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  • 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.

  • Jim DiEugenio on “Jason Olbourne’s 51st State” 10-23-25

    Jim DiEugenio speaks with Jason on how Kennedy’s foreign policy was changed immediately after his assassination, how Lyndon Johnson intimidated Earl Warren into the Lone Gunmen thesis, and who Oswald really was.

    Watch the podcast here.

  • Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 2

    Even Commission lawyers Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert had suspicions about the tall tales of Larry Crafrard and, among other things, his incredible journey from Dallas to Michigan.

    Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 2

    By John Washburn

    LEAD V

    Crafard’s alibi for November 22

    Crafard, when interviewed by the FBI on November 29, 1963, claimed he was sleeping at the Carousel Club during Kennedy’s assassination on November 22. He stated he overslept and was awakened by a phone call from Armstrong at 11:30 am and then again in person between 12:30 and 12:45 pm.

    With Ruby detained for Oswald’s murder, Andrew Armstrong managed the Carousel Club. An African American who handled the bar and cash takings, Armstrong was interviewed by FBI Agents Lish and Wilson on November 25, 1963 (CE5310-A). His testimonies are consolidated as CE5310 A-G here.

    That first interview focused on Jack Ruby, his reactions to Kennedy’s assassination, and a list of club employees. Crafard was not mentioned.

    Agent Lish (CE5310-B) visited Armstrong again that day, and Crafard was of interest, likely after Patterson’s lead. The second interview revealed Crafard had left on Saturday, and his whereabouts were unknown. But Armstrong found and handed over Crafard’s notebook, entered into evidence as CE5230. A typewritten transcript of it was made on November 27, which is on file but not included in the Commission’s evidence.

    FBI Agents Peggs and Zimmerman then made a third visit on November 26 (p.288 WC files, no exhibit). Because Armstrong had found a letter from Crafard’s cousin, Gail Cascadden, which listed her address as Box 303, Harrison, Michigan. Page 288 includes the notebook transcription and a typed copy of Gail’s letter. It was that letter which enabled the FBI to trace Crafard to rural Michigan, where he was found on November 28.

    Only on January 23, 1964, to Agents Sayer and Clements (CE5310-G), did Armstrong provide an alibi for Crafard regarding November 22, 1963. But Armstrong did not then (nor ever) mention Crafard’s claim of being awakened at 11:30 am.

    Armstrong’s improbable journey

    Armstrong lived at Dixon Circle, Dallas, over 4 miles due east from Downtown.

    Armstrong testified on April 14, 1964, that his regular working hours were from 1:00 pm to 1:00 am, and he typically left home at noon to catch the bus from Dixon Circle to Downtown. That would have been the 12/50 bus route along Scyene Road (Dallas City bus map). Armstrong said that he usually unlocked the club just before 1:00 pm and stocked the refrigerator so that the beers would be cold later in the day.

    In his January 23, 1964, FBI statement, Armstrong said that on November 22, 1963, he boarded a bus near his home at 11:53 pm, arrived at Main and Akard at 12:25 pm, missed the motorcade, but saw it was west at Main and Lamar before walking to the Carousel, arriving at 12:30 pm. The Carousel Club was on Commerce near Field, one block south of Field and Main. It would be a 2–3-minute walk from Main and Field to the Carousel.

    He said he took his jacket off and went to the men’s room. When he left there, he said he was curious about hearing sirens and hence got a transistor radio and listened to KLIF Dallas. Then he heard the President had been shot and tried to wake Crafard, but Crafard did not wake. He listened for two minutes more, then heard the President had gone to Parkland. Then he woke Crafard.

    He said that 15 minutes later, Ruby called from the Dallas Morning News and asked, “Had he heard the news?” He then said if “anything happens to Kennedy, the club will close.” He carried on listening until the announcement that Kennedy was dead at 1:30. He said Ruby arrived at 1:45-2:00 pm. Ruby said “what a terrible thing,” and the club would close for 3 days. Ruby made calls. Then he heard the announcement of the death of Tippit. (CE5310-G p320.)

    If Armstrong was on a westbound bus on Main Street, missing the motorcade but still seeing part of it further down (by his description, three blocks down), then there is a very narrow time window in which his arrival can have occurred.

    The Motorcade – running 5 minutes late – entered Main Street at Harwood (at City Hall) at 12:25 pm and was at Field and Main at 12:27 pm, Main and Houston at 12:29, and Kennedy was assassinated on Elm at 12:30 pm.

    If Armstrong was on a bus ahead of the motorcade, he would have observed the entire event. So, to have just missed it, Armstrong would have had to have arrived on Main immediately after the motorcade had, approximately 12:26 pm. But when he testified to the Commission, he claimed to have arrived at the Carousel at 12:15-12:20 pm. That places him at least 5-10 minutes ahead of the motorcade, and he wouldn’t have missed any of it.

    Further, if Armstrong could get from Dixon Circle to Main Street on a noon bus that could get him to the Carousel that quickly, then, on a normal working day, he would be arriving over half an hour too early for his 1:00 pm arrival. Added to which a noon bus from Dixon Circle would be hard pushed to arrive on Main in 20 minutes, even in normal day traffic conditions.

    But Armstrong then undermined his account even further. He testified he got up at 9 am, took the noon bus to see the parade, and stopped at Moore’s Barbers on the way. Merely adding the haircut time would have made it impossible for him to reach Main Street until well after 12:30 pm.

    The Dallas City Directory shows there were two Moore’s Barber Shops, 1124 S Haskell and 1125 Stonewall. Both of those were several blocks north of the Scyene bus route, a ten-minute walk. That detour would add an extra 20 minutes.

    This is what Armstrong said to the Commission about the barbers.

    Mr. HUBERT. And you got to the club about what time?

    Mr. ARMSTRONG. It must time been about 12:15-12:20, or something like that, because when I got downtown I could see portions of the parade, you know, like I got off of the bus at Main and Field- at Main and Akard, I’m sorry, which is the usual stop, I always get off at Main and Akard, and further down you could see portions of the parade, but I felt that I had missed the parade I didn’t realize that I had missed the parade until I was in the barber shop and thought, well, maybe I’ll get downtown, I said to myself, and I will see some portion of it, but when I got downtown I was surprised to see that the parade had moved forward – further down.

    Anyone who’d left home at noon and intended to stop by the barbers shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. With the motorcade scheduled for 12:20 pm on Main, he could not have made it.

    Crafard and the sleep story

    Hubert asked Armstrong if he had called Crafard to wake him up (Crafard’s 11:30 am call claim). Armstrong said no and added that he didn’t usually wake him even if he was asleep upon arrival.

    Armstrong’s account of the events at the Carousel Club was also inconsistent. On January 23, 1964, he told the FBI that he went to the restroom when he heard sirens and learned of the assassination via a transistor radio. He ran to wake Larry, found the door open, but despite his efforts, Larry fell back asleep. Armstrong then returned to the restroom without waking Larry.

    Gary DeLaune, a news anchor at KLIF radio in Dallas, Texas, was the first to break the news at 12:40 pm. CBS-TV, with sound only, started at 12:45 pm. WFAA Dallas started live TV at 12:45 pm with Bill and Gayle Newman, the closest civilian eyewitnesses to the fatal shot to Kennedy’s head.

    Armstrong then said he heard further reports, and 2 minutes later, he went to wake Larry up, and this time, Larry got up and dressed.

    That places Armstrong in the restroom from 12:15 pm to 12:40 pm on one account (for the Commission) and 12:30 pm-12:40 pm on the other (for the FBI).

    However, Armstrong’s inconsistent and impossible ‘alibis’ for Crafard were blown apart by Crafard himself when he testified in Washington on 8th, 9th and 10th April 1964. WC Vol XIV.

    Crafard was actually an early riser.

    Mr. HUBERT. Do you drink much?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Very seldom. I drank, I think, three or four different times while I was there that I drank a beer or two, that was all.
    Mr. HUBERT. So that your heavy sleep on the morning of the 22d couldn’t be attributed to the fact that you had a hangover?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No.
    Mr. HUBERT. Or that you were suffering from any overindulgence in alcohol?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir.
    Mr. HUBERT. You don’t take any kind of sleeping pills or anything like that?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir.
    Mr. HUBERT. So this was just normal sleep?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
    Mr. HUBERT. And his call failed to wake you?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I left the 23d of November, I believe it was.
    Mr. HUBERT. What were your hours there?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Any hours. I would just get up, I usually got up about 8 o’clock in the morning and I would be lucky if I would get to bed before 3:30, 4 o’clock.
    Mr. HUBERT. How come you would get up so early?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Get the club cleaned up.
    Mr. HUBERT. Wasn’t there a man to help?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I took care of that mostly myself

    Mr. CRAFARD. If I started cleaning up at 9 o’clock I would be finished by 11:30.

    Mr. HUBERT. In other words, you had 2 1/2 hours?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

    Mr. HUBERT. Were you then usually free?

    Mr. CRAFARD. No. Jack would come in about 11:30 and be there 2 or 3 hours. After he left I had to stay there and answer the phone.

    Mr. HUBERT. What was the purpose of keeping you around the club after your cleanup job was over?
    Mr. CRAFARD. So far as I understand just mostly answer the phone.
    Mr. HUBERT. Were there many phone calls to be answered?
    Mr. CRAFARD. There was quite a few that would come in–generally, usually, people calling in, would start calling in about 1 o’clock for reservations.

    The cold beer story

    Then, contrary to Armstrong’s account of leaving home at noon on November 22, 1963, Crafard’s testimony put Armstrong arriving at the club at 9:30 am.

    Mr. CRAFARD. Andy woke me that morning. He come in early. Andy always put the beer in and he come in early to do that so that he could have the rest of the day off.

    Mr. HUBERT. What time did Andy come in?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I think it was about 9:30 or something like that.

    Mr. HUBERT. Came in personally?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes. He was there when the President was shot.

    Mr. HUBERT. Were you asleep when he came in?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I was asleep when he came in.

    Mr. HUBERT. Did you waken up when he came in?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I didn’t wake up—Andy woke me up and told me that the President had been shot.

    There seems to be some confusion here. And Hubert should have clarified it. Because if Armstrong came in that early, he could not have told Crafard about the JFK murder. Jack Ruby did little to help.

    Ruby on June 7, 1964, told the Warren Commission party at the jail, regarding his actions when he was at the Dallas Morning News: “I could have called my colored boy, Andy, down at the club. I could have-I don’t know who else I would have called, but I could have. Because it is so long now since my mind is very much warped now.”

    If Crafard was at the club and Armstrong was having a half day, then Ruby would have expected to have called Crafard. Did Ruby think that Crafard was not going to be there?

    Crafard didn’t even sleep at the club towards the end

    Stripper Karen Carlin ‘Little Lynn’, who testified before Hubert on April 15, 1964 (WC Vol XIII), said Crafard did not sleep at the club. She said she worked at the Carousel for 2 months before the assassination, to the end of December 1963, and she worked 7 days a week.

    Mr. Hubert. Do you remember a man that stayed there and slept on the premises?

    Mrs. Carlin. No; I don’t know of anyone that did. Andrew was the only one I knew that ever spent the night there, and that was just because he would say so the next evening. He said, “I am tired.” He said, “I had to stay here all night.”

    Mr. Hubert. I might add that this man Larry’s full name was Curtis Laverne Crafard.

    Mrs. Carlin. Yes. That was a little young boy, the one that worked the lights.

    Mr. Hubert. He stayed on the premises?

    Mrs. Carlin. Yes. But he stayed next door most of the time. I know he was sleeping there for a while, but Jack put a stop to it.

    Mr. Hubert. You mean Jack wouldn’t let him sleep in the club?

    Mrs. Carlin. Jack didn’t like him sleeping there, because there was too many things gone.

    Mr. Hubert. Then he made him go next door?

    Mrs. Carlin. He went next door. I don’t know who was next door or what it was next door, but he went next door.

    Mr. Hubert. But what you heard was that this man had, Crafard, Curtis Laverne Crafard had been staying on the premises, but that Jack had put a stop to it and made him move to some place next door, but you don’t know which next door?

    Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

    Mr. Hubert. Who did you hear this from?

    Mrs. Carlin. It was from Larry. He was taking care of the dogs or something.

    Mr. Hubert. He told you he had to move out?

    Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

    Mr. Hubert. Out of the premises altogether?

    Mrs. Carlin. No. He just said, “I am going to have to move. I can’t stay here. I don’t know where I am going to get the money, but I am going to have to move.”

    Mr. Hubert. That must have happened just before the assassination of the President?

    Mrs. Carlin. Yes. After that I didn’t see Larry no more.

    Mr. Hubert. So to your knowledge he never did actually move, but just said he was going to have to move, and he informed you that Jack had told him he would have to move?

    Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

    Mr. Jackson. When you say move, you mean move out at night and not sleep there?

    Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

    Mr. Hubert. That is what I meant, to move next door, I think is what you meant?

    Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

    (The Jackson who interjected was her attorney.)

    In her FBI statement of November 26, 1963, taken at the Carousel Club to agents Peggs and Zimmerman (Tuesday) CE5318, Carlin said that she’d last seen Ruby at the club the night before the assassination.

    By all that, Carlin didn’t see Crafard at the club after he’d moved out of it, and that was before the assassination.

    “Next door”, may have been the Colony Club. Crafard’s not being at the Carousel Club would be due to his working at the Vegas Club near Lucas B&B, which is where he was seen by Mary Lawrence, as confirmed in Crafard’s November 28, 1963, FBI statement. But Crafard, when he testified, left out any mention of working at the Vegas Club before the assassination.

    Mr. CRAFARD. I have tried to think of what I was doing before, the night before [the assassination], a couple nights before, or something like that. I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary.
    Mr. HUBERT. If it was the ordinary, then I suppose it would have been that the club closed up at its usual hour.
    Mr. CRAFARD. As far as I recall, yes.
    Mr. HUBERT. And you were still sleeping there?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes; I was still sleeping there.
    Mr. HUBERT. So you would have gone to sleep?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes, sir.
    Mr. HUBERT. And then I suppose Ruby would have wakened you?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Andy woke me that morning. He come in early. Andy always put the beer in and he come in early to do that so that he could have the rest of the day off.

    Was Armstrong trying to give Crafard an alibi? But in doing so, Armstrong got tied in knots and created a highly improbable travel time scenario for himself, which Crafard himself seemed confused about.

    Armstrong testified at Ruby’s trial in March 1964 and told the Warren Commission he spoke with Crafard, who also testified for Ruby, in a courtroom corridor. That brief interaction likely did not give them time to align their stories.

    Crafard and the TV

    Crafard claimed to be watching TV after the assassination. Hubert tested him.

    Mr. HUBERT. It was a Dallas station or a Fort Worth station?
    Mr. CRAFARD. It is one there they call the Dallas-Fort Worth, WWTV12, I think it is.
    Mr. HUBERT. KLRD, is that what it is?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t know what station it is. I am not sure whether it was WWTV.
    Mr. HUBERT. How long did you stay there watching?
    Mr. CRAFARD. We turned it up real loud where we could hear it and then listened to his radio, too, where we would hear both of them.
    Mr. HUBERT. Go ahead, what happened next?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t recall exactly what was said except the fact that the President had been shot.
    Mr. HUBERT. How long did you continue to watch it?
    Mr. CRAFARD. We watched it right up until–most of the day, I think, we had the television on there, then, most of the day.

    A remarkably vacant memory for some very eventful testimony by, for example, Bill and Gayle Newman, taking up much of the coverage.

    In CE2430, a very late interview with the FBI on August 27, 1964. Crafard stressed that he was with Ruby when they both heard of the death of Tippit – by name – and the death of Kennedy.

    However, Kennedy’s death was announced at approximately 1:35 pm by TV and around 1:25 pm by radio. There was no announcement of the death of Tippit by name before Oswald’s arrest at the Texas Theatre at 1:50 pm. Indeed, by 2:00 pm, the DPD radio tapes show that Tippit’s wife had not been told.

    Whereas Armstrong in his FBI interview of January 23, 1964 CE5310-G says, correctly, that the name of Tippit didn’t appear until after the official announcement of the death of Kennedy. He said Ruby arrived 15-20 minutes after the official announcement of that, and then made one or two phone calls in about 5 minutes. It was after this, when KLIF mentioned the names of Tippit and Armstrong, he said that Ruby told him he knew Tippit. There is no mention of Crafard.

    LEAD VI

    Crafard and the police badge

    There is also this detail in Karen Carlin’s FBI statement,

    “She said that LARRY attempted to impress her by showing her a badge and telling her that he was a policeman.”

    In my “Death of Tippit article, I suggested that Tippit was waiting at Gloco, the end of the Houston Street Viaduct, to pick up whoever was on the Beckley bus, acting out the narrative that it was the way Oswald was making a getaway from Downtown. When Oswald most likely had actually been driven to the Theater in a Rambler.

    It is also important to remember why Karen Carlin was asked to testify. She was a key witness for the official line that it was her telephoning Ruby for her wages that caused him to be at Western Union opposite City Hall at 11:15 am on November 24 (Sunday), where he then happened on the transfer of Oswald.

    However, she actually said two things contrary to that line. She testified that Ruby said on Saturday, November 23, 1963, “I don’t know when I will open. I don’t know if I will ever open back up. And he was very hateful.”

    That seems to suggest premeditation by Ruby, perhaps having an inkling of the consequences of what he was going to do next, to Oswald.

    Also, when she testified to the Commission, she said that Ruby had said to her on the telephone on the morning of November 24 (she in Fort Worth, he at his apartment on South Ewing), “Well I have to go downtown anyway”.

    Ruby himself, when he testified after his trial, said. “So my purpose was to go to the Western Union–my double purpose but the thought of doing, committing the act wasn’t until I left my apartment.”

    Having a ‘double purpose’ in going to Western Union also indicates premeditation.

    LEAD VII

    The incredible journey. How did Crafard get to Michigan?

    Crafard said he took Routes 66 and 77, passing by Oklahoma City, St Louis, MO, then the outskirts of Chicago, IL. From there to Lansing, MI, Mount Pleasant and then Clare, MI, where he arrived at 9:00 pm on Monday, November 25, and stayed with his cousin, Clifford Roberts. A total distance of 1,282 miles.

    Crafard said that the 59-hour trek began when he decided to leave Downtown Dallas at 11-11:15 am on November 23 (Saturday). He had only $7 on him, he was carrying two bags, and he walked 15-18 blocks until he hitched a ride.

    Remarkably, he said the first ride was from a person he knew from the State Fair, but did not know his name.

    Mr. HUBERT. Did you walk there?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I walked out about 15 or 18 blocks, I think it is, and a guy I had met out at the fair picked me up. He saw me.
    Mr. HUBERT. Did you arrange for him to pick you up?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No; he was going by, he saw me, and he recognized me.
    Mr. HUBERT. What is his name?
    Mr. CRAFARD. How’s that?
    Mr. HUBERT. What is his name?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t remember what his name is. He worked out there for a while. I never did know his name. I don’t think he knew my name. He recognized me as having worked out there.
    Mr. HUBERT. You were on the highway hitchhiking at that time?
    Mr. CRAFARD. That’s right.
    Mr. HUBERT. Did you have a bag?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
    Mr. HUBERT. How large was it?
    Mr. CRAFARD. It was a regular satchel and I had another bag

    Hubert elsewhere displayed incredulity about the tale of rides and the fact that Crafard said he had $7 on leaving Dallas. But he still had $3 left when he left Clare on Tuesday to go to Harrison. –This was to visit his aunt Esther Eaton and cousin Gale Cascadden – where he stayed the Tuesday night and then hitched to Kalkaska (another 85 miles) to stay with his sister Cora Ingersoll, Wednesday night. It was there that he was traced by the FBI, and he was interviewed on the 29th ( the day after Thanksgiving), in the morning at nearby Bellaire, MI.

    Assuming that the first ride from Dallas was around noon, with Crafard saying he arrived in St Louis around 6:00 am on Sunday, then that was 705 miles in 18 hours, averaging 39 mph. 

    Then he said he did St Louis to the Chicago outskirts. I measure that distance as Country Club Hills, where the road bears to Michigan, at about 284 miles. He told Hubert he arrived there at 2 pm on Sunday. That’s 8 hours, averaging 35.5 mph and the whole Dallas to Chicago journey averages 37.6 mph. After that, his description of getting from the Chicago outskirts to Clare breaks down as: to Lansing, 212 miles, then Mount Pleasant, 69 miles and then Clare, 16 miles, arriving 9 pm, Monday.

    That’s 31 hours, averaging 9 mph. Had he averaged 35 mph, he could have done it in 8 hours. But Crafard did not describe any long stops, sleepovers, or waits for lifts. He described near continuous travel. Hubert picked up that the final 16 miles from Mt Pleasant to Clare, according to Crafard, took 12 hours.

    Mr. HUBERT. Then there is some mistake in timing of about 12 hours.

    Mr. CRAFARD. That is what I was saying. I’ve lost some time there

    Mr. HUBERT. It may be that you are making a mistake, Larry. Let’s see if we can’t refresh your memory from the time you got that last long hitch that took you to Mount Pleasant because you remember getting to Mount Pleasant at night, about 8:30.

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

    Mr. HUBERT. And that, you say, is a run of what–about 5 hours, 6 hours?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t believe it would take that long.

    Mr. HUBERT. So if you got there at about 8:30 at night, then either you didn’t get any hitches for a long period of time, or else something else happened.

    Mr. CRAFARD. I’m just trying to—-

    Mr. HUBERT. Because you told us, and if it is not so, why we want you to correct it. Everybody can make mistakes.

    Mr. HUBERT. You said that you picked up this ride at a point 60 miles outside of Lansing and into Mount Pleasant prior to dawn on the 25th. Now, maybe that is wrong. Maybe you got that ride late in the day. Let’s put it this way. Was that a continuous ride straight on?

    Mr. CRAFARD. It carried me straight on through to Mount Pleasant.

    Mr. HUBERT. Did you stop at all?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Not that I can recall. It isn’t that long a run across there.

    Mr. HUBERT. Did you stop for lunch or anything of that sort?

    Putting all into context. Crafard got from Dallas to the Chicago end of Lake Michigan in 1 day 2 hours, 77% of the distance. But he took 1 day, 7 hours to travel 23% of the trip, within Michigan itself. Hubert spotted that the most egregious time discrepancies occur from when he said he missed Chicago by bypassing it.

    Mr. HUBERT. He didn’t take you through Chicago?

    Mr. CRAFARD. No; I bypassed most of Chicago.

    Mr. HUBERT. How did you do that?

    Mr. CRAFARD. On a couple alternate routes.

    Mr. HUBERT. With hitchhikers?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Different rides.

    Mr. HUBERT. Different rides?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

    Mr. HUBERT. How many?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I got three or four different rides in Chicago.

    Mr. HUBERT. With these several rides around Chicago, bypassing it, how long did it take you to get around Chicago?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Probably 2 or 3 hours.

    Mr. HUBERT. And these were all short ones?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

    We can almost see Hubert raising his eyebrows.

    When did Crafard hear Ruby had shot Oswald?

    Ruby shot Oswald on live TV at 11:21 am on Sunday. By Crafard’s described journey, Oswald was shot when Crafard would have been heading to Chicago; then he had 3-4 rides bypassing it, then he took the one to Lansing. That is 5-6 rides, with the opportunity to hear the radio news of the big story, or any of the drivers commenting on it if they’d already heard it.

    Earl Ruby testified (Vol XIV) that he heard at noon that day, whilst on a phone call, that Oswald had been shot. He turned on the radio and, within 10 or so minutes, learned that his brother Jack had done it.

    Therefore, anyone first hearing of the shooting after 12:30 pm on Sunday, November 24, 1963, would know that Oswald was shot, and Ruby had done it. To know the former but not the latter could only have occurred early, between 11:21 am and 12:30 pm.

    So, when did Crafard say he heard that Oswald was shot, and Jack Ruby was the person who did it?

    Mr. HUBERT. When did you first hear that Oswald had been shot?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I had heard that Oswald had been shot Sunday evening.
    Mr. HUBERT. Where?
    Mr. CRAFARD. It must have been while I was getting through Chicago.
    Mr. HUBERT. Where did you hear that?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Over the radio.
    Mr. HUBERT. What radio?
    Mr. CRAFARD. The car radio.
    Mr. HUBERT. Did you know that Ruby had done it?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No; I didn’t find out who had done it until the following Monday, the following morning, Monday.
    Mr. HUBERT. Where did you find that out?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I heard that over the radio.
    Mr. HUBERT. As a matter of fact, Larry, I suppose all of those cars you were in had radios, didn’t they?
    Mr. CRAFARD. A lot of people don’t listen to the radio when they are riding like that. That was the first I’d heard of it—was Sunday evening, the first I heard Oswald had been shot.
    Mr. HUBERT. Sunday afternoon, wasn’t it?
    Mr. CRAFARD. How is that?
    Mr. HUBERT. You said it was while you were working your way through Chicago.
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
    Mr. HUBERT. Which took you two or three different cars; about 2 hours or so?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
    Mr. HUBERT. It was in one of those that you heard it?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
    Mr. HUBERT. There was no announcement that Ruby had done it?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t believe so, because I didn’t know Ruby had done it until Monday morning.
    Mr. HUBERT. How did you find that out?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I heard that over the news.
    Mr. HUBERT. In a car?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
    Mr. HUBERT. During the night when you were driving from Chicago to Lansing, during the period from 5 in the afternoon to about midnight, didn’t you hear any radio announcements about any of this matter?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No.
    Mr. HUBERT. Did that car have a radio in it?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I believe so    .

    Crafard tried to extract himself from that muddle by changing the time he said he was ‘passing’ Chicago to Sunday evening. But in doing so, he created another problem for himself by claiming he didn’t know it was Ruby who shot Oswald until Monday. Clearly, if Crafard had only found out Sunday evening that Oswald was shot, then that news would have also informed him that Ruby did it. After all, Ruby was very well known within the DPD.

    I suggest the reason for the inconsistencies and likely deceptions — which Hubert was having problems with — is because Crafard didn’t bypass Chicago in a hitched ride. He was taken to Chicago itself, and he stayed overnight on Sunday. This was more likely a camouflaged getaway. I would also suggest that Crafard was going to meet someone there clandestinely.

    Because his story did not add up, Crafard was questioned again in the morning of April 10, and put his time of his arrival in Chicago 20 hours later to late morning Monday 24th.

    Mr. GRIFFIN. On that basis, what time would you say that you arrived in Chicago?
    Mr. CRAFARD. It probably would put me in Chicago sometime Monday, about 10:30 or 11 o’clock in the morning.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. When you arrived in Chicago, then you knew that Ruby had killed Oswald?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. And what time did you arrive in Lansing, Mich.?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I believe it was about 6:30 or 7 o’clock Monday evening.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. When you arrived in Chicago did you make any effort to call any of the Rubensteins?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. Did that occur to you?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No; that arrival in Lansing would have been about 3:30 or 4 o’clock. It would have been a couple hours earlier    .

    Despite the ‘correction’ of 20 hours, his times are still all over the place, and he created no reason to know Oswald was shot without knowing Ruby did it. Griffin was rightly suspicious that Crafard was meeting people in Chicago.

    The Man he recognised – with no description

    In that session, when Crafard was asked more about the man, he said he recognised him from the State Fair, and who drove him out of Dallas. But he couldn’t say whether he had hair, or was bald, or wore glasses or not.

    Mr. GRIFFIN. How old would you say this man was?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I would say he was probably in at least his middle forties, more likely in his late forties.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he bald or did he have hair?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t really remember.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he a graying man or what color was his hair?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t remember that either.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you remember if he wore glasses?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you remember what kind of a car he owned?
    Mr. CRAFARD. I believe he had a Chevy. I am not sure.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. How would you describe his physical build, anything remarkable about it?
    Mr. CRAFARD. No; not that I could think of.
    Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he a thin man?
    Mr. CRAFARD. He was about medium build for a man his age and height.

    A question arises as to why Crafard held to the only $7 story, a point of detail that seems, again, improbable. I can only conclude that having little money was essential to the central story he’d hitchhiked, whilst also ruling out the possibility he’d used public transportation. Travel by public transport could invoke a search for witnesses, and would firm up the times.

    The lone fish journey does serve a purpose: it distances him from a team effort. From all that I outlined above, it is more likely that Crafard didn’t hitchhike at all. In my view, he was driven to Chicago and then told to lie low with relatives in remote Michigan, with the hitchhiking story as a cover.

    Having been asked how Crafard knew the route to Michigan from Dallas without a map, he said he’d done it previously, but then gave an irrelevant answer about a prior hitch to Sacramento and Bakersfield with his wife and two babies. That led to more questions about why Crafard’s wife wanted to take her 2 babies (one his, one by a prior marriage) hitchhiking.

    It’s impossible to stitch most things Crafard said to make something sensible out of it. But this was the man who was deceptive about getting to Dallas, the dates when that was, and clung to a dubious story about what he was doing on November 22.

    But the Warren Commission Final Report stated:-

    “An investigation of Crafard’s unusual behavior confirms that his departure from Dallas was innocent.”

    And,

    “Although Crafard’s peremptory decision to leave Dallas might be unusual for most persons, such behavior does not appear to have been uncommon for him. His family residence had shifted frequently among California, Michigan, and Oregon. During his 22 years, he had earned his livelihood picking crops, working in carnivals, and taking other odd jobs throughout the country.”

    That conclusion avoids the fact that Hubert and Griffin exposed Crafard’s account as being full of bizarre improbabilities that seem like cover stories. Working for the FAA in Nevada is excluded from that summary, as was his regular presence in Dallas.

    Whoever drafted those assertions wasn’t reflecting the underlying evidence.

    Click here to read part 1.

  • Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

    Did Ruby employee Larry Crafard impersonate Lee Harvey Oswald in the lead up to the JFK murder?  And did the Warren Commission seriously consider this?

    Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

    By John Washburn

    This article focuses on Curtis LaVerne “Larry” Crafard. Crafard had worked for Jack Ruby from mid-October 1963 at the Carousel and Vegas clubs. Ruby purportedly recruited him from a fairground.

     

    Crafard said he left Dallas late on the morning of November 23, 1963. This would be Saturday, the day after the assassination. He said he did not take his wages owed. He stated that he hitchhiked 1,175 miles to Clare, Michigan. Crafard’s departure was before Ruby had shot Oswald on Sunday, and hence before Ruby was in the spotlight.

    In my prior articles for K&K I postulated that Crafard had a role in the assassination of Kennedy, not as an assassin but impersonating Oswald as part of a frame. An element of that being to act out a fake getaway for Oswald, by getting a downtown bus to Oak Cliff. With Oswald himself having been duped into going to the Texas Theater in a station wagon where he was to be eliminated.

    With that, I assumed things went wrong when Tippit, who was supposed to intercept and protect Crafard’s movement once in Oak Cliff, got cold feet and had to be eliminated. Crafard then had to be taken off the bus and then act out an impromptu part at the Tippit murder scene to make it appear Oswald had done it. It was the mishaps around that which meant Oswald was not killed at the Theater.

    To examine whether that supposition is supportable, Crafard’s movements need to be addressed over an extended period of time, with particular attention to November 22, 1963 itself.

    LEAD I

    Crafard was mistaken for Oswald

     

    A Commission memorandum from Counsels Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin on March 6, 1964, preparing for interviews in Dallas in April 1964, speculated that Curtis Laverne “Larry” Crafard, an employee of Jack Ruby, was used as a look-alike imposter to set up Oswald as a ‘patsy’. What evidence had accumulated for them to think that impersonation might be an issue?

    There had been several reported sightings of Oswald at the Carousel Club in October/November 1963. Hence, indicating a pre-assassination link to the club’s owner, Jack Ruby.

    But any mystery about such sightings should have gone away after a memorandum from Naval Intelligence, not released until September 2017, which dealt with what Robert “Bob” Kermit Patterson, 23, ex US Navy, told the Resident Agent “RA” of Naval Intelligence, Dallas at 13:30 hours on November 26, 1963 (Tuesday).

    Patterson co-owned Contract Electronics, 2533 Elm St, Dallas, and was taken to the FBI that same day, CE2830. Patterson said that he had seen Ruby with Oswald in his shop about two weeks prior to the 26th.

    He said the person had a tattoo on his right forearm, was wearing tight-fitting blue jeans and no jacket, 5’8”-9” tall, 150 lb. He said his colleagues Donald Stuart and Charles Arndt were of the same view. He said Ruby had discussed matters concerning his club and its sound systems. Patterson was shown photographs of six different men and picked out Oswald. Patterson described a 4 by 5-inch notebook and said the names of Stuart and Patterson were added into it by the person on the instruction of Jack Ruby so that Ruby could issue them with passes for the club.

    From getting that lead at lunchtime on November 26, the FBI made several visits to the Carousel Club. It took just six hours for the FBI to establish that Crafard was being mistaken for Oswald, and to issue a request that Crafard be traced, interviewed and photographed.

    That request appears in an FBI teletype message of November 27, 1963. (The term “DASH VICTIM” in the teletype is code for the killing of Oswald.). A short account of that also appears in “the Taylor Memorandum” of November 27, 1963 (Wednesday), where Rear Admiral Taylor, Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote to Admiral McDonald about the Patterson lead.

    A memorandum from CIA officer (later Director) Richard Helms of February 24, 1964 to Hubert and Griffin also said that “Crafard fled Dallas area Saturday. November 23, located in rural parts of Michigan November 28”. (Unpublished WC, Andrew Armstrong file, page 331). ‘Fled’ is not a word to describe someone leaving in normal circumstances.

    The FBI traced Crafard to Michigan via his cousin, Gale Cascadden. She lived in rural northern Michigan (her mother was the sister of Crafard’s father). She said to the FBI on December 16, 1963, that he seemed uninterested in the fact that Ruby had shot Oswald. She also said she and her parents did not understand why Crafard had left Dallas. When she asked him why he’d left, she said he changed the subject. (CE 2429).

    However, none of that information from Naval Intelligence, nor the teletype, appears in Commission files.

    Absent that information from Naval Intelligence, the only route from published Warren Commission records to deduce that Kermit Patterson was the prime lead is to note the similarity between Patterson’s account of November 26, 1963 (Tuesday) in CE2830, and Crafard’s FBI statement of November 28, 1963 (Thursday), taken at Bellaire, Michigan CE5226. The photographs taken of Crafard appear as CE 451, 453 to 456.

    In that statement, Crafard gave examples of what he did for Ruby, he said:

    …on a few occasions during the daytime, he would accompany RUBY around the Dallas area.” “On another occasion, approximately three weeks ago, he went with RUBY when RUBY checked about some sound equipment for the club. This was at an electronics company in about the 2200 or 2300 block of Elm Street.  They were there ten or fifteen minutes and did not purchase anything. this occasion he, CRAFARD, was wearing a suit and he feels they were there at about 3:00 PM or 4:00 PM.”

    Patterson in Dallas on November 26, 1963 (Tuesday) had therefore described a situation which aligned with Crafard’s FBI statement of November 28, 1963 (Thursday) in Michigan, and vice versa.

    Donald Stuart was interviewed by the FBI on November 27, 1963, and confirmed a similar situation. But he was less certain that the person was Oswald. An FBI record of some of Ruby’s personal effects has passes duly recorded for Donald Stuart, pass number #170, and Robert Patterson #171. Thus, by Tuesday, November 26, 1963, the investigating authorities had information to attach to the mystery of some of the Oswald sightings – including at the Carousel Club.

    Mistaken identity, as opposed to false identity, is not uncommon. But what is inexplicable, unless there was something to cover up about Crafard looking like Oswald, is that all other people who came forward afterwards with similar leads were ruthlessly discredited by the Dallas Police and the FBI.

    The sightings reported by Litchfield, Kittrell, Crowe, Lawrence, Friedman and Jarnagin

    Griffin and Hubert noted in their Memorandum to Rankin of March 6, 1964, that Wilburn Litchfield told the FBI on December 2, 1964 – CE3149 – that in early November 1963, at Ruby’s Carousel Club, he’d seen a man who said he was from California in a V-necked sweater, ‘sloppily dressed’, 5’7”-5’9” who looked like Oswald.

    Litchfield had been playing poker on November 24, 1963 (Sunday). He said that he and his associates saw Ruby shoot Oswald on TV, which triggered his memory of seeing Oswald at the Carousel.

    Litchfield didn’t say it was Oswald; indeed, he said the person had acne scar pockmarks on the right side of his chin. That doesn’t fit Oswald. But that does match Crafard, who had also been brought up in California. Hubert and Griffin even recognised, in their joint memo of March 6, 1964, that although the DPD tried to discredit Litchfield, the facts stacked up.

    “It is also known that an employee of Ruby, Larry Crafard, closely resembles Oswald. Litchfield’s story checks out, moreover in other significant details including the description of a man resembling Alex Gruber of Los Angeles, California who is known to have visited Ruby at the Carousel during the period to which Litchfield refers.”

    Litchfield did have a criminal record. Associates of his (CE2889) confirmed what Litchfield said, but the FBI report said that one associate had said Litchfield was a “con man”. But so what, given that his story checked out?

    The ‘sloppy’ dress also matches Laura Kittrell’s evidence (see part 3 of my K&K Death of Tippit article). She said that Oswald himself on October 4, 1962 “looked very military as neat as a pin” and was “trim, energetic, compact and well-knitted” but the second person she saw on October 22, 1963 presenting himself as Oswald behaved badly and said he was “a trifling, shirtless, good-for-nothing lout who sprawled oafishly over his chair”. Thus, in her case, that was an active impersonation of someone purporting to be Oswald.

    William Crowe was a ventriloquist who did a memory man act with the stage name of ‘Bill DeMar’.

    He said he told a newsman he had been at the Carousel Club and saw a man who looked like Oswald, who worked for Ruby at the club. His story broke that day – November 22, 1963 – with the Associated Press agency. He was then interviewed by the FBI in Dallas that same day (page 5 of the Commission file for Crowe).

    He said he had performed at the Carousel Club in early November 1963 and asked 20 members of the audience to call the name of an object, so he could then relay them back by memory.

    He said that after seeing Ruby shoot Oswald on TV, he went to the Carousel Club within the hour, as he was concerned about his equipment stored there. He said he saw a newsman and a television man also trying to gain access, given the shooting of Oswald.

    Thereafter he said he’d been misquoted, and only said the person looked like Oswald. He also said he’d been on stage with lights shining in his eyes. In testifying to the Commission on 2 June 1964, before Hubert, Crowe was shown photographs of Oswald and Crafard. He stated it was a possibility that the man he saw was Crafard.

    Crowe was being discredited as late as June 1964 for being an attention seeker wanting to promote his memory act – CE2995.

    Even CBS reporter Dan Rather (later to be CBS evening news anchor) got dragged into it. KRLD Dallas on November 24, (Sunday) reported that Rather had seen Oswald at the Carousel Club. The Crowe file, held by the Warren Commission, on page 42 has a note of June 11, 1964, setting out how Dan Rather was interviewed by agents after the KRLD report.

    Dan Rather stated that he went to the Carousel Club after Ruby had shot Oswald. He came across Crowe trying to get into the Carousel Club to get his personal effects. Crowe told Rather that he’d seen Oswald there.

    Page 50 has the FBI testimony of Pauline Churchill, manager of the Shady Oaks Motel, Dallas, dated June 12, 1964. She confirmed Crowe was staying at the motel and rushed into her office within 15 minutes of Ruby shooting Oswald to tell her it had happened. Dan Rather and Churchill thus vouched for the spontaneity of Crowe. But Rather said (CE3101) that he thought Crowe was making it up.

    Waitress Mary Lawrence told the FBI on December 6, 1963, that she had served Oswald and Ruby together at the Lucas B&B café, Downtown Dallas, at around 2:15 am on the morning of the assassination. A few days after, she received an anonymous telephone call “telling her to get out of town or she would die”.

    When shown a photograph of Oswald, she said the person she saw had a small scar near his mouth on the right or left-hand side. The FBI Bellaire report states that Crafard had a small scar on his lip. So, Litchfield and Mary Lawrence, rather than trying to make up a story to fit with it being Oswald, did the opposite by describing scarring that Oswald didn’t have.

    An internal DPD memorandum and a more comprehensive record described her as a compulsive liar. The police memo was used to discredit her on the basis that Jack Ruby was banned from there and hence could not have been seen there.

    But Gloria Fillmon told the FBI on December 17, 1963, CE2379, that she had worked for three weeks in November 1963 as a champagne girl at the Carousel Club. She left because Ruby wanted her to be a stripper. She said a day or two before the assassination, at 3 am, Jack Ruby, Crafard, and she had eaten at Lucas B&B, Ruby and she picking up Crafard on the way. Hence, Ruby likely was not banned. Making that even more probable is that Lucas B&B was at the junction of Oak Lawn and Bowser. It was next to the Vegas Club, Ruby’s other outfit. The neon tower sign is still there.

    Crafard’s November 28, 1963, FBI interview (CE5226) states that he worked on the evening of November 21, at the Vegas Club, and went with Jack Ruby to Lucas B&B at 2:30 am on November 22, just as Mary Lawrence said.

    If that weren’t enough corroboration. He also said he went there with Ruby and a woman called “Gloria” at around 3:45 am on November 21, just as Gloria Fillmon said. Hence, DPD and the FBI were calling people liars for saying things for which the DPD and the FBI had had parallel evidence to corroborate and had known the cause of since Patterson’s lead of November 26, 1963.

    Bob Barrett and James Bookhout of the FBI, on December 26, 1963, followed a lead (CE2991) from the incarcerated Jack Ruby, who said Edward Rocco of Cabaret Magazine, who had been a visitor to the club, could be mistaken for Oswald. Ruby obviously knew Oswald’s appearance, given that he’d shot him from close range in the abdomen.

    Rocco was a photographer who had stayed a week in Dallas to take photographs of the Club. Rocco led the FBI to Terry Friedman. Friedman was interviewed by the FBI on July 1, 1964 (CE2991) when he said Rocco had shown him a photograph of the Carousel Club, and Friedman said he thought a person in the front row was Oswald. Out of all of that blossomed numerous photographs of the Carousel Club, included in CE5303.

    The Commission did not publish the photographs in another exhibit ‘Exhibit 5212’, but the Mary Ferrell Foundation now has. The reason they were not published was given as their “questionable taste and negligible relevance”. Questionable taste by ’60s standards is correct. Negligible relevance is not. What Exhibit 5212 contains are several photographs showing Larry Crafard, wearing a suit, seated in the front row at the Carousel Club.

    Therefore, Ruby’s false lead regarding Rocco being the Oswald look-alike still led to an outcome, the photographer was traced, and the photographs were obtained. Ultimately, Ruby revealed for posterity the photographic proof that it was Crafard who could be mistaken for Oswald. Was Ruby dropping clues deliberately?

    LEAD II

    An attorney saw ‘Oswald’/Crafard at the Carousel Club on 4 October 1963 discussing a plot to kill Governor Connally.

     

    Carroll Jarnagin was a criminal law attorney; CE2821 is his FBI report of December 6, 1963, the day after he had written a letter to Hoover. He asked to be kept anonymous. That report merely calls him “Witness”.

    The report said that on October 4, 1963 (Friday), he’d been using the phone booth at the back of the Carousel Club and overheard Jack Ruby talking to Oswald. The matter being discussed was a contract to kill the Governor of Texas, John Connally. He said he then ended his call to eavesdrop on what else was being said.

    Jarnagin had contacted Hoover directly in his letter of December 5, 1963, as he wanted to avoid local press publicity. A good reason for that was that he was an attorney in the criminal justice system and was dating a stripper, Shirley Maudin.

    The DPD put him through a polygraph test on March 2, 1964, which he failed, having been taken by Officer Paul Bentley (who had also been at Oswald’s arrest). Bentley was the chief polygraph examiner for the DPD and concluded Jarnagin had made the story up and had been intoxicated at the club. The DPD and Hoover concluded he was an attention seeker.

    But that just begs more questions. Why would someone seeking attention end his letter to Hoover asking not to be identified? Why not simply test whether he was yet another person who had actually seen Crafard? Why would someone seeking to raise attention regarding the assassination of the President talk about a plot to kill Connally instead?

    People who are intoxicated tend not to remember very much from that time. A tribute piece in a newspaper on his death does say he dedicated his last 14 years to working with Alcoholics Anonymous. Whether he was an alcoholic in 1963 is not known. But alcoholics tend to have a high tolerance of alcohol and don’t necessarily display symptoms of drunkenness.

    The FBI file, which has information to discredit him, states that Shirley Maudin, on December 9, 1963, said that he wasn’t drunk. Jarnagin appears to have been treated in the same way that Kittrell, Crowe, Litchfield and Lawrence were.

    DA Henry Wade knew Jarnagin personally, and in his Warren Commission testimony of June 8, 1964 (WC Vol V), Wade went out of his way not to discredit him too much and avoided using his name.

    Mr. Wade. I didn’t use him as a witness [in the Ruby trial] and after giving him the polygraph I was satisfied that he was imagining it. I think he was sincere, I don’t think he was trying–I don’t think he was trying to be a hero or anything. I think he really thought about it so much I think he thought that it happened, but the polygraph indicated otherwise.

    Had Jarnagin attended Ruby’s trial, his evidence would have been discussed in open court. He may also have encountered Crafard himself, who gave evidence in person at that trial as a character witness for Ruby.

    In his letter of December 5, 1963, Jarnagin also claimed the man he thought was Oswald was called H. L. Lee. But Oswald was alleged to use the alias of Alek Hiddell, and the alleged room booking at 1026 N Beckley was O. H. Lee.

    As my article on that subject for K&K, “Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit wallet”, sets out, there was a Herbert Leon Lee staying at 1026 N Beckley. The FBI, tracking of telephone calls from the telephone box opposite 1026 N Beckley, was in an FBI report (page 23) dated December 9, 1963.

    Therefore, rather than embellishing facts gained as an ordinary member of the public after the event, Jarnagin was coming up with accurate information that was not widely known.

    Two questions emerge from that. How could Jarnagin, in raising ‘H.L. Lee’ on December 5, 1963, have picked at random the name of someone who was at the very place Oswald had stayed at – 1026 N Beckley? How could Jack Ruby have known on October 4, 1963, that an HL Lee would be associated with 1026 N Beckley? A place that Oswald only moved into on October 14, but whose housekeeper was the sister of Ruby associate Bertha Cheek.

    This, from a Dallas Police report, set out more of what Jarnagin said.

    “The man who asked to see Jack Ruby is dressed in a tan jacket, has brown hair, needs a haircut, is wearing a sport shirt, and is about 5’ 9” or 10” in height, his general, appearance is somewhat unkempt, and he does not appear to be dressed for night clubbing.”

    A tan jacket has come up before. This, from my “Death of Tippit” series of articles, is from Dallas Morning News reporter Jim Ewell. He had arrived at the Tippit murder scene and wrote.

    “There was another police car there as they were examining a jacket next to the curb which had apparently been located by one of the policemen after Oswald had thrown it down as he ran toward Jefferson. I had a jacket just like it. I remember it as being a light tan windbreaker. I was with Westbrook as we all went over to examine the jacket because it was the only tangible thing we had at the moment that belonged to the killer. In fact, I held the jacket in my hands. I remember that they were talking about a water mark on it that was obviously made by a dry cleaning shop”.

    A post from Education Forum member Gil Jesus shows that the discarded jacket described and presented in monochrome photographs as CE162 as gray, was in fact tan. My Death of Tippit article for K&K also sets out how the evidence submission document, had a strip strategically placed so as to obscure that it was Captain Westbrook who found it. That document also described that tan jacket as gray. Thus, Jarnagin’s detail of a “tan jacket,” matches a jacket found that Captain Westbrook incorrectly reported as gray.

    The jacket is by Maurice Holman of California, and Litchfield had said the person he saw was raised in California. The jacket Crafard was wearing when photographed in Michigan also appears similar. Jarnagin also said that the person said he had been hitchhiking. Oswald’s history has no evidence of hitchhiking. Crafard’s story did.

    The possibility that Crafard was talking to Ruby about killing Governor Connally appears to have been a step in a very inconvenient direction.

    Lead III

    Crafard ‘s tall tales about when he arrived in Dallas, and his work after he left the military.

     

    Crafard portrayed himself as an easy come, easy go, itinerant hitchhiker acting as a barker for “How Hollywood Makes Movies” (HHMM), a side show at the October Texas State Fair, Dallas, which ran until it flopped. He then went to work for Jack Ruby at the Carousel Club before leaving on November 23, 1963.

    Crafard, in his November 28, FBI interview, said Bob Craven ran HHMM and employed him, and HHMM accounted for him being in Dallas on October 15, living in a tent, and that he stayed with its replacement, a rock and roll show, until approximately October 30, still living in a tent. He said he then moved to work with Ruby on November 1, having first met Ruby on or about October 21. However, Crafard’s story sits alongside conflicting accounts of others regarding the dates involved.

    Robert Craven, a co-producer of HHMM, confirmed to the FBI on November 27, 1963 (Wednesday) that the show ran from October 5 to October 15, with the troupe arriving on September 29, presumably for stage set up and rehearsals. CE1534.

    The Craven interview makes no mention of Crafard, but the interview was before Crafard was found from the Patterson lead. (Unfortunately, the FBI record is truncated at the end.)

    October 4 would be too early for Jarnagin, or anyone, to have seen Crafard as an employee of Ruby at the Club. But Jarnagin didn’t describe an employee, but an unkempt visitor wearing a tan jacket.

    HSCA Vol 9-3G page 1093 has a timeline for Jack Ruby. That states the State Fair opened on October 5, and Ruby visited the side show 3-5 times that day. It states HHMM closed on October 15, 1963, and on October 20, the State Fair closed. It also states Crafard was building a cloakroom at the Carousel Club using lumber from the failed HHMM side show that day.

    Andrew Armstrong, the barman at the Carousel Club, testified he met Crafard when the HHMM show closed and borrowed equipment was returned to the club by Armstrong and Crafard, Crafard showered at the club and moved in.

    An FBI document CE2348 has information regarding Marvin Gardner’s, the show’s electrical technician, interview on November 29, 1963 (Friday).

    Gardner said HHMM ran from October 5, 1963, to closure on October 15, 1963. He said the performers and producers left town on the 16th. He said Crafard was a barker working outside the tent, and when the show folded, Crafard worked outside the tent where a rock and roll show took its place.

    Crafard’s true timeline

    Crafard, in his first FBI statement on November 28, put his working for HHMM as October 15 rather than October 5. He said he worked for Ruby from November 1, but there is evidence he was actually working at the Carousel from October 16.

    With the true timeline, it is possible that what Jarnagin saw on October 4, 1963, was Crafard meeting Ruby, as the fair and show were already in town, both commencing the next day.

    Crafard was also deceptive about his activities from when he left the military in November 1959. Crafard testified on 8, 9 and 10 April 1964 in Washington, before Hubert and Griffin. This is from April 8, when he describes his short time in the military.

    Mr. CRAFARD. I was in Fort Ord for 2 months and then I went to Presidio, San Francisco, where I was stationed at an air defense school for a period of 2 months and then I was assigned to D Battery, 2d Missile Battalion, San Francisco Defense Organization. From there I went to Germany in April of 1959. I was transferred to Germany to Deisley Kersne, and I was stationed with the D Battery, 2d Missile Battalion there. I stayed there until November of 1959 then I was transferred back to the United States where I was discharged November 10, 1959.
    Mr. HUBERT. How long did you serve altogether?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Thirteen months

    Crafard then described staying with his sister in Michigan for 7 months (which takes things up to July 1960) working casually in pulp wood cutting. He then went to his father’s in Dallas, Oregon, for fruit picking for a month, then a cannery for six months and then, worked with carnivals.

    For 1961, he described various fairground jobs, and he extended his account up to 1962, with casual work in California and Dallas, Oregon (as opposed to Dallas, Texas).

    But this remarkable question was then posed, which blew that apart.

    HUBERT. Now, we have some information that you worked for Federal Aviation Agency through July and October of 1960 in Los Angeles?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes; in Los Angeles–I believe they were out of Los Angeles, where I worked for them that was over in Nevada.
    Mr. HUBERT. What kind of work did you do?
    Mr. CRAFARD. Surveyor’s assistant. I had forgotten I had worked for them.

    Nevada isn’t Oregon. A surveyor’s assistant for the FAA isn’t fruit picking.

    Hubert then sprung this on him.

    Mr. HUBERT. Do you remember working for the Teer Plating Co., Dallas, Tex.

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes. Let’s see, I believe it was, I am not certain of that.

    Mr. HUBERT. That was between April and June of 1961, was it not?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I believe so. The way I have traveled around, I had a lot of jobs I even forgot about almost.

    Teer Plating was based on Wyche Boulevard in Dallas, between Love Field Airport and Parkland Hospital. The places in Dallas where Kennedy had arrived and then departed from life. Making it all the more strange that Crafard hadn’t remembered that, given the significance of those places on November 22, 1963.

    Capping all of that, it wasn’t until Hubert then brought up that Crafard had also been in Dallas, Texas in 1961 working for Ablon Poultry that Crafard revealed that he was married, and had met his wife in Amarillo, Texas, in 1961.

    Mr. HUBERT. Did you ever work for Ablon Poultry Co.?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Yes, sir; that was after I was married.

    Mr. HUBERT. That was where?

    Mr. CRAFARD. In Dallas, Tex. At that time I was residing at the Letot Trailer Park with my wife and family.

    Mr. CRAFARD. I was married June of 1962.

    Mr. HUBERT. So your wife lived with you for some time in Dallas, Oreg.?

    Mr. CRAFARD. For about 6 months we was living in Dallas, Oreg., from June 10 until I believe in December.

    Mr. HUBERT. Where were you married?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I was married in Dallas, Oreg.

    Mr. HUBERT. Where was your wife from?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Originally from Texas.

    Mr. HUBERT. Where did you meet her?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I met her in Amarillo, Tex.

    Mr. HUBERT. When? How long before you married?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I believe it was in 1961.

    Mr. HUBERT. What part of 1961?

    Mr. CRAFARD. In the spring, I believe, it would have been in March of 1961.

    Crafard’s approach on each occasion he was caught out is interesting. Rather than doubling down, he gives in. He seems to be confident in knowing he can get away with it.

    The HSCA timeline also sets out that Crafard was in Dallas from March 10, 1963, and from March 21 was at Ablon Poultry and Eggs.

    Meyer Ablon was interviewed by the FBI on December 20, 1963, and that interview appears as CE1275. Ablon was an associate of Ruby and had also owned the Chateau Nightclub, Dallas. Ablon Poultry and Eggs was on Canton Street at the Farmers Market, 7/10th mile from the Carousel Club.

    The story that Crafard was mainly in Oregon after leaving the military was not an accurate one.

    LEAD IV

    Crafard didn’t hitch to Dallas or arrive with the State Fair. He was driven from Memphis by a staff sergeant of an airbase.

     

    How Crafard got to Dallas in October 1963 also has irregularities

    Mr. CRAFARD. I traveled to Dallas, Tex.

    Mr. HUBERT. How did you travel?

    Mr. CRAFARD. With a friend of mine, Mickey Spillane.

    Mr. HUBERT. Mickey who?

    Mr. CRARARD. Mickey Corday.

    Mr. HUBERT. How do you spell the last name?

    Mr. CRAFARD. C-o-r-d-a-y.

    Mr. HUBERT. How did you travel?

    Mr. CRAFARD. Traveled down in his car.

    Mr. HUBERT. Where is he from, do you know?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t know where his home is.

    Mr. HUBERT. Did you know him prior to this time?

    Mr. CRAFARD. I had seen him prior to this time and heard of him prior to this time.

    Mr. HUBERT. I mean it wasn’t a hitchhike?

    Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir; I met him at the fairgrounds in Dallas, Tex., or in Memphis.

    Crafard appears to be playing Griffin with the ‘Mickey Spillane’ (a character from detective fiction). Hubert was astute in breaking the hitchhiker narrative. But also, how can Crafard have met the man who took him on a 9-hour drive to Dallas fairgrounds, at the Dallas fairgrounds?

    The fair that came to Dallas in late September 1963, opening on October 5, had come from Midway, Texas. But if Crafard was driven from Memphis, TN. Midway is not on the route.

    Greg Parker and Mark Groubert writing in an article have identified that a Michael Cordray was a staff sergeant at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth (which is 30 miles from Dallas) and specialized in B-52s and radar systems. The US Air Force had used B-52s in sonic boom tests conducted in Nevada.

    Despite his efforts to camouflage his jobs and locations, Crafard’s job history mirrors Oswald’s—low-level positions mixed with roles involving military connections that might require clearance.

    Click here to read part 2.

  • The Washington Post’s Bomb on George Joannides

    Tom Jackman’s momentous story in The Washington Post has created a Rubicon moment that the MSM will find quite difficult to effectively reverse.

    The Washington Post’s Bomb on George Joannides

    Has the tide turned in mainstream media?

    By: Paul Bleau

    Jefferson Morley spoke with me two days before the story broke. He gave me a scoop. The Washington Post was about to publish an article about a subject he had been working on for years, namely, a story about a mysterious CIA officer named George Joannides. The Post was about to unmask him as an officer who oversaw a Cuban exile group that had direct contact with the alleged lone-nut assassin of JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald. This group, the DRE, had multiple interactions with Lee Harvey Oswald during the all-important summer that preceded the murder in 1963. Joannides would have had to have been informed about these suspicious incidents. This propaganda expert instructed DRE operatives to communicate Oswald’s pro-Castro bona fides to the FBI and media after the assassination. He would later be inserted by the CIA as their liaison for part of the HSCA 1976 investigation. He and the CIA had lied about his profile, and Joannides used his role to obstruct the efforts of HSCA investigators.

    Jeff asked for advice and my help in creating a buzz around this. So, I gladly did, not because Jeff and I are close collaborators, nor because I do not have concerns about the Washington Post and mainstream media as a whole when it comes to talking about their bête noire, nor that I do not have some misgivings about the current focus of the Luna task force on declassification. I helped because the Joannides story is newsworthy and helps tilt the playing field even more in favor of those fighting for the truth. I was convinced that the upcoming article would be a milestone because of the position that a world-leading mainstream media outlet would stake.

    Very simply, we gave a heads-up to key contacts about a scoop on what was about to break. The reactions were immediate: Jeff received many calls, and I was invited by local media for two interviews about the story. Feedback from researcher contacts varied between expressions of mistrust, interest, and offers to spread the news.

    Now that I have seen the article, gone through my interviews, and had a number of exchanges about the pros and cons of the coverage, it seems an opportune moment to discuss the article and the Luna task force’s work.

    The importance of the article

    This article is quite important, despite what anybody may say to attack it. No matter how much one feels disdain towards mainstream media complacency over sixty years, the fact that one of the U.S.’s most important media outlets on political affairs wrote what they did is nothing short of monumental. It is the suspicious mutism of sixty years on this tragedy by the fourth estate that renders what was written by the Washington Post so very compelling.

    Let’s be honest. Mainstream media should have denormalized the Warren Commission narrative of a lone nut assassin scenario still peddled by disinformation artists, history books, and many in the media decades ago. Some instance, in 1975 when the Zapruder film was shown to the world on Good Night America; or a few years later when the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded there was a probable conspiracy; or when declassified documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board the mid-nineties showed that there were a combined total of over 40 witnesses to wounds proving a frontal shot, at both Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where JFK was first treated after being hit, and at Bethesda Medical Center, where the autopsy was conducted; or later when the declassified Lopez Report confirmed that Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City shortly before the assassination and that CIA officials lied and obfuscated about this; and even just recently during the Luna task force congressional hearings where we heard important witnesses and Anna Luna herself decimate the Warren Commission findings with blistering statements…. Mainstream media has largely steered clear of these inconvenient truths.

    Researchers know all about Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program for manipulating the press and gaslighting the public, which likely lost some of its clout with the entry of the new Trump team. Currently, the media must be conflicted by the prospect of exposing their own weak performance on this issue over six decades. With the levy breaking and the traditional malarkey about JFK becoming a growing source of ridicule, the recently declassified Joannides document may have provided an opening to jump ship… Ha! This was not known until now, and it proves the (now defanged) CIA lied and hid stuff… Ergo, it is not our fault, and Luna and Tulsi will not turn on us for saying what is quickly becoming an official government narrative through Miss Luna herself! May as well be the first to spill the beans!

    Is this what is happening? Is the Washington Post showing courage or simply reading the writing on the wall? I don’t know! And I don’t care. A Rubicon of truth has been crossed and will be archived forever. The tables have turned. Now, the real whack jobs are the late Vince Bugliosi and his Keystone Cop disciples who are trying to spin this. They are flailing away. Front page news on the U.S.’s third-largest print media, with 130,000 subscribers to their paper edition and 2.5 million digital subscribers, is nothing to scoff at. Jeff Morley and Congresswoman Luna deserve kudos for bringing us to where we now are. The lone-nut apologists are marginalized, if not a laughingstock, and serious researchers who were a target of derision are vindicated.

    Unprecedented information quality from a news giant

    While the importance of the bearer of news cannot be understated, it is the impact of what was written that will echo far and wide, and hopefully for a long time.

    Some are telling me that while WaPo may have been the ones to break the Watergate story, they are also the ones who shielded the CIA from negative fallout by underplaying the significance of just who the burglars were and their ties to intelligence. My answer to them is that no matter what they may have done or omitted to do in the past, this clearly cannot be interpreted as a redux with what we have seen so far. We will ascertain whether this story has legs and where it may or may not go later. But I see no problem with the all-important first impressions.

    Consider: The title, subtitle and first paragraph are explosive!

    “The CIA reveals more of its connections to Lee Harvey Oswald

    New documents show an officer known only as Howard managed a Cuban group that interacted with Oswald in the months before the JFK assassination.

    For more than 60 years, the CIA claimed it had little or no knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. That wasn’t true, new documents unearthed by a House task force prove.”

    The reader now knows for certain that Oswald was no lone nut and that he was on the CIA radar, and the CIA lied about this. The article goes on to explain the Joannides, aka Howard, affair described above. The quotes come from a variety of important sources, and they are damaging.

    Jefferson Morley, a longtime JFK researcher and former Washington Post reporter, who first sued the CIA for their assassination files in 2003: “The burden of proof has shifted. There’s a story here that’s been hidden and avoided, and now it needs to be explored. It’s up to the government to explain.” And, “At least 35 CIA employees handled reports on Oswald between 1959 and 1963, including a half dozen officers who reported personally to [counterintelligence chief James] Angleton or deputy director Richard Helms.”

    “Joannides began to change the way file access was handled,” committee staff member Dan Hardway testified before Luna’s task force in May. “The obstruction of our efforts by Joannides escalated over the summer [of 1978]. … It was clear that CIA had begun to carefully review files before delivering them to us for review.”

    Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA counterintelligence officer who has delved deeply into the case, said, “This looks a hell of a lot like a CIA operation.” He said a plausible theory was rogue CIA officers created the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, unknown to the agency, and that “the CIA covered it up not because they were involved, but because they were trying to hide the secrets of that period.”

    “We are getting closer to the truth about Oswald and the CIA, but I do think there is more to come,” said Senior U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim of Minneapolis, who chaired the assassinations review board in the 1990s. “The Joannides disclosures are most important, I think.”

    And how about Congresswoman Luna for a grand finale: “There was a rogue element that operated within the CIA, outside the purview of Congress and the federal government, that knowingly engaged in a cover-up of the JFK assassination. I believe this rogue element intentionally turned a blind eye to the individuals that orchestrated it, to which they had direct connections. I think this rogue element within the CIA looked at JFK as a radical. They did not like his foreign policy, and that’s why they justified turning a blind eye to his assassination and those involved.”

    Of note: not one single voice still peddling the lone nut fairy tale is heard from in this article. Perhaps the Post did question some and found them to be lacking in credibility, or could not find a credible dissenting voice to come forward, or simply has come to the conclusion that there is no added value for their readers to hear from empty cans that make a lot of noise.

    If one has worked many years arguing that there was a conspiracy with slow progress being made, what more can one ask for? I ask the skeptics among us: Do you think punches were pulled so far on this particular story to spare the CIA? Has there ever been an article from mainstream media that has gone this far in discrediting the official narrative and their snake oil sales reps? Do you not prefer this coverage over the lopsided coverage lone scenario peddlers used to get? Who looks like foolish tale spinners now? Chalk this up as a win.

    Concluding remarks

    For all the reasons mentioned above and my personal experience with media questioning me about the significance of the Post article, I am convinced that this represents a real victory for our side. It reverses the tables on the disorganized opponents of the truth, and it puts pressure on the whole media industry to state their positions and dig deeper.

    I do have some concerns about where all this goes.

    The article says there is more to come and highlights what Joannides’ field reports on Oswald, the DRE, and the Fair Play for Cuba may reveal. When will we get these?

    Congresswoman Anna Luna is being attacked by the very same forces that many researchers believe are being backed by the CIA. We know the CIA devised a game plan to counter Warren Commission critics, and there are many signs that they still rear their ugly heads. Luna and those advising her need to take advantage of this singular moment in time to unravel these dirty tricks and hopefully reveal and critique the disinformation network. This will defend Luna’s reputation and agenda and pre-empt the sneaky character assassination attempts before they take hold.

    The current information release effort is impressive. Other voices need to be heard, including specialists respected for their knowledge and professionalism, and excluding loose-cannon know-it-alls as well as lone-nut water carriers. There is a legitimate fear, I believe, by some that the Luna task force endeavors are too centric on CIA misdirection and a couple of individuals rather than focused on the mechanics of the conspiracy. My analysis of files, including many recent ones, points in directions worthy of more exploration. They say a lot about the who, what, when and why of it all. Anna Luna needs guidance, and the gatekeepers, yes, this includes you Jeff, need to know what lanes to occupy and who should be brought in. It seems to me that people like Jim DiEugenio and Malcolm Blunt could be credible advisors who could enrich Luna’s sources of information.

    It would be an error to try to find a limited hangout to protect the image of the CIA. This will only prolong the pain. On the other hand, the marketer in me understands that perception is reality and reputational risk is high. However, there are more than enough examples of rebranding and new imaging efforts that have successfully saved products and organizations that were in a tailspin. Many have gone on to see these thrive. Old Spice did it, George Bush Junior was born again, and CIA 1963 no longer exists, just like those who created the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In this volatile world, CIA 2025 is needed more than ever.

    Finally, this murder is not solved. Investigations have been continuously sabotaged. Obstruction of justice in this case has been around for more than sixty years. There are still many stones that have been left unturned. A new investigation is in order, a genuine one. The Department of Justice right now has serious credibility issues due to the Epstein debacle. To lead one, I nominate Congresswoman Luna. Jefferson Morley needs to be complemented by a synergetic mind who excels in areas where Jeff is less at ease. Here, I would suggest Jim DiEugenio, who, through his research network, knows who the specialists are on the Secret Service, the Tippit assassination, Jack Ruby, the JFK Act, etc. What a formidable team this would be!

    (Tom Jackman’s Washington Post article may be viewed here, but you may have to create a free account to view)

  • The JFK Files Volume II: Pieces of the Assassination Puzzle

    Jeff Meek is the only American journalist writing a regular column on the JFK case. This is his second collection of his work on important subjects like Gaeton Fonzi and Jim Gocheanaur.

    The JFK Files Volume II: Pieces of the Assassination Puzzle

    By Jeffrey Meek

    Jeffrey Meek is the only writer I know who is allowed to pen a regular column on the JFK case. He writes for the Hot Springs Village Voice newspaper. He has now published his second collection of articles from that paper and added two long essays he wrote for the new version of George magazine. I have previously reviewed his first collection on this site. (Click here for that critique https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-jfk-files-pieces-of-the-assassination-puzzle)

    The main title of this anthology is The JFK Files, Part 2. This second collection leads off with an interview of the late Jim Gochenaur. People who have watched Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited will know who Jim was. Jim was interviewed by the Church Committee. As the witness says here, and he said to Stone off-camera, that interview transcript went missing. When he arrived in Washington, he was first interviewed by staffers Paul Wallach and Dan Dwyer, and then by Senator Richard Schweiker himself. Schweiker, of course, made up half of the subcommittee running the inquiry into the JFK case for Senator Frank Church. The other half is Senator Gary Hart.

    What makes that loss even odder is that the man he was interviewed about, Secret Service agent Elmer Moore, was also brought in for an interview. The transcript of that interview is available. Jim met Moore back in early 1970 in Seattle when he was doing an academic assignment concerning the JFK case. The following year, he went to visit Moore in his office. Moore agreed to talk to him about his Secret Service inquiry into the JFK case, which began about 72 hours after Kennedy was killed. But he would only speak to him on condition that he took no notes or made no tapes, and he understood that if anything he said appeared in public, Moore would deny it. (p. 5)

    Since most of this site’s readers have seen Stone’s documentary, I will not repeat the things that Jim said on camera for this review. There are some things that Stone and I did not cover in that interview (we did that one jointly). For example, Jim told Jeff that Moore considered George DeMohrenschildt—nicknamed The Baron–a key player in the case. But unfortunately for Moore, he could not get access to him once President Johnson put the FBI in charge of the investigation. Moore also told Jim that he could not understand why Captain Will Fritz did not make a record of his questioning of Oswald, since he knew that there were two stenographers on hand for the Dallas Police. (p. 6). Moore also had a print copy of one of the infamous backyard photographs of Oswald with a rifle and handgun. Jim noted that one could easily see a line through Oswald’s chin. I don’t have to inform the reader why that is of central importance.

    Jim was also interviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Strangely, that was only a phone interview. Even though the HSCA lasted much longer than the Church Committee and was a direct investigation of the JFK case, the Church Committee was chartered with only inquiring about the performance of the FBI and CIA for the Warren Commission. But further, Jim said they were more interested in another acquaintance he made in Seattle, namely, former FBI agent Carver Gayton. Gayton had told him that he knew James Hosty–whom he met after the assassination. The former Dallas agent told Carver that Oswald was an FBI informant. (p. 11) This action by the HSCA is odd since Jim always insisted that Moore was a more important witness than Gayton was. This two-part interview with Jim Gochenaur is one of the volume’s three or four high points. Made all the more important and poignant since Jim has passed.

    II

    Another interesting interview that Jeff did was with a man named Lee Sanders. Sanders was on the Dallas Police force at the time they were participating in a reconstruction of the assassination. This was for the acoustics testing that the HSCA did towards the end of their term. Sanders was involved with crowd and traffic control during a five-day assignment. Live ammunition was being used in these tests. (p. 49)

    Sanders said that the DPD’s best marksman, a man named Jerry Compton, took part in the tests. He and an FBI sharpshooter took their shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Between test firings, Compton would come down out of the building. Sanders overheard Compton say that they were having problems repeating what the Warren Commission said Lee Oswald had done. As Meek writes, “The scuttlebutt from other officers was that there must have been other shooters.” (p. 49). Sanders then added, “We just didn’t think that one guy could have done this. We didn’t say that in public because it wouldn’t have been good for your career, not if you wanted to stay in good stature with the department.”

    Meek interviewed former Commission counsel Burt Griffin about his 2023 book, JFK, Oswald and Ruby: Politics, Prejudice and Truth. As an interviewing journalist, Meek is rather merciful with Griffin. His technique was to let him burn himself. Griffin tells Jeff that Jack Ruby shot Oswald out of anti-Semitism. He wanted to be seen as an avenger due to the infamous black bordered ‘Wanted for Treason’ ad in the papers. That was signed by a Bernard Weissman. This is Griffin’s money quote about Jack Ruby: “He was convinced at the time, and for the rest of his life, that antisemites were involved, with the goal being to blame the Jews for the president’s assassination.” (p. 56) Griffin properly labels this as his conclusion. He then adds that Jews were being blamed for the attack on General Walker in April of 1963. He then states, “So, antisemitism was an important factor in Dallas at the time.”

    Griffin then continues in this nonsensical vein by saying that there is no evidence that anyone else was involved in the JFK assassination except Oswald. He then adds the antique adage that the Commissioners always use: that the Commission’s goal was to locate a conspiracy. And if he could have done so he would have had an acclaimed political career. Meek does not say if he giggled during these comments. I assume he did not. His goal was to keep Griffin spouting these absurdities, which Griffin did by using Howard Brennan as a reliable eyewitness to the assassination.

    Something puzzling comes up next. It appears to be Griffin who surfaces the fact that the Commission has Jack Ruby entering the basement through the Main Street ramp. The book says that Sgt. Patrick Dean was the head of security, and Dean said no, Ruby did not come down that ramp. ( Meek, p. 57) But if one reads the Warren Commission volumes, one will see that it was Dean who was the first person to say that Ruby proclaimed he did come down the Main Street ramp. And this was right after the shooting. This information is also contained in Paul Abbott’s recent book about the shooting of Oswald by Ruby. (Death to Justice, pp. 226-27) In fact, Abbott implies that Dean might have manufactured this quote by Ruby since, initially at least, no one else heard it. It did not catch on as a cover story for the DPD until November 30th. (ibid) In fact, according to one disputed journalistic account, Dean even said he saw Ruby come down the ramp, which was not possible. (Abbott, p. 229).

    But here it states that Dean said that Ruby did not come down that ramp. It was then this dispute that caused a blow-up between Griffin and Dean. (Meek, p. 57). But yet in Seth Kantor’s book on Ruby he has excerpts from some of Griffin’s contemporaneous memos. This is what one of them says:

    If Dean is not telling the truth concerning the Ruby statement about coming down the Main Street ramp, it is important to determine why Dean decided to tell a falsehood about the Main Street ramp. (p. 288)

    In that memo, Griffin wrote that he thought Ruby came in some other way. And that Dean, who was responsible for security that day, “is trying to conceal his dereliction of duty.” In fact, Griffin even theorized that Dean “simply stated to Ruby he came down the Main Street ramp.” Evidently, through the intervening decades, something got lost in translation or dissipated down the memory hole.

    III

    One of the most fascinating tales in the book was not directly told to Meek. He relates it from an MSNBC show in 2013, an interview with HSCA staffer Christine Neidermeier. She said there was a lot of pressure for the committee to downplay any talk about conspiracy. It also became clear that it was going to be difficult getting straight answers from the CIA, and to a lesser extent, the FBI. (p. 69)

    She then related that she got a call from a man she thought was an FBI agent. Because he seemed to know everything she had told another agent. One of the things she said was that she leaned toward the conspiracy verdict since the HSCA could not duplicate what Oswald did in their rifle tests. The caller then revealed that he knew all about her classes at Georgetown, and also some of her friends. He then said that, with such a bright future ahead of her, maybe she should rethink her position. Niedermeier said this call rocked her back on her heels.

    Three other highlights of the book are interviews by Meek with Morris Wolff, Dan Hardway and Marie Fonzi.

    Wolff was a Yale Law School graduate who was employed by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy in his Office of Legal Counsel, where he worked on civil rights, and also contributed to the famous Peace Speech at American University. (Meek, pp 74-75) According to Morris, he was also a bicycle messenger between the AG and the president when Bobby wanted to get around J. Edgar Hoover. After JFK was killed, Bobby suggested that he go over to the staff of moderate Senate Republican John Sherman Cooper. According to Morris, when Cooper served on the Warren Commission, he was strongly opposed to the Single Bullet Theory. (p. 71)

    The interview with Dan Hardway was for a three-part review of the investigations of the JFK case by the federal government. HSCA staffer Dan tells Jeff that, at first, he and his partner Ed Lopez were stationed at CIA headquarters and allowed to have almost unrestricted access to requested files. That changed in 1978 when Scott Breckenridge, the main CIA liaison, told the HSCA that they were bringing in a new helper, namely George Joannides. George was coming out of retirement. And he assured the HSCA that he had nothing to do with the JFK case back in the sixties. (p. 150)

    As most everyone knows, this was false. Joannides was a CIA propaganda officer who was instrumental in running the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) faction of anti-Castro Cubans in New Orleans. And they had many interactions with Oswald in the summer of 1963. It was around the arrival of Joannides that Dan and Ed were moved out of the CIA offices and into a new building with a safe, and then a safe inside the larger safe. They would now have to wait for files and would get them with missing sentences. They would then have to turn over both the files and their notes into the safe at night. This might indicate that the pair were getting too close to Oswald’s association with the CIA and what really happened in Mexico City, which were the subjects they were working on.

    IV

    The closing three-part essay is an exploration of the life and career of the late Gaeton Fonzi. It is greatly aided by the extensive cooperation Meek had with his widow, Marie. Gaeton Fonzi began as a journalist, first for the Delaware County Daily Times and then for Philadelphia magazine. It was his meetings in Philadelphia with first Vince Salandria and then Arlen Specter that got him interested in the JFK assassination. After consulting with Vince, he was prepared to ask Specter some difficult questions about the Single Bullet Theory, which was the backbone of the Warren Report. Fonzi was troubled by Specter’s halting replies to his pointed questions. (pp. 172-73). He then wrote an article about this for Philadelphia called “The Warren Commission, The Truth and Arlen Specter.”

    In 1972, Gaeton moved south to Florida. He began working for Miami Monthly and Gold Coast. In 1975, he got a phone call that would have a great impact on his life and career. Senator Richard Schweiker was from the Philadelphia area and had apparently heard about Fonzi’s article about Specter. He and Senator Gary Hart now made up a subcommittee of the Church Committee. Their function was to evaluate the performance of the CIA and FBI in aiding the Warren Commission. Schweiker was inviting Gaeton to join as chief investigator, which he did.

    In only one year, that committee made some compelling progress. The combination of their discoveries and the broadcast showing on ABC of the Zapruder film helped cause the HSCA to be formed. Fonzi continued his work there and was hot on the trail of CIA officer David Phillips. That pursuit actually began under Schweiker. And when the HSCA began, the first Deputy Counsel on the Kennedy side, Robert Tanenbaum, went to visit the senator. After a general discussion, Schweiker asked Tanenbaum’s assistant to leave the room. The senator then opened a drawer and pulled out a folder made up largely of Fonzi’s work. He handed it to Tanenbaum and said, “The CIA killed President Kennedy.” (click here https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/robert-tanenbaum-interviewed-by-probe) That file is what got Fonzi the job with the HSCA.

    As we all know, once Tanenbaum and Chief Counsel Richard Sprague were forced to resign, the writing was on the wall for that committee. And Fonzi did a very nice job outlining this in his memorable book, The Last Investigation. That book was presaged by a long article Fonzi did for Washingtonian magazine, which had a significant impact on the critical community. (p. 174) Fonzi clearly implied in both the article and the book that the findings in the HSCA report were not supported by the research that the committee conducted. When the Assassination Records Review Board ordered the HSCA files declassified, this was proven out in spades.

    A column that Meek apparently got a lot of reaction to involved an interview with this reviewer. It was about John Kennedy’s evolving foreign policy views from 1951 until his death. This included his visit to Saigon and his signal 1957 speech on the Senate floor about the French crisis in Algeria. (p. 103) No speech Kennedy made up to that time elicited such a nationwide reaction as the Algeria address. The Africans now looked to Kennedy as their unofficial ambassador. Meek follows through on this with the Congo crisis: how Kennedy favored Patrice Lumumba, while Belgium and the CIA opposed him. This was at least partly the cause of Lumumba’s death in January of 1961, about 72 hours before Kennedy was inaugurated.

    There are two essays that I find problematic. The first is with Antoinette Giancana, daughter of Chicago Mafia chieftain Sam Giancana. As I have been at pains to demonstrate, the Mob had nothing to do with either Kennedy’s primary win in West Virginia or the result in the general election in Illinois. Dan Fleming proved the former in his important book Kennedy vs Humphrey, West Virginia, 1960. He conducted extensive interviews and found no evidence of any Mafia influence on anyone. And he also outlines three official investigations of that election, on a state level, on a federal level, and one by Senator Barry Goldwater, which all came up empty. As per Illinois, Professor John Binder did a statistical study showing that, in the wards controlled by Giancana, not only did the results not show his support for Kennedy, they indicated the contrary: that he might have discouraged voting for candidate Kennedy. That essay first appeared in Public Choice, and it has been preserved at Research Gate.

    The second essay I find problematic is the one dealing with the whole Ricky White/Roscoe white imbroglio from the early nineties. In August of 1990, Ricky White was presented as the son of the Grassy Knoll shooter, namely Roscoe White. Roscoe was also supposed to have killed Patrolman J. D. Tippit. Meek bends over backwards to be fair to Ricky White. I will not take up space to deal with all the problems with this story. But for a contrary view, I include a link to Gary Cartwright’s 1990 article critiquing this concept. (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7560/711990-014/html?lang=en)

    All in all, Jeff Meek has done some good work. We are lucky to have him toiling in the vineyards of the JFK case oh so many years afterwards. I hope he keeps it up.