Bill Simpich Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 (edited) Education Forum colleagues: Ten years after I wrote State Secret, I have received much valuable feedback on the book (which can be found on the Mary Ferrell website) With the new releases and some new discoveries, I am warming up to write a second edition. It may take a little while, because the JFK lawsuit I am working on remains my first priority. Among other reasons, I have discovered that AMKNOB-1 was not the double agent Santiago Garriga of the would-be Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Miami (also known as Juan Cruz, a fascinating figure in his own right) - no, AMKNOB-1 was a double agent known as "the Swiss" - Piero Fedeli Medici, who had a fascinating inter-relationship in 1963 with the cousin-in-law of Antonio Veciana, Cuban agent Guillermo Ruiz/AMAUTO-1 that I am studying as of this day. My mistaken identification was a fortuitous mistake that led to more discoveries. I may even do two versions - a super-short version for the general public and a tightened version for the research community. Up to this time, the research community has always been my intended audience. I noticed that I never received any feedback on my "cover-up chapter" - which was my original intent for the book until the Mystery of Mexico City became foremost in my mind. I think the best way to get this feedback is to serialize the cover-up chapter. The first few chapters are pretty short. As the book reaches its conclusion, the final two chapters became much longer than I intended. "The Set-Up and the Cover-Up" - Chapter 6 - is the longest of all. So I will break the cover-up chapter into five or more sub-chapters. I will begin with the "set-up" - you have to have a set-up before any cover-up. I have shortened the chapter to some degree already. Let me know if it is clear enough. All thoughtful comments appreciated! I. The set-up 1. The sixth floor was insecure It’s hard to think of a less secure sniper’s nest than the sixth floor. Six men had been up there all morning on November 22 laying a wood floor, and they were nowhere near done. It was an optional sniper post at best. The entire sixth floor was open storage space. Anyone could walk in at any minute. In fact, the men had planned to eat lunch on the sixth floor that day, and Bonnie Ray Williams left the floor at 12:15 only when he realized no one was coming up to join him. The sixth floor was not Oswald’s turf – as an order filler, he would only come up there when he needed some books to pack into a carton, and then he was on his way again. The best evidence is that Oswald wasn’t on the sixth floor on the day of the assassination, but on the first or second floor. 2. The two lunchroom theory I never understood why there weren’t more witnesses coming forward and saying that they saw Oswald in the lunchroom. Then I found out that Oswald regularly ate his lunch in the first floor lunchroom called the “domino room” where the African American employees would gather, instead of in the all-white, main lunchroom on the second floor that had all of the soft drink machines. This behavior was Oswald’s regular practice. When he went to court in New Orleans in August 1963, he sat on the side of the courtroom with the African Americans. During that same month, Oswald was seen in the predominantly black voter registration line. Many African Americans were dissuaded from providing testimony due to racism, and this is one more example of it. Oswald himself told his interrogators that he saw Junior Jarman and a second short another African American man that he recognized in the domino room while he was eating lunch during noontime, which was subsequently verified. It has been suggested that Oswald may have left the domino room “to go up to the second floor to get a coke.”[ 1 ] Maybe we should rehabilitate what we called during the Vietnam War “the domino theory” - many things fall in line when you look at the story this way. I’m also relying on several witnesses. Carolyn Arnold stated on November 26 that she saw Oswald on the first floor a few minutes before 12:15 pm. On the sixth floor itself, Bonnie Ray Williams told the Warren Commission that he was up there until about 12:15, and Oswald was not there. Arnold Rowland said that he saw an African American man and a white man with a rifle in two separate windows on the sixth floor at 12:15 pm. Carolyn Walter also saw two men on the sixth floor a few minutes later, one of them with a rifle. The HSCA photographic panel found that someone rearranged the boxes in the sniper’s nest within two minutes after the shooting – given Oswald’s verified appearance on the second floor with Patrolman Marrion Baker ninety seconds after the shots, I don’t see how Oswald had the time to do this rearrangement. 3. The humanitarian weapon It’s even less likely that anyone used the Mannlicher-Carcano later found near the sixth floor stairwell to fire at anything. This rifle is what Oswald supposedly used to kill JFK and wound Connally by firing three shots from behind the president’s car in the motorcade. It’s hard to imagine why Oswald would have used it – it was a mail order weapon ordered under the name of Oswald’s supposed chief of the New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Alex Hidell. Of all the rifles in the world, what assassin would use a rifle that would maximize chances of getting caught? This rifle was hardly an assassin’s choice – the Mannlicher-Carcano was a World War I relic best known as the “humanitarian weapon” during World War II because it never killed anybody on purpose - MCs could be purchased for three dollars each in lots of 25. On the day the rifle was found, the firing pin was found to be defective or worn-out, the telescopic sight was not accurately sighted, and no ammunition clip was officially reported. Without an ammunition clip, a gunman would have to hand-load cartridges. 4. An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene The unknown white male's "five foot ten/165" description of the shooter was announced five times by the Dallas police dispatcher Murray Jackson in the hour after the assassination Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm. Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt. The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject. Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26. Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140. J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all. 5. Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home. Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ] In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ] I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt. Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears. (Theater patron Jack) Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills. 6. One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds" Another unknown man told Officer Gerald Hill at the Tippit crime scene that the man who shot the policeman was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to 170 pounds. As soon as Officer Gerald Hill came on the scene, he was approached by an unknown witness. Hill said “the first man that came up to me, he said ‘The man who shot him was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to 170 pounds, had on a jacket and a pair of trousers, and brown bushy hair.” Hill never got the man’s name, turned him over to another officer, and no one knows his identity. Patrolman Howell W. Summers called in a description from witness Ted Callaway of a “white male, twenty-seven, five feet eleven, a hundred sixty-five, black wavy hair, fair complected, wearing a light grey Eisenhower-type jacket, dark trousers and a white shirt…(with) a 32 dark-finish automatic pistol.” Oswald owned a 38 caliber revolver, not a 32 automatic. Joseph McBride is the author of the new book Into the Nightmare, focusing on the Tippit case. A key aspect of the case is Detective Jim Leavelle’s admission that cartridge shells supposedly found at the crime scene were never actually marked on the scene by the Dallas police. McBride points out that “given that the HSCA relied solely on the shells to make its case that Oswald shot Tippit, Leavelle’s admissions that the shells were not marked at the scene help nullify that homicide case against Oswald.”[ 15 ] One aspect of the Tippit case has fascinated me since it was revealed by FBI agent Jim Hosty in 1996. Hosty revealed that FBI agent Robert Barrett said that a wallet containing identification for Oswald and his purported alias Alek James Hidell was left at the scene of Tippit’s shooting and found by police captain W. R. Westbrook near a puddle of blood. The rifle found on the sixth floor was ordered by A. Hidell, with Oswald's post office box as the return address. The Warren Commission was told by postal inspector Harry Holmes that anyone who had access to Oswald’s PO box could have picked up the rifle without even showing identification. 7. A second unknown man said the suspect handed something to Tippit through the open passenger window FBI agent Barrett claims to this day that an unknown witness told him that Tippit pulled over and the gunman handed something through the open passenger window to Tippit inside the car. Barrett believes that Tippit saw the two IDs for Oswald and Hidell, got out of the car to question Oswald, and was shot. Barrett admits that he doesn’t know who the witness was, and can’t verify it, but the wallet was “there”. Who would hand their entire wallet to a police officer when asked for identification when not under arrest? It looks like someone planted a wallet with Oswald’s identification on the ground at the scene, framing him with a throw-down wallet much as others have been framed with a throw-down gun. 8. A third unknown man handed Oswald's wallet to the police at the crime scene An unknown man provided Oswald's wallet to Officer Kenneth Croy at the crime scene where Officer Tippit was shot. The wallet contained ID for both Lee Oswald and Alek J. Hidell. The finding of this wallet was hidden until 1996. I say that because since Hosty’s revelation in 1996, we have learned quite a bit more, thanks to researcher Jones Harris. When Sergeant Kenneth H. Croy arrived as one of the first officers on the scene, an unknown man handed him a wallet. Croy handed the wallet to Sergeant Calvin Owens.[ 17 ] Owens apparently gave it to Westbrook, who displayed it to Barrett. After the wallet was videotaped, it went back to Westbrook’s custody, and Hosty tells us that it was never seen again. Westbrook and Barrett were in charge of the scene at the Texas Theater when Oswald was arrested. When Oswald refused to provide his name, Westbrook ordered, “Get him out of here.” The history of Oswald’s wallets can only be described with three words: Smoke and mirrors. Only after the release of the Warren Report did the FBI evidence inventory show three wallets for Oswald: B-1 (the arrest wallet), 114 (brown billfold) and 382 (red billfold). No wallets were found at his rooming house. The “arrest wallet” appeared on videotape at the Tippit crime scene; we have discussed how no one knows how it appeared on the scene. This arrest wallet of Oswald’s was supposedly removed from his pocket by Officer Paul Bentley following his arrest and while on the way to City Hall, Bentley said that he reviewed the contents and saw the identification for Oswald and Hidell. Since Bentley’s recent death, FBI agent Robert Barrett now says that Bentley was lying. (Whether or not Barrett is telling the truth...) The best evidence indicates that an unknown citizen brought the wallet to the murder scene, based on Officer Croy’s interview with Jones Harris. Edited March 12 by Bill Simpich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Cummings Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Great work and flow. Thank you for posting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denny Zartman Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 (edited) Thanks for posting this here @Bill Simpich . You do good work, and I appreciate it. - I would suggest calling Into The Nightmare a "2013 book" instead of a "new book." - There's a newspaper article "Was Oswald In The Window" by Earl Golz, Dallas Morning News, November 26, 1978, where Carolyn Johnston (Carolyn Arnold in 1963) indicates to Golz that she saw Oswald in the second floor lunchroom at 12:25 pm as she was on her way out of the building to watch the motorcade. In the article, she challenges several aspects of the FBI's report on her interview. - I would also suggest maybe being a little clearer on the three wallets, such as also writing where they were found, along with description of the color and the evidence numbers. I'm not sure if you mentioned that the wallet found at the Paine residence had $170 in it. (I personally find that significant because it accentuates the improbability that a guilty lone assassin with that much money wouldn't somehow be able to facilitate a successful escape. This is the same person who, according to the official story, recently made it to Mexico and back using only public transportation.) - I don't think you mentioned that the rifle was initially misidentified. I personally find it completely unbelievable that the first investigators misidentified the rifle on the sixth floor as a 7.65 Mauser. It appears that the words and numbers "MADE ITALY" and "CAL 6.5" were etched into the metal on the Mannlicher Carcano, as testified to by attorney Mark Lane. How could it be possibly ever be misidentified as a 7.65 Mauser by anyone with the ability to read, especially if Mausers of the era also had identifying information etched onto them? Edited March 12 by Denny Zartman Added images Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Odisio Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 1 hour ago, Bill Simpich said: Education Forum colleagues: Ten years after I wrote State Secret, I have received much valuable feedback on the book (which can be found on the Mary Ferrell website) With the new releases and some new discoveries, I am warming up to write a second edition. It may take a little while, because the JFK lawsuit I am working on remains my first priority. Among other reasons, I have discovered that AMKNOB-1 was not the double agent Santiago Garriga of the would-be Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Miami (also known as Juan Cruz, a fascinating figure in his own right) - no, AMKNOB-1 was a double agent known as "the Swiss" - Piero Fedeli Medici, who had a fascinating inter-relationship in 1963 with the cousin-in-law of Antonio Veciana, Cuban agent Guillermo Ruiz/AMAUTO-1 that I am studying as of this day. My mistaken identification was a fortuitous mistake that led to more discoveries. I may even do two versions - a super-short version for the general public and a tightened version for the research community. Up to this time, the research community has always been my intended audience. I noticed that I never received any feedback on my "cover-up chapter" - which was my original intent for the book until the Mystery of Mexico City became foremost in my mind. I think the best way to get this feedback is to serialize the cover-up chapter. The first few chapters are pretty short. As the book reaches its conclusion, the final two chapters became much longer than I intended. "The Set-Up and the Cover-Up" - Chapter 6 - is the longest of all. So I will break the cover-up chapter into five or more sub-chapters. I will begin with the "set-up" - you have to have a set-up before any cover-up. I have shortened the chapter to some degree already. Let me know if it is clear enough. All thoughtful comments appreciated! I. The set-up 1. The sixth floor was insecure It’s hard to think of a less secure sniper’s nest than the sixth floor. Six men had been up there all morning on November 22 laying a wood floor, and they were nowhere near done. It was an optional sniper post at best. The entire sixth floor was open storage space. Anyone could walk in at any minute. In fact, the men had planned to eat lunch on the sixth floor that day, and Bonnie Ray Williams left the floor at 12:15 only when he realized no one was coming up to join him. The sixth floor was not Oswald’s turf – as an order filler, he would only come up there when he needed some books to pack into a carton, and then he was on his way again. The best evidence is that Oswald wasn’t on the sixth floor on the day of the assassination, but on the first or second floor. 2. The two lunchroom theory I never understood why there weren’t more witnesses coming forward and saying that they saw Oswald in the lunchroom. Then I found out that Oswald regularly ate his lunch in the first floor lunchroom called the “domino room” where the African American employees would gather, instead of in the all-white, main lunchroom on the second floor that had all of the soft drink machines. This behavior was Oswald’s regular practice. When he went to court in New Orleans in August 1963, he sat on the side of the courtroom with the African Americans. During that same month, Oswald was seen in the predominantly black voter registration line. Many African Americans were dissuaded from providing testimony due to racism, and this is one more example of it. Oswald himself told his interrogators that he saw Junior Jarman and a second short another African American man that he recognized in the domino room while he was eating lunch during noontime, which was subsequently verified. It has been suggested that Oswald may have left the domino room “to go up to the second floor to get a coke.”[ 1 ] Maybe we should rehabilitate what we called during the Vietnam War “the domino theory” - many things fall in line when you look at the story this way. I’m also relying on several witnesses. Carolyn Arnold stated on November 26 that she saw Oswald on the first floor a few minutes before 12:15 pm. On the sixth floor itself, Bonnie Ray Williams told the Warren Commission that he was up there until about 12:15, and Oswald was not there. Arnold Rowland said that he saw an African American man and a white man with a rifle in two separate windows on the sixth floor at 12:15 pm. Carolyn Walter also saw two men on the sixth floor a few minutes later, one of them with a rifle. The HSCA photographic panel found that someone rearranged the boxes in the sniper’s nest within two minutes after the shooting – given Oswald’s verified appearance on the second floor with Patrolman Marrion Baker ninety seconds after the shots, I don’t see how Oswald had the time to do this rearrangement. 3. The humanitarian weapon It’s even less likely that anyone used the Mannlicher-Carcano later found near the sixth floor stairwell to fire at anything. This rifle is what Oswald supposedly used to kill JFK and wound Connally by firing three shots from behind the president’s car in the motorcade. It’s hard to imagine why Oswald would have used it – it was a mail order weapon ordered under the name of Oswald’s supposed chief of the New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Alex Hidell. Of all the rifles in the world, what assassin would use a rifle that would maximize chances of getting caught? This rifle was hardly an assassin’s choice – the Mannlicher-Carcano was a World War I relic best known as the “humanitarian weapon” during World War II because it never killed anybody on purpose - MCs could be purchased for three dollars each in lots of 25. On the day the rifle was found, the firing pin was found to be defective or worn-out, the telescopic sight was not accurately sighted, and no ammunition clip was officially reported. Without an ammunition clip, a gunman would have to hand-load cartridges. 4. An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene The unknown white male's "five foot ten/165" description of the shooter was announced five times by the Dallas police dispatcher Murray Jackson in the hour after the assassination Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm. Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt. The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject. Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26. Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140. J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all. 5. Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home. Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ] In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ] I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt. Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears. (Theater patron Jack) Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills. 6. One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds" Another unknown man told Officer Gerald Hill at the Tippit crime scene that the man who shot the policeman was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to 170 pounds. As soon as Officer Gerald Hill came on the scene, he was approached by an unknown witness. Hill said “the first man that came up to me, he said ‘The man who shot him was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to 170 pounds, had on a jacket and a pair of trousers, and brown bushy hair.” Hill never got the man’s name, turned him over to another officer, and no one knows his identity. Patrolman Howell W. Summers called in a description from witness Ted Callaway of a “white male, twenty-seven, five feet eleven, a hundred sixty-five, black wavy hair, fair complected, wearing a light grey Eisenhower-type jacket, dark trousers and a white shirt…(with) a 32 dark-finish automatic pistol.” Oswald owned a 38 caliber revolver, not a 32 automatic. Joseph McBride is the author of the new book Into the Nightmare, focusing on the Tippit case. A key aspect of the case is Detective Jim Leavelle’s admission that cartridge shells supposedly found at the crime scene were never actually marked on the scene by the Dallas police. McBride points out that “given that the HSCA relied solely on the shells to make its case that Oswald shot Tippit, Leavelle’s admissions that the shells were not marked at the scene help nullify that homicide case against Oswald.”[ 15 ] One aspect of the Tippit case has fascinated me since it was revealed by FBI agent Jim Hosty in 1996. Hosty revealed that FBI agent Robert Barrett said that a wallet containing identification for Oswald and his purported alias Alek James Hidell was left at the scene of Tippit’s shooting and found by police captain W. R. Westbrook near a puddle of blood. The rifle found on the sixth floor was ordered by A. Hidell, with Oswald's post office box as the return address. The Warren Commission was told by postal inspector Harry Holmes that anyone who had access to Oswald’s PO box could have picked up the rifle without even showing identification. 7. A second unknown man said the suspect handed something to Tippit through the open passenger window FBI agent Barrett claims to this day that an unknown witness told him that Tippit pulled over and the gunman handed something through the open passenger window to Tippit inside the car. Barrett believes that Tippit saw the two IDs for Oswald and Hidell, got out of the car to question Oswald, and was shot. Barrett admits that he doesn’t know who the witness was, and can’t verify it, but the wallet was “there”. Who would hand their entire wallet to a police officer when asked for identification when not under arrest? It looks like someone planted a wallet with Oswald’s identification on the ground at the scene, framing him with a throw-down wallet much as others have been framed with a throw-down gun. 8. A third unknown man handed Oswald's wallet to the police at the crime scene An unknown man provided Oswald's wallet to Officer Kenneth Croy at the crime scene where Officer Tippit was shot. The wallet contained ID for both Lee Oswald and Alek J. Hidell. The finding of this wallet was hidden until 1996. I say that because since Hosty’s revelation in 1996, we have learned quite a bit more, thanks to researcher Jones Harris. When Sergeant Kenneth H. Croy arrived as one of the first officers on the scene, an unknown man handed him a wallet. Croy handed the wallet to Sergeant Calvin Owens.[ 17 ] Owens apparently gave it to Westbrook, who displayed it to Barrett. After the wallet was videotaped, it went back to Westbrook’s custody, and Hosty tells us that it was never seen again. Westbrook and Barrett were in charge of the scene at the Texas Theater when Oswald was arrested. When Oswald refused to provide his name, Westbrook ordered, “Get him out of here.” The history of Oswald’s wallets can only be described with three words: Smoke and mirrors. Only after the release of the Warren Report did the FBI evidence inventory show three wallets for Oswald: B-1 (the arrest wallet), 114 (brown billfold) and 382 (red billfold). No wallets were found at his rooming house. The “arrest wallet” appeared on videotape at the Tippit crime scene; we have discussed how no one knows how it appeared on the scene. This arrest wallet of Oswald’s was supposedly removed from his pocket by Officer Paul Bentley following his arrest and while on the way to City Hall, Bentley said that he reviewed the contents and saw the identification for Oswald and Hidell. Since Bentley’s recent death, FBI agent Robert Barrett now says that Bentley was lying. (Whether or not Barrett is telling the truth...) The best evidence indicates that an unknown citizen brought the wallet to the murder scene, based on Officer Croy’s interview with Jones Harris. My recollection, from I think Greg Parker and others, is that the division of the two lunchrooms was more about class than race, although there was of course some overlap. Laborers like Oswald were expected to eat on the first floor, and in fact were not really welcome on the second. The second floor room was for the rest of the employees, mostly white collar. There was no problem for anyone going to the second floor for a soft drink. According to Bart Kamp, Oswald's testimony at the first interrogation was that he did get a coke from the second floor to drink with his lunch, which he ate *before* the parade. Just another problem for the second floor encounter fabricated by the WC. So there were no witnesses who saw Oswald on the second floor with a coke after the murder because he wasn't there. Just like Fritz (was it Fritz?) who admitted early on they had no one who could place Oswald on the sixth floor at the time of the murder. Btw, Bill, what is the latest on the MFF law suit? Are you working on an appeal or is there still more to do in front of Judge Seeborg? RO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Doudna Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 (edited) There is a logical problem in citing the Leavelle claim that no officers marked shell hulls found at the Tippit crime scene, as argument for no proof of match to Oswald’s pistol, unless you truly believe Leavelle’s claim. There is plenty of evidence officers marked crime scene shell hulls on Nov 22 and that Leavelle was making it up when he claimed that didn’t happen. The Leavelle claim only has force if it is true. Maybe better to argue for reasonable doubt on chain of custody, e.g. absence of firsthand testimony from any of the marking officers establishing identifications of their alleged marks, etc without invoking the bogus claim of Leavelle. The only officers asked under oath to identify their marks did not claim they never marked, they instead struggled and failed to credibly identify accurately what they believed they had marked, among the marks on the hulls presented to them. The zero sworn testimony establishing chain of custody of those hulls could go to reasonable doubt on whether there were substitutions, given the stakes at issue in this particular case and other grounds for doubt that Oswald was the gunman who carried out what looks more like a professional execution of officer Tippit. Edited March 13 by Greg Doudna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 Bill, There have been references over the years to a cable sent on the evening of 11/22 from Washington to Strike Command, McDill AFB in Florida, based on information provided to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. In In the cable, reference was made to information obtained from Detective Don Stringfellow of the Dallas Police Department. You can find a copy of the cable, here: https://archive.org/details/nsia-ArmyIntelligenceJFK In the Stringfellow cable referenced above, Stringfellow allegedly informed the 112th INTC that a Harvey Lee Oswald had been arrested for the murder and was described as being 5'10" tall, 165 lbs, with blue eyes. Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 (edited) On 3/12/2024 at 4:04 PM, Bill Simpich said: Education Forum colleagues: Ten years after I wrote State Secret, I have received much valuable feedback on the book (which can be found on the Mary Ferrell website) With the new releases and some new discoveries, I am warming up to write a second edition. It may take a little while, because the JFK lawsuit I am working on remains my first priority. Among other reasons, I have discovered that AMKNOB-1 was not the double agent Santiago Garriga of the would-be Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Miami (also known as Juan Cruz, a fascinating figure in his own right) - no, AMKNOB-1 was a double agent known as "the Swiss" - Piero Fedeli Medici, who had a fascinating inter-relationship in 1963 with the cousin-in-law of Antonio Veciana, Cuban agent Guillermo Ruiz/AMAUTO-1 that I am studying as of this day. My mistaken identification was a fortuitous mistake that led to more discoveries. I may even do two versions - a super-short version for the general public and a tightened version for the research community. Up to this time, the research community has always been my intended audience. I noticed that I never received any feedback on my "cover-up chapter" - which was my original intent for the book until the Mystery of Mexico City became foremost in my mind. I think the best way to get this feedback is to serialize the cover-up chapter. The first few chapters are pretty short. As the book reaches its conclusion, the final two chapters became much longer than I intended. "The Set-Up and the Cover-Up" - Chapter 6 - is the longest of all. So I will break the cover-up chapter into five or more sub-chapters. I will begin with the "set-up" - you have to have a set-up before any cover-up. I have shortened the chapter to some degree already. Let me know if it is clear enough. All thoughtful comments appreciated! I. The set-up 1. The sixth floor was insecure It’s hard to think of a less secure sniper’s nest than the sixth floor. Six men had been up there all morning on November 22 laying a wood floor, and they were nowhere near done. It was an optional sniper post at best. The entire sixth floor was open storage space. Anyone could walk in at any minute. In fact, the men had planned to eat lunch on the sixth floor that day, and Bonnie Ray Williams left the floor at 12:15 only when he realized no one was coming up to join him. The sixth floor was not Oswald’s turf – as an order filler, he would only come up there when he needed some books to pack into a carton, and then he was on his way again. The best evidence is that Oswald wasn’t on the sixth floor on the day of the assassination, but on the first or second floor. 2. The two lunchroom theory I never understood why there weren’t more witnesses coming forward and saying that they saw Oswald in the lunchroom. Then I found out that Oswald regularly ate his lunch in the first floor lunchroom called the “domino room” where the African American employees would gather, instead of in the all-white, main lunchroom on the second floor that had all of the soft drink machines. This behavior was Oswald’s regular practice. When he went to court in New Orleans in August 1963, he sat on the side of the courtroom with the African Americans. During that same month, Oswald was seen in the predominantly black voter registration line. Many African Americans were dissuaded from providing testimony due to racism, and this is one more example of it. Oswald himself told his interrogators that he saw Junior Jarman and a second short another African American man that he recognized in the domino room while he was eating lunch during noontime, which was subsequently verified. It has been suggested that Oswald may have left the domino room “to go up to the second floor to get a coke.”[ 1 ] Maybe we should rehabilitate what we called during the Vietnam War “the domino theory” - many things fall in line when you look at the story this way. I’m also relying on several witnesses. Carolyn Arnold stated on November 26 that she saw Oswald on the first floor a few minutes before 12:15 pm. On the sixth floor itself, Bonnie Ray Williams told the Warren Commission that he was up there until about 12:15, and Oswald was not there. Arnold Rowland said that he saw an African American man and a white man with a rifle in two separate windows on the sixth floor at 12:15 pm. Carolyn Walter also saw two men on the sixth floor a few minutes later, one of them with a rifle. The HSCA photographic panel found that someone rearranged the boxes in the sniper’s nest within two minutes after the shooting – given Oswald’s verified appearance on the second floor with Patrolman Marrion Baker ninety seconds after the shots, I don’t see how Oswald had the time to do this rearrangement. 3. The humanitarian weapon It’s even less likely that anyone used the Mannlicher-Carcano later found near the sixth floor stairwell to fire at anything. This rifle is what Oswald supposedly used to kill JFK and wound Connally by firing three shots from behind the president’s car in the motorcade. It’s hard to imagine why Oswald would have used it – it was a mail order weapon ordered under the name of Oswald’s supposed chief of the New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Alex Hidell. Of all the rifles in the world, what assassin would use a rifle that would maximize chances of getting caught? This rifle was hardly an assassin’s choice – the Mannlicher-Carcano was a World War I relic best known as the “humanitarian weapon” during World War II because it never killed anybody on purpose - MCs could be purchased for three dollars each in lots of 25. On the day the rifle was found, the firing pin was found to be defective or worn-out, the telescopic sight was not accurately sighted, and no ammunition clip was officially reported. Without an ammunition clip, a gunman would have to hand-load cartridges. 4. An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene The unknown white male's "five foot ten/165" description of the shooter was announced five times by the Dallas police dispatcher Murray Jackson in the hour after the assassination Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm. Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt. The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject. Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26. Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140. J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all. 5. Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home. Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ] In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ] I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt. Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears. (Theater patron Jack) Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills. 6. One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds" Another unknown man told Officer Gerald Hill at the Tippit crime scene that the man who shot the policeman was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to 170 pounds. As soon as Officer Gerald Hill came on the scene, he was approached by an unknown witness. Hill said “the first man that came up to me, he said ‘The man who shot him was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to 170 pounds, had on a jacket and a pair of trousers, and brown bushy hair.” Hill never got the man’s name, turned him over to another officer, and no one knows his identity. Patrolman Howell W. Summers called in a description from witness Ted Callaway of a “white male, twenty-seven, five feet eleven, a hundred sixty-five, black wavy hair, fair complected, wearing a light grey Eisenhower-type jacket, dark trousers and a white shirt…(with) a 32 dark-finish automatic pistol.” Oswald owned a 38 caliber revolver, not a 32 automatic. Joseph McBride is the author of the new book Into the Nightmare, focusing on the Tippit case. A key aspect of the case is Detective Jim Leavelle’s admission that cartridge shells supposedly found at the crime scene were never actually marked on the scene by the Dallas police. McBride points out that “given that the HSCA relied solely on the shells to make its case that Oswald shot Tippit, Leavelle’s admissions that the shells were not marked at the scene help nullify that homicide case against Oswald.”[ 15 ] One aspect of the Tippit case has fascinated me since it was revealed by FBI agent Jim Hosty in 1996. Hosty revealed that FBI agent Robert Barrett said that a wallet containing identification for Oswald and his purported alias Alek James Hidell was left at the scene of Tippit’s shooting and found by police captain W. R. Westbrook near a puddle of blood. The rifle found on the sixth floor was ordered by A. Hidell, with Oswald's post office box as the return address. The Warren Commission was told by postal inspector Harry Holmes that anyone who had access to Oswald’s PO box could have picked up the rifle without even showing identification. 7. A second unknown man said the suspect handed something to Tippit through the open passenger window FBI agent Barrett claims to this day that an unknown witness told him that Tippit pulled over and the gunman handed something through the open passenger window to Tippit inside the car. Barrett believes that Tippit saw the two IDs for Oswald and Hidell, got out of the car to question Oswald, and was shot. Barrett admits that he doesn’t know who the witness was, and can’t verify it, but the wallet was “there”. Who would hand their entire wallet to a police officer when asked for identification when not under arrest? It looks like someone planted a wallet with Oswald’s identification on the ground at the scene, framing him with a throw-down wallet much as others have been framed with a throw-down gun. 8. A third unknown man handed Oswald's wallet to the police at the crime scene An unknown man provided Oswald's wallet to Officer Kenneth Croy at the crime scene where Officer Tippit was shot. The wallet contained ID for both Lee Oswald and Alek J. Hidell. The finding of this wallet was hidden until 1996. I say that because since Hosty’s revelation in 1996, we have learned quite a bit more, thanks to researcher Jones Harris. When Sergeant Kenneth H. Croy arrived as one of the first officers on the scene, an unknown man handed him a wallet. Croy handed the wallet to Sergeant Calvin Owens.[ 17 ] Owens apparently gave it to Westbrook, who displayed it to Barrett. After the wallet was videotaped, it went back to Westbrook’s custody, and Hosty tells us that it was never seen again. Westbrook and Barrett were in charge of the scene at the Texas Theater when Oswald was arrested. When Oswald refused to provide his name, Westbrook ordered, “Get him out of here.” The history of Oswald’s wallets can only be described with three words: Smoke and mirrors. Only after the release of the Warren Report did the FBI evidence inventory show three wallets for Oswald: B-1 (the arrest wallet), 114 (brown billfold) and 382 (red billfold). No wallets were found at his rooming house. The “arrest wallet” appeared on videotape at the Tippit crime scene; we have discussed how no one knows how it appeared on the scene. This arrest wallet of Oswald’s was supposedly removed from his pocket by Officer Paul Bentley following his arrest and while on the way to City Hall, Bentley said that he reviewed the contents and saw the identification for Oswald and Hidell. Since Bentley’s recent death, FBI agent Robert Barrett now says that Bentley was lying. (Whether or not Barrett is telling the truth...) The best evidence indicates that an unknown citizen brought the wallet to the murder scene, based on Officer Croy’s interview with Jones Harris. Bill Simpich, I know that you give away State Secret for free, but I want to give you some marketing advice: YOU SHOULD PUT IT FOR SALE ON AMAZON IN KINDLE and maybe in a "print-on-demand" book form. I would price it at $20 for Kindle and $28 for the book form. Why? Amazon offers great visibility for your work. We could buy a Kindle or a book from Amazon which would give us the right to review your book on Amazon. You can give your book away for free and ALSO sell it on Amazon to give your work more visibility. Previously, you have said no one has reviewed your work. Sell the book and Amazon and you will start getting reviews of your book there. For example, the book The Other Oswald: A Wilderness of Mirrors, released in 2020, has 47 Amazon ratings and about 10 reviews. Edited March 13 by Robert Morrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 16 hours ago, Steve Thomas said: Bill, There have been references over the years to a cable sent on the evening of 11/22 from Washington to Strike Command, McDill AFB in Florida, based on information provided to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. In In the cable, reference was made to information obtained from Detective Don Stringfellow of the Dallas Police Department. You can find a copy of the cable, here: https://archive.org/details/nsia-ArmyIntelligenceJFK In the Stringfellow cable referenced above, Stringfellow allegedly informed the 112th INTC that a Harvey Lee Oswald had been arrested for the murder and was described as being 5'10" tall, 165 lbs, with blue eyes. Steve Thomas Where in the cable does it say that Dallas Detective Don Stringfellow was the one who provided the physical description of Oswald to the 112th INTC? I do not think the cable explicitly says that. However, I think Marguerite Oswald was the first person to put into the record that she thought her son Lee Oswald was 5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds - as she told this to Dallas FBI agent John Fain in May of 1960. https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2023/01/5-feet-10-inches-165-pounds-is-absolute.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said: Where in the cable does it say that Dallas Detective Don Stringfellow was the one who provided the physical description of Oswald to the 112th INTC? I do not think the cable explicitly says that. However, I think Marguerite Oswald was the first person to put into the record that she thought her son Lee Oswald was 5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds - as she told this to Dallas FBI agent John Fain in May of 1960. https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2023/01/5-feet-10-inches-165-pounds-is-absolute.html On page 3 of the document Steve posted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said: Where in the cable does it say that Dallas Detective Don Stringfellow was the one who provided the physical description of Oswald to the 112th INTC? I do not think the cable explicitly says that. However, I think Marguerite Oswald was the first person to put into the record that she thought her son Lee Oswald was 5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds - as she told this to Dallas FBI agent John Fain in May of 1960. https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2023/01/5-feet-10-inches-165-pounds-is-absolute.html Robert, No. You're absolutely right. The cable does specifically say that that physical description came from Stringfellow. It just says that "additinal information" about Oswald..., blah, blah, blah; but doesn't say where that information came from. I was wrong to make that assumption. Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Hargrove Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Bill, Without considering which chapter is under discussion, may I ask if you would consider abandoning your statement that LHO “was a spy in his own mind” and at least discuss the possibility that this Russian-speaking young man who allegedly sat in a U-2 radar bubble before "defecting" to the USSR was an actual U.S. spy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandy Larsen Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 17 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said: Bill, Without considering which chapter is under discussion, may I ask if you would consider abandoning your statement that LHO “was a spy in his own mind” and at least discuss the possibility that this Russian-speaking young man who allegedly sat in a U-2 radar bubble before "defecting" to the USSR was an actual U.S. spy? Ditto. As I was reading State Secret, I immediately quit when I saw the sentence reading, “Oswald was a spy in his own mind.” There's plenty of evidence for Oswald being a paid CIA asset. Here's just one: How do you explain the fact that Oswald just happened to get a job exactly where he need to be for the assassination? Oswald's actions were clearly controlled. He had a CIA handler. Having said that... In all honesty, I'd probably disagree with the premise of your book from the get go, based on what others have said about it. I believe that the purpose of the Mexico City shenanigans was to create the impression that Oswald was in cahoots with Cuba and Russia. That Cuba gave Oswald a $6500 down payment to have Kennedy killed. In other words, it was a CIA false flag op against Cuba and Russia designed to create a pretext for invasion of Cuba, or a first nuclear strike on the Soviet Union at a time when it was thought that the US had a nuclear advantage. The assassination was a military-sponsored CIA-planned coup d'etat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denise Hazelwood Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 You might want to include info about how the "State Secrets Doctrine" has been used to support cover-up accidents. For example, the U.S. v. Reynolds decision, which was cited in many subsequent cases involving "National Security" interests, allowed the government to cover up a USAF crash that was ultimately learned to have been due to negligence in USAF plane maintenance. Check out my article at https://www.a-benign-conspiracy.com/the-supreme-court-state-secrets-and-cover-up.html. You may also want to watch the 2-hour documentary Secrecy, which reiterates the U.S. v. Reynolds decision and other examples of government-sanctioned cover-up. Of course, government sanctioned cover-up exactly fits my Hickey scenario (which differs substantially from Howard Donahue's original scenario). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 3 hours ago, Steve Thomas said: Robert, No. You're absolutely right. The cable does specifically say that that physical description came from Stringfellow. It just says that "additinal information" about Oswald..., blah, blah, blah; but doesn't say where that information came from. I was wrong to make that assumption. Steve Thomas I forgot the word "not". The cable does not say the physical description came from Stringfellow. It just says there was additional information about Oswald, but it does not say where that information came from. Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Bulman Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 On 3/12/2024 at 4:04 PM, Bill Simpich said: Education Forum colleagues: Ten years after I wrote State Secret, I have received much valuable feedback on the book (which can be found on the Mary Ferrell website) With the new releases and some new discoveries, I am warming up to write a second edition. It may take a little while, because the JFK lawsuit I am working on remains my first priority. Among other reasons, I have discovered that AMKNOB-1 was not the double agent Santiago Garriga of the would-be Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Miami (also known as Juan Cruz, a fascinating figure in his own right) - no, AMKNOB-1 was a double agent known as "the Swiss" - Piero Fedeli Medici, who had a fascinating inter-relationship in 1963 with the cousin-in-law of Antonio Veciana, Cuban agent Guillermo Ruiz/AMAUTO-1 that I am studying as of this day. My mistaken identification was a fortuitous mistake that led to more discoveries. I may even do two versions - a super-short version for the general public and a tightened version for the research community. Up to this time, the research community has always been my intended audience. I noticed that I never received any feedback on my "cover-up chapter" - which was my original intent for the book until the Mystery of Mexico City became foremost in my mind. I think the best way to get this feedback is to serialize the cover-up chapter. The first few chapters are pretty short. As the book reaches its conclusion, the final two chapters became much longer than I intended. "The Set-Up and the Cover-Up" - Chapter 6 - is the longest of all. So I will break the cover-up chapter into five or more sub-chapters. I will begin with the "set-up" - you have to have a set-up before any cover-up. I have shortened the chapter to some degree already. Let me know if it is clear enough. All thoughtful comments appreciated! I. The set-up 1. The sixth floor was insecure It’s hard to think of a less secure sniper’s nest than the sixth floor. Six men had been up there all morning on November 22 laying a wood floor, and they were nowhere near done. It was an optional sniper post at best. The entire sixth floor was open storage space. Anyone could walk in at any minute. In fact, the men had planned to eat lunch on the sixth floor that day, and Bonnie Ray Williams left the floor at 12:15 only when he realized no one was coming up to join him. The sixth floor was not Oswald’s turf – as an order filler, he would only come up there when he needed some books to pack into a carton, and then he was on his way again. The best evidence is that Oswald wasn’t on the sixth floor on the day of the assassination, but on the first or second floor. 2. The two lunchroom theory I never understood why there weren’t more witnesses coming forward and saying that they saw Oswald in the lunchroom. Then I found out that Oswald regularly ate his lunch in the first floor lunchroom called the “domino room” where the African American employees would gather, instead of in the all-white, main lunchroom on the second floor that had all of the soft drink machines. This behavior was Oswald’s regular practice. When he went to court in New Orleans in August 1963, he sat on the side of the courtroom with the African Americans. During that same month, Oswald was seen in the predominantly black voter registration line. Many African Americans were dissuaded from providing testimony due to racism, and this is one more example of it. Oswald himself told his interrogators that he saw Junior Jarman and a second short another African American man that he recognized in the domino room while he was eating lunch during noontime, which was subsequently verified. It has been suggested that Oswald may have left the domino room “to go up to the second floor to get a coke.”[ 1 ] Maybe we should rehabilitate what we called during the Vietnam War “the domino theory” - many things fall in line when you look at the story this way. I’m also relying on several witnesses. Carolyn Arnold stated on November 26 that she saw Oswald on the first floor a few minutes before 12:15 pm. On the sixth floor itself, Bonnie Ray Williams told the Warren Commission that he was up there until about 12:15, and Oswald was not there. Arnold Rowland said that he saw an African American man and a white man with a rifle in two separate windows on the sixth floor at 12:15 pm. Carolyn Walter also saw two men on the sixth floor a few minutes later, one of them with a rifle. The HSCA photographic panel found that someone rearranged the boxes in the sniper’s nest within two minutes after the shooting – given Oswald’s verified appearance on the second floor with Patrolman Marrion Baker ninety seconds after the shots, I don’t see how Oswald had the time to do this rearrangement. 3. The humanitarian weapon It’s even less likely that anyone used the Mannlicher-Carcano later found near the sixth floor stairwell to fire at anything. This rifle is what Oswald supposedly used to kill JFK and wound Connally by firing three shots from behind the president’s car in the motorcade. It’s hard to imagine why Oswald would have used it – it was a mail order weapon ordered under the name of Oswald’s supposed chief of the New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Alex Hidell. Of all the rifles in the world, what assassin would use a rifle that would maximize chances of getting caught? This rifle was hardly an assassin’s choice – the Mannlicher-Carcano was a World War I relic best known as the “humanitarian weapon” during World War II because it never killed anybody on purpose - MCs could be purchased for three dollars each in lots of 25. On the day the rifle was found, the firing pin was found to be defective or worn-out, the telescopic sight was not accurately sighted, and no ammunition clip was officially reported. Without an ammunition clip, a gunman would have to hand-load cartridges. 4. An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene The unknown white male's "five foot ten/165" description of the shooter was announced five times by the Dallas police dispatcher Murray Jackson in the hour after the assassination Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm. Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt. The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject. Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26. Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140. J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all. 5. Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home. Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ] In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ] I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt. Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears. (Theater patron Jack) Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills. 6. One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds" Another unknown man told Officer Gerald Hill at the Tippit crime scene that the man who shot the policeman was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to 170 pounds. As soon as Officer Gerald Hill came on the scene, he was approached by an unknown witness. Hill said “the first man that came up to me, he said ‘The man who shot him was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to 170 pounds, had on a jacket and a pair of trousers, and brown bushy hair.” Hill never got the man’s name, turned him over to another officer, and no one knows his identity. Patrolman Howell W. Summers called in a description from witness Ted Callaway of a “white male, twenty-seven, five feet eleven, a hundred sixty-five, black wavy hair, fair complected, wearing a light grey Eisenhower-type jacket, dark trousers and a white shirt…(with) a 32 dark-finish automatic pistol.” Oswald owned a 38 caliber revolver, not a 32 automatic. Joseph McBride is the author of the new book Into the Nightmare, focusing on the Tippit case. A key aspect of the case is Detective Jim Leavelle’s admission that cartridge shells supposedly found at the crime scene were never actually marked on the scene by the Dallas police. McBride points out that “given that the HSCA relied solely on the shells to make its case that Oswald shot Tippit, Leavelle’s admissions that the shells were not marked at the scene help nullify that homicide case against Oswald.”[ 15 ] One aspect of the Tippit case has fascinated me since it was revealed by FBI agent Jim Hosty in 1996. Hosty revealed that FBI agent Robert Barrett said that a wallet containing identification for Oswald and his purported alias Alek James Hidell was left at the scene of Tippit’s shooting and found by police captain W. R. Westbrook near a puddle of blood. The rifle found on the sixth floor was ordered by A. Hidell, with Oswald's post office box as the return address. The Warren Commission was told by postal inspector Harry Holmes that anyone who had access to Oswald’s PO box could have picked up the rifle without even showing identification. 7. A second unknown man said the suspect handed something to Tippit through the open passenger window FBI agent Barrett claims to this day that an unknown witness told him that Tippit pulled over and the gunman handed something through the open passenger window to Tippit inside the car. Barrett believes that Tippit saw the two IDs for Oswald and Hidell, got out of the car to question Oswald, and was shot. Barrett admits that he doesn’t know who the witness was, and can’t verify it, but the wallet was “there”. Who would hand their entire wallet to a police officer when asked for identification when not under arrest? It looks like someone planted a wallet with Oswald’s identification on the ground at the scene, framing him with a throw-down wallet much as others have been framed with a throw-down gun. 8. A third unknown man handed Oswald's wallet to the police at the crime scene An unknown man provided Oswald's wallet to Officer Kenneth Croy at the crime scene where Officer Tippit was shot. The wallet contained ID for both Lee Oswald and Alek J. Hidell. The finding of this wallet was hidden until 1996. I say that because since Hosty’s revelation in 1996, we have learned quite a bit more, thanks to researcher Jones Harris. When Sergeant Kenneth H. Croy arrived as one of the first officers on the scene, an unknown man handed him a wallet. Croy handed the wallet to Sergeant Calvin Owens.[ 17 ] Owens apparently gave it to Westbrook, who displayed it to Barrett. After the wallet was videotaped, it went back to Westbrook’s custody, and Hosty tells us that it was never seen again. Westbrook and Barrett were in charge of the scene at the Texas Theater when Oswald was arrested. When Oswald refused to provide his name, Westbrook ordered, “Get him out of here.” The history of Oswald’s wallets can only be described with three words: Smoke and mirrors. Only after the release of the Warren Report did the FBI evidence inventory show three wallets for Oswald: B-1 (the arrest wallet), 114 (brown billfold) and 382 (red billfold). No wallets were found at his rooming house. The “arrest wallet” appeared on videotape at the Tippit crime scene; we have discussed how no one knows how it appeared on the scene. This arrest wallet of Oswald’s was supposedly removed from his pocket by Officer Paul Bentley following his arrest and while on the way to City Hall, Bentley said that he reviewed the contents and saw the identification for Oswald and Hidell. Since Bentley’s recent death, FBI agent Robert Barrett now says that Bentley was lying. (Whether or not Barrett is telling the truth...) The best evidence indicates that an unknown citizen brought the wallet to the murder scene, based on Officer Croy’s interview with Jones Harris. Thank you, Bill, for your work as both an attorney and researcher on behalf of the JFKA. Also, for considering us, the people on the forum as colleagues. I'm not really qualified to comment as I've never read State Secret in full, good parts of it, linked on here primarily, but not all of it. What I have read was some years ago. But you asked. 1. The Sixth Floor was Insecure. I wonder. 12:15 Bonnie Ray Williams leaving 6th floor, 12:15 Rowland sees an African American man and a White man with a rifle. I think BRW was heavily coached in his testimony. The parade was running late. People would have been in position before 12:15. Secured a few minutes after noon? By people already in position to do so? 2. 2 Lunch Room theory. Oswald ate his cheese sandwich in the domino room on the first floor. He most likely stopped on the way down and got a coke or dr pepper. Didn't a witness testify to giving him change for the coke machine about 12:15? 3. Humanitarian Weapon. All said true. The gun placed there prior to the assassination. Oswald didn't buy it or bring it in to work that morning. I defer to David Josephs work at Kennedys and King. 4. By Unknow Man to DPD inspector Sawyer 1st report of suspect, DPD Inspector, 5' 10", 165 lbs. The exact same as recorded by the CIA per Ann Ergeter, and the FBI in 1960? 5. No Role in the Tippit shooting. Popcorn, I believe Oswald after not making contact with anyone in the very limited audience, including Jack Davis, went into the concession area looking for his contact and bought the popcorn as an excuse for being in the lobby to look around. Never read about the torn 1/2 box top from Cox's of Fort Worth, though I've been to Cox's with my mother shopping for clothes. 6. Unknown man, Tippit's shooter to DPD officer Gerald Hill 5'10, 160-70 lbs. Callaway to Summers, 27 rears old, 5'11", 165 lbs., wavy black hair. The wallets, I defer again to K & K. 7. Unknown man said suspect handed something through the window to Tippitt. 8. An unknown man handed a wallet to reserve officer Croy at the Tippit murder scene. The unknown men arouse suspicion and are not easily dismissed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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