Bill Brown Posted September 2, 2023 Share Posted September 2, 2023 (edited) @Steve Roe @Gerry Down Re: Oswald, leaflets and the USS Wasp... Commission Exhibit 1412... https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1412.pdf "In a letter to Mr. V.T. Lee, then National Director of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, Oswald said that "we also managed to picket the fleet when it came in and I was surprised at the number of officers which were interested in our leaflets". Edited September 2, 2023 by Bill Brown Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Roe Posted September 2, 2023 Share Posted September 2, 2023 1 hour ago, Gerry Down said: Thanks. I hadn't realised this story about the Wasp. So the Wasp had some notoriety regarding the blockade. Any idea what the papers were saying about it? There were several newspaper articles in the Picayune and States-Item. They mentioned how long the fleet was going to be berthed and it was open to the public to view. There were a few pictures of the fleet and aboard the carrier. One of the articles did mention the Wasp fleet was involved in the Cuban blockade. Harbor patrol ran Oswald off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerry Down Posted September 2, 2023 Author Share Posted September 2, 2023 15 minutes ago, Steve Roe said: There were several newspaper articles in the Picayune and States-Item. They mentioned how long the fleet was going to be berthed and it was open to the public to view. There were a few pictures of the fleet and aboard the carrier. One of the articles did mention the Wasp fleet was involved in the Cuban blockade. Harbor patrol ran Oswald off. I always suspected the Trade Mart leafleting was related to the trade embargo with Cuba but hadn't realized the Wasp incident followed the same line of reasoning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerry Down Posted September 9, 2023 Author Share Posted September 9, 2023 On 9/2/2023 at 7:34 PM, Gerry Down said: I think an old JFK researcher named John Newman, not the John Newman of "Oswald and the CIA" fame, found this book. I forget the story now but think it turned up in the Oak Cliff library or something. Albert Newman, not John Newman. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Doudna Posted August 18 Share Posted August 18 (edited) Great question and discussion! I must have missed this topic when it was appearing but what a great find of a puzzle. Anyone not familiar, be sure to read the opening post of the problem and its lack of satisfactory solution: HOW was a book checked out at the Napoleon branch of the New Orleans Public Library system by Oswald on May 22, 1963 (fact), done when Oswald did not obtain a library card until May 27, 1963 (fact)? Read the amicable and informed discussion above and the agreement that there has been no good solution offered. Fact and fact, makes no sense... what is the explanation? Here is what must be the solution, missed in the above discussion: Oswald did indeed check out that book with a library card before he had one, by use of someone else's library card which had been lent to him. The record in the book shows its due date which gives its checkout date two weeks earlier, that is a hard fact, but I see no record or proof as to which library card Oswald used to check it out. The book appears on a list provided by the library of books checked out and returned by Oswald, so that was known (the return date is after Oswald had his own library card in his name and was actively using the library). But there is no specific evidence excluding that Oswald used someone else's library card lent to him, to do the checkout before he returned it himself. All that needs to be done is find who might have lent Oswald a library card temporarily as a favor until he could get his own. Who might possibly have lent a library card to Oswald in May 1963 in New Orleans as a favor? The Secret Service and FBI were all over David Ferrie the weekend of the assassination asking if he had lent a library card to Oswald for him to check out books. "David William Ferrie on interview November Twentyfive, Sixtythree, advised one of the allegations made against him was Oswald had Ferrie's library card in his possession when arrested and Oswald had used Ferrie's library card to obtain books from New Orleans public library. Ferrie stated his library card was in his personal property in custody of New Orleans Police Dept. on Nov. Twentyfive Sixtythree and is library card expired March Thirteen Sixtythree. Ferrie said he had not applied for a new library card..." (FBI teletype New Orleans to hq, Nov 27, 1963, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62253#relPageId=152&search=ferrie_library card) Ferrie is not able to produce a library card of his own valid in May 1963 ... hmmm, OK... he only produces one that expired in March 1963, claims he never got a new one, claims he had no library card at all while living in New Orleans all the rest of that year since March... hmmm. BUT--Dallas Police records of what they found of Oswald's have no record of a David Ferrie library card. Also, hasn't it been shown that that inquiry of Ferrie originated with Jack Martin, a witness of terrible credibility, therefore that dismisses that? Well maybe it was somebody else unknown who lent his or her library card to Oswald which Oswald used to check out that book at the Napoleon branch on May 22. But let's stay with this Ferrie lead for a moment to see if it really should be summarily tossed. Is the evidence solid that Jack Martin originated it, or is that an explanation that may not actually be ultimately correct? Why were the Secret Service and FBI asking everyone else in New Orleans about this, even asked Marina in Dallas about it, about a lent library card of someone else allegedly found on Oswald after his arrest by the Dallas Police, but no actual record that I can see that FBI or Secret Service asked the Dallas Police. (Did I miss a document on that?) It is a little odd that Jack Martin makes all his allegations with motive against Ferrie in his original interview but not the Dallas Police find of Ferrie's library card. Jack Martin claims he must have gotten the Ferrie library card/Dallas Police business from a TV news station. He was in contact with that TV news station by phone three times, he said, that afternoon (Nov 23) shopping his OTHER allegations against Ferrie. The library card allegation apparently never was aired by the TV news station, but did it come up in one of those phone conversations from someone on the other end talking to Jack Martin? I don't know, but maybe nobody else knows for sure on that either. But, someone will say, how could that TV station possibly have gotten any word about the Ferrie library card/Dallas Police allegation? Well, a phone record from the location in Houston where Ferrie was on the afternoon of Nov 23 shows a call made was made to that very TV station in New Orleans, looks like it was from Ferrie. Might Ferrie have been the source of the TV station's knowledge of the allegation, and then via that TV station in their phone calls, Jack Martin? (Even though it was never aired by that station?) Oswald's landlady Mrs. Garner said Ferrie came to her and her husband’s front door distraught about 9 pm or 10-11 pm the night of the assassination. Ferrie was asking about, or trying to find, his library card if she knew anything about it. People say she has the date wrong. People say another neighbor said she was visited by Ferrie on a date the neighbor was certain was Nov 27 the next Tue. But maybe there were two visits by Ferrie. And the neighbor didn't say anything about Ferrie's visit to her happening that late at night, 9 pm or 10-11 pm. Mrs. Garner seemed pretty sure in her earliest interview of when she thought it was. A possible explanation of Ferrie's odd "ice skating business trip" to Houston Possible support for Mrs. Garner's reported timing could be the fact of what happened next after the time she gave--Ferrie's exceedingly strange bolting from New Orleans immediately after the time given by Mrs. Garner of his visit distraught asking her about his library card ... to go ice skating in Houston, arriving in Houston at ca. 4 am Nov 23. Whereupon he arrives to the ice skating rink with two younger companions, and doesn't ice skate but spends his time at a pay phone, one call after another, including to the Carlos Marcello organization headquarters in New Orleans and another two phone calls to two TV news stations in New Orleans one of which was the one Jack Martin claimed was his information of the Ferrie library card deal. The 350 miles from New Orleans to Houston straight through drive is about 6 hours or so. Ferrie arrived 4 am in Houston, count back ... odd, unexplained trip ... Mrs. Garner's sober claim of Ferrie's visit to her front door ca. 9 pm immediately following which Ferrie departs to Houston... Maybe the cause of the Houston trip was Ferrie had learned he was or would he sought to explain the library card (having learned of it somehow within hours while still in New Orleans on Nov 22), and the purpose for going to Houston was to avoid arrest in Louisiana until he made phone calls and had a strategy. The ice skating is a transparent alibi for some other reason for the trip, but maybe forget all the unsubstantiated speculation that he was going to fly anyone as part of the JFK assassination plot, or that he had anything to do with the JFK assassination in the absence of concrete evidence indicating he did of which there isn't any. Instead consider an explanation for that odd spontaneous trip of Ferrie: that it indeed was spontaneous and may make sense: to leave the state and expected imminent arrest over something which was true, not false (the library card of his lent to Oswald); to go somewhere to make phone calls from pay phones and not be found and picked up and arrested before he had a strategy prepared and was ready to turn himself in, if he believed an arrest was imminent. A possibility how the Dallas Police could have found a library card of Ferrie in Oswald's possession, without it being reported found on his person, or in his room in Oak Cliff, or among his belongings in Irving Just before Fri Nov 22, someone mailed some papers of some kind in a mailer to Oswald to a dead address. This is another longstanding unresolved mystery. The envelope was found and survives today but its contents were removed and unknown what those contents were. One of the existing suggestions of that has been that it could reflect Oswald mailing a few things in that mailer as a way to get them not on his person or found among his personal belongings, but yet not destroyed either and potentially retrievable. One possibility is that among those contents was Oswald put David Ferrie's borrowed library card, which he had never got around to returning to him, in that mailer. The mailer was found, that is how David Ferrie's library card became known but also not reported found on Oswald's person or in his belongings at either Oak Cliff or Irving. And if it was found in those circumstances, that would account for the heavy-duty law enforcement response of immediately and aggressively attempting to find David Ferrie and run down what that library card was about and his relationship with Oswald the accused assassin. Conclusion Again, it could be someone else who helped Oswald out by lending him a library card to use temporarily so he could check out books before he got a library card in his own name in that Napoleon branch library. But it was someone, and there is all this data about a known issue from the weekend of the assassination about a library card from someone in New Orleans having been lent to Oswald. What not to like about this solution to the identity of that "someone"? Edited August 18 by Greg Doudna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerry Down Posted August 18 Author Share Posted August 18 2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said: Great question and discussion! I must have missed this topic when it was appearing but what a great find of a puzzle. Anyone not familiar, be sure to read the opening post of the problem and its lack of satisfactory solution: HOW was a book checked out at the Napoleon branch of the New Orleans Public Library system by Oswald on May 22, 1963 (fact), done when Oswald did not obtain a library card until May 27, 1963 (fact)? Read the amicable and informed discussion above and the agreement that there has been no good solution offered. Fact and fact, makes no sense... what is the explanation? Here is what must be the solution, missed in the above discussion: Oswald did indeed check out that book with a library card before he had one, by use of someone else's library card which had been lent to him. The record in the book shows its due date which gives its checkout date two weeks earlier, that is a hard fact, but I see no record or proof as to which library card Oswald used to check it out. The book appears on a list provided by the library of books checked out and returned by Oswald, so that was known (the return date is after Oswald had his own library card in his name and was actively using the library). But there is no specific evidence excluding that Oswald used someone else's library card lent to him, to do the checkout before he returned it himself. All that needs to be done is find who might have lent Oswald a library card temporarily as a favor until he could get his own. Who might possibly have lent a library card to Oswald in May 1963 in New Orleans as a favor? The Secret Service and FBI were all over David Ferrie the weekend of the assassination asking if he had lent a library card to Oswald for him to check out books. "David William Ferrie on interview November Twentyfive, Sixtythree, advised one of the allegations made against him was Oswald had Ferrie's library card in his possession when arrested and Oswald had used Ferrie's library card to obtain books from New Orleans public library. Ferrie stated his library card was in his personal property in custody of New Orleans Police Dept. on Nov. Twentyfive Sixtythree and is library card expired March Thirteen Sixtythree. Ferrie said he had not applied for a new library card..." (FBI teletype New Orleans to hq, Nov 27, 1963, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62253#relPageId=152&search=ferrie_library card) Ferrie is not able to produce a library card of his own valid in May 1963 ... hmmm, OK... he only produces one that expired in March 1963, claims he never got a new one, claims he had no library card at all while living in New Orleans all the rest of that year since March... hmmm. BUT--Dallas Police records of what they found of Oswald's have no record of a David Ferrie library card. Also, hasn't it been shown that that inquiry of Ferrie originated with Jack Martin, a witness of terrible credibility, therefore that dismisses that? Well maybe it was somebody else unknown who lent his or her library card to Oswald which Oswald used to check out that book at the Napoleon branch on May 22. But let's stay with this Ferrie lead for a moment to see if it really should be summarily tossed. Is the evidence solid that Jack Martin originated it, or is that an explanation that may not actually be ultimately correct? Why were the Secret Service and FBI asking everyone else in New Orleans about this, even asked Marina in Dallas about it, about a lent library card of someone else allegedly found on Oswald after his arrest by the Dallas Police, but no actual record that I can see that FBI or Secret Service asked the Dallas Police. (Did I miss a document on that?) Second, it is a little odd that Jack Martin makes all his allegations with motive against Ferrie in his original interview but not the Dallas Police find of Ferrie's library card. Jack Martin claims he must have gotten the Ferrie library card/Dallas Police business from a TV news station. He was in contact with that TV news station by phone three times, he said, that afternoon (Nov 23) shopping his OTHER allegations against Ferrie. The library card allegation apparently never was aired by the TV news station, but did it come up in one of those phone conversations from someone on the other end talking to Jack Martin? I don't know, but maybe nobody else knows for sure on that either. But, someone will say, how could that TV station possibly have gotten any word about the Ferrie library card/Dallas Police allegation? Well, a phone record from the location in Houston where Ferrie was on the afternoon of Nov 23 shows a call made was made to that very TV station in New Orleans, looks like it was from Ferrie. Might Ferrie have been the source of the TV station's knowledge of the allegation, and then via that TV station in their phone calls, Jack Martin? (Even though it was never aired by that station?) Third, Oswald's landlady Mrs. Garner said Ferrie came to her distraught about 9 pm or 10-11 pm the night of the assassination. Ferrie was asking about, or trying to find, his library card if she knew anything about it. People say she has the date wrong. People say another neighbor said she was visited by Ferrie on a date the neighbor was certain was Nov 27 the next Tue. But maybe there were two visits by Ferrie. And the neighbor didn't say anything about Ferrie's visit to her happening that late at night, 9 pm or 10-11 pm. Mrs. Garner seemed pretty sure in her earliest interview of when she thought it was. A possible explanation of Ferrie's odd "ice skating business trip" to Houston Possible support for Mrs. Garner's reported timing could be the fact of what happened next after the time she gave--Ferrie's exceedingly strange bolting from New Orleans immediately after the time given by Mrs. Garner of his visit distraught asking her about his library card ... to go ice skating in Houston, arriving in Houston at ca. 4 am Nov 23. Whereupon he arrives to the ice skating rink with two younger companions, and doesn't ice skate but spends his time at a pay phone, one call after another, including to the Carlos Marcello organization headquarters in New Orleans and another two phone calls to two TV news stations in New Orleans one of which was the one Jack Martin claimed was his information of the Ferrie library card deal. The 350 miles from New Orleans to Houston straight through drive is about 6 hours or so. Ferrie arrived 4 pm in Houston, count back ... odd, unexplained trip ... Mrs. Garner's sober claim of Ferrie's visit to her front door ca. 9 pm immediately following which Ferrie departs to Houston... Maybe the cause of the Houston trip was Ferrie was so freaked out about the library card business (having learned of it somehow within hours while still in New Orleans on Nov 22), and the purpose for going to the ice skating rink in Houston was to temporarily avoid being found and arrested until he made phone calls and had a strategy. The ice skating is a transparent alibi for something, but maybe forget all the unsubstantiated speculation that he was going to fly anyone as part of the JFK assassination plot, or that he had anything to do with the JFK assassination in the absence of concrete evidence indicating he did of which there isn't any. Instead consider an explanation for that odd spontaneous trip of Ferrie: that it indeed was spontaneous and may make sense: to go somewhere to make phone calls from pay phones, and not be found and picked up and arrested before he had a strategy prepared and was ready to turn himself in, if he believed an arrest was imminent. A possibility how the Dallas Police could have found a library card of Ferrie in Oswald's possession, without it being reported found on his person, or in his room in Oak Cliff, or among his belongings in Irving Just before Fri Nov 22, someone mailed some papers of some kind in a mailer to Oswald to a dead address. This is another longstanding unresolved mystery. The envelope was found but its contents were removed and unknown what those contents were. I bet Oswald mailed a few things in that mailer as a way to get them not on his person or found among his personal belongings, but yet not destroyed either and potentially retrievable. One possibility is that among those contents was Oswald put David Ferrie's borrowed library card, which he had never got around to returning to him, in that mailer. The mailer was found, that is how David Ferrie's library card was known but also not reported found on Oswald's person or in his belongings at either Oak Cliff or Irving. And if it was found in those circumstances, that would account for the heavy-duty law enforcement response of immediately and aggressively attempting to find David Ferrie and run down what that library card was about and his relationship with Oswald the accused assassin. Conclusion Again, it could be someone else who helped Oswald out by lending him a library card to use temporarily so he could check out books before he got a library card in his own name in that Napoleon branch library. But it was someone, and there is all this data about a known issue from the weekend of the assassination about a library card from someone in New Orleans having been lent to Oswald. What not to like about this solution to the identity of that "someone"? 🙂 I would have thought that if Oswald used Ferries library card to take out a book, that would be registered at the library as though it was Ferrie himself who took out that book. Therefore that first book would not be traced to Oswald at all after the assassination. Furthermore if the library card was expired since March 1963, that library card wouldn't be able to be used to check out any books at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Doudna Posted August 18 Share Posted August 18 (edited) 2 hours ago, Gerry Down said: I would have thought that if Oswald used Ferries library card to take out a book, that would be registered at the library as though it was Ferrie himself who took out that book. Therefore that first book would not be traced to Oswald at all after the assassination. That would normally be true but here is how (I think) it could happen that Oswald could show a Ferrie library card yet the library's record would show Oswald, not Ferrie, checked out the book. This was before computers and bar-code scanning. The person would show their library card, then write their name on a "borrowing card" taken out of a jacket inside the book cover, underneath the last previous name above in a list. The checkout librarian would stamp the date on that card, keep that card in the library, replace it in the book with a "date due" notice, and the person goes out the door with the book. The record is the name written by the person on that borrowing card. When the book is returned to the library, the borrowing card is put back into its jacket inside the cover of the book, and the book reshelved. To compile a particular user's book borrowing history, I imagine those borrowing card records microfilmed each day and a manual check back through the microfilm records by a human being looking for a particular name. Here are some visuals of vintage library checkout lore, https://clickamericana.com/media/books-media/remember-vintage-library-checkout-cards-due-date-slips. In other words, nobody can check out a book without showing a library card, that's the requirement to check out books. Oswald shows a card, Ferrie's. But the record is the name signed. Oswald signs his own name. That (I think) is how it could happen that Oswald could show a library card of Ferrie but the branch library would have Oswald's name, not Ferrie's, in their compilation of books Oswald checked out from their records. 2 hours ago, Gerry Down said: Furthermore if the library card was expired since March 1963, that library card wouldn't be able to be used to check out any books at all. Correct that Ferrie's invalid library card expired March 1963 was not used by Oswald in May 1963 but that is not the point. Ferrie still had that old expired invalid card in his possession on Nov 22, 1963, so for that reason alone that library card of Ferrie could not have been found in Dallas associated with Oswald on Nov 22 even if it were not expired. The reconstruction is Ferrie lent a VALID library card of his in May 1963 to Oswald, the one he would have gotten when his old one expired in March. Ferrie did not produce such a valid library card in his possession in Nov 1963. In the reconstruction, the explanation why he did not have a valid library card to show police of start-date in the March-May 1963 range is because he actually had had one but had lent it and never got it back. That wasn't Ferrie's explanation though: Ferrie claimed he never got a new valid library card at any time after March 1963 (or cards, plural, between March and Nov if he reported losing one at some point, say), after his old one expired. But there is only Ferrie's word for it that he went nearly the whole year of 1963 cut off from the public library system with no valid library card. Edited August 18 by Greg Doudna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Doudna Posted August 18 Share Posted August 18 (edited) Fred Litwin's piece on the David Ferrie library card issue (written before my above proposing differently), "Did Lee Harvey Oswald have David Ferrie's Library Card?" https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/did-lee-harvey-oswald-have-david-ferrie-s-library-card. Litwin argues no. Edited August 18 by Greg Doudna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Balch Posted August 20 Share Posted August 20 Has anyone ruled out a transcription error on the date either on the part of the library of the FBI? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerry Down Posted August 20 Author Share Posted August 20 48 minutes ago, Kevin Balch said: Has anyone ruled out a transcription error on the date either on the part of the library of the FBI? It can't be a transcription error. We have both the check out date and the due back date. The two dates are Wednesdays spaced exactly 2 weeks apart, which was the normal book loan time for that library. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Balch Posted August 20 Share Posted August 20 9 hours ago, Gerry Down said: It can't be a transcription error. We have both the check out date and the due back date. The two dates are Wednesdays spaced exactly 2 weeks apart, which was the normal book loan time for that library. OK I see. I couldn’t make out the title of that column. Is it possible that a temporary card is issued upon application until a “permanent” card can be typed up (I don’t think they issued plastic cards in those days, they were mainly paper with the name and address typed in)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Gram Posted August 20 Share Posted August 20 1 hour ago, Kevin Balch said: OK I see. I couldn’t make out the title of that column. Is it possible that a temporary card is issued upon application until a “permanent” card can be typed up (I don’t think they issued plastic cards in those days, they were mainly paper with the name and address typed in)? I had the same question. The book was checked out exactly a week before Oswald got his card, so I was wondering if a temp card could have been issued that expired in a week, or something like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerry Down Posted August 20 Author Share Posted August 20 I think Steve Roe answered this one well on page one of this thread. What quiet possibly happened is that Oswald reserved the book behind the counter in case the book would be gone by the time the library issued the card. But I'm open to other possibilities if someone has any other ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Gram Posted August 20 Share Posted August 20 3 hours ago, Gerry Down said: I think Steve Roe answered this one well on page one of this thread. What quiet possibly happened is that Oswald reserved the book behind the counter in case the book would be gone by the time the library issued the card. But I'm open to other possibilities if someone has any other ideas. That seems like a bit of a stretch, IMO. The NOLA Public Library still exists, right? I’ve reached out their archivist before and they were very nice and accommodating. It might be work asking about historical library card policies etc. They’ll probably know… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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