Claude Barnes Capehart?

[Greg Wagner]

Is Barney related to Sen (Rep, Ind) Homer Capehart?

Hi John,

There's not much info I can find on our friend CBC, but I'm still looking. Thanks for the photo.

[Thomas Graves]

The following story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on July the 5th, 1995.

One thing though, it says Capehart claimed to have worked on Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer which raised a Soviet sub in 1968. The sub actually went down in 1968 but wasn't raised until 1974 - which was Project Jennifer.

Also, in the comparison which follows the story, the man on the right was being sought for questioning by HSCA investigators and his image was published in various newspapers. The man on the left was photographed in Dealey Plaza (right in front of the TSBD) after the shooting.

Is the man on the right Capehart?

Some food for thought?

James

**********************************

Judge Sues Over JFK Information

He wants CIA to Answer Questions on Mystery Man

It was the kind of case any hard-boiled DA or cop might look at skeptically -- a Central Valley woman believes her mysterious boyfriend was in a CIA conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, and she fears for her life.

The boyfriend tells her that Lee Harvey Oswald, the reputed assassin, was just an innocent bystander and that others fired the fatal shots. Top-secret government codes are found on papers in his house. Evidence about the man's possible complicity in the assassination is given to congressional investigators and then disappears during a burglary in Washington. The CIA refuses to talk about it.

And then, years later, the boyfriend dies of a heart attack just hours before he is to be interviewed by the district attorney and a sheriff's detective.

Oliver Stone, where are you?

This may sound like the kind of farfetched tale concocted by wild- eyed conspiracy theorists, but in fact it is the stuff of a lawsuit filed in federal court in Fresno by a respected Madera County judge acting as a private citizen, one who does not like it when the CIA tells him to get off its case.

The judge, who was the district attorney at the time, is David Minier, 61 -- and he now sits on the Municipal Court bench in Chowchilla. He gained a certain fame in the 1970s for prosecuting three young men who had kidnapped 26 Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver.

Two years ago [1993] , using the Freedom of Information Act, he sued the CIA after the agency refused to tell Minier whether Claude Barnes Capehart had ever been employed by the CIA and whether Capehart was in Dallas in November 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated.

A federal judge dismissed Minier's suit, but Minier, who is doing all the legal work himself, is appealing the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The judge may be tilting at windmills -- thousands of books and articles over the past 33 years have failed to come up with a definitive solution to Kennedy's death, the Warren Commission's report notwithstanding. But Minier says he is suing the CIA to release the Kennedy assassination documents as a way to preserve this ``historical research'' on the public record for generations to come.

``I wanted to get it into some form of permanent record,'' he said earlier this week, ``so that if there's any validity to this thing, then the information will be there as a resource. Anything you file in court is there for all time. And someone may come along who has a lot more ability in doing research than I do, and the material will still be there.''

Minier's odd quest about the Kennedy assassination started nearly 20 years ago, when Capehart moved to Chowchilla and opened a well-drilling business. Soon Capehart came to the county sheriff's office and said some men had been sent from ``back East'' to kill him. Sergeant Dale Fore said he would look into it. But after scouring the dusty Central Valley town (population: 6,000), he could find no assassins.

But Capehart seemed like an interesting guy to Fore, and soon he was confiding to the sergeant that he had done some work for the CIA. After a while, Fore called a friend at the FBI and asked about Capehart. Both men concluded that Capehart was a fake, but Minier and Fore were later told by a retired FBI agent that Capehart had been employed by the CIA.

Capehart had told his female friend that he once worked on industrialist Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer, a deep-sea research vessel that, under CIA sponsorship, raised a Soviet submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean in 1968.

In 1978, Kennedy assassination theories were at such a full boil in the United States that Congress formed the House Select Committee on Assassinations and began digging into the tons of muck raked up over the preceding 15 years by dozens of investigators.

Back in Chowchilla, Capehart's female friend, who had seen newspaper photographs of possible assassination conspirators being sought by the committee's investigators, came to Fore and said Capehart's face was in one of the pictures.

The woman, who still fears retribution and declines to be publicly identified even years after Capehart's death, said Capehart told her he was ``in the (Texas School Book) Depository when the president was shot, and Oswald wasn't the only one involved at that time,'' Fore wrote in his police report, which ended up as part of Minier's lawsuit.

She also reportedly said: ``Oswald was not the person who shot the president. Capehart showed (her) a handgun with a silencer, automatic firearms, a cyanide pistol, and passports under an assumed name.'' Capehart, apparently disturbed by the publicity of the congressional investigation, moved to Pahrump, Nev., to lie low.

Then the woman brought Fore a sheet filled with what appeared to be ciphers. She said she had found it in Capehart's papers. Fore added it to his file.

In early 1979, while the House assassinations committee was in full-bore operation, Fore traveled to Washington to attend an FBI training course, a routine career assignment for many local law enforcement officers. While there, he called up committee staffers and told them his tale. They seemed interested and took his information, including the cipher sheet.

When he finished his training course several weeks later, Fore stopped by and asked to have his evidence back. The FBI agents who had interviewed him at the time gave him some of it, but kept the code sheet, saying the ciphers were ``classified government codes.'' When Fore got back to Madera County, he heard that the committee office he had visited had been burglarized, and the evidence he had given the committee's investigators had been stolen.

In July 1979, the assassinations committee concluded that conspiracies were ``likely'' in Kennedy's death. But 17 years later, no government agency has confirmed or refuted that conclusion.

In 1989, Fore and Minier prepared to interview Capehart at his home in Nevada. A few hours before they were to meet him, Capehart, 64, dropped dead of a heart attack.

``After he died,'' Minier said, ``things kind of dried up, in terms of information, and so there was nothing else to do but ask the CIA about it.''

So far, the CIA is saying nothing about Claude Capehart.

Here is a 11/20/63 CIA document about Claude Barnes Capehart that says he was 6'1", 220 lbs and was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on October 15, 1924 (making him 40 years of age at the time of the assassination).

https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=14179&relPageId=2

Another "confidential" CIA document from 1973 which suggests that Capehart was applying for the position of crane operator or driller.

https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=14172&relPageId=2

I'm thinking: Oklahoma ancestry + 6'1", 220 lbs + experienced crane operator / driller = Oil Fields Worker / Heavy Equipment Operator or Mechanic = "Dirty Fingernails and Hands of a Mechanic" .

Police officer Joe M. Smith said he encountered a (probably phony) Secret Service agent on the Grassy Knoll who had dirty fingernails and the hands of a mechanic. I think Officer Smith may have encountered Claude Barnes Capehart, posing as a Secret Service officer.

Malcolm Summers may have encountered the same person (although he gives a different clothing description). The portrait of the man that Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson drew, based on Summer's description, is said by some to resemble Claude Barnes Capehart. I've never seen a verified photograph of Capehart, so I'll just have to take their word for it.

(The portrait by Gibson, in turn, somewhat resembles one of the two potential "blond Oswalds" captured photographically by the CIA in Mexico City. This particular "blond Oswald" was captured on film on 9/26/63, one day before Oswald is said to have arrived in Mexico City. But I tend to believe that this "blond Oswald" was a friend of Silvia Duran's by the name of Ernesto Lehfeld Miller. It is said that he was a well-known Mexico City architect or designer and that he used to borrow Duran's car.)

Interestingly, on ancestry.com there is an Ernesto Lehfeld whose mother's maiden name was Miller. I don't belong to ancestry.com, so all I know that an "Ernesto Lehfeld" died in Texas sometime before 1958, and that an "Ernesto Lehfeld Miller" appears in New York Passanger Lists sometime before 2001.

Maybe a forum member who belongs to ancestry.com can check this Ernesto Lehfeld out? I'm thinking there might be some photographs of him there...

http://records.ancestry.com/ernesto_lehfeld_records.ashx?pid=187823779

____________________________________________________________________

Also, I haven't been able to find a photograph of Claude Barnes Capehart on the Internet. Has anyone seen a verified photo of the interesting and mysterious Capehart ?

Thanks,

--Tommy

Edited December 9, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

The following story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on July the 5th, 1995.

One thing though, it says Capehart claimed to have worked on Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer which raised a Soviet sub in 1968. The sub actually went down in 1968 but wasn't raised until 1974 - which was Project Jennifer.

Also, in the comparison which follows the story, the man on the right was being sought for questioning by HSCA investigators and his image was published in various newspapers. The man on the left was photographed in Dealey Plaza (right in front of the TSBD) after the shooting.

Is the man on the right Capehart?

Some food for thought?

James

**********************************

Judge Sues Over JFK Information

He wants CIA to Answer Questions on Mystery Man

It was the kind of case any hard-boiled DA or cop might look at skeptically -- a Central Valley woman believes her mysterious boyfriend was in a CIA conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, and she fears for her life.

The boyfriend tells her that Lee Harvey Oswald, the reputed assassin, was just an innocent bystander and that others fired the fatal shots. Top-secret government codes are found on papers in his house. Evidence about the man's possible complicity in the assassination is given to congressional investigators and then disappears during a burglary in Washington. The CIA refuses to talk about it.

And then, years later, the boyfriend dies of a heart attack just hours before he is to be interviewed by the district attorney and a sheriff's detective.

Oliver Stone, where are you?

This may sound like the kind of farfetched tale concocted by wild- eyed conspiracy theorists, but in fact it is the stuff of a lawsuit filed in federal court in Fresno by a respected Madera County judge acting as a private citizen, one who does not like it when the CIA tells him to get off its case.

The judge, who was the district attorney at the time, is David Minier, 61 -- and he now sits on the Municipal Court bench in Chowchilla. He gained a certain fame in the 1970s for prosecuting three young men who had kidnapped 26 Chowchilla schoolchildren and their bus driver.

Two years ago [1993] , using the Freedom of Information Act, he sued the CIA after the agency refused to tell Minier whether Claude Barnes Capehart had ever been employed by the CIA and whether Capehart was in Dallas in November 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated.

A federal judge dismissed Minier's suit, but Minier, who is doing all the legal work himself, is appealing the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The judge may be tilting at windmills -- thousands of books and articles over the past 33 years have failed to come up with a definitive solution to Kennedy's death, the Warren Commission's report notwithstanding. But Minier says he is suing the CIA to release the Kennedy assassination documents as a way to preserve this ``historical research'' on the public record for generations to come.

``I wanted to get it into some form of permanent record,'' he said earlier this week, ``so that if there's any validity to this thing, then the information will be there as a resource. Anything you file in court is there for all time. And someone may come along who has a lot more ability in doing research than I do, and the material will still be there.''

Minier's odd quest about the Kennedy assassination started nearly 20 years ago, when Capehart moved to Chowchilla and opened a well-drilling business. Soon Capehart came to the county sheriff's office and said some men had been sent from ``back East'' to kill him. Sergeant Dale Fore said he would look into it. But after scouring the dusty Central Valley town (population: 6,000), he could find no assassins.

But Capehart seemed like an interesting guy to Fore, and soon he was confiding to the sergeant that he had done some work for the CIA. After a while, Fore called a friend at the FBI and asked about Capehart. Both men concluded that Capehart was a fake, but Minier and Fore were later told by a retired FBI agent that Capehart had been employed by the CIA.

Capehart had told his female friend that he once worked on industrialist Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer, a deep-sea research vessel that, under CIA sponsorship, raised a Soviet submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean in 1968.

In 1978, Kennedy assassination theories were at such a full boil in the United States that Congress formed the House Select Committee on Assassinations and began digging into the tons of muck raked up over the preceding 15 years by dozens of investigators.

Back in Chowchilla, Capehart's female friend, who had seen newspaper photographs of possible assassination conspirators being sought by the committee's investigators, came to Fore and said Capehart's face was in one of the pictures.

The woman, who still fears retribution and declines to be publicly identified even years after Capehart's death, said Capehart told her he was ``in the (Texas School Book) Depository when the president was shot, and Oswald wasn't the only one involved at that time,'' Fore wrote in his police report, which ended up as part of Minier's lawsuit.

She also reportedly said: ``Oswald was not the person who shot the president. Capehart showed (her) a handgun with a silencer, automatic firearms, a cyanide pistol, and passports under an assumed name.'' Capehart, apparently disturbed by the publicity of the congressional investigation, moved to Pahrump, Nev., to lie low.

Then the woman brought Fore a sheet filled with what appeared to be ciphers. She said she had found it in Capehart's papers. Fore added it to his file.

In early 1979, while the House assassinations committee was in full-bore operation, Fore traveled to Washington to attend an FBI training course, a routine career assignment for many local law enforcement officers. While there, he called up committee staffers and told them his tale. They seemed interested and took his information, including the cipher sheet.

When he finished his training course several weeks later, Fore stopped by and asked to have his evidence back. The FBI agents who had interviewed him at the time gave him some of it, but kept the code sheet, saying the ciphers were ``classified government codes.'' When Fore got back to Madera County, he heard that the committee office he had visited had been burglarized, and the evidence he had given the committee's investigators had been stolen.

In July 1979, the assassinations committee concluded that conspiracies were ``likely'' in Kennedy's death. But 17 years later, no government agency has confirmed or refuted that conclusion.

In 1989, Fore and Minier prepared to interview Capehart at his home in Nevada. A few hours before they were to meet him, Capehart, 64, dropped dead of a heart attack.

``After he died,'' Minier said, ``things kind of dried up, in terms of information, and so there was nothing else to do but ask the CIA about it.''

So far, the CIA is saying nothing about Claude Capehart.

Thanks, James! (Wherever you are.)

Here's a 11/20/63 CIA document about Claude Barnes Capehart that says he was 6'1", 220 lbs and was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on October 15, 1924 (making him 40 years of age at the time of the assassination).

https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=14179&relPageId=2

Another "confidential" CIA document from 1973 which suggests that Capehart was applying for the position of crane operator or driller.

https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=14172&relPageId=2

I'm thinking: Oklahoma ancestry + 6'1", 220 lbs + experienced crane operator / driller = Oil Fields Worker / Heavy Equipment Operator or Mechanic = "Dirty Fingernails and Hands of a Mechanic" .

Police officer Joe M. Smith said he encountered a (probably phony) Secret Service agent on the Grassy Knoll who, according to Anthony Summer's 1989 book Conspiracy page 50, had dirty fingernails and the hands of a mechanic. If true, I think Officer Smith may have encountered Claude Barnes Capehart, posing as a Secret Service officer.

Assassination witness Malcolm Summers may have encountered the same person (although he gives a different clothing description). The portrait of the man that Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson drew, based on Malcolm Summer's description, is said by some to resemble Claude Barnes Capehart. I haven't been able to find a photograph of Claude Barnes Capehart on the Internet. Has anyone seen a verified photo of the mysterious and elusive Capehart ?

The portrait by Lois Gibson, in turn, evidently somewhat resembles one of the two potential "blond Oswalds" captured photographically by the CIA in Mexico City. This particular "blond Oswald" was captured on film on 9/26/63, one day before Oswald is said to have arrived in Mexico City. Based on what Bill Simpich has posted on the subject, I tend to believe that this "blond Oswald" was not Capehart but a friend of Silvia Duran's by the name of Ernesto Lehfeld Miller. It's said that Miller was a well-known Mexico City architect or designer who used to visit Duran at the Consulate to borrow Duran's car.

Interestingly, on ancestry.com there is an Ernesto Lehfeld whose mother's maiden name was Miller. I don't belong to ancestry.com, so all I know that an "Ernesto Lehfeld" died in Texas sometime before 1958, and that an "Ernesto Lehfeld Miller" appears in New York Passanger Lists sometime before 2001.

Maybe a forum member who belongs to ancestry.com can check this Ernesto Lehfeld out? I'm thinking there might be some photographs of him there...

http://records.ancestry.com/ernesto_lehfeld_records.ashx?pid=187823779

Thanks,

--Tommy

edited and bumped

Edited December 9, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Steven Gaal]

Robert Charles-Dunne, on Jan 4 2005, 02:55 PM, said:

There may be a more direct and tangible relationship between Halliburton and Dealey Plaza than just 'deep politics' speculation.

Page 769 of CD 1322 [a list of Jack Ruby's personal effects] includes the following:

"WYLLIE RAUL
Haliburton [sic] Oil Company
Duncan, Oklahoma"

Does the name "Raul" [or Raoul] ring any bells with anyone?

==================================

GRAVES

Here's a 11/20/63 CIA document about Claude Barnes Capehart that says he was 6'1", 220 lbs and was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on October 15, 1924 (making him 40 years of age at the time of the assassination).

https://www.maryferr...179&relPageId=2

Another "confidential" CIA document from 1973 which suggests that Capehart was applying for the position of crane operator or driller.

https://www.maryferr...172&relPageId=2

I'm thinking: Oklahoma ancestry + 6'1", 220 lbs + experienced crane operator / driller = Oil Fields Worker / Heavy Equipment Operator or Mechanic = "Dirty Fingernails and Hands of a Mechanic" .