists contain very short descriptions of what the teletype is about and these descriptions are in handwriting which can be difficult to read.

Am I reading the situation correctly, is this the only way I can find these two referenced teletypes which you talk about? As someone not used to conducting research, I feel like I would have better odds at finding a needle in a haystack than finding these two teletypes.

It seems like this janitor phonecall is important. If the Nov 20^th toll tickets were never searched for in relation to this phonecall as my superficial research suggests, then Yvonne Coopers claim remains valid. This means someone in New Orleans was aware Oswald was working at the TSBD and was trying to contact him at the building just days before the assassination.

[Tom Gram]

28 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

I’m a bit lost. I don’t have much experience using NARA. After reading the “Research Tools” on the NARA website I was still unable to locate the FBI field office files.

As you previously stated, the below teletype references two other teletypes:

SOURCE: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267#relPageId=3&search=Janitor_and%20new%20and%20call

1. Teletype 1: This teletypes was sent to the FBI director and so should be located somewhere in the FBI HQ file at this link: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1196  . There are over 250 sections however in that file.
2. Teletype 2: This teletype was a communication from the Dallas FBI Field Office to somewhere unknown. To get the reference number for this teletype, you suggest I would need to find it in the lists on this page: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1943  . However those lists contain very short descriptions of what the teletype is about and these descriptions are in handwriting which can be difficult to read.

Am I reading the situation correctly, is this the only way I can find these two referenced teletypes which you talk about? As someone not used to conducting research, I feel like I would have better odds at finding a needle in a haystack than finding these two teletypes.

It seems like this janitor phonecall is important. If the Nov 20^th toll tickets were never searched for in relation to this phonecall as my superficial research suggests, then Yvonne Coopers claim remains valid. This means someone in New Orleans was aware Oswald was working at the TSBD and was trying to contact him at the building just days before the assassination.

For anything from Dallas the cross reference sheets are the quickest way to find an agency file number in my opinion. They are in chronological order so if you find a teletype listed sent only from Dallas to New Orleans from Nov. 28th it’s probably the right one. From there I search the NARA spreadsheets for the file number to get the RIF, and the subject line will usually confirm you found the right one. For example, if you get a file number of 89-43-1073  just do a text search for that in all the spreadsheets containing the 124(FBI) prefix until you find it. 

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/search

For anything not from Dallas it’s a bit of a crap shoot. The best way I’d say is download the spreadsheets, then filter the agency file number column for the field office you are looking for. For example - I think New Orleans is 89-69 but don’t quote me on that - you’d filter for “text containing” 89-69. From there you can filter the date column for 11/28/63, find a teletype received from Dallas, then look at the subject lines on the far right to see if it matches what you’re looking for. Sometimes the sent and received copies( e.g. the same teletype in the Dallas vs. New Orleans files) are slightly different with written-in marginalia, etc., but usually they’ll just be duplicates. Where it gets interesting is with the unsent drafts of teletypes, with the SAC signature line at the bottom. An example of this is the pre assassination teletype from New Orleans that had the information about 544 Camp St. written in that was crossed out and never sent in the final version. The point being it’s worth it to look at both copies, and to check out different RIFs that seem to refer to the same teletype from the sending field office, since one might the draft version. 

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

For anything from Dallas the cross reference sheets are the quickest way to find an agency file number in my opinion. They are in chronological order so if you find a teletype listed sent only from Dallas to New Orleans from Nov. 28th it’s probably the right one. From there I search the NARA spreadsheets for the file number to get the RIF, and the subject line will usually confirm you found the right one. For example, if you get a file number of 89-43-1073  just do a text search for that in all the spreadsheets containing the 124(FBI) prefix until you find it. 

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/search

For anything not from Dallas it’s a bit of a crap shoot. The best way I’d say is download the spreadsheets, then filter the agency file number column for the field office you are looking for. For example - I think New Orleans is 89-69 but don’t quote me on that - you’d filter for “text containing” 89-69. From there you can filter the date column for 11/28/63, find a teletype received from Dallas, then look at the subject lines on the far right to see if it matches what you’re looking for. Sometimes the sent and received copies( e.g. the same teletype in the Dallas vs. New Orleans files) are slightly different with written-in marginalia, etc., but usually they’ll just be duplicates. Where it gets interesting is with the unsent drafts of teletypes, with the SAC signature line at the bottom. An example of this is the pre assassination teletype from New Orleans that had the information about 544 Camp St. written in that was crossed out and never sent in the final version. The point being it’s worth it to look at both copies, and to check out different RIFs that seem to refer to the same teletype from the sending field office, since one might the draft version. 

I can only recommend the above way-to-go, I have been experimenting with other stuff in processing the filesn but too much unknown variables to be consistent in the results (and a some codes we know very little about).

So people, copy the text above and save it on you desktop, and send a big thank you to TOM for sharing this !

 

 

[Tom Gram]

27 minutes ago, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

I can only recommend the above way-to-go, I have been experimenting with other stuff in processing the filesn but too much unknown variables to be consistent in the results (and a some codes we know very little about).

So people, copy the text above and save it on you desktop, and send a big thank you to TOM for sharing this !

 

 

Thanks Jean Paul. I also think there’s a column where it just has the name of the field office, so instead of filtering for text containing 89-69 you’d just do New Orleans for example. I can’t open the sheets right now but I’m fairly certain that column is there. That is the better way probably since there can be JFKA files, Oswald files, Ruby files etc. from the same field office with different file numbers.

Filtering for “text containing” in the subject line columns can also be helpful to find RIFs on various topics that are not online. 

I also recommend combining all the NARA spreadsheets as different tabs in one excel file so you can just switch back and forth instead of having multiple windows. 

[Gerry Down]

Let me get this straight so that I and others reading this can understand. You talk about the following:

An “agency file number”

An “agency file number” is the file number an agency, like the FBI for example, has assigned to a document. The agency then gives the document to NARA who assigns a RIF number to it. And you need the RIF to locate and read the document. 

I’ve gone to this set of cross reference sheets: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1943 . The first link contains a 279 page document. On page 7 of that document I’ve found a possible teletype I’d like to look at. It is a Nov 28th 1963 teletype from Dallas to FBI HQ. On that page there are several numbers. However I’ve found out that the following is the “agency file number”:

105-82555-328 (at the bottom right hand corner)

From here I then go to the NARA spreadsheets at this link: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/search . There are 6 spreadsheets there which I’d imagine any serious researcher has downloaded and kept on their computer for research.

So I searched these 6 excel sheet and found the agency file number of 105-82555-328 showing up in the second spreadsheet on that list of 6 sheets. My understanding is that this gives me a RIF number of 124-10014-10137:

So I now need to find RIF 124-10014-10137

I’ve tried Mary Ferrell and NARA and Google. And I can’t find this RIF. Any pointers to help find it?

[Gerry Down]

From my research which involved searching those 6 excel sheets for FBI documents on the date of Nov 28th 1963 and then searching the subject line to see if any had any correlation to what I was looking for I could only come up with one result:

That's giving me a RIF of 124-10144-10004 which I am not able to find. 

Tom, how did you find this document: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267#relPageId=3

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

Let me get this straight so that I and others reading this can understand. You talk about the following:

An “agency file number”

An “agency file number” is the file number an agency, like the FBI for example, has assigned to a document. The agency then gives the document to NARA who assigns a RIF number to it. And you need the RIF to locate and read the document. 

I’ve gone to this set of cross reference sheets: https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1943 . The first link contains a 279 page document. On page 7 of that document I’ve found a possible teletype I’d like to look at. It is a Nov 28th 1963 teletype from Dallas to FBI HQ. On that page there are several numbers. However I’ve found out that the following is the “agency file number”:

105-82555-328 (at the bottom right hand corner)

From here I then go to the NARA spreadsheets at this link: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/search . There are 6 spreadsheets there which I’d imagine any serious researcher has downloaded and kept on their computer for research.

So I searched these 6 excel sheet and found the agency file number of 105-82555-328 showing up in the second spreadsheet on that list of 6 sheets. My understanding is that this gives me a RIF number of 124-10014-10137:

So I now need to find RIF 124-10014-10137

I’ve tried Mary Ferrell and NARA and Google. And I can’t find this RIF. Any pointers to help find it?

Yes, 105-82555 is the Oswald HQ file, so it’s on MFF - and thus you don’t need the RIF to find it. You can try to go to RIF search on MFF, select agency file number from the drop down list and just type it in, but in my experience that basically never works for FBI files so you have to just flip through the different sections and find the correct number handwritten on the document, usually in the bottom right hand corner - but not always. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1191

The Oswald file is a much bigger pain in the ass to navigate than the JFK file since it’s jam packed with obscenely long compilation reports of 302s that take up a single file number, but it’s still all in order. So section 1 starts with 105-82555-1 and so on. The effect of the big reports is you have to over estimate. Each section is usually 100-200 pages, but you might have to double what you’d intuitively guess to get close - so for file number 328 a good starting point is section 6. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57674#relPageId=1

The first document in the file is a teletype with file number 281, so we’re probably in the right place. If you scroll through the section, which was made massively easier by MFF’s recent update, you’ll eventually find document 328.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57674#relPageId=85

Since it looks to be about the wrong topic, head back to the cross reference sheets and see if you can find another file number to check out. Rinse and repeat. 

The alternative would be just search for the file number in the NARA spreadsheets to get the RIF like you would if it wasn’t online, then do a RIF search on MFF, but for docs on MFF I like to do it this way because sometimes there are related documents adjacent to what you are looking for since everything is roughly chronological. Also, on MFF the FBI HQ files are from the late 80s, so the individual pages do not have searchable RIFs - thus unless a more recent version of any particular agency file number is on there you won’t be able to do a RIF search for it.

EDIT: To clarify, yes we’ve been talking about agency file numbers, and your description is spot on. You don’t need the RIF to actually find the document though, since all the agency file numbers are listed in the NARA spreadsheets (so you can search for them directly). Once you find the correct row in the spreadsheets you have everything you need to request a reproduction, which is RIF, record set, agency file number, and date. For example:

124-10027-10278; DL; 89-43-40; 11/22/63

The DL is the record set. I was wrong in my last comment about it saying “Dallas” - it’s abbreviated, so for New Orleans you’d filter for NO, etc. 

Edited September 13, 2022 by Tom Gram

[Tom Gram]

2 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

From my research which involved searching those 6 excel sheets for FBI documents on the date of Nov 28th 1963 and then searching the subject line to see if any had any correlation to what I was looking for I could only come up with one result:

That's giving me a RIF of 124-10144-10004 which I am not able to find. 

Tom, how did you find this document: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267#relPageId=3

For that teletype I searched MFF for: janitor and new and call. If you use the “ands” it’ll search for every document containing all of those words. If the photocopy sucks though or is off center it’ll be unsearchable on MFF, so you just have to dig around. Again, all the FBI HQ files on MFF are basically in chronological order, so that can be a good way to dig up files that don’t show up in the searches. 

[Benjamin Cole]

A concern about the janitor call:

Before the JFKA, wasn't LHO generally referred to as "Lee Oswald"? 

Also, LHO was a book handler, not a janitor. 

After the JFKA, there were any number of LHO sitings and connections, by earnest but inaccurate witnesses. 

The missing records from Nov. 20 are, as usual in everything about the JFKA case, suspicious. 

 

[Mark Knight]

Ben, re-read the beginning of the thread. It explains the "janitor" reference.

Of course, Oswald wasn't the janitor. Everyone knows that...NOW. Re-read the beginning of the thread to understand what the "janitor" reference was about.

And of course, the failure to search for the Nov. 20 records is suspicious. On that part, you have a gift at explaining the obvious.