Hugh Aynesworth is Dead: The Grinch is Gone

[Benjamin Cole]

5 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

What a massive Machiavellian world that all was.

Woodward has always been connected it seems. Access way beyond any other major news print media journalist. Even in today's times.

He gets Trump ( while Trump is President ) to talk to him dozens of times in personal chats? Which he then uses as a sensationalized hook in his book?

I remember watching a segment of the Bill O'Reilly TV show where he interviewed Frank Fiorini ( AKA Frank Sturgis ) regards Watergate mostly, but also the JFK assassination.

O'Reilly asked Sturgis who was CIA in the White House during the Watergate scandal.

Sturgis stated Alexander Haig...and Alexander Butterfield.

Butterfield was the White House taped conversations man. 

Of course. Control those tapes and you control Nixon when you need to.

Bennett, Howard Hughes, William Gay...all Mormons?

"Steady, straight-living, efficient breed?"

Mormons?

Strange religious order imo.

A guy named Joe Smith finds some gold tablets in the desert sand and declares them to be sent from God?

One great gift in those tablets...men can have multiple wives? I think if I was a young single man in those times I might have whip raced my horse over half the country and through hell and high water to join that group!  

 

 

It is curious that some societies allow polygamy and some ban it.  

If people agree to polygamous or polyandrous marriages, that would seem to be their business, not that of the state's. 

Back to Bennett: It is Bennett that Tosh Plumlee says he reported. 

Plumlee is yet another JFKA character who has some credentials...evidently, he was a bona fide asset of the CIA.

Was he in Dallas on 11/22? He has no proof of that. 

Bennett was also a CIA asset, and his story and connections to Watergate are verified. 

In one sense, the Plumlee tale makes sense. The CIA likely would use cut-outs for the JFKA, rather than CIA officers. 

Perhaps clues to this is what is buried in the JFK Records. 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

3 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

My first edition of DB has gotten buried somewhere.  But the second edition is still on the top shelf, I still use it for reference sometimes though It's been about a dozen years since I read it.  I've been looking at the pages on Phelan in particular 243-248, which precede the part on Aynesworth.  The part on HA I have multiple passages highlighted, page corners folded, a couple of post it notes sticking up, Phelan hardly any.  I guess the import didn't sink in back then.  Reading through them, and a couple of references elsewhere in the book and in another book it seems he was every bit as bad as Aynesworth or worse.  Maybe it's him on a national basis as opposed to HA on a Sothern/Texas/regional basis.

Thanks so much for this Ron.  Do not worry about the first edition, the second is much, much better.  

[Greg Doudna]

On was Aynesworth where he said he was on Nov 22, that's interesting. Its hard for me to believe he made it all up, but why is there no corroboration? He says he was on the north side of Elm midway watching the presidential parade when JFK was shot, wouldn't he show up somewhere in photos or film of Dealey Plaza? 

And I found this. Aynesworth in Sneed, No More Silence (1998), 25:

"When I arrived at the Texas Theater, I ran into Jim Ewell again. We decided that he'd go upstairs into the balcony since somebody had said that he'd gone there. So Jim went up while I decided to go down and under ... I just got in there when I saw officers coming off the stage on both sides..."

Fellow reporter Jim Ewell from the Dallas Morning News, in Sneed (1998), 10:

"It turned out that I was probably the only reporter that I remember who was at the Texas Theater. However, Hugh Aynesworth, who was a member of our staff, said he arrived at the Texas Theater also. I didn't see Hugh..."

Also in Sneed Aynesworth accuses Earlene Roberts of telling her police patrol car horn-honking story "three months" later because she was making money! I never heard of Earlene Roberts making any money off of the assassination, only grief to that poor lady, and her horn-honking police story was not "three months" later but told within the next few days, though evidently not to Aynesworth on Nov 22 who cites that against her. It sounds like Aynesworth maybe had owner Mrs. Johnson in mind on the money angle criticism, while accusing the innocent Earlene Roberts. Maybe by 1998 the two women had run together in his mind. 

I encountered an oddity in Aynesworth's reporting in my study on the jackets. It is commonly supposed that Earlene was all over the map on the color she reported of Oswald's jacket at 1 pm Nov 22. I concluded it was misreporting of Earlene which was all over the map, not Earlene herself, on the jacket description issue. I found that as a severe diabetic it is realistic that Earlene Roberts suffered from color-blindness which commonly afflicts severe diabetics, in which she could well have seen blue as gray for medical reasons. With the exception of a report of Hugh Aynesworth, all the Oswald jacket color reportings of Earlene Roberts were either "dark" or "gray". And the "gray" from Earlene if she was color-blind does not necessarily mean the jacket was actually gray, even less so the off-white, nearly white, light-tan color of CE 162 (the Tippit killer's jacket). CE 162 was not "gray" and was not "dark" (it was off-white light tan). A color-blind Earlene Roberts' "gray" would be consistent with Oswald's medium/dark blue coat, in agreement with her color description of it as "dark" or (if diabetes-caused color-blind) "gray".

But there is one exception: Aynesworth, alone, reported Earlene said the jacket color was "tan", inconsistent with her other tellings of "dark" or "gray". Although Aynesworth's interview of Earlene occurred Nov 22, his writeup and reporting of that appeared Nov 28 in a story that went nationwide telling a narrative of Oswald's guilty flight from start to finish as the killer of Tippit. I questioned the accuracy of Aynesworth's report. There is probably no way to ever know for sure, but the suspicion is Aynesworth wrote that that way because it agreed with the narrative in which Earlene was necessarily believed to be describing CE 162, which at the time Aynesworth wrote that was being widely and most commonly reported as "light tan" in color. (My full argument on the jacket color seen by Earlene Roberts is at pp. 95-106, https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/T-Jackets-112.pdf.)

I noted that in a KLIF-Radio interview from Nov 22, recorded words of Earlene from the same afternoon of Aynesworth's interview, Earlene called the jacket "a short gray coat". So Earlene's "gray" is verified; Aynesworth's "tan" is more questionable from the same witness the same day who otherwise showed no inconsistency in naming the color of the jacket she saw.     

[Joe Bauer]

HA says he also interviewed Earlene Roberts on 11,22,1963?

So, he's in Dealey Plaza right when JFK is hit, minutes later he races out to the Tippit murder scene, minutes later he then races to the Texas Theater and is a witness to Oswald being grabbed there...and he also makes it to Oswald's rooming house to interview Roberts...all in the same afternoon?

Really?

Truly a magnificent journalistic feat.

Wonder why he didn't fly over to Parkland hospital during the time JFK was there?

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Well Joe, with Hugh, you never know. 

That might turn up in one of his "notes" now that he is dead.

 

[James Keane]

On 1/14/2024 at 6:25 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Can we get back to what my article is about.?

Pat has turned this into an acoustical exercise, greatly aided by Mark.

Avoiding the questions I asked in that part of the essay:  was Hugh in Dealey Plaza and if so, where is the photo of him? 

Was he at the scene of the TIppit murder, how could he have gotten there before the official shooting time, and if so, does not that prove the opposite of what the WR says?

Was Hugh at the Texas Theater when Oswald was apprehended?  Can anyone show him coming out of the theater or in any witness description inside the theater.

Was he at the scene of the Oswald assassination?  If so, is there any film or photo evidence depicting him there?

 

The idea of Aynesworth being at all of these scenes yet escaping the glare of a photographer's lens gets wilder the more I think of it. 

I am reminded of the story of legendary British radio DJ John Peel. At the time of the assassination he was a young man working in Dallas. Wanting to be a part of history, he drove to downtown and managed to blag his way into Dallas Police headquarters posing as a journalist for the Liverpool Echo. He estimated he was 6 feet away from Oswald at one point as he was brought in for the midnight press conference. And unlike with Aynesworth, there is photographic proof of his presence there that night!

 

 

Edited January 17 by James Keane

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one James.

BTW, I am already being urged to do a similar obit on Epstein who passed away recently.

Oh God.  What slime.

Edited January 18 by James DiEugenio

[John Deignan]

On 1/17/2024 at 3:11 AM, Joe Bauer said:

HA says he also interviewed Earlene Roberts on 11,22,1963?

So, he's in Dealey Plaza right when JFK is hit, minutes later he races out to the Tippit murder scene, minutes later he then races to the Texas Theater and is a witness to Oswald being grabbed there...and he also makes it to Oswald's rooming house to interview Roberts...all in the same afternoon?

Really?

Truly a magnificent journalistic feat.

Wonder why he didn't fly over to Parkland hospital during the time JFK was there?

 

 

 

I believe the only place Hugh visited that day was the boarding house. In the Nov., 23rd edition of The Dallas Morning News the only byline of Hugh Aynesworth is an article on page 5 "Oswald Rented Room Under Alias". Even Mary Woodward"s article is on page 3 with the header "Witness From The News Describes Assassination". In an interview for the Sixth Floor Museum Feb. !7th, 2016, Hugh claims to not just have been at Dealey Plaza, the Tippit scene, The Texas Theater but also to have examined the windshield of JFK's limo the afternoon of the assassination, claiming to have felt the inside where a "fragment" hit. 

[Joe Bauer]

42 minutes ago, John Deignan said:

In an interview for the Sixth Floor Museum Feb. !7th, 2016, Hugh claims to not just have been at Dealey Plaza, the Tippit scene, The Texas Theater but also to have examined the windshield of JFK's limo the afternoon of the assassination, claiming to have felt the inside where a "fragment" hit. 

 

>>> but also to have examined the windshield of JFK's limo the afternoon of the assassination, claiming to have felt the inside where a "fragment" hit. ???   <<<

You've got to kidding me!

[John Deignan]

27 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

 

>>> but also to have examined the windshield of JFK's limo the afternoon of the assassination, claiming to have felt the inside where a "fragment" hit. ???   <<<

You've got to kidding me!

At the 37:23 mark

 

[Pat Speer]

13 minutes ago, John Deignan said:

At the 37:23 mark

 

Thanks for posting the video. Yeah, it's clear old Hugh was blithering at the end. He said he went out and examined the limo "a few hours later". As I recall, the limo was in the air within two hours or so of the shooting, long before anyone had published anything about a hole's being in the windshield. So, no, Hugh...

 

Edited January 18 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

LOL, ROTF.

I mean if you let this guy ramble on, I think he would say he was sitting behind Oswald in the Texas Theater.

[Joe Bauer]

31 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

LOL, ROTF.

I mean if you let this guy ramble on, I think he would say he was sitting behind Oswald in the Texas Theater.

HA!

Loudly munching on a large cardboard cup of buttered popcorn and shouting at Van Heflin on the screen..."Go Get Em Baby!"

[Joe Bauer]

HA said ...

"I went out 'a couple hours later' and examined that car and there was a crack on the 'inside' " of the windshield.

Within minutes ( even if it was 20 minutes later ) after arriving at the Parkland hospital ER entrance the police shooed away anyone getting close to the limo. 

Medical student Evalea Gangles was one of the last crowd members to get close enough to the windshield to examine it that closely. She said they soon after drove the limo away. And I believe they ( Secret Service ) put the top back on before they drove it away? 

So, HA drives out to Parkland 2 hours after the JFK shooting and is allowed by someone to get that close to the limo...and even to get his upper body inside to examine the inside of the windshield?

A reporter? 

Think about the facts of the limo movement and guarding time frame here.

Exactly when was the limo driven to the airport and flown back to DC?

 

 

[Pat Speer]

50 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

HA said ...

"I went out 'a couple hours later' and examined that car and there was a crack on the 'inside' " of the windshield.

Within minutes ( even if it was 20 minutes later ) after arriving at the Parkland hospital ER entrance the police shooed away anyone getting close to the limo. 

Medical student Evalea Gangles was one of the last crowd members to get close enough to the windshield to examine it that closely. She said they soon after drove the limo away. And I believe they ( Secret Service ) put the top back on before they drove it away? 

So, HA drives out to Parkland 2 hours after the JFK shooting and is allowed by someone to get that close to the limo...and even to get his upper body inside to examine the inside of the windshield?

A reporter? 

Think about the facts of the limo movement and guarding time frame here.

Exactly when was the limo driven to the airport and flown back to DC?

 

 

Kinney's report on the assassination says that after the arrival at Parkland, he emptied out the limo and put the roof back on, He says this took 15-20 minutes. He says he and Hickey then took the limo to Love Field, and secured it on a plane. And that this plane left for Washington at 3:35. 

Hickey's report confirms this timeline, and notes that he and Kinney drove the President's limo and SS back-up car to the airport shortly after the arrival of the priest. IOW, around 1:00. 

So, no dice, Hugh. The limo was locked up on an airplane by the time you made it out to the theater.