William S. Walter and the Telex

[Michael Griffith]

I am agnostic about Walter's account of the FBI telex. However, his argument that Oswald was a government informant is supported by Orest Pena's HSCA deposition, which the ARRB released in the 1990s. Pena was an anti-Castro Cuban and was also a government informant. He operated a bar in New Orleans while Oswald was in the city. Pena told the HSCA that Oswald was either a government agent or a government informant. 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Michael Griffith
Fix punctuation error.

[Tom Gram]

42 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I am agnostic about Walters' account of the FBI telex. However, his argument that Oswald was a government informant is supported by Orest Pena's HSCA deposition, which the ARRB released in the 1990s. Pena was an anti-Castro Cuban and was also a government informant. He operated a bar in New Orleans while Oswald was in the city. Pena told the HSCA that Oswald was either a government agent or a government informant. 

Peña also named names, and the first guy the Church Committee talked to, INS officer Wendell Roache, corroborated Peña’s account in his first phone call by saying that he “saw Oswald around all the time”. Roache eventually backtracked and said he only saw Oswald once, but he still gave extremely damaging testimony to the lone nut theory by stating unambiguously that Oswald was observed through INS surveillance in New Orleans and was “known to be a member of David Ferrie’s group” in 1963. 

To this day, the Church Committee testimony of Peña, Roache, fellow INS officer Ron Smith, and New Orleans INS investigative division chief Art Bero is missing from the JFK Collection, and those are just the depositions we know about and have dates for. 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Tom Gram

[Larry Hancock]

At a minimum Oswald should have been the files as a subversive/CI "source" given that he had directly contacted and had been interviewed by the FBI on at least one and possibly  more occasions.   Of course if he managed to actually stay  inside a targeted group he might have become eligible to become a PCI but he would have to be inside enough to see illegal activities and serve as a potential witness to them.  Its pretty clear Oswald initially set himself up to inform on the anti-Castro Cubans but after the leafleting its unclear how much more he would have been able to offer....which leaves the Clinton incident a total mystery to me at least given that he had been totally "exposed" by that time?
 

[Rob Clark]

Hi alll!

Thanks for posting this! Just to clarify how telexes worked, according to Walter, they were sent to field offices using a coded system on tickertape that employees like Walter would have to decode using a machine kept in the safe and type it up. They would then be responsible for disseminating the information to the appropriate agents, hence the names written on the telex.

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Tom Gram do we know if the Church Committee testimony of Peña, Roache, fellow INS officer Ron Smith, and New Orleans INS investigative division chief Art Bero are missing from the congressional collection or exist and are simply are not in JFK Collection?

[Gerry Down]

4 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

At a minimum Oswald should have been the files as a subversive/CI "source" given that he had directly contacted and had been interviewed by the FBI on at least one and possibly  more occasions. 
 

This is an interesting point. The fact Quigley met LHO and LHO passed on Intel to him about the new Orleans FPCC chapter such as some info on Hidell, this should have resulted in LHO being labelled a subversive/CI "source". But of course the fbi never acknowledged this. Prob cos he was somewhat more than that, met DeBrueys a few times etc. And so the fbi took the route of denying Oswald was anything other than someone who was being investigated and was not a source or informant on anything to the fbi.

[Michael Griffith]

49 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

This is an interesting point. The fact Quigley met LHO and LHO passed on Intel to him about the new Orleans FPCC chapter such as some info on Hidell, this should have resulted in LHO being labelled a subversive/CI "source". But of course the fbi never acknowledged this. Prob cos he was somewhat more than that, met DeBrueys a few times etc. And so the fbi took the route of denying Oswald was anything other than someone who was being investigated and was not a source or informant on anything to the fbi.

It is often overlooked that one of the reasons the FBI falsely denied that Oswald worked for the government in any capacity, much less that he served in an intelligence role, is that admitting his agent/informant status would have made it even harder to come up with a motive for him to have wanted JFK dead.  

[Larry Hancock]

Well we know the FBI destroyed one Oswald item in Dallas and actually rewrote and altered a page in his notebook to conceal an contact with him by the FBI; I seen no reason they would not have destroyed any files beyond the minimum required to document his one contact while in jail (and I'm not sure I trust the report on that interview either).

Equally importantly, DeBrueys was given an exemption on his testimony (Presidential as I recall) which meant that he could only be asked a couple of very innocuous questions.  My guess is that Oswald may actually have at least wanted to provide further information on his a variety of folks supporting the anti-Castro Cubans...which leads to the real question of why he was still apparently associating with some of those peripheral figures as late as the Clinton incident - well after his exposure?   Anyone got a good answer for that?

Edited July 5, 2023 by Larry Hancock

[Gerry Down]

I didn't realize DeBrueys was given a presidential exemption for his testimony. Who gave that - Gerald Ford?

One would think giving any kind of exemption would cause a spotlight to be shone on that person.

[Larry Hancock]

Nope, pretty sure it was Johnson in regard to the Garrison inquiry but it might have come up in the HSCA as well....that should be in SWHT but I could not tell you where off the top of my head.

[Tom Gram]

4 hours ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

@Tom Gram do we know if the Church Committee testimony of Peña, Roache, fellow INS officer Ron Smith, and New Orleans INS investigative division chief Art Bero are missing from the congressional collection or exist and are simply are not in JFK Collection?

The Church Committee turned over their records to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when they shut down. Then when the ARRB tried to get the records they found that a bunch of transcripts referenced in the footnotes of the Book V report, like Peña’s and a few others, were never turned over to NARA, and said that might only be the “tip of the iceberg”. They were right, since Roache and Smith’s testimony was only cited in a rough draft of the Book V report, and Bero’s was only mentioned in a memo stating that his testimony was scheduled for 12/15/75. I believe there are still other missing transcripts too - these are just the most glaringly relevant to the JFKA.

So the transcripts could still be buried in an SSCI vault somewhere, but they were never turned over to NARA with the rest of the Church Committee records. 

I’m not sure if this link will work, but here’s an ARRB memo that gives some background on the SSCI records from the Malcolm Blunt Archive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yE2pxMrdTKKAy1u7edraDj6Cmu8_U0e0/view?usp=drivesdk

[Gerry Down]

5 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

The Church Committee turned over their records to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when they shut down. Then when the ARRB tried to get the records they found that a bunch of transcripts referenced in the footnotes of the Book V report, like Peña’s and a few others, were never turned over to NARA, and said that might only be the “tip of the iceberg”. They were right, since Roache and Smith’s testimony was only cited in a rough draft of the Book V report, and Bero’s was only mentioned in a memo stating that his testimony was scheduled for 12/15/75. I believe there are still other missing transcripts too - these are just the most glaringly relevant to the JFKA.

So the transcripts could still be buried in an SSCI vault somewhere, but they were never turned over to NARA with the rest of the Church Committee records. 

I’m not sure if this link will work, but here’s an ARRB memo that gives some background on the SSCI records from the Malcolm Blunt Archive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yE2pxMrdTKKAy1u7edraDj6Cmu8_U0e0/view?usp=drivesdk

Thanks for that nice summary.

So if the ARRB could not get those records from the SSCI, then it's unlikely no one ever will.

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Gerry Down the ARRB ran out of time. NARA became the "successor in function". we are pressing this issue in the MFF lawsuit.

@Tom Gram does Malcom have an ARRB section on his drive? I'd like to see what he has against what is in the online public record 

[Tom Gram]

19 minutes ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

@Gerry Down the ARRB ran out of time. NARA became the "successor in function". we are pressing this issue in the MFF lawsuit.

@Tom Gram does Malcom have an ARRB section on his drive? I'd like to see what he has against what is in the online public record 

He does, and there’s a lot of stuff in there I haven’t seen online anywhere else. Here’s a link to the folder: 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cAWr9wQ2juOas2dKcTVBoHJ06jT3cWnK

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Tom Gram Thanks!!