William S. Walter and the Telex

[Gerry Down]

William S. Walter stated he received a telex at the New Orleans FBI office on Nov 17th 1963 stating that a "militant revolutionary group" may assassinate JFK in Texas on Nov 22nd or 23rd 1963. After the assassination he recreated the telex and here is how it looked:

This 1963 recreation telex says the assassination is planned for Dallas. However in a March 26th 1968 statement to the FBI, Walter states “I do not recall any specific town in Texas being mentioned” in the telex. The statement can be listened to in full at 12 minutes in on this podcast:

Three questions:

1. The telex mentions that a "militant revolutionary group" was going to assassinate JFK. When you hear the term "militant revolutionary group", what comes to your mind?
2. Is the contradiction between the 1963 recreated telex which says the assassination was to take place in Dallas and Walters 1968 statement stating “I do not recall any specific town in Texas being mentioned” a contradiction which raises problems about Walters credibility?
3. At 1 hour and 1 minute in on the above podcast, Walter mentions three FBI agents in New Orleans that could corroborate that Oswald was an FBI informant in New Orleans. He mentions three names but I can only make out two. The two I can make out are DeBrueys and Kaack. The other name is hard to make out from the audio. It sounds like "Ernest Wall". Can anyone make out what the name is?

For reference, William Walter can be viewed here discussing the telex:

 

[Larry Hancock]

The FBI was monitoring several groups that would fit that description, starting with the Minutemen and the NSRP and extending on to the anti-Castro Cubans they were continually trying to shut down on weapons buys and raids.

However the most obvious link here would be a report to the Secret Service at approximately that same date which came from Fort Worth, and was based in remarks from an active NSRP member that they were going to kill JFK soon, implying on his Texas trip.

 

[Gerry Down]

Do you think it would be possible to fake a telex like this?

For example take someone like William Harvey, an ex FBI guy who had a grudge against JFK. With his FBI background he would know how FBI telexs were formatted and might even have been used to seeing such FBI telexs from his work in the CIA. One could imagine how some ex-FBI guy like William Harvey or Guy Banister might fake a telex like this in the hope of embarrassing JFK by getting his Dallas trip cancelled and making it look like JFK wasn't welcome in his own country. 

A faked telex might account for the slightly off-formatting of the telex. 

[Joseph Backes]

The names mentioned are:

1.) Warren DeBreuys.

2.) Ernest C Wall, Jr.  

3.) Milton Kaack

Rob Clark ready from the HSCA testimony of William Walter. 

[Gerry Down]

5 minutes ago, Joseph Backes said:

The names mentioned are:

1.) Warren DeBreuys.

2.) Ernest C Wall, Jr.  

3.) Milton Kaack

Rob Clark ready from the HSCA testimony of William Walter. 

Thanks.

[Larry Hancock]

Gerry, as I recall this was a reconstruction from memory of the telex by Walter, not the original itself.  I go into a number of reasons why he is credible and the telex was likely very real in SWHT...  

Of course destruction of such a document after the assassination would be very consistent with destruction of the Secret Service JFK fall trip records during the period of the ARRB...even though it i is now asserted that some of  those may have survived after all - I remain confused on that question myself.

[Gerry Down]

4 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Gerry, as I recall this was a reconstruction from memory of the telex by Walter, not the original itself.  I go into a number of reasons why he is credible and the telex was likely very real in SWHT...  

Of course destruction of such a document after the assassination would be very consistent with destruction of the Secret Service JFK fall trip records during the period of the ARRB...even though it i is now asserted that some of  those may have survived after all - I remain confused on that question myself.

Yeah i think Walter is being genuine regarding this telex. But I don't think it was a real telex as it supposedly was sent to all 50 FBI field offices yet William Walter was the only one that came forward regarding it. It seems unlikely the FBI would have been able to cover-up such a telex if it went to 50 field offices especially seeing how the telex machine was often being manned not by FBI agents but by clerks such as William Walter who might not have any long term allegiance to the FBI. 

Therefore it seems to me that if Walter is correct about this telex, and i think he is, that this was a prank telex that was either sent to New Orleans alone or sent to the three FBI field offices of New Orleans, Dallas and Mobile but none of the other 50 field offices scattered through out the U.S. The alleged telex stated that it was sent to all 50 field offices but FBI HQ was not capable of sending out the telex to all 50 field offices at the same time and so it was sent in batches of 3 or thereabouts. Therefore the telex that Walter got was in a batch that was being sent, or at least was giving the impression that it was being sent, to New Orleans, Dallas and Mobile.

I looked into this a while back and apparently a telex could be sent in such a way as to give the impression it was coming from one location, in this case FBI HQ, when it was actually being sent by someone from a different location. A prank in other words. I had a good source of info on this i got from the internet back then but unfortunately i cant locate it at the moment. For this theory, what you would be looking at here could be that an ex-FBI person who was familiar with how FBI HQ would send out a telex to all 50 field offices in batches of 3, and familiar with the formatting of FBI telexs, got a telex machine and sent a prank telex to New Orleans (and also possibly to Dallas and Mobile though not necessarily) and sent the telex in such a way as to give the impression it was coming from FBI HQ in order to add authenticity to it. 

This would explain why the formatting might be close to a real FBI telex but not close enough. In this scenario, Walter may have passed the telex on to his superiors like he claimed and they spotted the formatting errors and presumed it was a prank and so ignored it. This would explain why it was never acted upon. Then after the assassination Walters superiors recognized that this prank telex could be an embarrassment to the FBI as they had not acted upon it and proceeded to destroy it. Leaving Walter in the lurch trying to explain his story of having received a telex about a possible assassination attempt. 

[Lawrence Schnapf]

And what would be the purpose of sending such a fake message? 

[Gerry Down]

29 minutes ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

And what would be the purpose of sending such a fake message? 

One possibility would be to embarrass jfk by getting his trips cancelled. It would make it look like jfk was not welcome in various parts of the country and therefore not popular. Not a great look with the 1964 election coming up.

[Larry Hancock]

I'd suggest looking into Telex communications in detail Gerry:

A major advantage of telex is that the receipt of the message by the recipient could be confirmed with a high degree of certainty by the "answerback", which is a retransmission-control enquiry character. At the beginning of the message, the sender would transmit a WRU (Who aRe yoU) code, and the recipient machine would automatically initiate a response which was usually encoded in a rotating drum with pegs, much like a music box. The position of the pegs sent an unambiguous identifying code to the sender, so the sender could verify connection to the correct recipient. The WRU code would also be sent at the end of the message, so a correct response would confirm that the connection had remained unbroken during the message transmission. This gave telex a major advantage over group 2 fax, which had no inherent error-checking capability.

The usual method of operation was that the message would be prepared off-line, using paper tape. All common telex machines incorporated a five-hole paper-tape punch and reader. Once the paper tape had been prepared, the message could be transmitted in minimum time. Telex billing was always by connected duration, so minimizing the connected time saved money. However, it was also possible to connect in "real-time", where the sender and the recipient could both type on the keyboard and these characters would be immediately printed on the distant machine.

Given that a special machine would be required, with its own identification, connected by subscription to a special network it would not be something I would describe as a "hoax" if it had been done, certainly it would be a federal crime.

 

 

[Gerry Down]

18 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

I'd suggest looking into Telex communications in detail Gerry:

A major advantage of telex is that the receipt of the message by the recipient could be confirmed with a high degree of certainty by the "answerback", which is a retransmission-control enquiry character. At the beginning of the message, the sender would transmit a WRU (Who aRe yoU) code, and the recipient machine would automatically initiate a response which was usually encoded in a rotating drum with pegs, much like a music box. The position of the pegs sent an unambiguous identifying code to the sender, so the sender could verify connection to the correct recipient. The WRU code would also be sent at the end of the message, so a correct response would confirm that the connection had remained unbroken during the message transmission. This gave telex a major advantage over group 2 fax, which had no inherent error-checking capability.

The usual method of operation was that the message would be prepared off-line, using paper tape. All common telex machines incorporated a five-hole paper-tape punch and reader. Once the paper tape had been prepared, the message could be transmitted in minimum time. Telex billing was always by connected duration, so minimizing the connected time saved money. However, it was also possible to connect in "real-time", where the sender and the recipient could both type on the keyboard and these characters would be immediately printed on the distant machine.

Given that a special machine would be required, with its own identification, connected by subscription to a special network it would not be something I would describe as a "hoax" if it had been done, certainly it would be a federal crime.

 

 

Thanks for that detailed response.

I guess the way i'm thinking about this is like a text message or an email. I could send you a text (from a new phone) or email (from a new email address) and identify myself as Jim D for example. I could then proceed to invite you to my JFK assassination conference coming up at the end of the month in New York. Your natural reaction would be to contact Jim D using a known text number or known email address to verify all this. 

Could the Walter telex fall into the same category? Someone got a telex machine, or went to some public outlet where they could use one, and had the code number for the FBI office in New Orleans. And then proceed to send a telex to the FBI office in New Orleans but write the telex in such a way as to give the impression it was coming from FBI HQ. The telex was sent at 1:45am. Such a prankster might guess that low level clerks, such as William Walter, who might not be very familiar with FBI HQ telexs would be on the graveyard shift. And that such a telex might fool the clerk and get the clerk to then notify agents and get the ball rolling that an assassination attempt might be planned for Dallas. 

Such a prankster might reason that even if the more senior FBI agents in the morning spotted that this was a fake telex, they might still feel duty bound to follow it up in case the prankster is not a prankster but someone trying to warn the FBI, in their own way, that something was planned for Dallas.

You stated:

Given that a special machine would be required, with its own identification, connected by subscription to a special network it would not be something I would describe as a "hoax" if it had been done, certainly it would be a federal crime.

From this i take it that a simple fake telex can be sent in the same way a fake text or fake email like i outlined here? I'm not talking about hacking in to the FBI telex network, but simply sending a telex from an ordinary telex machine down the street from the FBI office in New Orleans. A crude fake telex. The only issue i take it from what you're saying is that the FBI could then later trace the telex back to the specific machine from which it was sent. But if the prankster was really motivated, they could break in to an office block somewhere in New Orleans for example, boot up one of the telex machines, and send the fake telex to the FBI office in New Orleans. This way there would be no danger in the FBI tracing the telex back to the specific individual who sent it. If the FBI did try to trace it, all it would lead to would be an office block where the manager there would point out that no one has access to the building at 1:45am for such a telex to be sent, that a burglar must have sent it. 

[Larry Hancock]

I have no operational background in telex (telephone and data yes, but not specifically telex) but I doubt that the FBI would not have run a dedicated telex network using leased lines and with machines that were set to recognize the real sender from its network address.  If was not uncommon for federal agencies to use their own leased lines for communications, taking themselves outside the general dial up, public network for even telephone calls so I would expect the same for telex. The idea that any public network telex machine could have accessed FBI machines would seem very strange to me.  In reading the following description keep in mind that there were three types of "networks" operating over the Bell system lines - public dial up access, commercial leased lines with dedicated access number set at the telephone switches which could be accessed though an operator or specific dial code and dedicated lines straight to a local telephone exchange or even a private exchange inside a building/facility.

"The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages.^[

 

[Gerry Down]

2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

I have no operational background in telex (telephone and data yes, but not specifically telex) but I doubt that the FBI would not have run a dedicated telex network using leased lines and with machines that were set to recognize the real sender from its network address.  If was not uncommon for federal agencies to use their own leased lines for communications, taking themselves outside the general dial up, public network for even telephone calls so I would expect the same for telex. The idea that any public network telex machine could have accessed FBI machines would seem very strange to me.  In reading the following description keep in mind that there were three types of "networks" operating over the Bell system lines - public dial up access, commercial leased lines with dedicated access number set at the telephone switches which could be accessed though an operator or specific dial code and dedicated lines straight to a local telephone exchange or even a private exchange inside a building/facility.

"The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages.^[

 

I see what you are saying about the FBI having "a dedicated telex network using leased lines and with machines that were set to recognize the real sender from its network address." 

But the FBI does have a public phone number for example where members of the public can phone in etc. One would wonder if the FBI also had a publicly available telex number in the same way. For example, if the FBI was dealing with outside businesses or corporations for cleaning or stationary services, building management, or car parking services (such as the Reilly garage for example) etc. For these items its conceivable the various field offices might have a "public" telex number where such outside businesses and corporations would be able to telex through, though not meant for members of the general public. But if a member of the public did get hold of such a "public" telex number meant for outside businesses or corporations, theoretically they might try and send in a hoax telex at 1:45am in the morning in the hope of fooling the person there, especially if the text printed on the telex itself was purporting to be from FBI HQ. It would also be highly unusual to receive a telex from a business or corporation at 1:45am in the morning further building on the illusion it really was coming from FBI HQ. 

Fax machines only came in in 1964. So i'm guessing the telex was the forerunner of this. I think telex machines can be used by businesses to send invoices and receipts etc. If this is the case, this would possibly be an access point for a public network telex machine to communicate into the control room at the FBI office in New Orleans where William Walter was. In such a scenario, the less knowledgeable William Walter would be fooled by the telex but once it was viewed by the FBI agents at the office a few hours later they immediately spotted it was a fake and hence took no action. And when William Walter went back on the day of he assassination to view the telex again, like he said he did, he again still did not spot it had come from a public network telex machine. And so years later William Walter continued to talk of this telex as though it had in fact come from FBI HQ. 

[Mark Knight]

I worked at a radio station in Jeffersonville IN in 1977. During the spring racing meet at Churchill Downs, a machine was brought in which was used to receive race results from the track. We were on a dedicated network that only other media outlets had during the racing meet. I'm assuming this was essentially a telex machine. It was rather antiquated at the time, and the machine at the station had its own keyboard. It was nothing like the AP or UPI teletype machines we used in the newsroom, which were receive-only printers [one used a thermal printer with special paper, and the other used newsprint-type paper].

After midnight, it wasn't uncommon for someone at a media outlet on the [I assume] telex network to send out a message to whoever might be at another terminal. Since no one wanted to be held responsible for sending the unauthorized messages, none were formatted like the official race results from Churchill Downs. The system worked much like Larry described above.

Manually-input messages were received character-by-character at the speed they were being typed...unlike the race results, which printed much more quickly. If someone was monitoring the machine, they could likely tell if the message was "official" or not. If they instead found the message after it was sent, whether in seconds or minutes, it might not be obvious as to whether it was manually input or not.

[Gerry Down]

Under the Shamrock program, the NSA collected all the telegraph and telex communications from the 3 major communications companies. I wonder if any attempt was made to acquire from NSA all the telex communications into the fbi New Orleans office for the day of Nov 17th 1963.