Oswald and the Shot at Walker: Redressing the Balance

[James DiEugenio]

Scott Reid who did a previous interesting story for K and K, takes another look at the Walker shooting.

Really interesting is this:  the "Walker note" might not have ben about theWalker incident. 

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/oswald-and-the-shot-at-walker-redressing-the-balance

[Leslie Sharp]

Kudos to Scott for this excellent monograph. Let's see if there might be significant convergence, an effort being attempted with Dr. Caulfield as well.

From Dick Russell's limited analysis (published in the front matter of Coup in Dallas) of the 1963 datebook maintained by Pierre Lafitte 

·       The name of WALKER appears more than once, initially concerning the shooting attempt on his life that Oswald was later accused of. “April 7 – Walker – Lee and pictures. Planned soon – can he do it? Won’t.” (it’s possible that the word is ‘Wait.’) The indication is, someone was setting up Oswald to do this, but he didn’t want to. The shot was fired at Walker on April 10. Later references indicate that General Walker was in fact aware of, if not in on, the plot to kill JFK — —Dick Russell, bestselling author of thirteen books, including The Man Who Knew Too Much, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, and They Killed Our President! with Jesse Ventura.

From Coup —  . . . When contemplating the circumstances surrounding the Walker incident in April 1963, perhaps the only things most students of the event agree on is that the general resigned in 1959 and President Eisenhower refused his resignation, and that in 1961 Walker “resigned” again and President Kennedy “accepted the resignation.” In dispute are the circumstances of April 10. Based on Walker’s subsequent claim, a shot was fired into his home on Turtle Creek Blvd. in Dallas while he was sitting at his study desk. The shot missed. Within hours of the assassination, an FBI report presumed Lee Harvey Oswald was the Walker shooter. Very little else about the incident could be immediately verified, yet three days after the assassination, a Munich right-wing newspaper linked to the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations somehow determined that publishing the hitherto unrevealed story that Oswald shot at General Walker in April would meet standards of credible reporting, some seven months later and thousands of miles from the scene of the crime. . . .

            With access to his records, we now know that by April 7, Lafitte was, at the very least, aware of an upcoming incident when he wrote, “Walker - Lee and pictures. Planned soon—can he do it? Won’t.” 

 . . . Most prominent among those propagandists identified in Chapter 6 were Generals Charles Willoughby and Edwin Walker, both of whom have long been recognized, even by those less steeped in this research, as prime suspects in the assassination. Further proof is now presented that the two highly controversial retired generals were among those directly responsible for the murder of John Kennedy. 

Pierre Lafitte finally lays out for us the timing and the circumstances of the involvement of Willoughby and Walker, and leads us to the cast of kill squads and teams known particularly to Willoughby for more than a decade, including two retired colonels that acted under the retired general's orders, who evaded scrutiny for decades. . . .

We learn of a vast and tightly woven web of international organizations on the extreme right, driven primarily by religious ideology aligned with attempts to revive the Reich, and disguised by populist political action groups in America like the John Birch Society, which had been advanced by Gen. Walker among the military troops under his command. The reader also gets a better sense of the significance of Willoughby’s decades-long relationship with Allen Dulles, who was a former international lawyer for German corporations, the Director of the CIA, and a pivotal member of the Warren Commission. Their friendship, and the fact that both had known Otto Skorzeny since the inception of the World Commerce Corporation, prompted the authors to delve further into their written exchanges during the 1960s.

NOTE Most recently, we've uncovered a fairly obscure document among bureau files to indicate Walker was agitating in early 1963 to 'solve the Jewish, Masonic, Race problems once and for all' in a circular and follow up personalized letters to his European counterparts.  More soon.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Scott Reid who did a previous interesting story for K and K, takes another look at the Walker shooting.

Really interesting is this:  the "Walker note" might not have ben about theWalker incident. 

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/oswald-and-the-shot-at-walker-redressing-the-balance

Actually, the shot fired at Walker struck a window pane and was deflected lower, and towards Walker.

The shot would have missed by a wider margin had the slug not struck the window pane, according to the Dallas Police Department.  As it was, the shot missed by such a wide margin that Walker, as stated, initially thought the gunshot-sound might have come from firecrackers or even fireworks outside his house. 

Only later would the "close shot" mythology arise....

Whoever shot at Walker---and I suspect LHO---seemed intent on missing the shot. 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/walker-oswald-and-the-dog-that-didn-t-bark

[Paul Brancato]

I note that Mr. Reid doesn’t know whether the National Zeitung article came up with the idea of tying Oswald to the Z Walker shooting, or if it was Walker himself. It’s easy to assume it originated with Walker, but it may have been the German editor who suggested it. But what of Marina’s testimony? Has she ever been asked directly by researchers like Reid?

[Ron Bulman]

I'd read something about, but never the details of Finnegan and Harkness observation of the guy passing out pro Castro flyers in downtown Dallas in late spiring, early summer 1963.  They did see the Viva Castro placard on the back of whoever they saw, as mentioned in the note.   Surrey is hooey.

I've thought for years the note might have been manufactured by the CIA.

Oswald and the rifle did it for me on this story.  Carrying it on a bus?  Burying it afterwards?  Did he carry along a shovel to bury the rifle?  What did he do with the shovel?  Obviously hid the shovel nearby to dig up the rifle so he could shoot JFK.

Edited March 21, 2023 by Ron Bulman

[Mark Ulrik]

13 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Actually, the shot fired at Walker struck a window pane and was deflected lower, and towards Walker.

No, the police report only states that the trajectory from window to wall was downward. However, the shot came from an elevated position due to the sloping of Walker's backyard, and the trajectory was already downward when the bullet hit the window. Nicking the upper edge of the glass pane must have caused a slightly upward deflection, just enough to miss the intended target.

[Tom Gram]

42 minutes ago, Mark Ulrik said:

No, the police report only states that the trajectory from window to wall was downward. However, the shot came from an elevated position due to the sloping of Walker's backyard, and the trajectory was already downward when the bullet hit the window. Nicking the upper edge of the glass pane must have caused a slightly upward deflection, just enough to miss the intended target.

Do you have a diagram or any photographs demonstrating that the trajectory from the shooting location was actually downward, and/or that the bullet was or could have been deflected upward? “Nicking the upper edge of the glass pane must have…” isn’t very convincing. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Greg Doudna]

On 3/21/2023 at 6:53 AM, Mark Ulrik said:

No, the police report only states that the trajectory from window to wall was downward. However, the shot came from an elevated position due to the sloping of Walker's backyard, and the trajectory was already downward when the bullet hit the window. Nicking the upper edge of the glass pane must have caused a slightly upward deflection, just enough to miss the intended target.

Thanks for this Mark. Whether the bullet trajectory actually was deflected I doubt is known, but that it could have been deflected slightly upward (or downward), either way, not necessarily only downward as per Benjamin's article and also my article (https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1497), is prima facie demonstrated from your photo showing the bullet passing through the edge of glass, not only wood, in the absence of evidence to the contrary. I will be correcting my paper on that point, thanks. Can you say your source for the photos? 

Edited March 22, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Mark Ulrik]

3 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

Do you have a diagram or any photographs demonstrating that the trajectory from the shooting location was actually downward, and/or that the bullet was or could have been deflected upward? “Nicking the upper edge of the glass pane must have…” isn’t very convincing. 

Actual measurements have eluded me. Do you think the deflection may have been downward?

[Mark Ulrik]

2 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

Thanks for this Mark. Whether the bullet trajectory actually was deflected I doubt is known, but that it could have been deflected slightly upward (or downward), either way, not necessarily only upward as per Benjamin's article and also my article (https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1497), is prima facie demonstrated from your photo showing the bullet passing through the edge of glass, not only wood. I will be correcting my paper on that point, thanks. Can you say your source for the photos? 

Ouch! The upper one is from a CE and the others from Walker interviews found on (I think) YouTube, but not sure if the one in color is still online. Will have to look around and get back to you. Perhaps I still have my "work files" somewhere.

[Greg Doudna]

19 minutes ago, Mark Ulrik said:

Ouch! The upper one is from a CE and the others from Walker interviews found on (I think) YouTube, but not sure if the one in color is still online. Will have to look around and get back to you. Perhaps I still have my "work files" somewhere.

Mark, the damage in the wood from the bullet looks different in all three photos. Are you sure all three photos are of the same window? How is the wood damage different? If the top one is a CE photo then it is legit but is the "lower" whitish area glass or wood, in that top photo, would be the question? 

There is a basic prior question, and that was was the glass window up or down at the time of the shot? Someone asked me if that room was air conditioned the night of the shot and I checked and did not know. I saw no police report confirming glass shattered by the shot though one police report said "wood or glass" had hit Walker's arm and a reporter wrote a news story with that conjunction changed to "wood and glass" had hit Walker's arm. That raised a question to me whether there was any shattered glass involved at all. Then came your photos. But now, how can it be known all those photos are of the same wood damage and same window, since they look different?

[Steve Roe]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

But now, how can it be known all those photos are of the same wood damage and same window, since they look different?

Greg, the color photo of Walker's window comes from the 1993 Frontline series, "Who was Lee Harvey Oswald". That's some 30 years before, so no doubt the damage does look different from the original damage photos.  At approximately the 1:03:00 mark in the video shows the color version. Also of interest to you is Coleman's account of the vehicles leaving the area, just after Walker's narrative. The '58 Chevy could have been the car that Walker saw driving off and turning left on Turtle Creek Blvd. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cjwKxuie2o

Edited March 21, 2023 by Steve Roe
Add another point.

[Mark Ulrik]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

Mark, the damage in the wood from the bullet looks different in all three photos. Are you sure all three photos are of the same window? How is the wood damage different? If the top one is a CE photo then it is legit but is the "lower" whitish area glass or wood, in that top photo, would be the question? 

There is a basic prior question, and that was was the glass window up or down at the time of the shot? Someone asked me if that room was air conditioned the night of the shot and I checked and did not know. I saw no police report confirming glass shattered by the shot though one police report said "wood or glass" had hit Walker's arm and a reporter wrote a news story with that conjunction changed to "wood and glass" had hit Walker's arm. That raised a question to me whether there was any shattered glass involved at all. Then came your photos. But now, how can it be known all those photos are of the same wood damage and same window, since they look different?

Greg, I don't have time to do much digging right now, but here are some links to the image sources--not necessary of the best quality or the exact ones used for my graphic, but close enough. Obviously, angles are different, and loose pieces may have fallen out due to fingering, etc.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1135#relPageId=669
https://youtu.be/K6IKhtf5yFk?t=41
https://youtu.be/PYI4PqtIyE0?t=2530

As for the shrapnel wounding Walker, Surrey testifies to the WC that he personally removed pieces of metal (sliced off the bullet's jacket by the sharp edges of the glass, one would imagine) from his arm.

Reporters were also impressed that it wasn't a publicity stunt:

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.conspiracy.jfk/c/yVrgWudl9V4/m/yVZ_eRUaxyoJ

[Leslie Sharp]

11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I'd read something about, but never the details of Finnegan and Harkness observation of the guy passing out pro Castro flyers in downtown Dallas in late spiring, early summer 1963.  They did see the Viva Castro placard on the back of whoever they saw, as mentioned in the note.   Surrey is hooey.

I've thought for years the note might have been manufactured by the CIA.

Oswald and the rifle did it for me on this story.  Carrying it on a bus?  Burying it afterwards?  Did he carry along a shovel to bury the rifle?  What did he do with the shovel?  Obviously hid the shovel nearby to dig up the rifle so he could shoot JFK.

Ron, re. I'd read something about, but never the details of Finnegan and Harkness observation of the guy passing out pro Castro flyers in downtown Dallas in late spiring, early summer 1963. 

I've been searching for the citation for this for months. I seem to recall the incident occurred in front of S&H Green store - or maybe Sanger-Harris?  The timing would be significant if it's alleged that Joannides initiated an operation using Oswald in New Orleans in August of 1963.

  

[Tom Gram]

2 hours ago, Mark Ulrik said:

Actual measurements have eluded me. Do you think the deflection may have been downward?

I have no idea. It just seems like it’d be pretty difficult if not impossible to determine the deflection direction without knowing the precise trajectory. Where did you get the information that the trajectory from the shooting location to the window was already downward? In the Walker Exhibits it’s tough to make out but it looks pretty straight if not slightly upward to me, and the photos do not show much of a slope at all to Walker’s yard. CE1007 taken from the ground outside the window in particular suggests that there’d have to be a pretty steep slope to the shooting location for the shot to have been aimed downward, and I can’t see anything like that reflected in the other photos. 

EDIT: Walker also speculated during his testimony that the shot was made through the holes in the wooden fence, which if true would almost certainly indicate an upward initial trajectory. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by Tom Gram