Morley and Nagle on Mexico City

[Benjamin Cole]

10 minutes ago, Michaleen Kilroy said:

It’s a great story, Ben. I’ve read it before but didn’t recall the Gonzalez connection - the same rep who torpedoed Sprague. Wow.

it also reminds me that JFK was unlucky in so many ways in facing the conspirators - the first neck shot making him mute, the back brace essentially making him unable to get down, etc.

In the supposed investigation to follow, he was unlucky in having his brother as AG. A less emotionally tied AG just might have been strong enough - and seen as independent enough - to demand a truly thorough investigation. Instead we have asst AG Katzenbach and his ridiculous lone gunman memo.

Thanks for the note MK. 

I had not thought about that before, that RFK (understandably) checked out, leaving the stage empty. 

A hard-boiled AG, a Sprague type, might have demanded a real investigation. 

As the Nov. 23 statement from the State Department shows, the federal government was coalescing around a "lone gunman, no foreign involvement" narrative by Nov. 23. 

Could a real AG in 1963-4 have managed to get  to truth, even if flummoxed by the FBI and intel community? Tough call. 

[Michaleen Kilroy]

5 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Thanks for the note MK. 

I had not thought about that before, that RFK (understandably) checked out, leaving the stage empty. 

A hard-boiled AG, a Sprague type, might have demanded a real investigation. 

As the Nov. 23 statement from the State Department shows, the federal government was coalescing around a "lone gunman, no foreign involvement" narrative by Nov. 23. 

Could a real AG in 1963-4 have managed to get  to truth, even if flummoxed by the FBI and intel community? Tough call. 

Yeah it would have to have been someone who wouldn’t go along with a dishonest investigation ‘for the good of the country’ like so many did.

[Steve Thomas]

On 10/7/2023 at 7:44 PM, Larry Hancock said:

As to my guesses, I think that the subversives were Cuban exiles engaged in weapons buys in Dallas and that the FBI was monitoring them and observed Oswald in contact with one or more of them , again you will find that discussed in SWHT - most recently David Boylan have speculated on exactly who they might have been in our Wheaton leads work and our recent presentations on the Red Bird leads - I don't want to make it sound like anything brand new although we have much more detail on exactly which activist exiles were traveling from the Miami area to both New Orleans and Dallas now than when I was doing the various editions of SWHT.

Larry,

Oswald and subversives...

"traveling from Miami to Dallas,,,:

I was immediately reminded of Sylvia Odio.

Commission Document 946 - SS Aragon Report of 5 May 1964 re: Sylvia Odio, Rogelio Cisneros Diaz page 3

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11342&search=%22Juan_Martin%22#relPageId=4&tab=page

 

On May 4, 1964 in an interview in his home with SS Agent Ernest I. Aragon, Rogelio Cisneros told Aragon that:

 

Rogelio Cisneros, a JURE member in Miami, went to Dallas alone, by plane in June, 1963 for the specific purpose of contacting Sylvia Odio who was supposed to introduce Cisneros to a Uruguayan named Juan Martin, who was interested in selling small arms to JURE. “He further identified himself as Rogelio Cisneros Diaz, an officer of JURE, at Miami,Florida, and added that the name “Eugenio” is his designated “war name””.

 

The JURE office in Dallas was already in operation, having been established in May, 1963. He only contacted Sylvia Odio once. When they went to her house, Cisneros was accompanied by Jorge Rodriguez (Alvarada) (Alvereda?), their Dallas delegate, and no one else.

 

My question is, why would Rogelio Cisneros fly from Miami, FL. To Dallas, TX. alone, in a plane for the specific purpose of contacting Sylvia Odio in order to meet a gun runner who he had never met before? Why her?

 

WC TESTIMONY OF SYLVIA ODIO

The testimony of Sylvia Odio was taken at 9 a.m., on July 22, 1964

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/odio.htm

 

Mrs. ODIO. No. I have told you I moved several times, and it is because of reasons of my work, and because my children at the time were in Puerto Rico, I and I went down to get them in Puerto Rico June 29th.
That was exactly the day that I saw Ray again. We had been trying to establish a contact in Dallas with Mr. Johnny Martin, who is from Uruguay. He is from there, and he had heard that I was involved in this movement. And he said that he had a lot of contacts in Latin America to buy arms, particularly in Brazil, and that if he were in contact with one of our chief leaders of the underground, he would be able to sell him second-hand arms that we could use in our revolution.

 

And then... Lee Harvey Oswald shows up.

 

Steve Thomas

[Larry Hancock]

Ah Steve, good catch - the thing is David Boylan has turned up a lead that might explain a number of other things related to Odio in 1963, including that  flight to Dallas, Odio's time in Puerto Rico and ultimately provide a reason for that special visit by people from New Orleans (and Miami).

It makes a lot more sense than a weapons buy and would have involved Odio in something pretty special if it had not been compromised...but enough said on that for now.

The thing is David and I will be speaking on that lead as well as others in conjunction with his talk at the Lancer conference - specifically on the Odio visit.  So I'm going to have to keep that to myself for a few more weeks (David, if  you visit this thread, don't give it away yet...grin).

  -- Larry

[Leslie Sharp]

 Clay Shaw’s close associate, David Ferrie ironically lived in the quiet neighborhood of Broadmoor, [a stone's throw] from Silvia’s uncle, Augustin Guitart, a physics professor at Xavier University who resided at 3694 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. In hindsight, had FBI agents Odum and Hosty done their homework and tapped into their resources in New Orleans, including SA Bartlett and SA Rice who might have been slightly curious of the coincidence (the former having been a pivotal figure in the provenance of the magic bullet), they might have uncovered a connection. Instead, Silvia’s testimony before the Warren Commission served only to compartmentalize and confuse, deflecting attention from any legitimate pursuit of anyone other than the patsy. 

         Despite Odum’s follow through with Silvia Odio’s claims, including at least one interview with her, Odum was never called to testify before the Warren Commission on at least this aspect of the investigation. However, as revealed in the following snippet of her testimony before the commission, in a scene worthy of the film, The Godfather, Odum hovered:

Mr. LIEBELER. Did you say that you also started working at a new job that same day?

Mrs. ODIO. No, sir.

Mr. LIEBELER. But you had been working on the day that you did move? 

Mrs. ODIO. I started working initially the 15th of September, because it was too far away where I lived in Irving. I started the 15th of September, I am almost sure of the 15th or the 9th. Let me see what day was the 9th. It was a Monday. It was the 9th, sir, that I started working at National Chemsearch.

(Special Agent Bardwell O. Odum of the Federal Bureau of Investigation entered the hearing room.)

Mr. LIEBELER. This is Mr. Odum from the FBI. As a matter of fact, Mr. Odum was the man that interviewed you.

Mrs. ODIO. I remember. He looked very familiar. 

Mr. [LIEBELER]. What is the name? 

Mr. [sic] ODIO. I interview so many people, it slips my mind at the moment.

(Agent Odum left the hearing room…)

Special Agent Bardwell Dewitt Odum was never called to testify before the Warren Commission.

        
Caretaker Analysis

' . . . From that perspective, more serious consideration was given to the possibility that there was someone else in play, someone acting as Ruth’s handler, someone who was the ultimate caretaker of the role to be filled by the patsy. And with that realization, interest in FBI Special Agent Bardwell Dewitt Odum—known personally to the Paines prior to November 22 by their own admission—was revived. “The Ubiquitous Bard” was elevated to prime candidate for caretaker.

                                                      ***

In a July 1998 volume of the The Fourth Decade, a highly regarded publication focused on the assassination, researcher Raymond F. Gallagher presented a brilliant exposé of Special Agent Odum titled “The Ubiquitous Bard.” According to Gallagher, from the moment Odum ascended the stairway to the 6th floor of the TSBD to witness the recovery of the alleged murder rifle, he was an ever-present fixture in advancing Oswald as the lone gunman.

         Less than an hour after the rifle discovery, Bard Odum, along with Lt. Day of the Dallas Police Department, was photographed leaving the depository building with the alleged rifle used by an alleged assassin from the sniper’s nest. Lt. Day later stated that en route to headquarters, SA Odum had used his car radio to contact the Dallas FBI office and described the rifle. As Gallagher pointed out in 1998, there didn’t seem to be a record of this communication, but there is no doubt that early descriptions of the rifle set in motion rampant confusion as to the official identification of the alleged weapon. 

         Odum, an agent of the federal government, was at the DPD headquarters only briefly before dashing to the Texas Theater where a suspect in the shooting of a Dallas police officer was about to be apprehended. It has yet to be explained what prompted Odum to attend that particular arrest in the middle of what should have been the most aggressive manhunt in the nation’s history. Why would his boss, SAC Gordon Shanklin pull one of his prize protégés from the search for Kennedy’s assassin to pursue a local shooting, unless of course, Shanklin had already been advised that Lee Oswald would not only be charged with gunning down Officer J.D. Tippit, but that he would soon be charged with the assassination of Kennedy. 

         Once Oswald was in custody at the Texas Theatre, Odum, instead of tracking federal arrests being made in critical hours of the assassination, inexplicably spent another hour and a half in pursuit of the Tippit shooting along with nearly a dozen DPD staff. Federal detentions in the Dallas area during that twenty-four hour period—persons of interest to the Feds since the spring of 1963—stand out: Jean Rene Souetre and Michel Mertz and possibly Michel Roux.

         Rather than being ordered to question Souetre and or Mertz or Roux, Odum seems focused on Tippit’s murder, even taking time to interview Helen Markham who had witnessed a young male fleeing the scene. In another rarely heralded essay published in the Fourth Decade in 1997, researcher Tom Wallace Lyons summed up Odum’s early influence over the Tippit investigation, asserting that Odum sewed the confusion that contributed to Markham being labeled as an inconsistent, unreliable witness for decades to come. 

         In another noteworthy timeline, while Odum is biding time in Oak Cliff, pursuing a case that was technically outside his jurisdiction, Lee Oswald’s various addresses were being nailed down at the school book depository. Meanwhile, Oswald was being driven to police headquarters in Car Number 2 under the custody of Jerry Hill and his colleagues. According to Bill Simpich, another researcher who has long recognized that the elusive Bard demands close scrutiny, Jerry Hill had been on the sixth floor of the depository building when Mannlicher-Carcano shells were found and reported as a match to the rifle that Bard Odum escorted to police headquarters. Either the police department and the FBI were stretched thin that afternoon, or this was one of numerous serendipitous coincidences that would unfold in the next few days. 

         Once Lee Oswald was identified as AWOL during an alleged formal roll call of depository employees, and once his addresses were known, including that of the Paines, Odum seems to have finally returned his keen eye to the assassination, and with every subsequent step he took, the profile of the lone nut commie suspect was advanced. By December 2, he was responsible for the transfer of a fragment of a bullet retrieved from the wall of General Edwin Walker’s study to Washington D.C. for comparison against fragments from Dealey Plaza. In light of the September 4 Lafitte datebook entry, which reads Hotshot – Walker (Caretaker), we’re forced to consider the possibility that Odum knew more about the Walker incident than has ever been contemplated.

                                                   ***

[Odum and the Mex City photo)

Returning to Raymond Gallagher’s exceptional research and subsequent astute insight into Bard Odum’s role, combined with that of author Bill Simpich, the following is a truncated version of just how enmeshed the FBI agent was in guaranteeing that Oswald alone would be charged with Kennedy’s death: there was no conspiracy, there was no “coup” other than a blow to the president’s head.

         After transferring the rifle from the “scene of the crime” to DPD headquarters, after witnessing the arrest of Oswald at the Texas Theatre, and following a stop off to interview a witness in the Tippit shooting, Odum either cooled his heels the rest of the afternoon, or pursued leads that were not documented or have not been released. We do know from records that he ended up with shells and slugs from the Tippit scene in his pocket.

         We also know with certainty that within twenty-four hours of the assassination, Odum played a role in yet another attempt to cement Oswald’s guilt. Again, author Bill Simpich: “[Wallace] Heitman had a close colleague—Bardwell Odum . . . while Heitman specialized in working with the Russians and the Cubans as a valued CIA liaison for the Dallas office, Odum was a senior criminal specialist and a favorite of Dallas FBI chief Gordon Shanklin. Heitman was the man who met Eldon Rudd on the tarmac the night of the assassination. Rudd was delivering documents provided to him by CIA Mexico City chief Win Scott—a photo of the Mystery Man that Scott allegedly believed was Oswald. . . .”

         Simpich reminds us that J. Walton Moore, agent in charge of the CIA’s Dallas office, was a college roommate of Wallace Heitman. It was Moore that introduced George de Mohrenschildt to the returned “defector,” Oswald, and Moore and de Mohrenschildt shared a friendship with Texas oilman and former WWI Col. Lawrence Orlov who is named in the Lafitte datebook.

         CIA agent Heitman’s buddy, SA Odum was teamed up that evening with James Hosty, the agent assigned to Oswald since his return from the Soviet Union and infamous for having destroyed an alleged note from Oswald in the weeks prior to the assassination. Odum was the only agent to later claim that Hosty’s story about the Oswald note was erroneous. Ruth Paine soon changed her assessment of the note to align with Bard’s by insisting that the note was yet “another lie” told by Lee.

         When the photos arrived from Mexico City, after cropping any vestiges of the embassy building behind the image of a man in the photo that they intended to present to Marina for identification, the Hosty/Odum team proceeded to the motel in Garland, north of downtown, to confront her. Enter Marguerite Oswald who ran interference that night, and refused to allow Odum to interrogate either of the two women. 

Despite those seeming early unpleasantries, a photo of the Bard facing Marina who is cradling her newborn attests to the FBI agent’s persistence.

Edited October 16, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Karl Kinaski]

Leslie Sharp said, quote: 

 

Quote

 Simpich reminds us that J. Walton Moore, agent in charge of the CIA’s Dallas office, was a college roommate of Wallace Heitman. It was Moore that introduced George de Mohrenschildt to the returned “defector,” Oswald, and Moore and de Mohrenschildt shared a friendship with Texas oilman and former WWI Col. Lawrence Orlov who is named in the Lafitte datebook.

Close quote

J. Walton Moore and Charles Cabell knew each other well. 

Letter from Charles Cabell to Walton Moore: 

 

 

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Karl Kinaski

[Leslie Sharp]

28 minutes ago, Karl Kinaski said:

Leslie Sharp said, quote: 

 

Close quote

J. Walton Moore and Charles Cabell knew each other well. 

Letter from Charles Cabell to Walton Moore: 

 

 

 

[Note: J. Walton Moore was considered a serious candidate for the mysterious "T" referred to frequently by Pierre Lafitte in the datebook he maintained throughout 1963. Both Albarelli and Sharp considered the possibility that "T" was a composite of characters under the control and management of CIA COS J. Walton Moore.]   

' . . . Lafitte’s “Orlov” noted in the October 27 entry, along with both [Herbert] Itkin and [William King] Harvey, is a clear reference to Fort Worth oilman, Col. Lawrence Orlov. According to Prof. Peter Dale Scott in “Oswald and the Hunt for Popov’s Mole,” published in the Fourth Decade, Volume 3, Number 3, March 1996, “Col. Orlov, like Max Clark, was a veteran of the Air Force as well as a good friend of J. Walton Moore.” In fact, they were handball partners. It should also be noted that the Colonel had been drilling for oil in Texas prior to the war, and in 1963 was still engaged in the industry. Orlov’s Dallas office was located in a relatively unassuming building only a one-minute walk from the more imposing Reserve Loan and Life Insurance Building—across the street from the First Baptist Church of Dallas—where both George de Mohrenschildt who was a client of Herbert Itkin, and their mutual friend, CIA station chief J. Walton Moore leased office space. . . .'

Researcher Alan Kent, in his essay published in Coup in Dallas, built a strong case that Tracy Barnes was "T", but also makes note of a significant Lafitte datebook entry on September 16 suggesting J. Walton Moore was at the very least "in the loop."

         If Tracy Barnes was T, I think that we can see—from a distance—the outlines of a nexus of men who Barnes—as head of DOD—would have had “legitimate” operational interest in meeting in Dallas and New Orleans in 1963. People who centered around the Domestic Contact Service, including assets of J. Walton Moore, who seems to have been on the ground floor of CIA’s active outreach to Lee Oswald in 1961, 1962, and 1963. While these people—de Mohrenschildt (who Lafitte makes a note to “call” as late as November 20, 1963), and Col. Orlov, as well as Dallas resident and high-level intelligence agent Sam Kail—were no doubt involved in numerous schemes that Barnes could have had interest in, we know from the evidence of the Lafitte datebook that these people also had roles to play in the forthcoming murder of JFK, as the planning for that event rolled on through 1963. It is possible that Moore himself is being referred to in a key entry. On September 16, 1963, Lafitte wrote: “T says Oswald is idiot, but will be used regardless.” Above that is a note to “see J. in Dallas.” 


The following footnote from Coup in Dallas:

J. Walton Moore: A few days before his death, George de Mohrenschildt told author Edward Epstein that he had been contacted by the head of DCS in Dallas, J. Walton Moore, in 1961, several months prior to Lee Oswald’s return from the Soviet Union, and briefed about Oswald. de Mohrenschildt was a frequently used source of Moore’s, dating back into the late 1950s. Moore would later dissemble when testifying about his contacts with de Mohrenschildt, stating that he had seen George infrequently in the 1960s, but de Mohrenschildt’s wife Jeanne called Moore up on this, claiming that she and George quite frequently dined with Moore and his wife. While it is often stated in the literature that Barnes was “Moore’s boss” from his perch as head of DOD, this assertion cannot be proven. Still, the overlap between DOD and the DCS seems strong enough to suggest that as a likelihood. Moore occupies a unique and very interesting position in the story of the Kennedy assassination. de Mohrenschildt told Epstein that he “would never have contacted Oswald in a million years if Moore had not sanctioned it.” When de Mohrenschildt first made contact with Oswald, he arrived in the company of a CIA informant, Col. Laurence Orlov. Orlov, a long-time oilman and acquaintance of de Mohrenschildt’s, was also an informant for Moore at DCS in Dallas, as well as being a social companion of Moore’s. Joan Mellen writes: “It seems apparent that J. Walton Moore…had set up the meeting between de Mohrenschildt and Oswald.” And, it could well be added, if what de Mohrenschildt told Epstein about a 1961 contact from Moore regarding Oswald is accurate, Moore would seem to be on a short list of people who were involved very early on in maneuvering Lee Oswald.

Moore, an ex-FBI man, as well as an OSS agent during his service in the Second World War, had joined CIA in 1948, being assigned to Domestic Contacts at that time. By the 1960s, Moore was exceptionally well-known and respected within CIA. A friendly and personal letter from then Deputy Director of CIA Gen. Charles Cabell is in the record. Cabell, addressing Moore as “Walt,” thanked him for his hospitality during a recent (1960) Cabell visit to Dallas. Late in Moore’s career, a note in his personnel file shows that the Houston-based DCS office was upgraded in status, the New Orleans DCS office was placed under the Houston office in Agency command structure, and both offices were subordinate to the Dallas office, still headed by Moore. After the assassination of Kennedy, Moore would pop up periodically during times of intense interest in the assassination. In 1976, with the HSCA investigation into Kennedy’s death about to begin, Moore—still in the position in Dallas with DCS that he had occupied since 1948—wrote to the head of that division, asking for help in handling “the exposure of [Clay] Shaw’s connections with CIA.” When de Mohrenschildt died from gunshot wounding in 1977, Moore clipped the news stories reporting the death and sent them to the chief of CIA’s Domestic Contact Division. On a cover sheet over a Dallas Times-Herald article which stated that the HSCA had uncovered “new, unproven evidence on Oswald’s ties with CIA, FBI,” Moore wrote “Nothing new, is there?” Moore’s Agency files also feature a detailed account of the story of Gilberto Policarpo Lopez (December 1963), a young man whose late 1963 travels parallel those of Lee Oswald. Lopez moved suspiciously before and after the assassination of President Kennedy—attempting to get a visa to Cuba in Mexico City in the fall of 1963, and boarding a plane from Texas headed for Mexico City in the immediate aftermath of the assassination. A note from CIA DD/P Richard Helms to Win Scott at the Mexico City CIA station is also in Moore’s files. The note is suggestive of Lopez being involved in a highly compartmentalized intelligence operation. Beyond the particulars of the Lopez story, the significance for our interest is that Moore is being entrusted with highly sensitive information pertaining to an investigation of the murder of President Kennedy, information which was not widely shared within CIA. J. Walton Moore was not “regular folks” in CIA by the 1960s; he was something out of the ordinary—particularly for an employee whose record reflects no obvious advancement for nearly 30 years. — Alan Kent

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Leslie Sharp