The Raleigh phone call - an examination of the "call slip" factoid

[Guest]

Hi

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette

[Joseph McBride]

When someone writes "factoid," you know the

person "learned" about the assassination from

the late disinformation agent John MacAdams, who used the term

as a childish code word to disparage something he didn't like

before making or not making a case against it. The use

of "factoid" is similar to the common disparaging use of the

term "conspiracy theory" to end discussion.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Joseph McBride

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Joseph McBride said:

When someone writes "factoid," you know the

person learned about the assassination from

the late John MacAdams, who used the term

as a childish code word to disparage something he didn't like

before making or not making a case against it.

Thanks for the heads up.

[Greg Doudna]

Lance Payette -- I appreciate your effort in putting together this case but on this one I think you have misfired. Before going into the issues you raise concerning Alveeta Treon's credibility, some starting points. There was a "John Hurt" issue stemming from the assassination weekend in which Secret Service Agent Kelley, who was part of the interrogation of Oswald on Sunday morning Nov 24, contacted Chicago Secret Service within ca. 1 day seeking information on "John Heard" (phonetic).

And next, I do not think John D. Hurt of Raleigh is the right man, nor do I think John Limond Hart of CIA is the right man either for the reasons you cite: the name is different; no Raleigh connection. 

My person of interest is a John B. Hurt, a somewhat now-famous brilliant cryptographer and Japanese language specialist although he never was in Japan, one of the top technically brilliant persons in the National Security Agency (NSA). Jim Root (who first suggested interest in this name) looked into his background extensively including archival research, I to a much lesser extent. There is no known contact or known mechanism for contact between John B. Hurt and Oswald. Nor from what I have read was John B. Hurt involved in covert operations or the things Oswald was involved in. The impression is John B. Hurt was introverted, a sort of brilliant geek type who worked quietly in the office and cracked enemy codes. If it were only the name alone it would not be much. But...

• there is a "Raleigh" connection. Family roots of John B. Hurt from and plenty of relatives in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Next state over and not Raleigh, North Carolina. Could be coincidence.
• he was married to Anna Drittelle, who was a famous cellist. An alias of Oswald used only one known time, on the handwritten order for the revolver, was "D.F. Drittal". Highly uncommon last name. Sounds like the last name of John B. Hurt's wife. Could be coincidence.
• Anna Drittelle, the famous concert cellist, was from Russia and reportedly spoke fluent Russian. Oswald was in Russia and spoke Russian, and loved classical music of the kind for which Russian-born cellist Anna Drittelle was famous in the 1950s and 1960s. Check and check and check, raising the question whether Anna Drittelle would have been known by name to Oswald, and if there was ever contact. I would dearly love to know a timeline of her concerts and travels and movements, in order to run down the question "could Oswald have met Anna Drittelle?" But although google searches turn up New York Times reports of concert appearances here and there of Anna Drittelle in the 1950s, I can find so little on her movements, and no evidence she ever gave a concert in Russia, for example. She was from Paris and lived with her husband John B. Hurt in the U.S. so far as I can see. Nothing to connect her to Oswald, but so little is known it is unknown. About all that can be said is Oswald very well might have known the name from the classical music world, found her of interest because of the Russian connection, and if he did have opportunity to meet her might be expected to have welcomed it. But of course quite a lot is known and has been studied of Lee Harvey Oswald's movements and contacts and there is no Anna Drittelle in what is known of Oswald, which I suppose is a somewhat serious negative argument against a contact.

But its the three above added to the "John Hurt" name itself ... well, there's the case for this being a figure of interest with respect to the unexplained "John Hurt" of "Raleigh, North Carolina" sought by Oswald who (I believe, with you) was not one of the two John Hurts in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

And so imagine an Oswald, stonewalling under interrogation, stalling for time until an expected intervention springs him free (or whatever), dismayed that there is no intervention, the horror of a realization that it looks like he is being hung out to dry ... and the attempt to reach "John Hurt" (or attempt to reach Anna Drittelle via John B. Hurt?) is a Hail Mary pass on Oswald's part, so to speak. Somehow if he can reach this person, they know him, know something, can vouch for or get word to or say the right word to somebody ... if only he can reach John Hurt or Anna Drittelle ... John Hurt who retired recently from NSA several months earlier, and he remembers they said something about family in "Raleigh" not too far from Washington, D.C., he makes his Hail Mary pass trying to find John Hurt maybe in "Raleigh" through an operator's directory assistance in a previous phone call on Saturday from the Dallas jail, receives those two numbers...

On Sunday at the very end of Oswald's final interrogation Secret Service agent Kelley, the one who asked Chicago to check files for anything about "John Heard" the next day, spoke privately to Oswald. Kelley's written report says they discussed nothing. Postal inspector Holmes who was there tells in his Warren Commission testimony of overhearing quite a bit of content of that interaction between Kelley and Oswald which supposedly was nothing. Not all that happened in the Kelley/Oswald exchange was reported in writing. In keeping with not one time in all of the interrogation reports of Oswald that weekend is Oswald reported to have been asked whether he had ever worked for a government agency. When Oswald was interviewed by FBI Fain in 1962 he was asked that. Robert Oswald told of how Lee laughed with Robert over that afterward, thought it was hilarious, Lee saying he answered: "Don't you know?" Why wasn't, according to any written report of those hours of hearsay, Lee asked that utterly elementary question at any point on the weekend of Nov 22-24, 1963? Well, maybe Fritz was asked not to ask, if you catch the drift. Could it be Oswald tried to tell Kelley, a different agency than Oswald's hated (?) FBI, something privately? (Whatever Oswald told Kelley Sunday morning, minutes before he became dead, was out of the hearing of the FBI, about the only known time that weekend of interrogations when that was the case?) It is not known fully what was said between Kelley and Oswald. But it is known Kelley came out of that meeting wanting to find out, for no known explicable reason, if other of his Secret Service colleagues knew anything about a "John Heard" (phonetic). Was it because of something Oswald said to Kelley privately Sunday morning?

Next: to take up your criticisms of the credibility of Alveeta Treon, which are unjustified. Her story is credible, nothing not credible about her or it. 

 

Edited January 27, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

On Alveeta Treon.

7 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

The Raleigh call didn’t surface for several years after the assassination. A red flag? The matter was brought to the attention of the HSCA in 1977 as described below. The HSCA investigated it thoroughly but didn’t mention it in its final report.

Yes, grounds for caution. But does not automatically mean its false. It is corroborated that Alveeta was employed there, was employed that evening, was there to listen in on an Oswald phone call, had been asked by her daughter for a physical momento from this historic Oswald phone call. 

It is corroborated that there were phone calls attempted via operator by Oswald that evening. It is corroborated that Alveeta was there at the time of those Oswald attempted phone calls.

It is corroborated that there was unusual interest in the name "John Heard" (phonetic) on the part of the Secret Service in the days immediately following that weekend. 

Lance: "Alveeta’s first contact with the HSCA concerned a call she had ostensibly taken the night of the assassination in which someone had claimed there’d been a second assassin. She gave the HSCA the alleged assassin’s name and a Texas license plate number. She “stated that the original notes she took are in her handwriting and we may have them if wanted.” Does this seem a bit odd to you, as it does to me?"

Absolutely not odd, because it is completely in keeping with a documented pattern of calls from that particular caller of exactly that nature to other law enforcement agencies. You may not have known this, and Alveeta certainly would not have known it at the time (and probably not later). This is the little known saga story (a sad story truly) of one Marion Meharg. You can dive into the weeds on this with all the documents and details at the ROKC site https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t585-the-case-of-the-nuisance-phone-calls-redux?, with research there from (I think) Tom Gram.

I know a little about this because within the past year I have talked a couple of times with the younger of two sons of Marion Meharg.

Briefly, Marion Meharg made phone calls starting from Day #1 to law enforcement agencies. He claimed he was in Dealey Plaza and a witness. He claimed he witnessed an assassin run out of the Texas School Book Depository building and get into a white over green two-tone station wagon that he said belonged to his ex-wife. He claimed the assassin was his ex-wife's current husband, one David Miller. He claimed his ex-wife and her new husband were part of the assassination. Over the following weeks his phone calls became more persistent and abusive to innocent persons. Mixed in with this was he was cut off from access to his two boys, ages 11 and 8, whom he loved very much, but did not know where they were being kept hidden from him. Every time he found information, such as that they had moved to Atlanta, Georgia, he reported this to authorities. At one point he was almost prosecuted for impersonating a Secret Service agent over the phone, but federal prosecutors decided not to proceed on the grounds that it was mostly a domestic dispute not worth federal resources. The point: if you check the documents there you will see that the phone call reported by Alveeta is completely of a piece with the rest of the Marion Meharg case and completely believable that she took that call as she described, because that is what Marion Meharg was saying to everyone else under the sun.

David Miller (Jr.) (born Marion Meharg Jr.), with whom I have spoken, was 8 at the time. He remembers the move to Atlanta. His mother and stepfather (the ones Marion Meharg accused of assassinating President Kennedy making use of David's mother's station wagon) were in Atlanta the day of the assassination; David confirmed that to me; he remembers that day. Neither they nor his mother's station wagon had anything to do with the assassination. All of Marion's accusations to the Dallas police, FBI, Irving police, etc. were false accusations although he may have believed them. David was not aware of the extent of his father Marion's trail of abusive anonymous phone calls in Dallas; he told me his mother and stepfather did not tell him and his brother much of that, only vaguely. He says (something not in any of the documents) that his father found him and his brother in Atlanta ("he found us"). There was no violence. David and his brother seemed to care for their father even though he had problems exacerbated by alcohol, and Marion was attached to his boys. David came across to me as a decent man, with his father's behavior so long ago something of a painful subject.

Incidentally, I believe Marion's story could be understood if he was present on the same building Richard Randolph Carr said he was, seeing much the same things Carr said he saw. Their two stories are roughly similar, the main difference being in Marion Meharg's case he came to the belief that the station wagon was his ex-wife's, and the assassin running out of the TSBD was his ex-wife's new husband. But if one sets aside those mistaken identifications, it could be possible Marion Meharg did see a running man and a station wagon. David told me he had no knowledge of if his father was a witness at Dealey Plaza and said his father never said anything about that to him.

So in isolation Alveeta's report of the first known of many similar Marion Meharg phone calls looks bizarre. But it was exactly what Marion Meharg was doing elsewhere in the immediate days and weeks following the assassination. Alveeta gets a full pass of credibility on this. There is no warrant for impugning Alveeta's credibility on this, or calling her account of that phone call "odd".  

(continued)

Edited January 27, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

In defense of Alveeta Treon

On "the story evolves and changes" you are holding Alveeta responsible for words not verified she ever said. You are taking hearsay reports of what Alveeta said, and when Alveeta herself says what actually happened was a little different than the hearsay, you accuse Alveeta of changing her story. This is neither fair nor justified, because of how easy hearsay gets details garbled. 

One or two people who heard Alveeta's story say she told of getting a slip out of a wastebasket. Alveeta herself is emphatic that was a misunderstanding. You have no direct statement from Alveeta in which she herself changed her story. 

On the affidavit, which you cite as evidence she changed her story from what was in the affidavit, the affidavit is unsigned and Alveeta emphatically denied she ever saw it! You cite from your own experience that affidavits are composed based on what witnesses tell legal staff, and are highly accurate in your experience, and I believe you. But there is no basis for assumption that was what was going on with that affidavit. If that was what was going on with that affidavit, why isn't it signed? I read through Proctor's article again and there is that business of the National Enquirer reporter in the picture. It looks to me like the authors of that affidavit--motivated by someone (National Enquirer?) needing documentary evidence--wrote up that affidavit based on the hearsay, not based on interviews of Alveeta. The idea would be to obtain Alveeta's cooperation in signing it either as is or corrected, which evidently never got to that point (of bringing Alveeta in on it). Alveeta herself says she never saw it, and that is consistent with there is no signature of hers on it, and she says up and down that certain things in it are false. You take that bogus document (composed on the basis of the hearsay without Alveeta's knowledge or participation) and then claim it is evidence of Alveeta lying when Alveeta corrects errors in it when she does see it!

Your trump card for calling Alveeta the worst form of prevaricator is you say she forged Louise Swinney's signature on the call slip. Now you're a lawyer, I am not, but I want to ask you, on what legal grounds is that forgery? Did she represent it to anyone as Swinney's signature? No. Did she use the call slip for financial gain? No. Did she try to sell it, publish it, represent it as written by Louise Swinney? No. Is there any evidence she had malicious intent? No. Exactly how would you define her guilt of forgery if you were to prosecute this in court? What crime or wrong has been committed? There was no misrepresentation because it was kept private to herself until when it was requested, and when she showed it she made clear from the outset that there was no claim that was Louise Swinney's signature. She never said other than that she wrote the whole thing. What is the nature of her perfidy in your opinion, exactly?

Here is how I read what happened. I read Alveeta's story from her own words (as distinguished from the hearsay and the affidavit writeup of which she had nothing to do) as consistent. Therefore the following interpretation is based on Alveeta's consistent story from her words. She works there. She says she showed up a little early to her normal shift start at 11 pm. She is on the switchboard, working, when Swinney handles the phone call requests coming through from Oswald. She listens in. As she says, there is nothing to do with a wastebasket. Rather, she is filling out a call slip as the conversation is happening, not as a work product of her job, but as her notes or records for private personal use (even though on work time). She could have written longhand the notes (that are for her personal purpose). She simplified it by taking her notes in the form of filling out an existing call slip form. Your objection that that was not the normal procedure for calls that did not go through is true but irrelevant, since Alveeta's call slip was not done for the job, not done per usual procedure as part of work, but was an off-the-books, off-the-job personal notetaking.

All the information of the phone calls that she is overhearing she writes down, taking personal notes in this way, to record this history for her own benefit. Writing the name as Louise Swinney, which you find as the smoking gun of her perfidy and villany, is simply her completing her notetaking on who the operator was, Louise Swinney.

Alveeta never tried to pass that off as Louise Swinney's call slip. Never claimed that. Never represented it as such. The only thing that could be said is if someone else found that and did not know better, one might mistakenly think Louise Swinney signed it. There is however no evidence Alveeta ever intended that. 

Therefore you have not shown any basis to justify your conclusion that Alveeta Treon is a "villain". There is no evidence she did anything other than tell the truth. All that needs to be assumed is that errors in the hearsay are the fault of the transmitters of the hearsay, not the fault of Alveeta. I believe with your legal experience you will recognize that that is the fair and reasonable default assumption to be made here. 

The call slip is not a "fraud" as you term it because fraud involves intent to misrepresent, and there was none in this case.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Guest]

Greg already mentioned part of the following.   As it seems there were 2 different "sources", one has Martineau asking about Heard, the other has Kelley asking about John Hurt of Heard.  

From the Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr. website : Finally, there was this information concerning the Secret Service's interest in someone by the name of "Hurt" or "Heard" in the days after the Kennedy assassination, as summarized by Brady in her Report.
1) In the complaint filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in April 1970 by Sherman Skolnick against the National Archives and Record Service, it was alleged that acting Supervisor Maurice Martineau of the Chicago office of the Secret Service called one of his agents and asked if the agent had ever heard of a John Heard. According to the complaint, Martineau also asked the agent to pull all cards in the Chicago office marked "Heard." The complaint stated that "It is believed that the Secret Service arrested a John Heard at that time."

2) In an interview with Committee investigators on January 19, 1978, former Secret Service Agency Abraham Bolden stated that on or about November 26, 1963, Agent Thomas Kelly arrived in Chicago from Dallas and mentioned the name John Heard or Hurt. Bolden stated that the Chicago office files were searched for a similar sounding name. Bolden also said that he and Agent Conrad Cross were sent to a Black-Spanish Chicago neighborhood to attempt to locate a person who lived there on November 22, 1963. Bolden could not remember the name of the person but thought it was related to a threat which had been received by the Protective Research Service of the Secret Service. Bolden had no further information to relate regarding John Hurt or Heard.

 

Edited January 27, 2023 by Jean Paul Ceulemans

[Guest]

Bye

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette

[Gerry Down]

12 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

One possible solution – and I’m not the first to suggest it – is that a drunken John David Hurt actually did attempt to call Oswald and that Oswald was notified he had received a call from a John Hurt in Raleigh. Since Oswald had no idea who Hurt was, Louise had to ask the Information operator for “a John Hurt in Raleigh” and got two possibilities. What Alveeta retrieved from Louise’s wastebasket was a note that may have said no more than “John Hurt, Raleigh” with the two phone numbers. Alveeta then crafted her official-looking souvenir from this.

So let me get this straight. This theory is that a drunk John Hurt phoned the DPD looking for Oswald on Nov 23rd to have a talk. He gave Mrs Swinney his name and where he was from (John Hurt of Raleigh, North Carolina). Then John Hurt hung up - maybe he thought it was not a good idea to have a drunken chat with Oswald so late at night afterall, or the wife caught him and made him hang up. Mrs Swinney writes down on a piece of paper the name of “John Hurt” of “Raleigh, North Carolina”. Mrs Swinney then phones Oswald in his cell about this John Hurt. Oswald says he had no idea who John Hurt is. Meanwhile Mrs Alveeta comes in to work perhaps about 10:50pm and she briefly listens in on this conversation with Oswald before then going off the line and leaving Oswald and Mrs Swinney to talk in private. 

All during this time there were two Secret Service agents in the room and hear about this John Hurt that was trying to contact Oswald. At this stage Mrs Swinney decided to try and find out (possibly on the orders of the Secret Service or on her own initiative) who this John Hurt was from Raleigh North Carolina. So she phones the operator directory assistance in North Carolina where they look through their phonebook and give her the names of presumably the only two John Hurts in Raleigh North Carolina. So she takes the previous piece of paper she had on which she had written the name of “John Hurt” and “Raleigh, North Carolina” and now adds the two possible phone numbers given to her by the operator directory assistance in North Carolina. Mrs Swinney then places two outgoing calls to each of these John Hurts in the hope of reaching the drunk guy who had rang her, but neither answer. The nosy Mrs Alveeta sees Mrs Swinney making these two outgoing calls and presumes she is making them on Oswalds behalf. As neither John Hurt answers the phone, Mrs Swinney  views the whole endeavor pointless and throws the piece of paper in the bin.

When Mrs Swinney goes off work at 11pm, Mrs Alveeta retrieves the piece of paper from the bin and proceeds to make up a call sheet with the data on it as a souvenir for her daughter but because she only arrived in at 10:50pm AFTER John Hurt had phoned in, and only hears the start of the phone conversation in which Mrs Swinney talks to Oswald about a John Hurt, Mrs Alveeta thinks that it was Oswald looking for John Hurt rather than the other way around – John Hurt looking for Oswald. As the Secret Service had witnessed the events surrounding the call, after Oswald is assassinated Secret Service agent Kelley makes some brief enquiries to see if there is any “John Heard” on their books who could be linked to Oswald, which shows up negative. 

This theory would mean the following:

• Mrs Alveeta was being honest in so far as her understanding that Oswald was trying to contact a John Hurt.
• Mrs Swinney is telling the truth when she says Oswald was not trying to contact any John Hurt. Mrs Swinney probably thought no more of the John Hurt call as a crank call from a drunken idiot.
• The long suffering wife of John Hurt was telling the truth when she said that her husband had drunkenly phoned the DPD looking for Oswald on the night of Nov 23rd.
• John Hurt himself was being honest in the years after the incident when he said he didn't know Oswald. 

I'm not familiar with how switchboards worked in 1963 (i.e. how Mrs Swinney would phone Oswald in his cell, or how she would look for numbers from operator directory assistance in North Carolina etc). If anyone sees any mistake in my understanding of how these sets of phonecalls were made, please let me know. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by Gerry Down

[Guest]

Bye

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette

[Charles Blackmon]

A few weeks ago on this forum, regarding the alleged John Hurt phone call, Steve Roe claimed Hurt once told David Lifton that he (Hurt) had made the phone call to the jail. When I asked what the source was for this revelation...radio silence.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Charles Blackmon

[Steve Roe]

1 hour ago, Charles Blackmon said:

A few weeks ago on this forum, regarding the alleged John Hurt phone call, Steve Roe claimed Hurt once told David Lifton that he (Hurt) had made the phone call to the jail. When I asked what the source was for this revelation...radio silence.

Well, Authors Henry Hurt and David Lifton pursued this Raleigh call. The link to Lifton's 1970 call to John Hurt is not accessible. I do remember Lifton addressing this years ago. 

https://www.jfk-assassination.net/Raleigh.htm

[Steve Roe]

On this forum back in 2012, David Lifton said this: 

FWIW: I pursued this matter in the late 1960s. I called the number and spoke with John Hurt. Somewhere in one of my audio tape storage boxes, is a 5" reel of BASF tape on which the call was recorded. I do not remember the details today, but it was a fairly detailed, lengthy call, and I was satisfied, at the time, and after that call, that John Hurt was an alcoholic and that this lead was worthless. Today, over 40 years afterwards, I cannot recollect the details of that call--except that it proved to my satisfaction (and I was plenty curious at the time) that this particular lead (and the phone number) went nowhere.

If time and funds permitted (and they don't) I would be glad to go to the boxes of audiotapes that I have stored, locate this tape, and have it digitized, so that everyone could listen to it.

DSL

11/16/12; 10:35 AM

Los Angeles, California

Edited November 16, 2012 by David Lifton

[Charles Blackmon]

Nothing about Hurt telling Lifton that he made the "crank" call to the jail. Thanks.

[Greg Doudna]

3 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Come on, this nonsense is beyond putrid even for Conspiracy World. Folks like scowly face are so desperate to make Oswald an intelligence asset that they sail right past Alveeta and into the arms of nutcase John David Hurt (or, at the other extreme, major CIA figure John Limond Hart).

There is no known person advocating for John Limond Hart, and you were informed of that on this thread. Straw man. 

2 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

Just a quick dose of common sense, and then I'm done:

Lance Payette, after I labored to detail and eviscerate your character smear of Alveeta Treon, you are not even going to acknowledge or address or retract your character smear? Just drive-by character assassination, ignore substantive to-the-point response (from me), and "then I'm done"? 

That's xxxxx behavior Lance. 

You started it. You assassinated Alveeta Treon's character, called her names in public. She probably has family members, and even if she did not it is not right. I don't like to see character assassination done of Ruth Paine and I don't like it any better to see you doing this to Alveeta Treon.

You can't just "then I'm done" without response or correction. Have you no conscience?