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JFK: Absolute Proof New Evidence of Conspiracy in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (The Killing of a President, Volume Ill)
CONSPIRACY PUBLICATIONS, LLC Published by Conspiracy Publications, LLC 3700 Broadway Suite 300 Kansas City, MO 64111 Contact: [email protected] First published in 2013 by Conspiracy Publications, LLC. ISBN# 978-0-9849057-5-1 LCCN# 2013940037 10987654321 Copyright © Robert J. Groden, 2013. All rights reserved.
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Also by Robert Groden
The Killing of a President Volume I The Assassination, The Conspiracy And The Cover-up
ACOMPREHENSIVE PHOTOGRAPHICRECORD
The Killing of a President Volume II The Search For Lee Harvey Oswald
Dedication Christine Ann Groden: January 31, 1949 - September 7, 2011 There are many people who must be acknowledged in this volume, but most of all I must thank my wife Christine. Without her support and help for more than forty years, I could not have accomplished my work on the Kennedy case. My release of the visual materials including the Zapruder film, could not have happened without her courageous support. She shared all of the threats and danger and never challenged my decisions, nor did she ever complain. Also, to our four children: Robbie, John, Michael and Melanie, who gave up so much time with their father and sacrificed much so that America and the world might know the truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. To Melissa, Rob, and Jess, I love you all. And finally to my wonderful grandchildren Paige, Katie, Isabella, Anastasia, and Ava for the immense joy you give to me. Bless you all. I started my work investigating the assassination a half century ago in 1963. Just after my 18th birthday, which fell on the very day of the assassination, November 22nd. I did not go public until February of 1975, more than eleven years later. To those who became visible to the public before me, I salute the courage of all of you. There are far too many to name all of those who deserve thanks here, but here are just a few that I must mention: Harold Weisberg, Josiah Thompson, Dr. Cyril Wecht, Vincent Salandria, Sylvia Meagher, J. Gary Shaw, Richard Sprague, Larry Harris, Penn Jones, Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Jerry Policoff, John Judge and so many more. To the many who have followed the path as well. Also to those who have given so much to help me in this 50-year quest for the truth, Phil Singer, Marshal Evans, Moses Weitzman, Brad Kizzia, Roger Feinman, Jim Lesar, Mike Frankel, Dick Gregory, Congressman Thomas N. Downing, Jan Stevens, Gary Krupkin, Robert Tanenbaum, Beverly Massegee, Oliver Stone, Eric Bushman, Marye Makay and her family and many, many more. And of course, to Kathy. To Yun Kim, the brilliant graphic artist who designed this book with me. Without Yun, this book would not exist. And to Deborah Wolfe, Larry Sells and Will Leathern for their help and editing. For their immense legal assistance, Brad Kizzia and Michael LeVota. Quarterage (The Q) Hotel for it's K.C. hospitality. Finally, to President Kennedy and to the nation we might have become without the tragic loss of this great man of courage and vision.
v
JFK: Absolute Proof New Evidence of Conspiracy in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
(The Killing of a President, Volume III)
NOTE: The above photograph was taken by the author during the filming of Oli ver Stone's epic movie, JFK. Notice the result of the "smokeless gunpowder" whi ch shows the accuracy of the statements of the many Dealey Plaza witnesses who spoke of seeing the gun smoke on the knoll.
Conspiracy Publications, LLC
VI
Table of Contents Foreword
ix
Introduction
xii
Chapter 1
Proving the Conspiracy: The Amazing Smoking-Gun Document ......................................................... .
01
Chapter 2
Setting Up the Patsy and the Two Mrs. Reids ............................................................................................ .
19
Chapter 3
A Photographic Record of the Assassination ............................................................................................ ..
31
Chapter 4
The Aftermath: The Cover-Up Begins ......................................................................................................... .
67
Chapter 5
Too Many Shots, Too Little Time: Disproving The Single-Bullet Theory .............................................. .
81
Chapter 6
There Were Two Fatal Head Shots: New Photographic Proof ................................................................... 107
Chapter 7
The "Missing" Zap ruder Film Frames .. ...... .. .... .. .... .... .. .... .. ...... .... ................................ .......... ........ .... .... ...... 117
Chapter 8
Now Hear This! The Acoustic Testing ......................................................................................................... 123
Chapter 9
The Best Medical Evidence ............................................................................................................................ 141
Chapter 10
The Complete J.F.K. Autopsy Photo Archive .............................................................................................. 161
Chapter 11
J.F.K:s "Missing" Brain .................................................................................................................... ................ 185
Chapter 12
The Guilty Men: Conspiracies In Both The Murder and The Cover-Up ................................................. 197
Chapter 13
A History of the Cover-Ups ........................................................................................................................... 209
Chapter 14
The Death of Lee Harvey Oswald: Never Before Seen Photographs ........................................................ 229
Chapter 15
Mysteries, Myths, and Questions - Some Resolved ..................................................................................... 241
Chapter 16
Fighting Back To Set The Record Straight ........ ........................................................................................... 313
Chapter 17
Courtroom Battles and Reprisals ................................................................................................................. 327
Index
Vil
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JFK: Absolute Proof New Evidence of Conspiracy in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (The Killing of a President, Volume III)
Robert J. Groden www.JFKmurder.com
Book Cover Design & Layout by: Yun Kim Vl ll
FOREWORD by Josiah Thompson and Robert Blair Kaiser, were there as well as some friends from the old days. I asked researcher and media expert Jerry Policoff whether my old friend Sylvia Meagher was coming and Jerry said he didn 't know. The buzz came from a showing of the Zapruder film by a young man in his twenties, Robert Groden. This wasn 't just any copy of the Zapruder film. It was a copy that was infinitely better than the muddy copies that had begun circulating out of the Garrison investigation and the Shaw trial. It combined sections from the Muchmore and Nix films with several runs (some close-up, some fullframe) of the Zapruder film. The film highlighted what appeared to be the back of an individual's head and what looked like the outline of a rifle hidden behind a clump of bushes several feet in front of Zapruder 's pedestal. I saw that and said to myself, "Well, that's crapola. No one could have fired from there and gotten away with it since that was no
Josiah Thompson at the Committee To Investi ga te Assassination s symposium at Georgetown Uni versity in November of 1973, when we first met.
I first met Robert Groden in November of 1973. Back then, I hadn't had much to do with the Kennedy assassination investigation for several years. The GarrisonShaw trial had soured me on the whole thing and I'd spent the last few years working away as a young professor at Haverford College near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I'd spent a year in Denmark writing a critical biography of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and then returned to Haverford. The Kennedy assassination drifted farther and farther away. However, this was something special. November 22, 1973 was the tenth anniversary of the shooting. Bud Fensterwald, the Director of The Committee To Investigate Assassinations, had just organized the very first conference on the event to be held at Georgetown University. It would be interesting, I thought, to learn what had happened over the last several years. I took the train down to Washington. Friday night, Bud held a party at his brownstone home in Georgetown, Virginia. A few notables such as Norman Mailer IX
more than a few feet from Abraham Zapruder and Marilyn Sitzman." But the resolution and quality of the film were extremely high . I wondered how Bob Groden had gotten hold of his copy. I heard at the party that, after the first showing of the film, Chicago investigator Sherman Skolnick had accused Groden of being a CIA plant simply because no one else had been able to get such a good copy of the film. I wanted to meet Groden and tell him we were part of the same fraternity : years before Vince Salandria and Ray Marcus were claiming that I was CIA. That night Bob Groden was in full 1970s garb: sport jacket, turtle neck shirt and slacks with Jong sideburns. He seemed like an interesting guy about ten years younger than me. He said a few nice things about my book, Six Seconds In Dallas, and I got him talking about his film. He explained how the close-up run of the film had been "stabilized." He had rephotographed each frame centering it on JFK's right ear. This made the frames flow together and the whole film much clearer to watch. The head-shot sequence, as it always does, drew a gasp from the audience. Groden told me that this was the first public showing of the film he had obtained years before and had been working on ever since. He also mentioned that he had been born on November
22nd. I thanked him for all he had done and told him I thought his copy of the film was quite wonderful. I hoped his showing of the film would bring public attention to it. Later that night, I asked myself, "Who is Robert Groden and how did he get his copy of the Zapruder film?" It was years later that I got the answer. In 1969, Bob Groden was working for A-1 Record Sales in New York. They had offices in midtown Manhattan on Tenth Avenue. In June, he lost his job and went to the New York State Employment Office. The employment agency counselor asked him if he knew anything about photography. He told her that he knew his way around a dark room and had done some still photography. However, he didn't know much about motion picture film. She said that her boyfriend's best friend had something to do with an optical effects firm and that they were looking for a trainee. That firm was Moses Weitzman 's "EFX Unlimited." They did motion picture optical effects (dissolves, fades, titles) for the film and TV industry using 35 mm, 16 mm, super 8, and regular 8 film. Groden applied and was hired immediately. It turned out that Moses Weitzman and Groden shared an interest in the Kennedy assassination. Weitzman pointed out that back in 1967 or 1968, he had been asked to do some work on the camera original Zapruder film by TimeLi fe (Life Magazine). They wanted their 8 mm original blown up to 35 mm and Mo 's was the only optical house in New York City that could do this . Weitzman had kept a 35 mm color negative and print and a 16 mm color print of the film. He showed these to Groden and within a few months gave them to Groden. Weitzman may or may not have had other copies. As a thank you, Groden gave Weitzman a copy of Six Seconds In Dallas he had purchased for $1.98. All this happened in 1969. Groden and his wife, Chris, were married in May, 1968. They were living in New Jersey.
In the early 1970s, Groden worked on the film using his stabilization technique and the skills he had learned from Weitzman. Also in the early 1970s, cigarette commercials were banned from television and Weitzman lost about 40%
Moses Weitzman
of his business. Groden was laid off. He went on to other jobs but kept working away on the film. Before showing it publicly, he received permission from Weitzman to show it. Weitzman only asked Groden to make sure he, Weitzman, wasn't connected in any way to the showing as it might be bad for his business. That's the way things stood when Bob Groden and I met in November, 1973. Later on in the mid 1970s, Bob, on two separate occassions, worked on the camera original Zapruder film again and improved on his original work. Fifteen months later, he showed the film publicly for the second time. This was at the Assassination Information Bureau conference at Boston University. This turned out to be a big occasion. Thousands attended. The press covered it in detail. When the film was shown, some press people photographed it off the screen and clips of it were shown on local news programs. Social Activist Dick Gregory was at the conference. He said to Groden, "Let's take it to the Rockefeller Commission." David Belin of the Warren Commission staff was its Executive Director and could be expected to object to the showing of the film. Gregory, however, succeeded in making the arrangements and Groden showed the film to the Rockefeller Commission staff. Bob ended up testifying under oath for several days before Executive Director Belin and Senior Counsel Robert B. Olsen. In the whole investigation of the Kennedy case, there are certain pivotal moments and certain pivotal actors. One of x
those times is 1975 and Bob Groden is one of those actors. His showing of the Zapruder film on national television clearly led directly to the reinvestigation of the case by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. It was the showing of the Zapruder film on television and before Congress as a whole that brought about enough public outcry to pressure Congress into a new investigation. It was one moment in that film, the grisly moment when President Kennedy is hit in the head and bowled over backward, that moment above all that didn't square with the official story. That moment, the climax of the film, was never mentioned in the 888 pages of the Warren Report or in its 26 volumes of Exhibits and Hearings. When muddy copies of frames from the film were published in one of the Warren Commission volumes, two frames were switched making a backward snap look like a forward movement. When Groden showed the film on national television, that violent moment was imprinted on the national psyche. There was no going back. The House Committee's investigation, in tum, led to the discovery of the acoustics evidence and the conclusion that two gunmen fired on the limousine. Although the House Committee ducked the full import of what it had discovered, the Kennedy case would never be the same. From the beginning in the mid-sixties, the engine of change has been private individuals. Vince Salandria, a lawyer for the Philadelphia School Board, wrote the first devastating critiques of the Warren Commission's treatment of evidence. Sylvia Meagher, a researcher for the World Health Organization, followed up with a comprehensive indictment of the Commission's mistakes. The list goes on... Harold Weisberg, Penn Jones, Paul Hoch, Mary Ferrell, Ray Marcus, Maggie Field ... these are only some of their names. None of these people were journalists or public functionaries. They were little people who would not accept the pablum handed out by their government. Yet they provided the fundamental engine of change. Great work was done by private individuals both before and after 1975, but that year remains pivotal in the history of the case because that was the year Bob Groden provided the impetus to make a new investigation inevitable. He should be honored for it. XI
With JFK: Absolute Proof; he has put together an enormously useful book. As with his former volumes, this book will quickly become a reference work in discussions of the case. He and I disagree over some of the interpretations of evidence put forward in this book. That should come as no surprise, since at the very outset of my study of the case, Vince Salandria and I began disagreeing over evidence within months of starting work together. Last June, Bob Groden and I had breakfast and dinner together in Dallas. We talked over old times and then, of course, began discussing the case. It came as a shock to learn that some years ago and for completely different reasons we each had changed our minds about the frames surrounding and following Zap ruder film frame 313, that grisly image so recalcitrant to explanation. Completely independently, we'd reached the same conclusion. You'll find it in this book and in the new book I am writing. After decades of listening to temporizing theories about what happened, after watching the House Select Committee duck the full import of what it had discovered, it is ironic that we'd come to the same place by different routes. Through our mutual but independent discoveries the moment on film that sparked a new investigation finally can receive its full meaning. So too can full honor be paid to Bob Groden for unveiling that moment to public scrutiny.
Josiah Thompson Bolinas, California April 29, 2012
Josiah "Tink" Thompson
Six Seconds in Dallas Published in 1967
Introduction
"When I think of how many people have died, or have been hurt, for trying to reveal the truth of the Kennedy assassination, I realize how truly fortunate I am to still be here. " - Robert J Groden
T
his is my eleventh publication on the subject of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Many readers are already familiar with my work. You have read and heard so much over the last five decades, and may wonder what new information could justify yet another book on the crime of the twentieth century. The assassination of President Kennedy was an extraordinary criminal event. In a normal murder case, evidence and leads develop which guide investigators toward the solving of the case. Not here. As time begins to pass, the evidence grows cold faster than the body temperature of the deceased. Nearly half a century later,
most of the parties involved in the murder and the initial cover-up are either elderly or have passed on. After 48 years, it's highly unlikely to find new evidence in any criminal case that will make much of a difference. However, I'm excited to say that this book will present ground-breaking new evidence exposing the guilty parties in the crime of the century. I will also reveal the location of the President's missing brain by way of newly-discovered photographic evidence. Chapter 1 delivers to the reader the elusive holy grail of evidence proving beyond question that there was government complicity in the assassination plot. The first-time publication of this long-suppressed, top level CIA memo, which was written to the head of the Secret Xll
that they are perhaps influenced by those responsible for the assassination, or that they just don't give a damn about the truth. The history of the reporting leads me to believe that this is the case. We can't bring John Kennedy back to life, and it may be too late to prosecute those who remain that were involved in the murder or those who actively participated in covering it up. But we can search for and reveal the truth. We can expose the guilty parties for history, and bring justifiable shame to them and to those who have written books and produced TV shows perpetuating the cover-up. We may even be able to discourage such an act from happening in the future. This much I know; we owe the memory of President Kennedy at least this. I urge you to read on with an open mind. "Justice delayed is democracy denied. " - Robert F Kennedy
Someone needs to care and to present the evidence to the public at large. President Kennedy mattered. We owe it to him and his memory to reveal those who defend and protect his killers and accessories after the fact. The Sylvia Meagher Lifetime Achievement Award, the highest hon or in the fi eld of political assassinations in vestigation, was presented to me by The Coalition on Poli tica l Assassinations (C.O.P.A.) in 1996. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.
Service, is startling. This new evidence, along with the volume of never-before-seen photographic evidence, will make the reader scream for a reopening of the case and a new investigation. New disturbing images capture Lee Oswald's last moments of life at Parkland Hospital and totally quash the false claims that Oswald was dead on arrival at Parkland.
The extent and nature of the cover-up in the Kennedy assassination case is unprecedented. The degree to which the news media and commercial television openly and blatantly presented what are beyond question the most incredible and obvious inaccuracies, has made it apparent
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Many are still actively involved in the cover-up. Pimps for the Warren Commission such as Gerald Posner, Vincent Bugliosi and Mark Fuhrman are not always as independent as they would like to appear. Most are directly or indirectly propagandists for the powers that conspired to murder the President in the first place. Such is the case in the use of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza to spread the false party line supporting the discredited Warren Report. Nearly half-a-million people each year visit the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository building, and they are exposed to lie after lie. Many will believe it, simply because it is a museum and because they have already invested $16.00 per person to hear the fairy-tale proclaiming that Lee Oswald was "the lone assassin" of President Kennedy. The same fairytale they have been told since 1963. Some will realize that they have been lied to, but many believe the lies. After all,
this is why the Sixth Floor Museum is there in the first place. Veteran assassination researcher Mark Lane was asked in the late 1970s, "What is your new evidence that there was a conspiracy?" Mark answered, "What's wrong with the old evidence?" And he was correct. The truth has been there from the very beginning. I will present powerful new evidence in this book, but ample proof of conspiracy has ALWAYS been there!
Will we ever know the entire truth? Probably not, but that is not the fault of the critical community. We have tried and succeeded far beyond what we had any hope of doing when confronted with the power of the opposition. This book will, I predict, be ignored by the hacks of the national news media. For those open minded enough to listen and understand, you will be liberated. Read on.
Those of us dedicated to finding the truth about the conspiracy have been ridiculed and harassed by the scoundrels who aid and abet the guilty. These are people who, in some cases, have accepted paychecks exceeding $100,000 per year and even more to sell out others who have refused to do so themselves. When I think of how many people have died or have been hurt trying to reveal the truth of the Kennedy assassination, I realize how fortunate I am to still be here. It's not that there have not been attempts to silence me. There have. In 1983 a fire-bombing of the house next to my home was a clear attempt to either intimidate me into silence or kill me. I heard two explosions which were caused by a pair of Molotov cocktails. The flames were clearly intended to spread from the neighbor's garage to the overhang of my house which was only inches away from their garage. It has been the willing cooperation of the news media, dishonest "documentary" T.V. show producers and the Sixth Floor Museum that have given support and protection to those who continue to silence those who attempt to reveal the truth. Millions of people have traveled from all over the world to learn whatever they can in Dealey Plaza. I have made it my mission in life to be there for them so that they can learn that there is an alternative to the official fiction created by those accessories after the fact within the Warren Commission, the Rockefeller Commission, and to a lesser degree, part of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
President Kennedy addressing The United Nations on the only day I ever saw him in person, September 25, 1961.
Both Robert and John Kennedy wanted to end the war in Vietnam, hated the mob, fought for what they believed and were assassinated for their efforts. We may never know the entire truth about the conspiracies, but we owe it to them and to ourselves to at least try to find it. Bobby Kennedy knew that his brother had been the victim of a conspiracy, and had Bobby become President himself, he would have worked tirelessly to expose those guilty of the crime and those guilty of its cover-up as well. He would have also ended the war in Vietnam. These are two of the reasons that Bobby was also killed.
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Why Accepting the Evidence is Terrifying to Many In the case of the assassination of President Kennedy, we have the publicized view that the government fed us and the news media continues hammering into our heads, that one lone nut assassin murdered our national father figure, our President. On the other hand, we have fifty years of undeniable evidence and testimony showing us that the official story is completely impossible on so very many levels. For some, to learn the truth means sacrificing their false sense of security. We start to feel vulnerable and confused. These truths challenge the beliefs that our country protects us and keeps us safe, and that the American government is always the good guy. When your beliefs are challenged, fear and anxiety are created. Behavioral experts explain that in response to that fear our psychological defenses kick in and try to protect us from these Facing the truth can be painful and frightening for many people.
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t can be nearly impossible for some people to come to terms with what happened in Dealey Plaza on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. Even after fifty years, the truth can still be too challenging or emotionally
disturbing emotions. Denial, which is the most primitive psychological defense, is the most likely coping mechanism when our beliefs are challenged. It's an extremely uncomfortable state to be in. Eventually, our mind and the ability to reason shut down. Just as when a computer becomes overloaded, our minds soon become overloaded. We cannot process the data.
painful for some to accept. I have faced several people who refused to consider any evidence of conspiracy.
Some of us will deny the evidence that's coming our way and stick to the original story no matter how implausible or
At this point we have mountains of evidence, both scientific and otherwise, proving beyond any doubt that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy, and yet in some cases, people seem violently opposed to accepting the reality of the murder or are completely resistant to listening or looking at the information. So the question becomes, "Why?" Why is it that people have so much trouble hearing, seeing and understanding this undeniable information? Most ofus respond to this horrific evidence in a deeply personal way. To even begin to accept the possibility that our government was involved in either the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy and/or the massive cover-up of that conspiracy, challenges their beliefs about their own individual world. Their trust in our government and its agencies would be dashed by the waves of truth in the sea of their perceived reality. When we hear information that contradicts our ingrained views, social psychologists call the resulting insecurity "Cognitive Dissonance." xv
impossible it might be, in an attempt to regain our emotional equilibrium. A far more honest, intelligent and perhaps courageous course is to evaluate the conflicting evidence based on its merits; be sincere, fair and open-minded and look at both sides of the issue. Then make up our own mind about what the true reality is. Questioning is patriotic. Questioning is what we ' re supposed to do as citizens; that's our duty. When we have an event such as the assassination of President Kennedy, we need to be sure that we have a complete and open investigation into who the perpetrators were, and then, when possible, we need to be sure that those perpetrators are held legally accountable. Not pursuing the truth about the assassination is to disrespect the life of and tum our backs on the sacrifices of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Breaking News: January 2013 ackie Kennedy believed that Lyndon B. Johnson and a group of Texas oil tycoons, were involved in the assassination of her husband, President Kennedy, according to audio tapes recorded in 1964 with famous historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The tapes divulge that the former first lady believed that her husband 's successor was part of a larger plot to murder him. Mrs. Kennedy had become convinced that Johnson along with several wealthy businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, as part of a much larger conspiracy.
J
When ABC-TV aired a special about the tapes, all references to Mrs. Kennedy 's suspicions regarding Johnson were eliminated. This left only references to President Kennedy's negative feelings about Johnson and his fears for America should Johnson ever become President. Recorded within months of the assassination, the tapes were sealed in a vault at the Kennedy Library in Boston. Mrs. Kennedy instructed that these were not to be released until 50 years after her death. Some suggest that she feared that her revelations may target her remaining family members for revenge.
Jackie B. Kennedy, in 1964
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., January 11, 2013
On January 11, 2013, fifty-eight year old Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared publicly in Dallas. He stated that he and his late father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who, on June 5, 1968, was also assassinated as the result of a conspiracy, were both aware that the murder of President Kennedy, was the result of a conspiracy. He further stated that, his father referred to the Warren report as "a shoddy piece of craftsmanship." RFK Jr. stated that the evidence " is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman," and that the conspiracy involved "rogue CIA" personnel. Mr. Kennedy said that his father was "fairly convinced" that others were involved, and was "dismissive" of the Warren report. " A lot of the evidence, at this point, anyway, is very convincing, there was not a lone gunman." It has long been known that had Senator Kennedy been the winner in the 1968 Presidential election, the first two things he would have done would be to end the war in Vietnam and find out who killed his brother. Clearly, these are the prime reasons Senator Kennedy was killed. Back in 1999, when he was 38 years old, John F. Kennedy Jr., President Kennedy 's son and Robert Kennedy Jr. 's cousin, were reportedly aware of the conspiracy which killed his father. He had been able to figure out that those same rogue CIA personnel, right wing military leaders and the Mafia who had pulled off the assassination. It was also reported that John Jr. was considering exhuming his father's body to have an objective third party autopsy performed to find the truth. XV I
From left to right: Allen Dulles (former CIA Director and future Warren Commission member), Richard M. Bissell (CIA Director of Plans), President John F. Kennedy and John McCone (CIA Director).
Chapter 1 Proving the Conspiracy Agent Oswald and The Amazing Smoking-Gun Document There has been a great deal of discussion about the "smoking-gun" memo discussed in this chapter. The issue of its authenticity has been the subject of much debate. The JFK assassination critical community is divided regarding the legitimacy of the document. I obtained my original copy at the end of 197 8 while working with the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and because of its provenance, I believe the memo to be genuine. Nearly everything in the memo relating to Lee Oswald is supported by outside evidence. I present it in this chapter in order that you may make up your own mind as to whether the information it contains offers answers to some of the most troublesome questions of the Kennedy assassination and cover-up.
ountless books and articles have been written, accusations have been made, and theories have been presented. All lacked the evidence needed to prove conclusively who really killed President John F. Kennedy.
C
The following questions still linger: Was Lee Harvey Oswald working as an intelligence agent of the United States government at the time of the assassination? Was Oswald set-up as a patsy, and if so, was it by one of these agencies? Did our own government send him to the Soviet Union in September of 1959 on a covert spy mission, or did he really defect to Russia? Did Oswald have anything at all to do with the assassination? Is it possible that the Mafia and/or the CIA actually did it? For nearly five decades, the CIA, FBI and Warren Commission proponents have all emphatically denied that Oswald was an intelligence operative, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. Absent throughout the history of the JFK assassination inquiry has been a "smoking gun," defining evidence that would link elements within our government to Lee Oswald or show a coordinated effort to mislead the American public. Yet, shortly after the assassination, Oswald's own mother, Marguerite, insisted he "was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency."
On the very day of the assassination, while her son was still alive, Mrs . Oswald told the news media, and anyone else who would listen, that her son had in fact been an agent of the CIA for several years Immediately, the CIA publicly denied these allegations. The FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and The fa ll guy, CIA operati ve Lee Harvey nearly every other cloak Oswald, unde r arrest for the crime of the ce ntury on the afternoo n of November and dagger agency 22, 1963 . A profe ssional, he kept qui et, rapidly followed suit. wa iting fo r help. In fact, Oswald may have been involved for as long as seven years.
Note: The Office of Naval Intelligence is the oldest member of the United States Intelligence Community. The ONI is headquartered at the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Maryland, though subordinate to the Washington-based Defense Intelligence Agency. To the leaders of these agencies, determining whether Oswald actually shot President Kennedy was of far less importance than avoiding scandal. By distancing his activities from the intelligence community, they could protect individuals within who wanted the President replaced by Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a man more sympathetic to their goals. Years later, when it was learned that the CIA had kept a 201 personnel file on Oswald, all of the agencies once again denied that he was employed by them. Of course, no one outside of a select few within the organization was ever supposed to see Oswald's unsanitized 201 file, so they might have felt safe in their denials. However, concern grew as the assassination investigation continued.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the greatest fa ll-guy in history (far right), with his first CIA contact, David William Ferri e (second from the left), while in the Civi l Air Patrol in New Orleans in 1955.
The choice of Lee Oswald as the patsy was no accident.
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On August 9, 1963, Oswald is seen on Canal Street in New Orleans as part of a staged arrest for passing out pro-Castro leaflets, and for "fighting" wi th three anti-Castro Cuban activists. Thanks to the McCone-Rowley doc ument, we now know this was part of an intelligence ass ignmellt to establi sh Oswald as a proCastroite and to help frame him as the assass in for the upcomin g murder of the President.
He was a logical choice. It was easy for both the CIA and the FBI to control and maneuver Oswald's movements in the months prior to the assassination. By doing so, they were able to build a cover that would implicate him and protect those who called the shots.
In this dispatch, we see a clear portrait of an intelligence operative and follow Lee Oswald as he maneuvered through the CIA, ONI and FBI. When reading the memorandum, it becomes clear why these agencies
The Paper Trail Begins This chapter contains the very first public release of the "Agent Oswald Smoking Gun" document. It shows that regardless of the nearly five decades of voluminous denials by intelligence agencies, the American public has been egregiously misled. The memo is a candid response by CIA Director John McCone to Secret Service Chief James J. Rowley. It came just over three months after the assassination, on March 3, 1964, in answer to a request sent by the Secret Service on February 24, 1964. To date, we still have not seen the February 24th document.
3
Though this author considers the McCone-Rowley memo to be the smoking gun, as early as January of 1964, the Warren Commission had sufficient documentation to prove that Oswald had previously been "employed" by both the CIA and the FBI. They had a reported CIA "agent" payroll number for him which was said to be # 110669. In nearly all of the related Warren Commission internal memos, and in their secret executive session discussions, his FBI payroll number was stated as "No.179," although some of the early investigations revealed the number in fact to have been "S-172."
withheld this information from the Warren Commission, the Rockefeller Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the Assassinations Records Review Board . They continue to withhold this evidence, and their silence and complicity in the cover-up continues to this day. John McCone was appointed Director of the CIA by President Kennedy on September 27, 1961 to replace Allen Dulles, who was fired by the president after the Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco. Although McCone was officially the Director of the CIA, the evidence is that he was only a figurehead. It appears that his predecessor, Allen Dulles and Richard Helms were actually running the show. President Lyndon B. Johnson later took the suspicious action of naming Dulles as one of the seven members of the Warren Commission, "trusting" the disgruntled former director to investigate the assassination of the very man who fired him.
McCone served as CIA director from November, 1961, until April, 1965, when Lyndon Johnson dismissed him for opposing the Vietnam war. In 1946, James Rowley became the special agent in charge of the presidential protection Director John McCone of the CIA division of the Secret knew the truth about the innocence Service. He held that post of his agent, Lee Oswald. until September of 1961 when he was promoted to chief of the service, and continued in that role until 1973. This document, then, was written and sent while both McCone and Rowley held the top posts within their respective agencies. Note: In the next three pages you will find a copy of the actual document highlighting telling details of Oswald's involvement with intelligence agencies that include the following: Paragraphs two and three of the document demonstrate the CIA's policy of withholding information on Lee Oswald
and the assassination, a policy that remains in effect to this day.
In the second paragraph of the McCone memo, he suggests to Rowley that he should forget that everyone has been directed by Congress to send everything they have on Lee Oswald to "the Commission" (commonly Secret Service Chief James Rowley soon learned the real truth known as the Warren about the conspiracy. Commission). It suggests that Rowley send only items that were specifically requested and to send nothing more. In other words, if the Commission requested files X and Y on Oswald, then send only those files, and withhold all other files on Oswald. Don't respond beyond the request. Send only the formally listed, sanitized files. In paragraph three, McCone states that J. Edgar Hoover, the greatly feared director of the FBI, concurs with the strategy of withholding evidence from the Commission. It reveals that Hoover himself was keeping a "personal" file on Oswald and the assassination, separate from the official bureau files. Never before have so many things we strongly suspected to be true, but which we couldn't prove, been confirmed by someone not only from within the mner circle; they are confirmed by the head of the CIA himself. Lee Oswald did not kill President Kennedy, but CIA Director McCone clearly states in paragraph six of this disturbing memo, that other individuals within the CIA and the FBI absolutely did. James J. Ang leton, CIA Counterintelligence Chief
4
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ii"-" .....
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,.
TO
FROM
Mr. James J. Rowley Chief, U.S. Secret Service Mr. John McCone Director, Central Intelligence Agency
DATE
March 3, 1964
C0-2-34,030
SUBJECT: central Intelligence Report on the Assasination of John Kennedy
In response to the request made by your office on 24 February 1964 re: Lee Oswald's activities and assignments on behalf of this agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, there follows a narrative summary of the internal subversive activities of the Oswald subject. I recommend that unless the Commission makes a specific request for specific information contained herein, that this information not be volunteered. This agency has reason to assume that some junior commission staff members may be potential sources of leaks to the news media or to other agencies; due to the highly sensitive nature of the enclosed material, it would certainly be in the national interest to withhold it at this time - unless there is, of course, a specific request made. It is my understanding that Mr. Hoover has certain sensitive information within his agency, which has been transferred to his own personal files for safekeeping; he concurs that no material should be voluntarily given to the Commission which might affect the status of field operatives or their safety. He is particularly concerned about the De Bruey memorandum, which Central Intelligence has obtained and which, I understand, you have obtained. It is imperative that this information, at least for the time, remain under wraps . Oswald subject was trained by this agency, under cover of the Office of Naval Intelligence, for Soviet assignments. During preliminary training, in 1957, subject was active in aerial reconnaissance of mainland China and maintained a security clearance up to the Mconfidential• level. His military records during this period are open to your agency and I have directed they be forwarded to the Commission. Subject received additional indoctrination at our own Camp Peary site from September 8 to October 17, 1958, and participated in a few relatively minor assignments until arrangements were made for his entry to the soviet Union in September 1959. While in the Soviet Union, he was on special assignment in the area of Minsk, it would not be advantageous at this time to divulge the specifics of that assignment; however, if you wish this information, it can
5
be made available for your personal inspection within the confines of our own offices, or I can send it by courier on the condition that it not leave the custody of the courier. I am concerned that if this information were in any way disclosed to the wrong persons it would lead the media to erroneously claim this agency and perhaps others, were directly involved in the Dallas action. While the persons involved were in the employ of this agency as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it is virtually impossible for this or any agency to maintain full 24-hour-a-day responsibility over its operatives. At the time of the Dallas action, the Oswald subject wa only seldom in our employ; after the Soviet assignment, we found him to be unreliable and emotionally unstable. He was of little use to us after his marriage and De Bruey, from what I understand, concurs in this. He was provided with a few unimportant infiltration assignments and proved of little or no value.
® ®
It is possible that Oswald, given his instability, might have been involved in some operation concerning Hoffa, as noted in SAIC Bertram's report to your agency dated 1/3/64. Mr. Hoover advises that his agency is trying to determine whether Hoffa might have been involved laterally or vertically with the Dallas assassination. I have advised that I would be interested in seeing the results of that investigation. Mr. Hoover advises that the facts given in SAIC Bertram's 1/3/64 report are basically correct; his agency has advised Deputy Sweatt against further unauthorized statements to the news media which might adversely effect the investigation. Mr. Hoover advises he has no knowledge of how Deputy Sweatt obtained his information, as there is no record of the agency distributing any such information to Sweatt or any other member of Dallas Sheriff's office. It is regrettable that this information has come to the attention of the news media, but I am sure Mr. Hoover will be able to clarify the situation. Speculation within this agency - and this is only speculation at this point - is that the Oswald subject became unstable following surgery April 1, 1961, in the Minsk Hospital. He may have been chemically or electronically "controlled" ... a sleeper agent. Subject spent eleven days hospitalized for a "minor ailment" which should have required no more than three days hospitalization at the most. Six days after his release, he met Marina Prusakova. This agency is particularly interested in her intelligence background, and I have requested a report on same from our Soviet Embassy contact.
@
After his return to the U.S., Oswald worked in Hew Orleans through The Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean and Friends of Democratic Cuba, his case officer was SAIC Guy Bannister, from the Chicago FBI office. He was transferred from his assignments there after he was arrested and fined for an incident stemming from his distribution of pamphlets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. While our files here show no further assignments or contact, I am requesting an AS check on the subject from our Hew Orleans and Ft. Worth offices.
6
@
} " lcuo~
dlrt.:ct &rW f11:-t.t:c::· C\A'lll\m~CUtic•nc. '>fl thi:1 M"'t".. ~- •::- t,·_. rW l'•!:•vot1hl attt1ntio11 au \.hu.t. ~·:.>ur rtfp.1uot,9 ll\a:t b11 01r•sd~ t.~1 • •,;. t .. ..i free to 011.ll me 1J.11yt.h1r.. :!y ~rriee ill •h•o.ys avn5:•~hlf': t
0
.Y 0\1.
(Above) Page 3 of the smoking gun document signed by CIA Director, John McCone on March 3rd, 1964, just a little over three months after the assassination.
THE PROOF IS IN BLACK AND WHITE Preceding is a copy of the memorandum from CIA Director John McCone to Secret Service Chief James J. Rowley. It clearly establishes a connection between Lee Oswald and the intelligence agencies that later officially swore off any involvement with him. I believe this memo to be the smoking gun exposing disturbing evidence of their attempt to deceive the American citizenry. The original 1978 House Assassinations Committee photocopies of the three pages of the "McCone-Rowley Smoking-Gun Document," along with the original June 27, 1975, Church Committee cover letter are reproduced here. The document is an admission by the Director of the CIA that Lee Oswald had worked as an agent of the agency, the FBI and ONI. It explains that Oswald was never a defector to the Soviet Union, but rather had been on an assignment for the CIA and was sent to Russia by us as an agent. The document tells us that Oswald had been trained by the CIA at Camp Peary (also known as "The Farm") in Virginia. © and 0 7
Most importantly, CIA Director John McCone admits in the document that Lee Oswald did not shoot President Kennedy, but that others within the CIA and FBI were responsible (While the persons [involved in the Dallas action] WERE in the employ of this agency and the FBI). Emphasis added
0
It also explains that Oswald's trip to New Orleans in the summer of 1963 was an intelligence assignment as well. It was on this assignment that Oswald was being set up as the patsy for the upcoming assassination of President Kennedy. (j)
The previous book pages show copies of document pages 1 and 2 with reference numbers to this text. This document may well be the most important document ever to surface in the five decades since the assassination. It is presented here for the first time.
Jun
Honorab le H. St art
27> 1975
Yni~ht
Dir:•ecto::-
U. S;
Secre~S
rvice
1800 G s• oe , u. w. Was.hi ton, D. C. 20223 Dea:r il'r. Knight:
Pursuant Se ect Con.it~~e to R speet o In e lig gc:ti .g in el ge.ce
ma. da"e
of th
With the u ani::!o s a ;;1·ov~ or the Com.llit'Yee, I esp ctfu y re~u~st ~at th;·6 c ments b stppl:ed to t he Com.."nitt,,...e at the earlie t op9ort mity.
to ~10!·~ w both e.xpedi;
trt st that o u - -s .... ct..:.ve- .... taf "s "- 11 cont · nue ~ mu.tut! cooperatio wl.ich ... o Cn"'tL:e a tho o
~
Jo;.n .o\ e
Vice Cha1rr.ia.n The original June 27, 1975 Church Committee cover letter for the McCone-Rally " Smoking Gun" Document.
8
As James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's counterintelligence chief, stated to The New York Tim es in December, 1974, when asked about CIA involvement in the assassination, "A mansion has many rooms; there were many things going on during the p eriod; I'm not privy to who (within the agency) struck John ." With this publication of the smoking gun memo, we must now look more closely at falsely accused "assassin," Lee Oswald, as an intelligence operative. In paragraph seven, McCone states that Oswald was of little continued use to the CIA and the FBI after his marriage to Soviet national, Marina Prusakova. Lee Oswald was then relegated to "unimportant infiltration assignments" from that point on. One such assignment explains Lee Oswald's activities during the summer of 1963 - he was sent into the middle of a CIA operation in New Orleans. While he was there, a great deal of attention was focused on him: a public street fight and an arrest for passing Marina Prusakova Oswald out pro-Castro literature on several occasions. In the memo, McCone admits that the CIA was directing Oswald's movements in New Orle ans.
Starting in 1960, three full years before the assassination of President Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover himself wrote at least two memos about (his) agent, Lee Oswald. In these memos, released by the Warren Commission, Hoover mentioned his concern that someone was impersonating Oswald in New Orleans to buy trucks for the CIA-trained anti-Castro Cubans, and that someone else might also impersonate Oswald when he would finally return from the Soviet Union in June of 1962. At the time of the assassination, Hoover was helping President Kennedy break up CIA training camps in Louisiana, Florida and Guatemala, that were being used for a planned second invasion of Cuba. The President had ordered the CIA to stop, but the CIA openly defied his directive and continued their invasion plans. It appears that Hoover may have sent Oswald to New Orleans as an undercover agent to infiltrate the CIA antiCastro training operation for the second planned Cuban invasion (designated CIA Operation 40). Operation 40 was headed by rogue ex-FBI man Guy Banister, CIA contract employee, Clay L. Shaw, and others. Very likely, it was Oswald who helped locate the secret training camps on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans.
These covert CIA training camps were so secret that neither President Kennedy nor Director Hoover knew their locations. It is conceivable that Oswald's mission was to discover the locations of the camps and let Hoover
An extremely important character in the story of the assassination was a CIA operations officer named George E. Joannides, a main player in the New Orleans chapter of Oswald's story. According to CIA records, the New Orleans chapter of the Cuban exile groups, The Anti Communist League of the Caribbean and Friends of Democratic Cuba, dealt with Joannides in Miami, Florida. These groups had several dealings with Lee Oswald in New Orleans, three months before the assassination. Fifteen years later, Joannides was coincidently the CIA's choice to be the liaison between the agency and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (H.S.C.A.). Neither Joannides nor anyone else within the CIA revealed his pivotal role in the events of 1963 to anyone in the H.S.C.A. Joannides was certainly aware that Oswald had worked for both the CIA and the FBI. 9
George Joannides
One last thing that should never be forgotten is that Allen Dulles, John McCone's predecessor as Director of the CIA, already knew all of this. He possessed intimate details of every aspect of what had happened. After all, Dulles had been Oswald's boss! Now, after being fired by President Kennedy, he was appointed by President Johnson as one of the seven Warren Commission members.
A satellite view of Camp Peary.
know where they were. Oswald was positively identified as being in at least one of the New Orleans training camps for Operation 40 just days before the FBI raid on that camp. It was at this point that Oswald was possibly first discovered by some within the CIA operation as a turncoat to the agency. This would explain why they chose him as the patsy, or as they would have called him "the sponsor" to take the blame for the assassination. The irony was that the man chosen to take the fall was deeply connected to both agencies officially being relied upon by the Warren Commission to "investigate" the assassination. (The Warren Commission hired no independent investigators of their own.) As early as January 1964, Dallas District Attorney (former FBI agent) Henry Wade and the Texas State Attorney General, Waggoner Carr, had informed the Warren Commission that Oswald was working for both the FBI and the CIA at the time of the assassination. They also transmitted payroll numbers and salary rates. When Oswald was arrested after the assassination he ' had in his wallet the name, phone number and car license number of the Dallas FBI agent assigned to him, James Hosty. (Pictures of these items appear in my book, Th e Search for Lee Harvey Oswald). At the Bureau, Hoover panicked. Identifying his own agent as the assassin, he buried all connections between the FBI and Oswald. John McCone did the same for the CIA This explains the McCone-Rowley "smoking-gun" memo.
Shamefully, Dulles never shared his knowledge that Oswald was a CIA agent with any of the other Warren Commission members. Nor did Dulles reveal his knowledge of the CIA's planned assassination attempts against Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. Had Dulles revealed the truth, it might have led to an investigation of a potential conspiracy. McCone must have known that Dulles would keep his mouth shut, and vice-versa. As of this writing, the Joannides documents and thousands of Oswald documents are still being illegally withheld by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The original of the "Agent Oswald" document is also being withheld. (The document included here is only a copy of the original.) The law is specific. The J.F.K. Assassination Act of 1992, approved unanimously by Congress, mandates that all assassination-related records be disclosed and released immediately.
"The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justifY it . .. no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know." - John F. Kennedy
10
AUTHENTICATING THE SMOKING GUN he original memo was written in 1964. This copy of the memo first surfaced in 1979. I obtained it at about the same time as the color JFK autopsy photographs and the missing frames of the Zapruder film, among other items.
T
During research for this book, two more copies of the document have surfaced. One copy was seen in the National Archives as far back as 1992, possibly earlier, although the archives now states that the memo is no longer there. Another copy was said to have been in the possession of a former FBI man. The chain of evidence points to the possibility that the Senate Intelligence Committee had a copy as early as June of 1975 . On page 675 of his 1992 book, The Man Who Knew Too Much, author and investigator Dick Russell mentions the Archives' copy and accurately quotes verbatim, several lines from the document. He does not mention any of the key statements. This may well be because the Archives' copy might have been previously redacted. Any sensitive passages would have been eliminated or crossed out by the use of a magic marker on the original which was used to create the Archives' redacted copy. As for the National Archives ' copy, we have known for quite some time now, that the second Bush administration had been covertly and surreptitiously removing many embarrassing and sensitive documents from the files of the National Archives. This may well have been one of them. On October 3, 1963, nearly two months before the assassination, journalist Arthur Krock wrote in the New York Times, an article which predicted what actually may have happened. He wrote: The CIA's, "tactic is to give information to the press, under a seal of confidence, that challenges
11
or refutes the critics. Every President since the CIA was created has protected this secrecy." Mr. Krock goes on to quote reporter Richard Starnes and states that, "The CIA flatly refused to carry out [President Kennedy 's] instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge . . . [and] in one instance frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought from Washington because the agency disagreed with it." Mr. Krock continues quoting a "very high American official", "The CIA's growth was "likened to a malignancy" which the "very high official was not sure even the White House could control . . . any longer." "If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government] it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon." The agency "represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone." It appears that Arthur Krock may well have been
correct in his October 3rd article. He was correct about the CIA's control of the news media and their uncontrolled power grab.
"For years, I pondered the question of why John McCone who had been appointed CIA Director by President Kennedy would turn on him in this manner. It was finally clear to me that McCone was just a figurehead. Allen Dulles
and the
up-and-coming
Richard Helms were really running the show." - Robert Groden
THE COUNTERFEIT DEFECTOR
U.S
NAV~INING
DISTRIBUTION CENTER
Lee Oswald with wife Marina and daughter June.
F
rom the time he was a young child, Lee Oswald wanted to be a spy. Beginning in 1956 he got his wish; by 1959, he was in a major spy program. Judging by the information revealed in the McCone-Rowley memo, it looks as though his first major assignment was to be a counterfeit defector to the Soviet Union.
While on active duty with the U.S. Marines (October 1956 - September 1959), Oswald was trained to speak fluent Russian. He learned spy techniques through the marines and the Office of Naval Intelligence and "received additional indoctrination" at the CIA training center, Camp Peary, in Virginia. While stationed at the Atsugi, Japan, U.S . air base, Oswald's military records show he was given high security clearance and access to the highest top secret information on the U-2 spy planes and their flights. Provided with a hardship discharge from the marines, Oswald pretended to defect to the Soviet Union in order to carry out a clandestine mission. It is suspected that while in the Soviet Union, Oswald was ordered to reveal to the Russians all he knew about the U-2 spy plane and its flights, enabling the Soviets to shoot down CIA pilot, Francis Gary Powers. This act led directly to canceling the Paris Peace Talks and escalation of the cold war. This was exactly what the CIA and others had wanted.
12
The following list is a list showing a comparison sampling of 49 years of denials and lies followed by the truth as revealed by the "Agent Oswald" document. Camp Peary, is a Department of Defense training facility for covert spy operations. It is located along the York River and Interstate 64 near Williamsburg, Virginia. It was opened by the U.S. government on January 22, 1952. Camp Peary has for many years been recognized as one of the CIA's main training camps. It is known as "The Farm."
The Official Lies and Denials:
McCone quotes from the document
(la) Oswald wasn't trained by the CIA. And we didn't send Oswald to the Soviet Union as an intelligence agent. Oswald had a low level security clearance while in the Marines.
(la & lb) "Oswald subject was trained by this agency, under cover of the Office of Naval Intelligence, for Soviet assignments." Oswald subject . . . " ... maintained a security clearance up to the 'confidential' level."
(1 b) McCone tells Rowley that Oswald had a security clearance of 'confidential.' In reality his clearence was 'crypto ' which is at least three levels higher than confidential, and actually above 'top secret.'
(2) "Subject (Oswald) received additional indoctrination at our own Camp Peary site from September 8 to October 17, 1958 . . ."
(2) Oswald didn't receive any special operations training or instruction while in the Marine Corps, including his Russian language training. (3) The CIA gave everything it had on Lee Harvey Oswald to the Warren Commission. (4) Oswald did it by himself, was never an intelligence agent and was a lone nut.
(3) "I recommend that unless the Commission makes a specific request for specific information contained herein, that this information not be volunteered." (4) "While the persons involved (in the assassination) were in the employ of this agency as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it is virtually impossible for this or any agency to maintain full 24-hour-a-day responsibility over its operatives." (Emphasis added).
The CIA's spy-training school, Camp Peary, where agent Lee Harvey Oswald learned his trade.
13
Lee, We're sending you on assignment to New Orleans. We want you to infiltrate the Anti-Castro Cuban groups there. We'll bring you back
Under a pro-Castroite cover, Oswald passed out "HANDS OFF CUBA" leaflets in front of the New Orleans Trade Mart.
/
Lee Oswald (red arrow) and conspirator Clay L. Shaw (in the white suit) (yellow arrow) in front of his office at the Trade Mart in New Orleans.
Under arrest, leaving the Texas Theatre through the Jefferson Boulevard doorway, Oswald is taken into custody.
Oswald at the time of his arrest ins ide the Texas Theatre.
After arriva l at police headquarters, a dejected Oswald realizes that he has been set-up to take the blame for the assassination.
14
~ J:
ta.a
On January 27, 1964, the Warren Commission held a highly-secret, behindclosed-doors, executive session. These confidential transcripts remained sealed for more than a decade until they were declassified on June 12, 1974. These excerpts show that as early as two months after the assassination the entire Commission was well aware of Lee Oswald's status as an agent of both the FBI and CIA.
c..,, Jof 9
PR ESIDEN N TSSS C o Mm
IO
ON THE
A SSASSINAT Y ION NT KENN OF PRESIDE
ED
Instead of dealing with the evidence that Oswald was possibly acting on behalf of either or both agencies, they considered it a "dirty rumor" and never attempted to determine if it was true. It was stated that this damaging documentation needed to be "wiped out" at any cost. This was the attitude of Warren Commission members throughout its existence. Anything which went against their preconceived lone-assassin theory was denied or ignored. Present were all members of the Commission except Gerald Ford, who later stole it from the Warren Commission files, rewrote a sanitized version and illegally published it in his book, Portrait of the Assassin, in 1965 .
·~-.D.C.
l'!Onday,January27 , l964
l"AGU
121·212
W ARD & PAU L
on1ct1oL.•&ronu.1 tl'Ol'fU..,,lol,W. • ~11111 , 0. C . lOCIOI
... u... cool--.....
'¥tl P SEOi!g::__ ~·
I I
I
I
Mx•. . nanl·cln.
I
r~ceivec1
a co.11 .from 'l'!aggoner Carr,
Gene1•al A·;;·t;o:i:•ncy
oi" Texas, o.nd in ·that cai1 he
:::1ot~ld
~nm-ediately
get to me
t·12.a quit~
and it i·ias to the effect
'ch~
excil;ed.
t}'\..a.:i;
-Che
F ."B.:L. ~:.:.c1 an \lndercover agent who was Osw~lc1, and he saic.i j:c came up this \'1ay, -'chat the rna tte:i:" t·1as c-1cvoloped at a meeting
Mr. Ranlcin.
In chambers •
That he also tmew the number that waa assigned by . the 17.B.I.
15
That i·Jas all tr.at he lcnew about it.
He didn •t get the
informa·c ion .from District Attorney \·Tade, but he had gotten it
from someone eise and he didn't tell me who that was, but he said it \·1as a person in whom he had c ompl~te faith and could '\
rely upon. lie af.H('.ed ·i;hem to all
there, that Oswald waa an
co:rn~
t1p, and they d:td on. Fx-iday. At
\,111dercove~
agent, but they extended
it clso "i-;o the c ;I_A., saying 'i;hat they _had a number fo1• him assigned to him in· connection with the c;1.A. ··and gave.. that to him: and none of them had any original information or tl'le:lr oti~n. H-s d:td discover, amo11g3t the papers that
the
S~cre·t
i·1e
received from
Service, a . repor ..i; \'Jh:i..ch the Chief Justice obtained
:rrom f·'Ir. t-!oore, ! believe it was lYlr. Moore
~·:hioh
ro.ferred.
~~a
a
r.Ir. SNea :;t i·;}'lo was the Deputy She:riff in DaJ.laa Count;y in t·1 llich
he said that; Ost·1ald was an undercover agent and \'4as being paid
so much a month for some time back to September, and that it had a number which he gave and that report as No. 172. Thia report
, a -•r. . -. ',..
.,.0 -.':'.-:V _.., I ~
' I.,,
., •1•
a
~---~ /' G; it,.
16
Section
4 DALLAS, TEXAS, MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1963
****
****
Monday, December 2, 1963
Pravda Hints Oswald Spied for U.S. During Russia Visit MOSCOW (UPI) - The Com- have been a suicide attempt or and child non-quota visas to enter rapher who was helping Oswald possibly sympathy could not be ington as the body that made the the UnitedStates. write an "anti-Soviet ." book confirmed. !decisions. munlst party organ Pravda hinted the appearance of one. Sunday that Lee Harvey Oswald, The linking of Oswald to The Soviet Embassy in Wash· . "Thi~ boohks dealtUw~th .~is ser THE SOURCES said that Os-1 On Washington. it has been , , . . . . .. · ]OUrn in t e ov1et nton, Pra v~ . the slain accused assasstn of Pres- American intelligence act1v1t1es 1nglon Saturday tumed over con· d ld h · wald at the time was staying at stated that on May 24 1962, the · . . 1 fl h' 5 v' t · 't a quo e er as saying. . , ident John F. Kennedy, was an wu contained 1n two Pravda art1- su ar 1es on 1s 0 le VIS! h. to "In it, he sharply criticized the the Berhn Hotel here. Moscow Embassy, on State De0 h . . . f K the U.S. State epartment, w 1ch So . . h' 1L . . It t k h th hei 1 Americl!I spy during 1s 271 c es on t e 1nvestlgauon o en- in turn immediately delivered viet Union . BeS1des, the . stenogwas no . nown w e er partment instructions, renewed years in the Soviet Union. nedy's assassination in Dallas. th•m to the Federal Bureau of Jn. rapher .was quoted as saying, Os- called a hospital or. wh~ther he Oswald's passport and amended The newspaper said Oswald IN ONE TifE news a r for vestigation. wald hinted . that he had wor~.ed was found ?leeding in his room. it to include a daughter, Audrey, maintained constant contact with ' P pe as an American secret agent. The Amencan Embassy here has born that February. His wife Ma· the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. It the first time admitted that "Os· "THE FACT ," IS said Pravda Reliable sources reported that, said only that Oswald appea red rina. was given a visa. ' quoted a Fort Worth stenogra· wald lived and worked in Minsk, Sunday, "that during his sojourn shortly after his arrival in Mos- in Moscow in October of 1959 and . pher who helped Oswald prepare a where he married ~ Soviet cili· in. the U.S.S.R. he (Oswald) main· co':' in 1959, Oswald . slashed his sai.d he , was applying , for Soviet (~E FAMILY.· according to manuscript as saying he insinuat- zen." tained contact with t~e U.S. Em- wr15ts and was hosp1lahzed sev- c1t1zensh1p. But he did.. not re· Washington reports, was loaned ed he had been an American Oswald is known lo have been bassy and in 1962 decided to leave era! days. nounce h1S American c1tizensh1p. $435.71 tra vel e_xpenses. Oswald. agent. in the Soviet Union from October, the Soviet Union, receiving the Oswald took the action after Ser He was given his passport back, his. wife and child were reported At the same time, it was leamed 1959, when he UT1successfully ap- corresponding permission of the viet authorities refused him Rus- on his request, in May of 1962 to have landed Jn New York on that the former American Marine, plied for Soviet citizenship, until American Embassy and money sian citizenship, the sources said. and left, according to the Embas- June 13. 1962.) who wu fatally shot by a night· May, 1962, when the American for the trip." Whether the wrist slashing was sy here. Correspondents asking Pravda emphatically rejected club operator, slashed his wrists Embassy gave him back his pass· Pravda qijoted Pauline Bates, a genuine suicide attempt or a further details have been referred allegations that Oswald was "a while in Moscow in what could port and issued his Russian wile described as a Fort Worth slenog- gesture to evoke attention and to the State Department in Wash· Marxist" or "leftist fanatic."
The Russians already knew that Lee Oswald was a U.S. government agent decades before the American public did. Merely ten days after the assassination, Th e Dallas Morning News, among others, published this United Press International story revealing the truth about who and what Oswald rea lly was . Lee's mother, Marguerite, knew the truth and told anyone who would listen, but the authorities and the news media tried to make her look crazy. The story is all but forgotten today.
Contract agent Robert Morrow, of the CIA, author of First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia Murder ofPresident Kennedy, stated that while he worked at a CIA connected organization known as Permindex*, he received a call from CIA pilot David William Ferrie (see later in this book) from Switzerland. Ferrie had been instructed by CIA contacts to have Morrow go to Paris and pick up a package containing papers from an American couple who had recently been traveling in the Soviet Union. They were given the package by a CIA agent which they knew as "Harvey of Minsk." Lee Oswald was living in Minsk during this time, and Morrow states that it was Oswald who was providing intelligence information to the CIA. This was part of one of agent Lee Oswald's spy m1ss10ns. Morrow also recounts a story about Ferrie's associate, CIA paymaster Eladio del Valle. Del Valle called Morrow during the fall of 1963 requesting four walkie-talkies which could not be traced. Morrow knew that del Valle 17
had connections with the mafia and several anti-Castro groups. Morrow provided the equipment to del Valle and believes that one of the walkie-talkies he provided can be seen in photographs taken immediately after the assassination, hanging out of a man's back pocket on the Elm Street sidewalk.
* Permindex
was a trade organization created in 1958. Its name was a contraction of "Permanent Industrial Expositions. "
The officials in charge of the alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy.
Police Captain Will Fritz
Sheriff Bill Decker
Distric Attorney Henry Wade.
Police Ch ief Jesse Curry.
Lee Oswald's former boss at the CIA was Agency director Allen Dulles. As one of the seven members of the Warren Commission, Dulles should have shared information with the Commission. He didn't. Given that Dulles had been fired as CIA director by President Kennedy, it does not require any kind of a stretch to ask if Dulles held a grudge against the President, or if he would be reluctant to actively participate in the Warren Commission's cover-up.
In January of 1964, less than two months after the assassination, Dulles blatantly admitted that he would have no problem withholding evidence from the rest of the Commission, and expected that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wouldn' t either. It would not be long until he proved it. With the exception of Gerald Ford, Dulles, more than any other Warren Commissioner, framed Lee Oswald.
Not only did Dulles know Oswald was a CIA agent, he knew his payroll number. It stands to reason, that Dulles was aware of the CIA's
assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. This was knowledge he also withheld from the other members of the Warren Commission. Why is this important? Because it leads to a strong motive for an alternate theory for the assassination.
President Kenn edy and Allen Dulles, who he fired as CIA Director.
Left and above: While Oswald was in th e Soviet Union, he was contacted by several CIA-conn ected indi viduals and several observation photos of him were in his CIA fil e.
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Chapter 2 Setting Up the Patsy & The Two Mrs. Reids* * Quite a few years ago, I was given a lead about a
key witness who was employed in the Texas School Book Depository. Her name was Geraldine Reid, and her interview conditions included no taping of her story and no revealing the story while she was alive. I recently received word and confirmation of her passing. At the time I did the interview, the witness appeared to be in her late seventies to early eighties. The interview took place near Fort Worth. She is mentioned only once in the Warren Commission volumes, but was perhaps the single most important witness in the Kennedy case. Her story is included in this chapter..
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n this chapter, I will present something completely new about a previously unknown (to the public) witness who was manipulated and coerced by the Warren Commission. In fact, even her very existence was hidden from the public and buried for nearly five decades.
I
My last book, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald (1995), was a photographic biography of Oswald. My original title for that book was The Patsy, but my publisher felt that the title was too "judgmental." It contained more than 600 photographs and pretty much covered everything about Lee Oswald's life and death. For those who have the book, I will not repeat the entirety of that information here. There are, however a few things that must be mentioned for those who may not have The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald.
eyewitness and earwitness testimony presented under oath for the record. The fairy-tale that Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy would go unchallenged, and that would be that. When he made it out alive, the conspirators had a real problem on their hands. Oswald would be a live suspect who could pass a lie detector test. He would be able to corroborate third-party witness testimony that he had been on the second floor at the exact time the shots were being fired from the sixth floor. Ultimately, Oswald was silenced by Jack Ruby's fatal bullet. But the truth lived in the testimony of the many book depository witnesses who saw Oswald during those critical moments. Perhaps the most important witness has been lost to history until now. Geraldine Reid The Warren Commission spoke to a Depository employee witness who they simply refer to as "Mrs. Robert Reid," failing to refer to her real first name, which was Delores. She was standing in front of the Book Depository as the motorcade drove by.
Oswald (far-right) in the Civil Air Patrol in 1955. Second from the left is David Ferrie who was a pilot for the CIA and who would later reunite with Oswald in New Orleans just a few months prior to the assassi nation of President Kennedy.
First and foremost, Lee Oswald did NOT shoot President Kennedy. Secondly, as I have shown in the previous chapter, there is undeniable proof that Oswald was involved with the intelligence agencies of our government which plotted the assassination. It is my belief that the true murderers set Oswald up to take the fall, intending to kill him before he could leave the book depository. With Oswald dead, there would be no trial, no adversary proceeding, and no
However, there was a second Mrs. Reid who worked on the second floor of the Book Depository. Her name was Geraldine Reid. The Warren Commission avoided mentioning this Mrs. Reid like the plague. She was flown to Washington and interrogated by the Commission. Her testimony was so devastating to their preconceived conclusion of Oswald 's guilt that they buried all references to her. She said, "I was threatened to keep my mouth shut, or else." Anyone reading the testimony of "Mrs. Robert Reid" would naturally assume that there had been only one 'Mrs. Reid'. In fact there were two: Mrs. Robert Reid (Delores) and Mrs. Geraldine Reid. Here, for the first time, is Geraldine Reid's story: About one minute before the fatal shots were fired at the motorcade, Lee Oswald walked into the office across the
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second floor hallway from the snack room where he had been eating his lunch. He wanted to buy a bottle of soda and did not have the required change for the machine. He walked up to Geraldine Reid at her desk and handed her a dollar bill and asked her for change. "Mr. Oswald didn't like pennies. I remember that," she recalled. "As I was counting out the change, I heard what I later learned were gunshots. Mr. Oswald and I looked at each other quizzically for a moment, but neither of us said anything about the sounds. I did not know that they were shots at the time. I gave Mr. Oswald the change and he turned and walked back into the hallway toward the snack room. That's the last time I saw him until he passed by me a few minutes later as he was leaving the building." Approximately seventy-two seconds after the shots ended and Oswald had returned to the snack room to buy a soda from the machine, Officer Marrion Baker and Oswald's boss, Roy Truly, confronted him in the snack room. Truly told Officer Baker that it was alright and that Oswald, in fact, worked for him. At that time, Truly mentioned to Lee that President Kennedy had been shot. Oswald seemed genuinely surprised. Baker and Truly then left the lunch room and headed upstairs to investigate further. In the meantime, someone had informed Geraldine Reid about the assassination. Geraldine Reid's final encounter with Lee Oswald occurred a few minutes later. "The last time I saw Mr. Oswald, he was leaving the building," Reid stated. "As he passed by me, I noticed that he had his jacket slung over his arm. I told him that the President had just been shot and he simply said 'Oh?' or something like that, and kept on walking out of the office to go downstairs and, I assume, out of the building." Geraldine Reid and David Thiess Several Texas School Book Depository employees have spoken about Geraldine Reid through the years, such as 21
Pauline Sanders and Ruth Hendrix. They knew and liked her. On Sunday morning, November 24, Pauline Sanders spoke by telephone to Geraldine Reid and Geraldine told Pauline about the incident with Lee Oswald in the second floor office, which had occurred at the same time that Delores Reid was still on the front stairs to the Depository building on the first floor.
In January of 2009 I first met with David Thiess, a former investigator for The Office of Naval Intelligence (O.N.I.). He, like myself, was born in 1945. Dave admitted that he had been assigned to look into the assassination of President Kennedy. I was introduced to Dave by longtime friend and even longer time JFK assassination researcher Phil Singer. He told me that this had been a top-secret internal investigation. This was the first of three meetings the three of us had over a three year period. On February 16, 2009, while discussing many of the issues of the assassination, Dave independently brought up the subject of Geraldine Reid. He stated that he knew who Geraldine was. Dave confirmed that he knew that she had been interviewed by the Warren Commission in Washington, DC, in 1964, and that the Commission had suppressed her entire story and buried the fact that she even existed. The Commission never once mentioned her name in their report. He stated that he, "saw suppressed documents on her." I have the feeling that Dave had in fact also interviewed her as well, but he did not confirm it. He said that Geraldine had passed away some years earlier. He did, however, know her entire story and when Dave was told what Geraldine had told me, he confirmed everything from his own investigation. In November of 2012, Dave called Phil Singer and seemed very agitated and distressed. The last time we all met was in December of2012. As this book is going to press, I have just learned that Dave passed away of a heart attack on January 7, 2013, just a few weeks
ago. Dave Thiess, R.I.P.
In the time frame from five minutes before until five minutes after the assassination, Lee Oswald had witnesses to his innocence.
The fifth and sixth floor windows of the Book Depository 15 seconds after the fatal shot. The sixth floor window would soon become known as "th e sniper 's nest. "
At first Officer Baker was the only Deal ey Plaza witness to consider the Book Deposi~ory as a point of interest. Here he alone races into the building seconds after th e assass ination. Just a minute later, he was face to fa ce with Lee Oswald, calml y drinking a "Coke" in the second flo or snack room.
Officially, Carolyn Arnold left the office across the hall from the snack room on the second floor of the Book
Depository, stopped by the water fountain by the doorway of the snack room, had a drink, looked in to see Lee Oswald eating his lunch. She then walked down the stairs to the first floor and out onto the steps of the building to watch the motorcade. Her statements since give a different account, "The FBI changed my story. Lee Harvey Oswald was with me at the water fountain in the break room at around 12:25 , immediately before the time of the shooting. Whenever he had come to me in the past to make change, he would not accept anything with Lincoln's face on it, neither pennies nor five dollar bills." This supports Geraldine Reid's statement about Oswald not wanting any pennies in his change for his one dollar bill at the time of the shooting. Geraldine Reid, along with Carolyn Arnold, Oswald's boss Roy Truly, and Dallas Police Officer Marrion Baker account for Oswald's whereabouts before, during and after the shooting. This would all have been revealed to the public had Oswald lived to stand trial. In addition, depository employee Bonnie Ray Williams was on the sixth floor right in the so-called "sniper's nest" up until just a few minutes before the shooting. According to Williams, Oswald was not there. He would have had to see Oswald if he had been there. Victoria Adams and
The "sniper's nest" window on the sixth floor of the Depository a full thirty seconds after th e fa tal shot. A person is still in the window at the ri ght edge of the open window. This cannot be Lee Oswa ,ld who was already on the second fl oor when this picture was taken.
Sandra Stiles were slowly walking down the stairs of the Depository building right after the shooting, and no one passed them. A photograph taken by witness and Army intelligence officer James Powell shows the sniper's nest window thirty seconds after the shooting. A person is still in the window. We cannot see his face, but we can see part of his body. This allows somewhere between 40 and 60 seconds for Oswald to cross the entire sixth floor both from south to north and then from east to west walking around hundreds or perhaps thousands of book cartons, wiping all fingerprints off the rifle, hiding it behind a row of book cartons, then descending four flights of stairs to the second floor, getting the change from Geraldine Reid during the firing of the shots, crossing the hallway and buying the "Coke" by the table where his sandwich was waiting, partially eaten, on the table. This could not have happened. An Unlikely Chain of Events About forty minutes after the assassination, Dallas Police
22
from theater manager, Butch Burroughs, placing Oswald at the Texas Theatre at the very moment that Officer Tippit was shot.
Army intelligence officer, James Powell , took this photograph of the upper floors of the Book Depository "thirty seconds" after the fatal head shot. One of the shooters is still in the sniper 's nest window on the sixth floor. However a mere forty-two seconds later, Oswald was to encounter police officer M'arrion Baker on the second floor, after Oswald had bought a "Coke."
The bullet shells from an automatic pistol found at the Tippit killing scene don't even fit Oswald's only known handgun, which was a revolver. Also, the bullets removed from Officer Tippit's body cannot be matched to Oswald's revolver! What are the possibilities here?
Officer J.D. Tippit was also shot and killed. The Dallas Police and the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had shot both the President and Tippit, although all of the evidence was to the contrary in each case. In fact, forty minutes after the assassination, Dallas's finest were still too busy destroying the crime scene in the Depository and planting evidence to know anything. The only real connection between both murders is that both President Kennedy and Officer Tippit were shot on the same day. There are no other links between the two crimes. Let's review the connections, or lack thereof, for the two murders that day: the issues that might link the killings of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. Only four minutes prior to Officer Tippit's shooting, Oswald was confirmed to be at his rooming house located at 1026 North Beckley Street, leaving him only four minutes to travel more than a mile on foot to arrive at the kill site in time to shoot Officer Tippit. A feat that would require faster than world-class running. The possibility of someone driving Oswald to the Tippit killing site at Tenth and Patton Streets cannot be totally overlooked, but if that had happened, it does add fuel to the issue of conspiracy. Even ignoring all of the eyewitnesses who stated that the assailant was not Oswald, we still have the very real issue of someone impersonating him to the point of looking enough like him to convince others that they were seeing Oswald in many other circumstances prior to the Tippit shooting. Most importantly, we have eyewitness testimony 23
1. The Tippit shooting had absolutely nothing to do with
the assassination. (Quite likely.) 2. An unknown assailant was about to be questioned or arrested by Tippit, and he shot the policeman in order to escape. (Very possible.) 3. Tippit already knew Oswald (or the look-a-like impostor) and recognized him. The assailant panicked and shot Tippit. (Very believable.) 4. Oswald was driven to a point near Tenth and Patton by a co-conspirator and actually participated in the Tippit shooting. (This is the least likely scenario.)
5. Officer Tippit was part of the conspiracy and already knew the assailant. The killer then shot Tippit, fearing that the officer would either arrest or shoot him and acted first. The strongest bit of evidence here is that beyond any question, Tippit and Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby already knew each other. Two days later, Ruby would silence Oswald by murdering him in the basement of the Dallas police department building. (Very possible.)
6. Tippit was an sacrificial lamb used by the conspirators, who was murdered to link Lee Oswald to the crime by those who knew in advance that Oswald would be in the area. For those involved with the various Dallas law enforcement agencies who were not fans of the Northern, liberal President and would not care (or were even happy about the fact) that he had been murdered, the shooting of a brother police officer might be all that it would take to
In this composited pano rama which I've constructed by stitching two photos together, we see the first moment that most people became aware of Lee Harvey Oswald (aw) . n-o He had just been arrested fo r all egedly sneak ing into the movies, (although be had a ticket stub), at the Texas Theatre on Jefferson Boulevard in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. lt was I :50 p.m ., an hour and twenty minutes after the assass ination.
have the suspect later killed by a "warning shot" as he was being arrested . (Very probable.) 7. Officer Tippit was shot by another police officer, possibly Roscoe White, for any number of reasons, although Officer White considered Tippit to be his "best friend." (The Roscoe White story is a long one and quite involved, but there is a very high probability that this is what happened.) 8. It all happened just the way the Dallas Police and the Warren Commission said it did with Oswald shooting Tippit using a weapon (a .3 8 automatic pistol) which he did not own, after having run what amounts to a 3 :30 mile, making Lee Oswald the fastest runner of all time (the world record is 3:43), at the same time he was at the Texas Theatre a full mile away. (This is the one scenario that is absolutely impossible.) We may never know the true story of the Tippit killing. Was Officer Tippit a true hero, a martyr or an accidental victim of the conspiracy? Was Tippit's killing completely umelated to the President's assassination? Or was he an active participant who was given the last-minute job to silence the patsy? We may never know. Oswald was never given a polygraph test while he was
alive, but his statements, "I have committed no acts of violence" and "I've shot nobody, no sir" have been tested time again on Psychological Stress Evaluators and Voice Stress Analyzers, and every time the results show that he was telling the truth! In the decades since that dark day in November, 1963, much evidence has surfaced that Lee Oswald had, in fact, been an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, among other intelligence organizations (See Chapter One of this book). Just the fact that the Warren Commission used "national security" as an excuse to bury its files and working papers for 75 years, lends credence to that fact. If Oswald was a lone assassin, and if he had no connections to intelligence agencies, how can anything about him relate to any national security issues or concerns? Will we ever know the entire story of Lee Oswald? I would say probably not. In fact, we may never have an answer to the question: who was Lee Harvey Oswald really? But given the totality of the evidence in this case, what we can say for sure is that Lee Oswald never shot anyone on November 22, 1963. The actual assassins were officially protected and went free.
"I have committed no acts of violence .... I've shot nobody, no sir . .. I'm just a patsy." - Lee Oswald 24
The Question of Lee Oswald's Alleged Guilt. Perhaps no other issue is as divided as the question of whether Lee Oswald was one of the assassins. Was he involved in either the murder of President Kennedy or Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit (40 minutes later and 3.5 miles away from Dealey Plaza)? Evidence indicates he didn't shoot either one, but what might he have known in each case? Those are the unsolved questions. The following photographs are from Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK.
Carolyn Arnold saw Oswald eating in the snack room moments before the shooting. She left her office minutes before the shooting. As she passed by the snack room, she clearly saw Oswald eati ng his lunch. She then went down to the first floor and out into the street.
Victoria Adams and Sandra Sti les were wa lking down the stairs . Moments after the shots were fired, no one passed them. During the time that Oswald wo uld have to have been running down the Book Depository stairs. No one passed them, not Oswald, not anyone else.
As the shots were being fired , Lee Oswald was at Gera ldine Reid 's desk in the office on the second floor. He was getting change fo r a dollar bill to use in the snack room soda machine. " o pennies please," requested Oswald . They both heard the shots being fired and looked at each other.
Oswald took the change and bought a "Coke." Approximately 70 seconds later was face-to-face w ith his boss, Roy Truly, and Dallas Police Officer Marrion Baker. When questioned, Oswald accurately named all of the people who had been in the snack room. lfhe had been on the sixth floor, how could he possibly have known who was there?
Oswald's alibi. At the moment of th e fata l shots. He was in the second floor office.
25
Oswald was at Geraldine's desk getting change for a dollar bill when the shots were fired.
Robert Groden on the set of JFK.
The rooming house at 1026 N . Beckley, where Oswald was staying in Oak Cliff.
Earlene Roberts hanging Oswald's curtain rods in hi s room on the afternoon of the assassination.
Above two photos Oswald's fingerprints on the curtain rods that he said he had brought with him to work from Ruth Paine's house on the morning of th e assassination.
Gladys Johnson (Manager and Hou ekeeper where Oswald resided) at 1026 North Beckly Ave. Oak Cliff, TX
The windows of his 5ft. x l 2ft. room (a little more than the size of a walk-in closet) which he rented for $8.00 per-week .
The Sm ith & Wesson .38 revolver said to have been carried by Oswald at the time of his arrest in the Texas Theatre. According to the Dallas police report, Officer Tippit was shot with an automatic, not a revolver.
"Lee Oswald did not have a gun or bullets in our house. We
Oliver Stone's 1991 recreation of the Lee Oswald impostor who actually shot Dallas Police Officer J.D . Tippit near the corner of 10th and Patton Streets in Oak Cliff forty minutes after the assassination. From the film, JFK.
would regularly go through everyone :S closets and drawers all the time to make sure that they didn't have any bottles of alcohol since that was not allowed by my mother. My mother and I used to make Mr. Oswald's bed nearly every day and I can tell you that he did not have a gun under hi s mattress either." - Pat Hall, whose family owned the rooming house where Oswald was living.
26
Above (this page and opposite): In this composited panorama, which T constructed from four photographs, we can see the actua l arrest of Lee Oswald (yellow arrow) at the Texas Theatre, on the left, and the distance to the Hardy shoe store (black arrow) where John Calvin Brewer worked, on the right.
Above and left: The Texas Theatre on Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff where Lee Oswald was arrested at 1:50 p.m.
27
I
It was Brewer who saw someone who resembled Oswald duck into the entrance way of his shoe store and then sneak into the theatre. The problem is that when this happened, Lee had already been in the theatre for quite a while.
Dallas police officer Maurice "Nick" McDonald, who was one of the officers who arrested Oswald after a scuffle inside the theatre.
Lee Oswald under arrest, outside the Texas Theatre.
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Lee Oswald 's mug shots.
One sty le of Jack Ruby's business card.
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