Kennedys and King Test Site

Tag: JFK ASSASSINATION

  • In Memory of Robert Tanenbaum

    Robert Tanenbaum, a professional prosecutor who was once in charge of a congressional investigation of the murder of JFK, has now passed on. Jim DiEugenio pays his last respects to someone who really wanted to solve the JFK murder.

    In Memory of Robert Tanenbaum

    The announcement of Robert K. Tanenbaum’s death at age 83 was made on January 7th by his only daughter, Rachael. According to friends of his, he had been suffering from a case of cancer which he had tried hard to keep quiet and hidden from the public.

    Bob was born in New York, and he went to the University of California, Berkeley on a basketball scholarship. He attended Boalt Hall School of Law and then applied for a position back in Manhattan under the legendary DA Frank Hogan. While in his employ, he never lost a felony case and rose to be supervisor of the Homicide Division. From that position, he oversaw literally scores of cases. He often said that if Hogan had not become stricken in office and forced to resign, he most likely would have finished his career there. For the simple reason that he loved the man, and Hogan was never going to lose an election.

    But Hogan did die on April 2, 1974, at age 72. After an interim DA was appointed, Robert Morgenthau won a special election and took office in January of 1975. To put it mildly, Tanenbaum did not think much of Morgenthau as DA. He always thought that what made Hogan unique was the fact that he was not political in his practice. For instance, Bob disagreed with Morgenthau’s later decision to set aside the verdicts in the Central Park Five case. (Click here https://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Robert-Tanenbaums-report-on-the-Central-Park-Jogger.pdf)

    Once he worked with Morgenthau up close, Tanenbaum was ready to leave in the mid-seventies. At about that time, he got an unexpected invitation from another very successful first assistant DA, Richard A. Sprague, from Philadelphia. Sprague was a superb practicing first assistant. He made a name for himself as a special prosecutor in solving the famous Jock Yablonski murder conspiracy case. Sprague won a series of pyramiding trials, which resulted in the conviction of union leader Tony Boyle for the 1969 murders of his opponent Yablonski, his wife and daughter. Tanenbaum wrote a 2023 book on this subject called Coal Country Killing.

    The reason he wrote that book is because the two prosecutors became friends. Once appointed Chief Counsel, Sprague invited Tanenbaum to become his Deputy Chief for the first phase of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Sprague had been chosen by representatives Tom Downing and Henry Gonzalez in late 1976. Since Tanenbaum had grown disenchanted with his office, he took Sprague up on the offer, even though he did not know him personally. Bob became the supervisor of the JFK side of the inquiry. His colleague in the Manhattan office, Robert Lehner, supervised the MLK side.

    When Sprague and Tanenbaum were first appointed, the JFK community had reason to be excited. Why? Because unlike with the Warren Commission, these two men were very experienced in investigating and solving homicide cases. Plus, they both had reputations as being uncompromising in their procedures. Those two characteristics were about the inverse of what the Warren Commission was. For instance, Commission lawyer David Belin was a specialist in corporate law and estate planning. Wesley Liebeler was a professor of antitrust law. Chief counsel J. Lee Rankin focused on corporate affairs back in Nebraska. That was not the case with Sprague and Tanenbaum. They practiced criminal law, and they prosecuted felonies and murder cases every day.

    In addition, both men had reputations for being straight arrows as far as not cutting corners or compromising in court. For example, in the Yablonksi case, Spague had offers to close deals with suspects before trial. He would not. Tanenbaum once said at a speech in Chicago, that there was no toleration for anyone ever interfering with one of his prosecutions.

    And this is one of the things that made their service for the HSCA rather difficult. Congress works on the whole principle of compromise. But as Tanenbaum often said, there was no Democratic or Republican way of solving a felony case. This is why he had such scorn for the Warren Commission. And this is why he found the behavior of Earl Warren so inexplicable, since Warren had been the DA of Alameda County and also the Attorney General of California.

    During a TV special with Dan Rather, Tanenbaum ended up in Dealey Plaza, facing off with Belin. After Belin ended up reciting one of his canned spiels, Tanenbaum said something like, I don’t know how many homicide cases this guy has tried, but I did dozens of them through to jury verdict–and what the Commission did will not wash. He told me that then, off camera, Rather said to him, “We really blew it on the Kennedy case.” That is how convincing Bob was to the public.

    One of the most startling episodes Tanenbaum talked about was his meeting with Senator Richard Schweiker. Along with Gary Hart, Schweiker had been running an investigation of the Kennedy case under the Church Committee. He was working with people like attorney Dave Marston and field investigator Gaeton Fonzi. That committee had made public the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro. And this had shocked and sickened Schweiker.

    When Tanenbaum arrived in town, the Church Committee was winding down, as the HSCA was just forming. Tanenbaum had brought down his chief detective from New York, Cliff Fenton. They both went over to see Schweiker. After talking about the general outlines of what he and Hart had discovered, Schweiker told Tanenbaum he wanted Fenton to leave for a moment. Which he did. Schweiker then pulled out a file that Fonzi and Marston had put together. He handed it to Tanenbaum. As he did so, he said, “The CIA killed President Kennedy.”

    Shocked, Tanenbaum and Fenton read the file until the wee hours of the next morning. At dawn, Fenton wiped his eyes and told his boss quite simply that they were in over their heads. This was not a typical New York murder case; it was not a typical anything. Tanenbaum insisted they had to move forward in good faith since that is what they were tasked to do. What Bob did not know was that the CIA, the FBI and certain members of Congress were not going to let him and Sprague shoulder forward.

    As Tom Downing told me, he had decided he was going to retire at the end of 1976. He had served his district for 18 years. He wanted to get back to private practice. Which he did, in his large, luxurious office in beautiful Newport News. He told me there that, as he was trying to get the HSCA passed into law, it was the CIA who lobbied against the Kennedy side and the FBI who opposed the King side. But after he accomplished that astounding feat, he was going to leave.

    Without him, the committee was easy pickings for the intel community. As Mark Lane said, they created a phony feud between the new chairman, Henry Gonzalez, and Sprague. The press joined in, through the likes of David Burnham at the New York Times and Nicholas Horrock at Newsweek. They began to attack Sprague, and there was a showdown in which the committee backed Sprague and forced Gonzalez to resign. Which led to Gonzalez taking the floor of the House and unremittingly attacking Sprague. It got so bad that Sprague was told that the committee would not survive a continuing vote with him as Chief Counsel. As with Jim Garrison, and as would be later with Judge Joe Brown, the media had made Sprague radioactive. (The Assassinations, edited by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 62)

    Sprague fell on his sword and resigned. He and Tanenbaum had made a compact that if one was forced to leave, the other would also. But Sprague insisted that Tanenbaum stay on so it would not look like they had sunk the committee completely. So Tanenbaum stayed on as a kind of caretaker, with Sprague’s colleague Al Lewis.

    But Bob told me that he understood what had happened. The Powers That Be had won out. They had fired a warning shot, and it had hit home. Therefore, no experienced and skilled prosecutor would now take the job. They understood they would not be protected by Congress. As famed civil rights lawyer Joe Rauh told Jerry Policoff, “You know, I never thought the Kennedy case was a conspiracy until now. But if they can do that to Dick Sprague, it must have been.” (ibid, p. 66)

    In the waning days, Tanenbaum hired investigators L. J. Delsa and Bob Buras to inquire into New Orleans. He told me he was very curious as to why the CIA was lying about Clay Shaw. He also hired Gaeton Fonzi to look into JM/Wave and Miami. To show the reader the impact of his leaving, he had hired both Cyril Wecht and Mike Baden to be his pathology experts. Tanenbaum told me that while he was there, Baden agreed with him that it was a conspiracy. Of course, that did not last after the new leadership took over.

    Tanenbaum was also quite curious about CIA officer David Phillips. He was puzzled about why there was no picture of Oswald entering or exiting either the Cuban or Russian embassy in Mexico City. He was also bewildered that the CIA claimed there was no tape of Oswald’s voice that survived. Phillips told him that concerning the former, their camera happened to be out those days. Concerning the latter, they recycled their audio tapes every 7 or 8 days. Tanenbaum accepted this until Mark Lane presented him with the evidence that J. Edgar Hoover’s agents had listened to tapes of Oswald in Dallas while the suspect was in detention. As he said in Chicago in 1993, he now wanted to get Phillips back and charge him with perjury. But the committee faltered in doing that. It should also be added that both Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway wanted to indict, not just Phillips, but also Anne Goodpasture. But the committee would not do that under Robert Blakey either. (AARC Conference of 2014)

    The JFK case never left Bob Tanenbaum. He always regretted that he and Sprague were not left to their own devices. I believe that they both thought that they had a chance at solving the great murder mystery of the 20th century. In 1996, Bob wrote an interesting novelization of his experience with the HSCA called Corruption of Blood. He was always willing to talk about the case either on the phone or in person. Often to complete strangers. Which is how I first met him back in 1992.

    Now, one of our strongest advocates for truth in that case is gone. He will be sorely missed, as both a friend and a sterling colleague in a great cause.

  • Robert Tannebaum Passes

    Former HSCA Deputy Chief Counsel during its first phase, Robert K Tanenbaum, has passed on. He and his superior Richard Sprague really tried to find out the facts of the JFK case. Read here.

  • CAPA Highlights and Board Nominations

    CAPAis offering highlights from past conferences and also is enlisting nominations for new Board members. Read here.

  • Paul Bleau to Eileen Murphy at ABC

    Paul Bleau has a suggestion for ABC executive producer Eileen Murphy in the wake of that network’s very poor Truth and Lies special on the JFK case, a program that was utterly obsolete on arrival.

    Eileen Murphy
    Senior Producer
    ABC News Studios
    7 Hudson Square, New York, NY 10013

    Dear Mrs. Murphy,

    I am corresponding with you after being made aware of how Jim DiEugenio and Oliver Stone felt about their most recent experience with your network.

    I appeared in their documentary Destiny Betrayed and had the honour of spending five days with them when they promoted it here in beautiful Quebec City, where I live.

    I am deeply concerned about the situation in the United States. I am a Canadian who has visited over twenty magnificent states in your country. Americans are amazingly welcoming, and the beauty of your nation is breathtaking.

    But I have put a pause on my visits, because, quite frankly, I have never seen the U.S. as polarized as it is now. It is not as welcoming to visitors as it once was, and there is a dark cloud of anger and mistrust floating over you.

    Ask yourself the question: what word do your citizens equate with politician and media? Write it down, and maybe we can compare this word if ever we correspond.

    ABC, in my humble opinion, is one of the causes of this chasm that has formed and grown steadily between you and the people you aim to serve.

    Studies prove that the starting point of this steady march towards chaos was the Fairy Tale written up in the Warren Report. Trust in your institutions, preceding JFK’s death, was at a high point before beginning its downward spiral towards rock bottom.

    ABC and the rest of the fourth estate turned into cheerleaders for the ensuing whitewash and continued the lone-nut narrative all the way up to your most recent production, “Truth and Lies”. Add to this how Americans were deceived about the murders of RFK, Malcom X, MLK and the War in Vietnam, Watergate, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Iran-Contra, Epstein… and you have all the seeds needed to cultivate fascism. With this, mainstream media has seen its credibility scrape the bottom of the barrel.

    As a marketer, I do not believe Truth and Lies will help turn the tide on your sagging ratings and reputation. On the other hand, if you want to perform real journalism around the granddaddy of your demise in credibility, I suggest you begin by reading the JFK Assassination Chokeholds as a starting point for a real quest for the truth rather than wasting your dwindling audience’s time with yet more rounds of tired, desperate attempts at stemming the flow of ridicule you are needlessly subjecting yourself to. I am offering you this gift. If you read it, you will see that:

    1. It was written by me, Jim DiEugenio, who felt tricked to be on your show, and three attorneys.
    2. It is based on over 800 solid sources (mostly primary government documents).
    3. It is plugged by the renowned Cyril Wecht, John Newman and Mr. Stone, who also considers that he was deceived by you.

    You will learn that:

    1. The seven government inquiries into this tragic event, and the people assigned to them, cumulatively destroy the Warren Commission and refute the lone nut version of events your “expert” guests cling to.
    2. Oswald had numerous links with intelligence.
    3. Ruby was given the mission to remove the most dangerous witness.
    4. Some shots came from the front.
    5. The Single Bullet Theory is debunked.
    6. Oswald was not on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting.
    7. Oswald was impersonated at least 15 times.
    8. There were many prior plots with a similar template.
    9. The medical analysis of the murder was a total whitewash endeavour.
    10. There has been and continues to be massive obfuscation to derail government investigations for over sixty years.

    Do you not think it is time for ABC to turn a new leaf and perhaps regain the trust of people like me? If so, start by taking on your bête noire head-on. Tell the truth and expose the real lies about the conspiracy. Has ABC really taken the time to understand the information has surfaced since the ARRB was set up to ensure declassification, thanks to Mr. Stone’s movie JFK? At one time, Canadians were proud of fellow Canadian Peter Jennings, and the U.S. had a high regard for ABC. Even Old Spice successfully renewed its brand. Is it not time for you to do the same?

    Sorry for this harsh language, but sometimes it is good to hear the hard truth and stay clear of the big lies.

    Happy Holidays
    Paul Bleau ([Paul’s gmail address hidden])
    A concerned neighbour!

  • Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? – Part 4

    ABC conceals who Jack Ruby really was, and ignores how he got into position to kill Oswald. It then seals the deal with a reprise of Dale Myers’ faulty computer simulation that tries to revive the dead corpse of the Magic Bullet.

    Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? – Part 4

    Upon Oswald’s return from Mexico City, the program says that, somehow, there was a big mistake made by the CIA in not following up on him after he allegedly visited both the Cuban and Soviet embassies there. Which is a highly problematic thesis. As stated previously, if–as the show says–the CIA had surveillance on Oswald in Mexico City, then why have they never been able to produce a picture of him at either embassy? And why could they not send a proper voice tape of his up to Dallas for the FBI agents questioning Oswald in detention?

    All the indications from the declassified record indicate that the CIA was taken by surprise when confronted by the alleged presence of Oswald in Mexico City. At first, they could not confirm he was there, how he got there, or how he left. They talked to their men inside the Cuban embassy with negative results; they sent the wrong pictures up to the Commission; they even said their cameras were not working on the days he was there etc. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 294-97) They then tasked the job of putting together an ersatz trail for Oswald to their friends in the Mexican security forces, the DFS. (For example, see John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, pp. 678-84)

    This confusion over Oswald upon his return may have been partly perpetrated by CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton. His office put out two different cables with false descriptions of Oswald on October 9th and 10th. One was for use inside the CIA. The other went to the FBI, the State Department and the Navy. In fact, it was not until months later, during the Warren Commission inquiry, that even CIA people realized the latter description was wrong. Both cables said Oswald was age 35, with an athletic build, about 6 feet tall with a receding hairline, and the former said he was bald on top. (John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 398-99) But also, the information about Oswald himself was curtailed in the internal CIA memo. It only covered the information the Agency had up until May 1962. In other words, Oswald’s important activities in New Orleans were cut out. (Newman, pp. 403-05)

    This is all relevant to the point the program is making about the tracking of Oswald upon his return from Mexico City. As is the inexplicable removal of the FBI’s Flash warning from the Oswald file. That removal happened on the day the first cable went out, October 9th. That act stopped information on Oswald from being sent to the Espionage Section of Division Five. What makes it even more odd is this: it had been in effect since Oswald’s defection in 1959. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 222)

    Needless to say, none of this is in the ABC special.

    II

    The show tells us that Robert Kennedy knew about the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Kennedy. This is a half-truth. It implies he was somehow involved with them, or knew about them from the start, and took no exception. This is another rather large intellectual failing of the program. The CIA’s internal report on the plots, called the Inspector General Report, has been declassified since about 1995. It is the lengthiest and most revealing document we have on that matter. It very clearly says that the CIA had no presidential approval for the plots, from Kennedy or anyone else. (See IG Report, pp. 132-33)

    Further, it shows that Robert Kennedy only found out about them by accident. Because of a rather stupid security breach by one of the mobsters involved, Sam Giancana, in Las Vegas and their coordinator, Robert Maheu. Through this, the FBI found out about the plots. And this is how the info was then relayed to RFK. (Ibid., pp. 57-59) Bobby then requested a briefing, since he did not know anything about the subject. He was upset when he was informed of their length and nature. He told his CIA briefers they should never do anything like this again without telling him. The CIA agreed. But the briefers knew this was a lie, as another phase of the plots was being enacted at the same time. (Ibid., pp. 62-65)

    From here, the show now jumps to the premise that RFK suspected that Fidel Castro was involved in the killing of his brother. The best discussion about Bobby Kennedy’s beliefs about who was culpable in his brother’s assassination is in David Talbot’s book Brothers. Bobby Kennedy’s immediate reaction to the news of the assassination was that he was suspicious of three groups: the CIA, the Cuban exiles, and the Mob. He called the CIA Director John McCone, he called in an exile, Harry Williams, and he phoned two of his men on the organized crime/Jimmy Hoffa beat, Julius Draznin and Walter Sheridan. (Talbot, pp. 6-12) There is no mention of him suspecting Castro. And I have never seen any credible report or biography that says RFK ever felt that way. Probably because he knew about his brother’s attempt to establish a rapprochement with the Cuban leader in 1963.

    What is remarkable about Bobby’s immediate suspicions is that they correspond to what many notable writers and researchers later decided was likely the case. Namely, that there was substantial evidence that the CIA and Cuban exiles were setting up Oswald in advance. This began in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, and then culminated in Dallas after whatever happened in Mexico City. Those two venues—New Orleans and Mexico City– provided some highly inflammatory information to make the public think that Oswald was a communist who was then enlisted for the Kennedy assignment. And this was bombarded into the media the night of the assassination.

    The facts are that RFK saw through all of this as the mirage it was.

    III

    Which leads us to ABC’s treatment of Jack Ruby. The show relies on the late Breck Wall to say that Ruby did what he did—killed Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters—because he wanted to be a famous person. (Similar to what the show says about Oswald) They then have Rabbi Hillel Silverman say that Ruby was now in his own mind a hero, perhaps even a martyr. They even trot out the Jackie Kennedy excuse: Ruby killed Oswald to spare Jackie Kennedy the ordeal of testifying at Oswald’s trial. About 47 years ago, author Seth Kantor wrote that Ruby himself told Joe Tonahill that this Jackie Kennedy story was never his idea. It was something made up by his first lawyer, Tom Howard. (The Ruby Cover-Up, p.238)

    Incredibly, the show glides over the information that Jack Ruby had manifold organized crime connections. It excuses this by saying that many of us do. This is another instance of unintentional humor on the program’s part. Jack Ruby began his career in Chicago as an underling for the Capone gang. He was also associated with a mob-influenced union, which was involved with violent shakedown operations. Ruby was then part of the Chicago mob moving into Dallas in 1946-47. In fact, the man who was arranging this movement said that Ruby would be moving into Dallas to open a restaurant which would have a second-floor gambling house. And that would serve as a front for Chicago operations. (Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, pp. 172-73) There is an FBI report from 1956 stating that a narcotics runner claimed to have gotten clearance to operate in Dallas /Fort Worth through Ruby. Ruby was also involved, as previously stated, in illegal gambling operations in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. (Hurt, p. 175)

    But, beyond that, Ruby was an acquaintance of Lewis McWillie. McWillie was a casino manager for Santo Trafficante in Havana. Ruby visited McWillie on the island, and there is evidence that Ruby visited Trafficante while the Florida mobster was held in detention by Castro. Ruby had once mailed McWillie a handgun. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 456, p. 272)

    This is quite relevant to the JFK case because Trafficante was one of the three mobsters that Robert Maheu recruited for the CIA in their attempts to kill Fidel Castro. A former girlfriend of McWillie, Elaine Mynier, said he was always in the money and had a bodyguard living with him. She saw him with Ruby more than once. And she said it was her impression that Ruby would do anything for McWillie. (Kantor, p. 252) Ruby himself said that McWillie was his idol. (Op cit, Benson)

    When we then add in the facts about Ruby’s prolific connections to the Dallas police, and his involvement with CIA gun-running activities into Cuba, then one can connect some dots rather easily. (Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, p. 423; Hurt, pp. 401-05) Which ABC apparently does not want the viewer to do.

    IV

    Dale Myers is then brought on to do two things. First to say that in all the years he has been working this case—decades upon decades—he somehow could not find evidence of a frontal shot to JFK. The program does not mention the previously noted 42 witnesses at Bethesda and Parkland who saw a baseball-sized, avulsive hole in the back of Kennedy’s skull. That is good evidence of a shot from the front. And one of those witnesses is someone they have on the show, Dr. Ronald Jones from Parkland. (Gary Aguilar, Murder in Dealey Plaza, pp. 198-200) Nor does the show mention, as Josiah Thompson describes in Last Second In Dallas, the blood and tissue and brain spatter forcefully flying to Kennedy’s left onto the cyclists riding next to him.

    One of the comments on the show is that somehow Time-Life’s attempt to conceal the Zapruder film from the pubic contributed to cynicism about the JFK case. I did not understand what this meant. Because one of the trickiest tactics ABC uses is to curtail the showing of the Zapruder film. The film is cut before it reaches Z frame 313. If you do that, then you fail to show the bullet impact of JFK’s head exploding, and him rocketing backward with such force that he bounces off the back seat. This convinced millions in 1975, when it was first shown on TV, that Kennedy was hit from the front. By the way, it was shown by Geraldo Rivera on his ABC program. According to the late Jerry Policoff, the network did not want Rivera to show the film. He then threatened to call a press conference, to tell the media about the pressure, and show the film to the assembled media.

    I don’t even want to talk about the recycling of Dale Myers and his computer simulation of Kennedy’s murder, which somehow demonstrates the single bullet theory is now made true. This pastiche has been wrecked at least four times: by Pat Speer, Bob Harris, Milicent Cranor and Dave Mantik. It’s an all too typical example of computer GIGO. As Speer notes, Myers moved Kennedy’s back wound up and then turned JFK into some kind of hunchback in order to camouflage the mislocation. And that is just one thing he did. (Click here for Speer https://www.patspeer.com/chapter12canimania)

    To me, Myers has become the new unofficial David Belin. A man you tune out whenever he opens his mouth on the JFK case.

    Barbara Perry, a University of Virginia historian, is then brought on to say that all the controversy in the JFK case created fodder for Oliver Stone. Like many things in the film, I did not understand this comment. The doubts about the Warren Report were around for decades prior to 1991 and Stone’s film JFK. In spite of the fact that the MSM had tried to hide them on many occasions. And after about 1967, the polls showed that the majority of the public did not buy the Warren Commission. But to take one example, Josiah Thompson’s 1967 book Six Seconds in Dallas was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. That cover headline read “Three Assassins Killed Kennedy”. In 1966, Life Magazine had asked the question on its cover, “Did Oswald Act Alone? A Matter of Reasonable Doubt.” And there had been films on the subject also, like Executive Action, which was a fairly popular picture with a distinguished cast, including Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan.

    What Stone’s film did was to place all those doubts and serious evidentiary problems into a cohesive, true-life narrative. One which had plentiful back up, as noted in the volume which accompanied the picture, JFK: The Book of the Film. For many reasons, the MSM did not want to hear about this since it would bring into question their allegiance to a paper-thin cover story.

    Which relates to another topic—actually, a couple of them about Perry, one related to the film under discussion. For whatever reason, Perry spoke at the 60th anniversary CAPA conference in Pittsburgh. She said two dubious things. The first one was that Kennedy came late to the civil rights issue. Which is a staple among MSM historians, even though it is not true. For example, on the night Kennedy was inaugurated, he called up his Treasury Secretary, Doug Dillon, and asked him: Why were there no black faces in that Coast Guard parade today? Dillon said he did not know. Kennedy told him to find out.

    Because of this, at his first cabinet meeting, Kennedy asked everyone to bring a chart to the next meeting, enumerating all the minority people in their departments, and where they stood on the hierarchy scale. When Kennedy got the charts, he was surprised at how few there were. But also how they were mostly located near the bottom, that is, in clerical and custodial work. As a result, in March of 1961, Kennedy signed the first affirmative action executive order. Does anyone think that 45 days is a long time to act on civil rights? In fact, Kennedy did more for civil rights in three years than Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower did in three decades. (Click here https://www.kennedysandking.com/reviews/the-kennedys-and-civil-rights-how-the-msm-continues-to-distort-history-part-1)

    At that Pittsburgh Conference, Perry suggested that Kennedy was not really withdrawing from Vietnam at the time of his death. ABC suggests that somehow Oliver Stone came up with the idea that Kennedy was getting out of Vietnam, as expressed in his 1991 film JFK. Again, this is simply not accurate. Back in the sixties, Jim Garrison was consulting with an Ohio University professor who wrote him a 26-page letter on the subject. That letter was at pains to show how Kennedy’s death had escalated the Vietnam War.

    In 1971, the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers contained a section entitled “Phased Withdrawal of Forces 1962-64”. Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky edited the volumes, and Peter Scott read and made a contribution to the set. Scott thought that particular section on withdrawal was worth writing an accompanying essay about. Zinn and Chomsky initially objected, but Chomsky relented, and Scott’s essay was included in the Beacon Press series. It was later published in Ramparts, and was included in more than one anthology in different forms, e.g., the 1976 collection Government by Gunplay. Fletcher Prouty had also written an essay on the subject in the 1980s. So when Stone included the concept in his film, it was not like it was something out of the box, brand new.

    Stone relied on Prouty and John Newman for his information. Prouty actually worked on Kennedy’s withdrawal plan through his boss, General Victor Krulak. Newman had been preparing a doctoral thesis based on this subject matter for a number of years. It was published as a book in 1992 called JFK and Vietnam. That book had a large impact, e.g., it was reviewed by Arthur Schlesinger in the New York Times on May 10, 1992. And it remains one of the most authoritative narratives on the subject. In the intervening years, other authors have followed in the Newman/Prouty footsteps: James Blight, Gordon Goldstein and David Kaiser, among others. And they have furthered and deepened our understanding of Kennedy’s intent. In this reviewer’s opinion, Kennedy’s withdrawal plan has the status of historical fact today. And it is also a fact that Lyndon Johnson knowingly reversed that plan.

    ABC used Oliver Stone’s appearance in advertising for the show. It also promised, in the trade publication MemorableTV, that unlike other JFK retrospectives, it would “focus on newly released documents”. In fact, that is what Stone and I tried to talk about, particularly the work of the Review Board. Virtually none of that made it into the show. Jeff Morley, Stone and I were interviewed for approximately 150 minutes. Compare our air time with that of Dupre, Garrett and Myers, and you will see the agenda the program had. As a result, ABC has put forth a backwards, timid, tawdry effort on the JFK case. Especially considering it is 2025. As I have said elsewhere, this will now join the hall of infamy on the subject, along with Peter Jennings’ 2003 effort, Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite’s 1967 4 part special, and the initial September 1964 programs by CBS and NBC. That is not a club anyone should be proud of joining.

     

    Click here to read part 1.

  • Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? – Part 3

    ABC spins the Warren Commission fairy tale about Oswald in the Marines, Russia, New Orleans and Mexico City. Nothing about his rightwing pals, the 544 Camp Street flyer, or no photos or voice tapes of him in Mexico City.

    Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? – Part 3

    About halfway through the show, the focus shifts to Lee Harvey Oswald. There is a quick glide over his decision to join the Marines. There is no mention of his joining the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and meeting David Ferrie in 1955. In fact, there is more in the Warren Report about this. At least the Commission mentions the CAP. (Warren Report, p. 679). It was just a couple of months after joining the CAP that Oswald dropped out of Warren Easton High School. He then tried to enlist in the Marines by claiming he was 17, when he was actually 16. In fact, Oswald’s mother was visited by someone who said he was a Marine recruiter. But since he asked her to let her son quit school, he almost had to be an imposter. (Destiny Betrayed, by James DiEugenio, second edition, pp. 125-26)

    The Oswalds moved back to Fort Worth the next year, and the film misses another important point about Oswald. At the time he is reading the Marine Corps Manual, he is pushing communism on his acquaintances there. It got so bad that Richard Garrett reported him to the principal of the school Oswald briefly attended. (ibid) One would think that this apparent dichotomy would be worth noting.

    There is very little, if anything, about Oswald’s service in the Marines. And again, that is a notable lacuna in the show. Because it is at this time that Oswald begins to learn the Russian language. He even gets tested in Russian. And he has an interesting meeting with a woman named Rosaleen Quinn. A relative of Quinn knew Oswald, and he told her about his acquisition of the language via listening to records and reading newspapers. Quinn had been formally studying Russian for over a year with a tutor in hopes of getting a translator job at the State Department. A meeting was arranged. Quinn came away quite impressed. Because Oswald spoke Russian as well or better than she did. (Philip Melanson, Spy Saga, p. 11).

    II

    The show very skimpily deals with Oswald’s defection to Russia. And I could detect no mention of the hardship discharge that was granted to Oswald so he could leave the service early. This is notable since it was granted in record time. They usually took 3-6 months. Oswald’s was done in two weeks. Further, there is evidence that his mother knew he was going to defect–six months before Oswald began the application process. (Op. Cit. DiEugenio, p. 136)

    The program mentions that very few people defected to Russia at this time. Which is true. It fails to mention the uptick that took place in the mid to late fifties. And by 1960, the number had grown into the high teens. (Melanson, pp. 24-25; Probe Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 3, article by Lisa Pease) It also fails to mention that State Department employee Otto Otepka suspected that some of the defectors may have been ersatz, that is, agents of the CIA or the Office of Naval Intelligence.

    The program deals rather briefly with Oswald’s stay in Russia. It mentions how he met Marina, they married, and then the couple moved out of Moscow to Minsk. There is no mention of KGB suspicions about Oswald being an intelligence agent, and that is why they shipped him out to Minsk. There, they surrounded him with a ring of intelligence agents and even placed a listening device in his kitchen. (Ernst Titovets, Oswald: Russian Episode, p. 62; DiEugenio, pp. 145-46; see also the work of Peter Vronsky on Oswald in Russia)

    About Oswald’s return from Russia in the summer of 1962, I could not detect an important figure in Oswald’s life at this time, namely George DeMohrenschildt. He became Oswald’s best friend while he was in Dallas/Fort Worth. If one does not mention the man nicknamed The Baron, then one does not have to deal with the rather odd relationship of a Communist defector with the White Russian community in Texas. Or that the Baron proclaimed near the end of his life that he never would have met Oswald if it had not been for the instructions by the CIA station chief in Dallas. (Edward Epstein, The Assassination Chronicles, pp. 558-62)

    The program mentions that Oswald, while in New Orleans, attempted to organize a Fair Play for Cuba group. But the program does not picture the pamphlet he handed out while in the Crescent City, which had the address 544 Camp Street stamped on it. This had been the home of a Cuban exile, CIA-backed group, the Cuban Revolutionary Council. (JFK Revisited, edited by James DiEugenio, p. 233) And in 1963, it had been the address of Guy Banister’s office. There was no mention of Banister, David Ferrie or Clay Shaw.

    The program then makes a leap into Mexico City. They follow the whole Warren Commission scenario about Oswald riding on a bus down to Mexico City, visiting both the Cuban and Russian embassies, making scenes at both places and wanting to return to Russia via Cuba. When a producer on the program did a pre-interview with Oliver Stone and myself, she mentioned this controversial episode. I replied:

    DiEugenio: Did you just say that Oswald was in Mexico City?

    ABC: Yes, I did.

    DiEugenio: Then why is there no picture of Oswald while he was there? The CIA had cameras in front of both embassies. So there should be ten pictures; he went in and out five times. But there are none.

    ABC: Oh.

    DiEugenio: And why is the tape that the CIA sent up to Dallas not his voice? The Dallas FBI agents who heard it said the man on the tape is not the man we are talking to.

    ABC: I didn’t know that.

    Well, they did know it at this point, and this was about two months before the airing of the program. But yet the show still says the CIA had Oswald under surveillance in Mexico City.

    III

    There are many other problems with the Warren Commission story about Mexico City, too many to go into here. But to name just three, the receptionist at the Cuban desk who had the most interaction with Oswald, Silvia Duran, told the HSCA that the man she saw was short and blonde, which would not match Oswald. Also, two CIA plants who worked in the Cuban embassy were interviewed by HSCA investigator Ed Lopez in 1978. They both said that they did not see Oswald inside the building. Finally, there was Oscar Contreras, a student active in pro-Castro politics at National University. Contreras met Oswald outside the embassy, and he told Oscar about his attempt to get to Russia through Cuba and asked for help. Again, the description by Contreras did not match the real Oswald. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 293; for a full discussion, see Chapter 10 of that book)

    But the show avoids all of these and even uses a dubious story from an FBI informant. Namely, that Oswald talked about killing Kennedy while there. John Newman later showed that this had all the indications of being a fabrication. One problem being that it was from a notorious J. Edgar Hoover sycophant, Morris Childs, and it was third-hand. The original source being unnamed Cuban diplomats. But, for example, neither Sylvia Duran nor Eusebio Azcue, two such diplomats, heard it. (John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p.428) Further, the CIA had the Cuban embassy bugged, and there is nothing yet declassified resembling this.

    From here, the show now begins to shift into 4th gear to back the Warren Commission. Their FBI man, Brad Garrett, says that Oswald was proficient with a rifle and was a good shooter. To say this is an exaggeration is too mild. Author Henry Hurt located fifty of Oswald’s former Marine colleagues. Virtually all of them said Oswald was a poor marksman. Sherman Cooley was a good example. He said he saw Oswald shoot, and there was no way he could have pulled off the JFK assassination. He then added: If I had to pick one guy to shoot me, it would have been Oswald. (Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, p. 99)

    On top of that, there is the problem of the rifle in evidence. The Mannlicher Carcano was a poorly designed bolt-action rifle. One with a significant recoil, which made it unreliable on repeat shots. (ibid., p. 100) And Garrett does not mention the Warren Commission scenario of Oswald getting off three shots—with two direct hits—in six seconds. Which is something that no professional rifleman has been able to duplicate without cheating. (Click here https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/22/how-cbs-news-aided-the-jfk-cover-up/)

    To pile more questionable information on top of all this, the program now states that Oswald was going to shoot both Nixon and Eisenhower. These are items that not even the Warren Commission bought into. And predictably, the show makes no mention of the prior plots to kill JFK in November, one in Chicago and another in Tampa. Or that the failed Chicago plot—on which Oswald may have been the informant– closely resembled the successful one in Dallas. (Edwin Black, Chicago Independent, November 1975)

    IV

    In addition to the dubious accusations about Oswald threatening Kennedy and wanting to shoot Eisenhower and Nixon, the program goes along with the whole Oswald took a shot at General Edwin Walker scenario. Again, it just states this without providing any backup for it. This accusation was not made against Oswald until over seven months after it happened. The local authorities never considered Oswald a suspect in that case. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 48) It was only after Oswald was dead that the FBI felt compelled to create this charge.

    The reason the local police did not suspect Oswald in that case was simple: the information they had pointed to at least two plotters with at least one car. Oswald did not own a car, and according to the official story, he did not drive. Further, who would have been his Dallas associates in the crime?

    The best witness was Kirk Coleman, who was a Walker neighbor. He ran out right after the shot and saw two men running to two cars. (ibid., p. 57) When he was shown pictures of Oswald by the FBI, he said neither of the men he saw resembled him. Further, he had never seen Oswald on or around the Walker residence before the day of the shooting, which was April 10, 1963. Robert Surrey, an aide to Walker, said he had seen two men in a car behind Walker’s house a couple of days before the incident. They got out and walked around the place. This looked suspicious, so he followed the car for a while before losing it. The car had no license plates. Again, he said neither man resembled Oswald. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 440)

    But further, the bullet recovered from the Walker shooting was a steel-jacketed 30.06 projectile. (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 507) On November 30, 1963, the FBI requested this bullet from the Dallas Police. Local agent Bardwell Odum sent it to FBI HQ on December 2nd. In a very short time, the FBI turned this bullet into a 6.5 copper-jacketed Mannlicher-Carcano bullet in order to pin the Walker case on Oswald and his rifle.

    All of this strong evidence was tossed aside due to the questionable and inconsistent testimony of Marina Oswald, and an undated note and pictures of Walker’s house. The latter two were surfaced by Ruth Paine. Interestingly, when first told about the note, Marina said she knew nothing about it. Like many things in her testimony, that changed. (Armstrong, p. 513)

    Would any of this have held up under cross-examination in court? Highly doubtful. But, for ABC, that does not enter into the journalistic equation.

     

    Click here to read part 4.

  • Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? – Part 2

    ABC sanitizes the debacle of JFK’s autopsy and sidesteps the impossible journey of CE 399, the Magic Bullet, from Dallas to Washington.

    Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK?- Part 2

    One of the worst sections of Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? is the manner in which it deals with Kennedy’s autopsy. This is one of the most vulnerable parts of the Warren Commission Report, and also the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) report. In fact, according to Doug Horne of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), HSCA chairman Louis Stokes asked the Board to review that aspect, since no one was happy with what the HSCA did with it.

    The producers seem to know they have a serious problem here. So they decide to make excuses for what happened at Bethesda Medical Center. Chris Connelly says the procedure was rushed due to Bobby Kennedy. This was denied by Kennedy’s pathologist, Thornton Boswell, under oath before the ARRB. He specifically said they were not rushed or in any hurry. The hospital Commander Calvin Galloway said that no orders were coming into the autopsy room from outside. Third, Bobby Kennedy “left blank the space marked ‘restrictions’ in the permit he signed for his brother’s autopsy.” (Trauma Room One, by Charles A. Crenshaw, pp. 179-180)

    One of the most serious problems with the autopsy was the fact that chief pathologist James Humes burned his notes. ABC understands what a violation of procedure this is, so they go with Humes’s excuse that Kennedy’s blood was on the notes and he did not want them to fall into the wrong hands and become a souvenir.

    The problem with this is that Humes did not just burn his notes. He also burned the first draft of his autopsy report, which he made at home and therefore could not have had Kennedy’s blood on it. (AP report of 8/2/98, by Mike Feinsalber) Further, Humes had lied about this act in November of 1963. Then he certified in writing that he had only destroyed preliminary draft notes, but not any other working papers. (Harold Weisberg, Post Mortem, p. 525)

    Third, Humes was asked about this excuse by the Review Board’s attorney, Jeremy Gunn. Gunn astutely asked him about the Boswell notes and face sheet. They also had blood on them. Humes took possession of them, so why did he not burn these also? Humes could not think of any reason for the inconsistency except that Boswell’s notes were not his. But the blood was Kennedy’s on both; no souvenir hunters for Boswell’s notes? (ARRB deposition, 2/13/96) We will never know for certain why Humes burned the notes and his report. But as we will see, and the program tries to conceal, there does appear to be more malignant reasons than just blood drops.

    Humes did his incinerating shortly after Oswald was killed, knowing there would be no trial. (Russell Kent, JFK Medical Betrayal, p. 31) And that is just the beginning.

    II

    Dale Myers says that conspiracy theorists claim the autopsy was completely botched and you had amateurs performing it. He then says, “None of that is true.” Well, Dale, let us quote from a forensic pathologist who is not a conspiracy theorist: “Where bungled autopsies are concerned, President Kennedy’s is the exemplar.” That is from Dr. Michael Baden, who defended the Oswald did it story for the HSCA. Exemplar? Does it get much more categorical than that? (Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, p. 5)

    As per the medical qualifications of doctors Humes and Boswell, neither of them was a certified forensic pathologist. And they knew this, since they themselves wanted civilian forensic pathologists there. That request was denied. (John Lattimer, Kennedy and Lincoln, p. 155) Milton Halpern, the most illustrious forensic pathologist of that era, said that choosing Humes, who had taken one course on forensic pathology as the lead autopsist, was “…like sending a 7 year old boy who had taken 3 lessons on the violin over to the New York Philharmonic and expecting him to perform a Tchaikovsky symphony.” (Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. 384; Myers was the ghostwriter for this book)

    Humes told the Warren Commission that his type of practice had largely been done in peacetime. Therefore, it had mostly been in the field of natural disease and not violent death. The violent deaths he dealt with were accidents and suicides. His only exposure to forensic pathology was a one-week course completed 10 years prior to 1963. (Kent, p. 26) Boswell was Chief of Pathology at the National Naval Medical School, but he was not an active pathologist at the time of JFK’s autopsy. (ibid., p. 27)

    The one doctor who was a forensic pathologist, Pierre Finck, was 30 minutes late and took notes and made suggestions but ”…mostly watched while Humes and Boswell did the manual work.” And we should note, Finck’s notes went missing after. (Crenshaw, p. 177)

    One of the weirdest parts of ABC’s weird special then ensues. Someone named Dr. Michelle Dupre comes forth. She is a retired Medical Examiner and a forensic pathologist. She makes some comments about the JFK medical case. She talks about the difference between entrance and exit wounds; exits should be much larger. She says that when bullets strike hard surfaces, they should be deformed. She then says that one of the bullets came in at the back of the neck. Which is wrong. We know from the autopsy photos that Kennedy’s wound entered in his back.

    Further, her comments on exits and entrances are stunningly problematic in this case. And it is hard to believe that no one involved with the program noticed it. Why? Because, as almost every commentator on the medical aspect of this case knows, the back wound was larger than the neck wound. Before Dr. Malcolm Perry cut a tracheotomy over that neck wound, he said it was very small, with neat edges, clearly a wound of entrance; other doctors at Parkland Hospital thought so also. (Kent, pp. 21-22) The wound in the back was measured at 7 x 4 millimeters. (ibid., p. 28). Further, the wounds in the clothing, the jacket and shirt, are 15 and 10 mm long, respectively. The back wound was 7 mm wide, and the throat wound was about 3-5 mm originally. (Stewart Galanor, Cover-Up, p. 26) Therefore, going by DuPre’s logic and those measurements, the front neck wound would be an entrance, and the back wound would be an exit.

    Let us never forget the following, which ABC left out of this program. In 1965, Pierre Finck himself revealed that, “I was denied the opportunity to examine the clothing of Kennedy. One officer who outranked me told me that my request was only of academic interest.” (Memo from Finck to General Joe Blumberg, 2/1/65) This is one of the many procedural failures in this autopsy caused by interference–not from the Kennedys–as Mr. Connelly wants us to think, but by the military presence at the autopsy. Did Dale Myers forget about this?

    III

    DuPre is pictured reading the autopsy report and saying that it’s correct, two bullets from behind. Which is kind of shocking. Why? Due to another matter that neither Myers, Connelly, DuPre, nor anyone else brings up: neither wound in Kennedy was dissected. If you do not do this fundamental practice, how can you determine directionality, or even if a bullet transited the body? Dr. Henry Lee, the leading criminalist in America, told Oliver Stone and myself that it should have been done in this case. Does DuPre know about this failure?

    Now we will see even more interference, and again, it’s not from Bobby Kennedy. At the New Orleans trial of Clay Shaw in 1969, Dr. Finck made a remarkable disclosure. He said that Humes was not actually in charge of the autopsy. Humes was being so badgered that he stopped and asked, “Who’s in charge here?” An Army General replied with: “I am.” Finck then added:

    You must understand that in those circumstances, there were law enforcement officials, military people with various ranks, and you have to coordinate the operations according to directions. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 300; italics added)

    This directly relates to another point brought up at the Shaw trial. Finck had to be asked 8 times why he did not dissect the back wound. The judge had to order him to answer. Again, Finck replied that he was told not to do so. (ibid., p. 302) Another point should be added about Finck’s trial testimony: he tried to imply that he had seen the autopsy photos before he signed the report. He had to take this back at trial; he had not. Again, does DuPre know any of this?

    But that is not all. Kennedy’s brain was not sectioned. Again, because JFK died due to a head wound, this should have been done. For the same reason that the back wound should have been dissected: for purposes of transit and directionality. And this directly relates to another matter that DuPre glides over: the nature of the rear skull wound. She simply describes where the doctors located it. ABC decided to ignore the facts of its size and characteristics. It was about the size of a baseball, and it was an avulsive wound. Meaning it appeared to be an exit. (Crenshaw, pp. 196-98; 200-202)

    The HSCA lied about this key point. (Vol. 7, p. 37) They said that there was a disagreement between the doctors who saw the body at Parkland vs the ones who saw it at Bethesda. They said the Bethesda set failed to observe this massive, gaping wound. When the ARRB declassified the HSCA files, this was exposed as a deception. Because just as many witnesses saw this wound at Bethesda as at Parkland. (See the essay by Gary Aguilar in Murder in Dealey Plaza, pp. 197-200) About 21 witnesses in each location saw the hole in the right rear of the skull. And it was avulsive, some even saw cerebellar tissue extended out. In other words, with over 40 witnesses in unison, that rear skull wound was a textbook demonstration that a bullet came in the front.

    IV

    Incredibly, there is no mention that not only was the brain not sectioned, but it was also not weighed the night of the autopsy. Again, these are both grievous violations of usual protocol, which Myers and everyone else on the program ignore. The excuse for not sectioning, as given in the supplementary autopsy report, was to preserve the specimen. As the late Dr. Cyril Wecht commented, “For whom? For Jacqueline Kennedy’s mantelpiece? For the president’s grandchildren? For a museum? Preserve it for whom?” (James DiEugenio, JFK Revisited, p. 161)

    When the entry weight was finally entered, it was 1500 grams. Which is about 140 grams above the norm. (DiEugenio, JFK Revisited, pp. 160-61) With as much damage done by the projectile to Kennedy’s head as we see, this is very hard to comprehend. What makes it more difficult to buy is this. The official photographer of JFK’s autopsy was John Stringer. When he was examined by Jeremy Gunn of the ARRB, he ended up denying that he took the photographs of Kennedy’s brain that are in the National Archives. It was the wrong film and the wrong photographic technique, among other points. (See Stringer’s deposition of 7/16/96, pp 219-26)

    Again, if the brain was not sectioned and forensically examined, if it weighs more than it should, and if the official photographer denies he took the pictures, how can DuPre make a declarative statement? Should she not be asking: Then who took the official pictures? And why was someone else needed?

    Both DuPre and Brad Garrett, their former FBI investigator, mention problems with the condition of CE 399, popularly called the Magic Bullet. Garrett says you would have thought it would have fragmented more, and that makes it an interesting aspect of the case. Well, I guess so: if it went through two people, seven layers of skin, and smashed two bones. And the show more or less leaves it at that. It shouldn’t have.

    For instance, Dr. Milton Halpern found it incomprehensible that CE 399 could have thrashed around in “all that bony tissue and lost only 1.4 to 2.4 grains.” (Marshall Houts, Where Death Delights, pp. 62-63) Dr. Robert Shaw, who operated on Governor Connally, thought the same. He thought there was more than three grains still in John Connally’s wrist. (Warren Commission, Vol. 4, p. 113) Dr. Joseph Dolce, who worked for the Warren Commission and was a distinguished battlefield surgeon, agreed. Except he went further and said that the bullet should have been significantly deformed—it is pretty much intact– since it smashed two bones in Connally. (JFK Revisited, p. 30, p. 140)

    The other question to ask is this: why did the bullet that hit Kennedy’s head fragment, yet CE 399 did not? That bullet split into three parts, leaving a 6.5 mm fragment in the rear of Kennedy’s skull, and plentiful dust-like fragments in the front of the brain. (Ibid., p. 169) Yet nothing like that happened with CE 399.

    All of this, and much more, has led many to believe that there is a serious chain of custody problem with CE 399.

    V

    Chain of custody, as explained by Brian Edwards and Henry Lee in the film JFK Revisited, refers to the integrity and credibility of evidence. Evidence must remain consistent and identifiable from the crime scene to the police headquarters to the courtroom. If not, then the defense can successfully challenge its admittance before a jury. We have already seen how the pictures of Kennedy’s brain would not be admissible since John Stringer denied taking them. The same test would apply with the Magic Bullet.

    First, as author Josiah Thompson demonstrated with his 1967 book, Six Seconds in Dallas, there is a serious question about whether or not the projectile was discovered on Connally’s stretcher. And it would have to have been if the Single Bullet Theory is to have any validity. After a long, illustrated analysis, Thompson clearly demonstrates that the distinct probability—not possibility– is that the Magic Bullet was really found on the child Ronald Fuller’s stretcher, not Connally’s. (Thompson, pp. 154-66)

    Then there was Thompson’s interview with the security supervisor at Parkland Hospital, O. P. Wright. Wright was the witness who passed off the bullet to the Secret Service. There is no record of Arlen Specter of the Warren Commission interviewing him. Therefore, Thompson was the first person to show him a photo of CE 399. Wright said this was not the projectile he gave to the Secret Service. (ibid., pp. 175-76) And he took out a sharp-nosed projectile—CE 399 is rounded at its tip– from his desk as an example of what his bullet looked like.

    Once the exhibit arrived in Washington, it was given to James Rowley, head of the Secret Service. Rowley gave it to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd. Todd wrote a note that said he was in receipt of the bullet at 8:50 PM. (Warren Commission Vol. 3, p. 428; Commission Document 320) Here is another problem. Because in FBI technician Robert Frazier’s journal, he lists that he got the bullet from Todd at 7:30 PM. And he did the same on another inventory list. (How could he be in receipt of CE 399 before it got there? (John Hunt, ‘The Mystery of the 7:30 Bullet” at JFK Lancer.com)

    Finally, there was an FBI document contained within Commission Exhibit 2011. It stated that on June 12, 1964, FBI agent Bardwell Odum showed the projectile to Wright, and he said it appeared to be the same bullet. But there was no FBI field report, termed a 302, to certify this. This puzzled Gary Aguilar and Thompson. They decided they should look for and talk to Bardwell Odum. When they did, it was a shocker. He denied ever taking any bullet around for Parkland Hospital employees. And since he knew Wright, he would have recalled doing so. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 284) Therefore, it appears the FBI fabricated an identification. Like Specter, did they know that Wright would not back their story? With a chain of custody like this, CE 399 would never be admitted into court.

    And Specter knew this. In a belatedly revealed interview that writer Edward Epstein did with Specter, the writer asked the lawyer why the Secret Service reconstruction did not conclude with the Single Bullet Theory. Specter replied, “They had no idea at the time that unless one bullet had hit Kennedy and Connally, there had to be a second assassin.” When Epstein asked how he convinced the Commission to go along with that idea, he said: “I showed the Zapruder film, frame by frame, and explained they could either accept the single bullet theory, or begin looking for a second assassin.” (James DiEugenio review of Assume Nothing, at Kennedys and king.com)

    It was never a matter of evidence. It was one of necessity. And there is not a word about this said by ABC.

    Click here to read part 3.

  • Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? – Part 1

    ABC follows in the footsteps of the Peter Jennings tradition from 2003, and Dan Rather in 1967. Somehow, the Warren Report is something that must be upheld, even 62 years later. No matter what the cost. And it ends up being pretty high. First of four parts

    Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK? – Part One

    On November 24th of this year, ABC broadcast a special on the John Kennedy assassination. It was entitled Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK?. It was in the tradition of their 2003 show hosted by Peter Jennings and directed by Mark Obenhaus. One of the lead talking heads, and the one with the most speaking time, was author and animator Dale Myers, who was a featured speaker for Jennings. How obsequious is the show to the Warren Report? Later in the two-hour program, we see Myers adoringly gazing at and passing his hand over that report and its 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits. And during the show’s opening overture, Myers says that in all his years of research, there is no evidence to support a shot from the grassy knoll or the right front striking Kennedy. It would have been better to say that the agenda this program utilizes will curtail any evidence of that fact.

    Right after this, the program introduces two related themes that it will intercut throughout. The first declaration is that JFK was the first celebrity president. One could make that same statement about Franklin Roosevelt, who was only five years older when first elected, and was also handsome and witty and charming. But their resident historian, Tim Naftali, does not want to go there. This then leads into the adjunct theme that the John Kennedy assassination was the first national conspiracy theory. Again, some historians would say that the Lindbergh kidnapping or the Rosenberg case would also qualify. But again, that is not what this program is about.

    And make no mistake, this combination psychological thesis-that average Americans could not swallow that the handsome, charming president could be killed by one man, it had to be a plot– is clearly enunciated by Naftali very shortly into the show. In fact, right after showing Kennedy in Dealey Plaza.

    The program then cuts to Kennedy arriving in Dallas on November 22, 1963. We see films of the motorcade progressing from Love Field, while comments are made about the presidential limo having an open top, ignoring the fact that JFK did this a lot. For example, according to author David Sloan, he did it in Key West, Florida, after the missile crisis and then in Tampa the week before Dallas, when he knew there had been a threat on his life.

    The other fact that is ignored is the very odd Secret Service protection that was offered that day. Some examples being: an agent being called off the rear bumper of the car as it exits Love Field. (Vince Palamara, Honest Answers, p. 48) Or the strange motorcycle formation that was cut down to just two cycles on each side. (Doug Horne, Inside the ARRB, pp. 1402, 1404) Also, the lack of any requests for supplemental personnel to ensure against things like any open windows on the route. Or that the local authorities were alerted the night before Kennedy arrived that the route was altered; thus providing a near-perfect milieu for what military snipers call an L-shaped ambush. (Vince Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt, second edition, pp. 103-06) Authors like Doug Horne and Vince Palamara have written about these matters at length. There is also the fact that these failures should have resulted in strong subsequent disciplinary hearings and action. They did not. Somehow, the ABC program neglects to tell the viewer that the Warren Commission pretty much avoided all this negligence. When, in fact, the totality of this security collapse is what caused Kennedy’s death.

    II

    We now go to what happened in Dealey Plaza. Even though the program shows scenes of dozens of spectators running up the grassy knoll, Myers tells us that the first shot missed, and the next shot went through Kennedy and — of course both originated from behind. He later says the third shot is the headshot. But the infamous Z frame 313 is not shown, an issue we will return to later. Weirdly, someone on the soundtrack–who was nameless–says there was a 95% chance of four shots being fired and two assassins. This was the HSCA version, but again, that is not attributed or delved into.

    In a recurring motif, Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan—an inexplicable authority– now goes through a Who’s Who of possible suspects: FBI, CIA, Cuba, the USSR and the Mafia. And this becomes the occasion to introduce a second recurring motif: the labeling of those suspicious or critical of the official story as “conspiracy theorists”. As the late Lance DeHaven Smith showed, that phrase began to be used by the New York Times in 1964, and then it spread to the MSM in 1967. At the time of issue of the infamous CIA dispatch called “Countering the Critics”. (Click here https://www.kennedysandking.com/reviews/dehaven-smith-lance-conspiracy-theory-in-america)

    Now comes a truly desperate strophe in the show. Chris Connelly, an ESPN sports and entertainment reporter and producer —about as qualified as Mary Jordan—says that a man in the sixth-floor window ran down the stairs. How Connelly knows this is never explained. Since no one saw anyone run from the sixth to the second floor. And here comes the deus ex machina of the program: they rely on Howard Brennan to convict Oswald. We are to believe that no one associated with the show was familiar with the fact that Brennan had been torn to shreds all the way from 1966 (Edward Epstein, Inquest) to 2021 (Vince Palamara, Honest Answers).

    In Epstein’s book, it was revealed that not even the Commission lawyers, e.g., Joe Ball, wanted to use Brennan. (The Assassination Chronicles, p. 143) As Ball noted, when the Commission did a reconstruction with Brennan, he had problems identifying a figure in the window. Ball also noted that Brennan stated that the shooter was standing while firing. He then stepped down out of sight. (McKnight, p. 109) Yet this was not possible since photographs showed the window was not open high enough to do that, unless the assassin was firing through glass, and there was no shattered glass found. So the Commission had to conclude that the sniper was kneeling. (Epstein, p. 144, Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, p. 83) But if that was the case, then how could Brennan give a description of height and weight? Which is what the program says happened.

    Then there was the chain of evidence in the Brennan case. How did Brennan’s testimony originate, and then how was it passed on to the Dallas Police to be broadcast? Commission Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin wanted the FBI to provide this chain. But Director J. Edgar Hoover would not commit to any. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 109) Why? Because there was confusion about its origins. Brennan said that he gave his info to a policeman, neither identified nor called by the Commission, and he took him to Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels. But the problem was that Sorrels was not in Dealey Plaza at that time, which was about ten minutes after the shooting. He did not arrive back there for about half an hour. (Lane, p. 86)

    So then the onus for Brennan’s initial description fell to police Inspector Herbert Sawyer. Who could barely remember anything about Brennan, including his name and how he was dressed. Which is really something considering the fact that Brennan was wearing a hard hat. (Lane, p. 87). When Sorrels finally did talk to Brennan, another problem was created, actually two. First, the description on the police radio had already gone out. And second, Sawyer said he had a no clothing description; but Sorrels–who took Brennan to the Sheriff’s office– said he was given one by the witness, the suspect was wearing a light jacket. (Lane, p. 88)

    As Connelly notes, Brennan failed to identify Oswald at the first line-up he attended. Consider what ABC left out. Brennan told the FBI on the 23rd that he still could not be sure it was Oswald. (Commission Document 5, p. 12 ) But further, the late Ian Griggs surfaced fascinating information on this issue: namely, that he could not find Brennan’s name listed for any of the official line-ups. (No Case to Answer, pp. 85-90) Further, there were never more than four people in the lineups. But Brennan said there were six. Finally, Brennan could not recall if there was an African American among them. (Griggs, p. 91) This is Texas in 1963. In fact, Detective Will Fritz’s testimony on the matter suggests that Sorrels might have invented the line-up where Brennan made a positive ID after the fact. (ibid., p. 94)

    Finally, there is the following, as related by Vince Palamara. As noted above, Brennan told the FBI that he could not positively identify Oswald even after he had seen Oswald on TV. (Honest Answers, p. 186) Further, Brennan testified that he did not see the rifle discharge, or recoil or the muzzle flash. (ibid) And then there is this: Brenan’s job supervisor said they took Brennan away for three weeks. He came back a nervous wreck. He would not talk about the assassination after that: “He was scared to death. They made him say what they wanted him to say.” (ibid., p. 187)

    Later on, Brennan refused to talk to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) unless he was under subpoena. When the HSCA said they would do so, Brennan replied he would fight the subpoena. And if forced to appear, he would simply not say anything. In addition, he refused to sign any written statement. And even when offered immunity, he would not appear. (ibid., pp. 188-89)

    As Palamara concludes, “Are these the actions of a truthful man?” Yet this is what ABC relied upon to put Oswald on the sixth floor.

    III

    A rich piece of unintentional humor follows. Dale Myers intones that people who do not know what they are talking about are the ones making claims about someone up on the knoll. In other words, witnesses like Lee Bowers, Sam Holland, and Joe Smith are now ruled out in favor of the hapless Mr. Brennan–the man who refused to appear for the HSCA even when offered immunity.

    Let us just use one of those discarded as an example of the show’s–and Myers’– imbalance. Josiah Thompson’s 1967 volume, Six Seconds in Dallas, is considered a perennial in the field. One of its high points is Thompson’s interview with Holland. Holland—like at least six others– insisted he had seen smoke rise near the stockade fence, which would indicate a shot from the knoll area. (Thompson, p. 121) Holland heard four shots, not the Commission’s three; and the third and fourth were very close together, like a double shot. Which would tend to eliminate the Oswald thesis since the Commission said he had a manual bolt-action rifle. Holland added that the third shot had a different sound to it, like it was fired from another weapon. He also told friends that his Commission testimony had not been transcribed accurately. (Thompson, pp. 83-84)

    But further, Holland was so certain of the origins of the sound that he ran from the overpass over to the parking lot behind the picket fence behind the knoll. (Thompson, p. 122) When he got there, he saw footprints behind a station wagon (it had been raining that morning). And on the bumper of the car, there were muddy spots, as if someone had raked off their shoes, while standing there waiting. The prints did not extend further than the width of the car.

    As Thompson said about Holland, his testimony stood up, and he could find no flaws in the detail. That Myers and ABC valued Brennan over Holland is a flashing red flag as to how agenda-driven the show was.

    IV

    The program now shifts to two subjects: the evidence on the sixth floor, and the murder of policeman J. D. Tippit.

    Predictably, ABC retains the whole “sniper’s nest” idea: that Oswald built a shield of boxes behind him with the rifle resting on one in front. As researcher Alan Eaglesham proved with pictures, plus the testimony of Dallas photographer Tom Alyea, the boxes were moved by the police from their original position. Alyea was the first civilian photographer on the sixth floor, and he talked about this rearrangement in an interview he did with Tulsa World newspaper back in 2013. This rearrangement was done before letting the rest of the reporters into the crime scene area, and, according to the testimony of Officer J. C. Day, it was still being done for police pictures until the 25th. Also, Alyea said the shells were not scattered as the pictures portrayed. They were originally in the diameter of a hand towel. Which is not how they would have landed if ejected from a rifle. (James DiEugenio, JFK Revisited, pp. 145-46).

    Per the rifle, the program never brings up the identification problem. The rifle was first identified as being a Mauser rifle, and there were three reports in evidence that it was the German rifle and not the Italian Mannlicher-Carcano that was first found. (The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, by James DiEugenio, p. 81) Secondly, how could the envelope with the money order and coupon to pay for it be sent from Dallas on March 12, 1963, and arrive at the Kleins’ mail order house in Chicago–and be deposited at their bank–the next day? And why does the money order sent have no stamps on the back of it, like it never was passed through the Federal Reserve system? (ibid., p. 82)

    Fourth, the rifle in evidence is not the rifle that the Commission says Oswald ordered. The rifle in evidence is a short rifle that is 40.2 inches long and weighs about 8 lbs. with sling and sight. The one Oswald allegedly ordered is a carbine that is 36 inches long and has a weight of 5.5 lbs. (ibid., p. 83) Fifth, as former SWAT team member Brian Edwards said during Oliver Stone’s documentary, JFK Revisited, that Oswald could not have applied the screw on the butt end of the short rifle that is evidence today. And there is no evidence that someone did it at a rifle shop. (Op cit, JFK Revisited, p. 143)

    Needless to say, the program brings up none of these anomalies, and Myers simply says that the rifle in evidence was ordered by Oswald.

    The program then goes with the Sawyer/Brennan story as being the reason for a description going out on the police radio of a man 5’10” tall and 165 lbs., armed with a .30 caliber rifle. And this was used by Tippit to pull over Oswald. Myers then used that to say: Oswald killed Tippit, so that means Oswald killed Kennedy.

    To go through all the problems with Oswald being the assailant in the murder of Tippit would take much too long, since the show pretty much glides over that case. But suffice it to say the following: if Helen Markham is your chief witness, you are in trouble, since she might even be worse than Brennan. (Epstein, pp. 142-43) Secondly, it is highly problematic that Oswald could have negotiated the 9/10 of a mile walk to the Tippit scene at 1:08, the time he was likely killed. Third, the shells do not match the bullets, and the bullets do not match each other. Fourth, according to Tippit expert Joe McBride, the best witness to the shooting was Acquilla Clemmons, and she said there were two shooters, neither of whom was Oswald. (Click here, https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-case-in-the-new-millennium)

    When we go to Oswald’s capture at the Texas Theater, there is no mention of the two wallets problem. That is, Oswald had one on him, but there was also one found at the scene of Tippit’s murder. (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, pp. 862-63) The show then gets unintentionally humorous with Oswald’s detention and interrogation. They say the police had no tape recorder, so we do not know what was actually said. The show’s scenario stops anyone from saying: why not go buy one? Or why not call in a stenographer?

    Click here to read part 2.

  • Don Jeffries Responds to ABC Special

    Don Jeffries chimes in on the recent ABC special on the JFK case. In no uncertain terms. Read here.

  • Review of “How Key West Killed JFK”

    David Sloan’s new book tries to further the research on a character who has lurked in the background of the JFK case for too long. That is Gilberto Lopez, who went from Tampa to Dallas, to Nuevo Laredo, to Mexico City, and then Havana right after the assassination.

    How Key West Killed JFK

    By David L. Sloan

    The title of David Sloan’s book suffers from hyperbole. And the subtitle, “The Island that changed the Course of History,’ even more so. Sloan was born in Texas, and he moved to Key West in 1996. He has written several books, the vast majority of them concentrating in some way on Key West and the Florida Keys.

    He begins the book by mentioning some of the presidents who have visited Key West, both in and out of office: Grover Cleveland, U. S. Grant, William Howard Taft, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, both Roosevelts and, after the Missile Crisis, John Kennedy. In a strophe that then foreshadows the book’s agenda, he then talks about how organized crime grew on the island, originally through the numbers rackets. (p. 27) And also through speakeasies during Prohibition. He then brings in how, geographically, the island and the adjoining ones, became important to men like Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante Sr. and Jr. as a connecting point to Cuba, which they were quite interested in as a business matter.

    Sloan writes about heroin incoming through the Florida Keys (p. 28). But in another article of his, I found he wrote that this was only suspected of happening. (Keys Weekly, June 11, 2020) He then mentions a man named Sam Hyman who moved to Miami Beach and then started buying hotels, and ended up purchasing land and constructing a dog track in Key West. Sloan says he was backed up by Jimmy Hoffa. (p. 45)

    Following in the legendary José Martí’s footsteps, Castro visited the island in December 1955. At that time, he was seeking funds and support for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. But the local sheriff was a Batista loyalist, and he cooked up a charge to have him arrested. Castro escaped by jumping bail. (pp. 50-51) Once Castro took power, many Cubans were disappointed with the result. Therefore, they escaped. A dropping off point was Key West, on their way to larger Florida cities like Miami.

    As many other authors have noted, Castro’s revolution had a disastrous effect on the Mob. Especially for men like Trafficante Jr. and Lansky who had invested heavily in casinos, resorts, drugs and prostitution. All of which Batista had not just allowed, but from which he was receiving kickbacks. (See Imperial State and Revolution, by Morris Morley, pp. 46-71). After Castro took power, Trafficante’s casinos were overrun, and he was arrested that summer of 1959 and detained at the Triscornia Detention Center.

    As Sloan notes, there is credible information that Trafficante paid bribes for special treatment. But, beyond that, he was visited there by Jack Ruby, who—at the least—was attempting to gain his release. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, pp. 455-56) Ruby was trying to facilitate this release through noted arms smuggler Robert McKeown. And since the offering price went up to $25,000, Ruby had to have third-party backing, which he said came from Las Vegas. (Benson, p. 269) This may have been through Trafficante’s pit manager, Lewis McWillie, whom Ruby idolized and who he visited in Cuba a few weeks before Trafficante was released. (Sloan, p. 61)

    Sloan has found an FBI report which states a witness observed that Ruby was operating gun-running operations in the Keys. (Sloan, p. 60) He also observes that Ruby was falsifying the record when he said he visited Cuba only once. The data in FBI files would indicate he was there as many as six times. He even mailed cards to his workers at his clubs from Havana. (ibid)

    Continuing in what would seem his Mob-oriented view of the JFK case, Sloan writes that organized crime had an influence in getting JFK elected in both the primaries, through West Virginia, and the general election, in the Chicago area. As I have noted, on the ground inquiries do not back this up. Professor John Binder in Public Choice proved that, in 1960, the voting data in the wards the mob controlled showed Kennedy got less of a turnout than Democrats usually did. Dan Fleming did a book-length examination of West Virginia. He notes in Kennedy vs. Humphrey, West Virginia, 1960, that no subsequent inquiry–of which there were three, one by Barry Goldwater–ever found anything illegal or any mob influence there. And neither could he, even though he interviewed 80 witnesses. (pp. 107-112; 170-71)

    In his discussion of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Sloan seems to abide by the mythology that Kennedy canceled the D Day air strike. (pp. 73, 75) As I have been at pains to show, this is not accurate. Declassified materials on that operation reveal that Kennedy determined the strike should only occur from a strip on the island. Since no beachhead was ever secured, this could not be done. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 45) As everyone knows, that operation ended in disaster.

    Sloan now comments on how, during the subsequent anti-Castro project, Operation Mongoose–the secret covert campaign against Cuba waged by the CIA–the Keys were often used as staging grounds. (p. 83) He dutifully mentions the No Name Key brigade led by Gerry Patrick Hemming. And the fact the location was only accessible by boat, with no land bridge, made it an ideal training spot for a secret brigade. He also mentions the training camp in the New Orleans area at which Lee Oswald was reportedly seen. He then adds that mob figures in Chicago recruited Cuban exiles for secret military training. (p. 92) I wish he had footnoted this last piece of data since I was not familiar with it.

    About halfway through the book, Sloan brings up the name of George Faraldo. Faraldo said that in the summer of 1963, he had seen Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald at the Key West Airport, which he managed at the time. They were part of a group of hippie-looking people who claimed to be with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and were going to go to Cuba to cut sugar cane. Oswald asked Ruby “Have you heard anything from the Big Bird yet?”(Sloan, p. 107)

    As related by investigator Gaeton Fonzi, Faraldo told him that when the Aerovia Q plane arrived, Oswald got on with the group. But he did not see Ruby get on. (The Last Investigation, p. 62)

    When Fonzi further checked this story out for the Church Committee, he found out that Aerovia had stopped its regular flights out of Key West in 1961. But Faraldo insisted that a plane could have been chartered just by submitting a flight plan to the FAA. (Fonzi, p. 63) The local newspaper photographer, whom Faraldo said had covered the incident, told Fonzi he could not recall it. Fonzi went to the public library to the Key West historian. She did not recall it and could find no info about it in her files. Though Faraldo said he kept a list of daily flight manifests in storage, again, Fonzi wrote, “I found nothing that resembled manifests.” Fonzi contacted the local TV news director for whom Faraldo had freelanced. He said that Faraldo had brought this up before, about the time of the Jim Garrison inquiry. He checked his files, and found nothing.

    It turned out that Faraldo had made many trips into Cuba. He hated Castro and liked Batista. He maintained an expensive photo lab which Fonzi estimated had to contain a hundred thousand dollars worth of sophisticated equipment. This included a large aerial camera. He said he had taken shots of the Russian missiles inside Cuba before President Kennedy discovered them. It turned out that Faraldo had worked for the United States Information Agency when he was doing that assignment. When Fonzi asked him: “Was it possible that he was really working for the CIA?”, he said: “Yes, I think so.” When Fonzi asked who paid for all the equipment, Faraldo said, “No comment.” (ibid, p. 65)

    I could not find any of this in Sloan’s book. Either he was not aware of it, or chose not to relate it.

    Sloan considers the prior plots to kill JFK as not actual scenarios to do away with him, but as test runs. (p. 129) This is a questionable thesis, especially since the attempt in Chicago so resembled the successful one in Dallas.

    The most valuable information in the book is the new data that Sloan has unearthed on Gilberto Lopez. To say the least, Lopez is an interesting character. There is little or no information about him in the Warren Report, or the volumes. But the HSCA did pay some attention to him.

    Lopez was born in Havana, in the Cerro district. He played baseball and served as an altar boy. At age 20, in 1960, he left Cuba for Key West. He told immigration officials he planned to stay permanently. He stayed with family who were already here and registered for the Selective Service. He lived with an uncle and worked at a bakery for his cousin. (Sloan, p. 118)

    Within two years, Lopez had a change of heart. He requested permission to return to Cuba; he was homesick. That request put him on the FBI radar in March of 1962. According to interviews Sloan did with family survivors, Lopez was a changed man upon his return. Prior to this he was quiet and apparently satisfied; but now he was a complainer about his job and did not get along with the bakery employees. He was terminated. (ibid, p. 119)

    In August of 1962, Lopez married Blanche Leon, who was an American woman with family ties in Key West and Tampa. Blanche practiced witchcraft. Lopez now developed epilepsy. Gilberto worked at a restaurant in Tampa under an assumed name. He would disappear for days and sometimes weeks. Blanche’s brother once saw him with a duffel bag stuffed with rifles. Blanche’s sister refused to let him put them in the apartment. (ibid, p. 120)

    By September, Lopez and his wife had separated. She left Tampa for Key West. (Sloan, p. 135) On November 17, 1963, Lopez was at the home of Mary Quist—a member of the Tampa FPCC. He was allegedly awaiting a call from Cuba. He was about to leave the USA again. (I should note that there is confusion about this date; some place it earlier, some later.)

    Lopez was in receipt of a tourist card in Tampa on November 20th. He left for Mexico after the assassination and crossed by car into that country from Laredo, Texas, to Nuevo Laredo on the 23rd. He then registered at the Roosevelt Hotel on the 25th. He then went to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. (Benson, p. 256) On the night of the 27th, he boarded Cubana Airlines Flight 465 to Havana. He was the only passenger, amid a crew of nine. The FBI reports say that in the fall of 1964, he was still in Cuba and had only partly paid back the FPCC loan made to him for the flight to Havana. (Sloan, p. 179)

    Sloan found a daughter of Gilberto from his third marriage, since he married twice while in Cuba. Her name is Lisbette. She told Sloan that Gilberto faked epilepsy to dodge the draft in America. (Sloan, p. 183) He told her that he was in Dallas on the way to Mexico when Kennedy was shot. But he never said anything about being involved with the plot. (Sloan, p. 185) She concluded that her father had been used as a distraction, he was likely misled. When his new family left Havana, they went from Miami to Hialeah and settled in the exile community there. He developed Parkinson’s Disease, became mentally unstable, and she had him committed. He died on July 15, 2021.

    I should add, in addition to this new information, the book contains some rare photos of Lopez I had not seen before.

    The author makes a strained attempt to fit Lopez into the Trafficante orbit. He further strains by then saying that Carlos Marcello controlled Lee Oswald, Sam Giancana had John Rosselli and Lansky and Hoffa controlled Ruby. (Sloan p. 127) As many have stated, the HSCA’s attempt to make Oswald into a kind of Mafia pawn has, to say the least, not stood up: especially in light of the work of the late Phil Melanson and John Newman. As Lee Server, Rosselli’s biographer, has noted, Rosselli was on the West Coast at the time of the murder of JFK, navigating between Vegas and Los Angeles. As per Ruby, most students of the case connect Ruby’s killing of Oswald from Lewis McWillie to Trafficante. I could add other faults: Allen Dulles did not retire quietly after his service on the Warren Commission. (Sloan, p. 161) He hired Gordon Novel to infiltrate and disrupt the Jim Garrison probe. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second edition, pp. 232-35) I also wish the author had elucidated the story attributed to the Tampa Tribune about Vincent Lee, then Director of the FPCC, meeting Oswald in Tampa, Florida, in the fall of 1963. (p. 136)

    It’s a spotty book overall, but Sloan deserves credit for his work on attempting to close the circle on Gilberto Lopez.