jfk taken out by mob??? **Contains Graphic Images**

fergus o brien

THE SECRET SERVICE AGENT ON THE KNOLL


by Debra Conway,
with contributions from Michael Parks and Mark Colgan
Copyright 2001
UPDATED

"After the assassination, several witnesses stated they had seen or
encountered Secret Service agents behind the stockade fence
situated on the grassy knoll area and in the Texas School Book Depository."
(HSCA Report pg. 184)
Introduction:
I suppose the first thing most researchers think when reading about Officer Smith's experience meeting the Secret Service Agent on the knoll is to wonder who it could have been, the second thought has to be, "What nerve!" The creativity of impersonating one of the Presidential Praetorian Guard is one that always stood out in my mind. Our guy is not content with the everyday impersonation of Dallas' finest or the cache of being an FBI agent. (And CIA agents never identify themselves as such so that was out of the question.) But to claim be one of the elite Secret Service, those men with sunglasses and headsets in their ears ­ albeit in this case, with dirty fingernails and a sportcoat.[SIZE=-2]1[/SIZE]

According to assassination literature and testimony it has long been established that no genuine Secret Service agents were in Dealey Plaza until later in the afternoon of November 22, 1963. Surprisingly, not only were there no Secret Service agents assigned to or stationed behind the grassy knoll area, but there were no FBI or other federal agents, or Dallas Police Officers stationed there either. This fact suggests phony Secret Service agents were in Dealey Plaza, and that perhaps they were there to help the assassins escape.

I began my search for the knoll agent a few years ago when an article written by Warren Commission apologist Max Holland for "The Washington Spectator" newsletter stated that the mysterious agent on the knoll was none other than James W. Powell, a Army Intelligence agent on his day off.

"James Powell, an Army Intelligence agent then involved in the surveillance of domestic dissidents, was present, and dressed in civilian clothes, in the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas, 10 minutes after the shooting. And his unit, 112th Intelligence Group, did indeed have a file on a self-styled, and seemingly non-violent, Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald....Like thousands of Dallasites that bright November day, Powell had taken the day off to watch the President and First Lady....After hearing the shots, Powell, who was a block away from Dealey Plaza, immediately ran to the vicinity. His first reaction was to take a picture of the TSBD because several people were pointing to it as the source of the rifle fire. He then raced over to check out the commotion around the "grassy knoll," identifying himself as "Special Agent Powell," and thereby creating rumors of a mysterious federal agent at the seen." ("The Washington Spectator," May 15, 1997)

After reading this article, I first called the ARRB's Washington, D.C. offices to ask when the Powell statement had been taken and when it had been released. I related that I had read a summary of the interview by Holland and to my astonishment was told it wasn't released yet. I then phoned "The Washington Spectator "contacting Mr. Holland who openly admitted his source was an ARRB staffer who shared the statement with him. I was understandably upset and shortly received a call back from both the ARRB's Information Officer, Tom Samoluk and General Council, Jeremy Gunn. Gunn told me that Powell didn't necessarily admit he was the agent on the knoll, it was the staffer's interpretation of the conversation - not necessarily what the testimony says.

Confusingly, after pestering the ARRB and NARA the following years for both the Robert E. Jones HSCA testimony and the ARRB's Powell statement, finally on May 24, 1999, I was sent three pages of the HSCA's Executive Session questioning of Army Intelligence Col. Robert E. Jones[SIZE=-2]2[/SIZE], but not the ARRB's Powell statement. I finally received that document a year later simply faxed to me from the National Archives.[SIZE=-2]3[/SIZE]

Through the years there has been speculation from different assassination related sources regarding the knoll agent. There is no doubt he was there on the grassy knoll only moments after the shooting. More than a few authors have scoured testimony and written many words speculating on who the knoll agent could have been. This article won't tell you that but it will tell you who it wasn't.

To assist the reader with the purpose of this article I begin with a listing of the witnesses to the knoll agent and their statements:

THE WITNESSES
Dallas Police Officer Joseph Smith
"After the shooting, Dallas Police officer Joe M. Smith encountered another suspicious man in the lot behind the picket fence [on the grassy knoll]. Smith told the Warren Commission that when he drew his pistol and approached the man, the man "showed [Smith] that he was a Secret Service agent." (WC Vol. VII, pg. 535; see interview of Joseph M. Smith, Feb. 8, 1978, House Select Committee on Assassinations (JFK Document 005886).)
"I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I wasn't alone. There was some deputy sheriff with me, and I believe one Secret Service man when I got there. I got to make this statement, too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot and this woman, I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent." (Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VII, pg.. 531)
J.C. Price
Post Office employee Price was never called to testify, however, he did sign an affidavit stating that immediately after the shots he saw a man with something in his right hand run across the railroad yard that lies behind the wooden fence and parking area.
"I saw one man run towards the passenger cars on the railroad siding after the volley of shots. This man had a white dress shirt, no tie and khaki colored trousers. His hair appeared to be long... He had something in his hand. I couldn't be sure but it may have been a head piece." (Dallas Sheriff's Department Affidavit, 12-22-63)
Lee Bowers, Jr.
Bowers, from his vantage point in the train observation tower located in the parking lot behind the Texas School Book Depository, saw two strangers standing near the wooden fence prior to and at the time of the shooting. They fit the description of the casually dressed man who accosted Officer Smith. (WC Vol. Dallas, Tex. by Mr. Joseph A. Bail, assistant counsel of the President's Commission.
"One man, middle-aged, or slightly older, fairly heavy-set, in a white shirt, fairly dark trousers. Another younger man, about midtwenties, in either a plaid shirt or plaid coat or jacket. They were standing within 10 or 15 feet of each other, and gave no appearance of being together, as far as I knew. They were facing and looking up towards Main and Houston, and following the caravan as it came down."
Sam Holland
Holland told the Warren Commission that he ran around behind the fence on the knoll immediately after the shots and saw evidence of someone standing behind the fence - muddy footprints going back and forth in one spot. He mentions seeing "agents" a few minutes later.
"...I remember about the third car down from this fence, there was a station wagon backed up toward the fence,,, a spot, I'd say 3 foot by 2 foot, looked to me like somebody had been standing there for a long time.
"Yes; immediately, but I turned around, see, and went to searching in there for empty shells, and three or four agents there then and that is when I walked back to the ear there and noticed the tracks there in one little spot." (WC Vol. 6, pgs. 254-247)
Malcolm Summers
"I ran across the-Elm Street to right there toward the knoll. It was there [pointing to a spot on the knoll]-and we were stopped by a man in a suit and he had an overcoat-over his arm and he, he, I saw a gun under that overcoat. And he-his comment was, "Don't you all come up here any further, you could get shot, or killed," one of those words. A few months later, they told me they didn't have an FBI man in that area. If they didn't have anybody, it's a good question who it was." (1988 documentary "Who Murdered JFK?")
Ed Hoffman
"A police officer came around the north end of the fence. He saw and confronted the suit man. The policeman held his service revolver in both hands, arms extended forward, legs spread and slightly squat. The suit man held both arms out to his side, as if to gesture, 'it wasn't me. See, I have nothing.' Then the suit man reached inside his coat and pulled out something and showed it to the police officer. The officer relaxed, and both men mingled with the crowd coming around the fence." ("Eyewitness," by Ed Hoffman and Ron Friedrich, 1998, JFK Lancer Publications)
Gordon Arnold
After hearing the shots, "The next thing I knew someone was kicking my butt and telling me to get up, Arnold said, 'It was a policeman. And I told him to go jump in the river. And then this other guy - a policeman - comes up with a shotgun and he was crying and that thing was waving back and forth." ("Dallas Morning News," August 27, 1978, under the caption, "SS Imposters Spotted by JFK Witness," by reporter Earl Golz.)
Another Witness?
Wilfred Baetz
According to documents found by Michael Parks, Mark Colgan and myself, Wilfred Baetz saw the November 25, 1966, "Life" Magazine and decided to admit he had been in Dealey Plaza on the day of the JFK assassination.3 According to a letter summarizing Baetz's phone statement on December 5, 1966, written by Charles Batchelor, Dallas Chief of Police, Baetz called both the New York FBI and Chief Batchelor. On December 7, 1966, Chief Batchelor sent this letter to the Dallas FBI office. (Document 1, pg. 22 of this article) But by the time the New York FBI pays him a visit Baetz has changed his mind and denies not only being in Dealey Plaza and being accosted by the Secret Service man, he denies even making the calls in the first place. Why? Perhaps the second document holds the explanation: Baetz's wife works for Time-Life.
"The subject stated...He was standing on the grass on the north side of Elm Street - on the slope approaching the triple underpass. He recalls only one shot and immediately after the shot he ran up the slope toward the railroad tracks and was stopped by an unknown officer who pointed a pistol at him and shouted 'Where are you going?' He then returned down the slope." (Letter from December 5, 1966)

Is this a valid witness? After reading the background report listing some of Mr. Baetz's more colorful past experiences, he may not be considered a strong one. However, the evidence shows he could not have made the claim of seeing the knoll agent without having actually experienced it. The "recent publicity" he relates to when contacting the FBI is a "Life" Magazine issue concerning the Zapruder film - not witness statements. Likewise, the phone call to the FBI did originate from his home where he admits no one else could have had access. Each witnesses' statement leaves us with the unimpeachable conclusion that there was a man on the grassy knoll moments after the shooting identifying himself verbally and physically (showing the badge) as Secret Service.4 Next we must try to find out who it could have been.

Potential Agents
Secret Service
· Agent Lem Johns
· Agent Forrest Sorrels
Committee interviews or depositions with 11 of the 16 agents who were on duty with the motorcade and with their supervisors produced evidence that only one agent had left the motorcade at any time prior to the arrival at Parkland Hospital. This agent, Thomas "Lem" Johns, had been riding in Vice President Johnson's follow-up car. In an attempt to reach Johnson's limousine, he had left the car at the sound of shots and was momentarily on his own in Dealey Plaza, though he was picked up almost immediately and taken to Parkland Hospital.[SIZE=-2]5[/SIZE] In every instance, therefore, the committee was able to establish the movement and the activities of Secret Service agents. Except for Dallas Agent-in-Charge Sorrels, who helped police search the Texas School Book Depository, no agent was in the vicinity of the stockade fence or inside the book depository on the day of the assassination. (HSCA Report pg. 184)
Dallas Police Officer D. V. Harkness was questioned regarding his Warren Commission testimony as to who was behind the TSBD when he got there:"There were some Secret Service agents there, but I didn't get them identified. They told me that they were Secret Service." (Harkness HSCA 180-10082-10443 02/07/78)
Dallas Police
· Plainclothes Detectives
Because the Dallas Police Department had numerous plainclothes detectives on duty in the Dealey Plaza area, the committee considered it possible that they were mistaken for Secret Service agents. (HSCA Report, pg. 185)

According to Dallas Police records no plainclothes detectives were assigned to the knoll area in Dealey Plaza.[SIZE=-2]6[/SIZE] But if there, the question begs to be asked: "Why would they identify themselves as Secret Service?" Were they behind the fence on the grassy knoll? Not officially.

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau (A&TT)
· Frank Ellsworth
"...[FBI Agent James] Hosty told the [House] Select Committee that at the time of the assassination 'Frank' Ellsworth...had indicated that he had been in the grassy knoll area and for some reason identified himself as a Secret Service Agent.' [SIZE=-2]8[/SIZE] Ellsworth, deposed by the Committee, denied Hosty's allegation. We know, however, that he was in the immediate area.[SIZE=-2]9[/SIZE] Interestingly, he and seven other ATF agents were among the first law enforcement personnel of any description to reach the sixth floor of the TSBD. If Ellsworth was in the vicinity, it remains to be asked how Hosty knew about it. (Peter Dale Scott, "Deep Politics," pg. 274)
"In 1963, if you would have asked me if I was a Secret Service agent, I most likely would have answered yes-our roles overlapped that much." (Frank Ellsworth to author Gus Russo in 1994, "Live By The Sword," pg. 473)[SIZE=-2]10[/SIZE]
Is Ellsworth admitting he is the knoll agent? If so, then why did he deny it to the HSCA? Reflecting on the timing of Officer Smith seeing the knoll agent, if Ellsworth left his fellow agents and drifted over to the knoll area immediately after the shooting he may have been the man Smith saw. According to testimony, this didn't happen.

· Other ATF Agents
The text below is from a US Secret Service document given to JFK Lancer by author Gus Russo regarding a memo from Alcohol and Tobacco Tax regarding their agents in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination. (A&TT was the old name of ATF.) Both ATF and Secret Service had treasury ID's. Even so, the Booth documents state the agents were searching the TSBD, not the knoll. [SIZE=-2]11[/SIZE]

CO-2-34,030

U.S. SECRET SERVICE
TO: Chief - Attn. Inspr. Kelly
FROM: SAIC Sorrels, Dallas (initialed)
SUBJECT: Report as to A&TT Investigators searching Texas School Book Depository Bldg., Dallas, TX, after assassination of President Kennedy.

There is enclosed a memorandum dated Jan. 14, 1964, submitted by Mr. Carl R. Booth, Jr. Supervisor in Charge, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax, Dallas, TX, regarding their Special Investigators and others having assisted in search of the Texas School Book Depository Building after assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. A copy of this memorandum is being retained in Dallas office.

ATTACHMENT - Memo & cc.
-=-=-

Army Intelligence
Any study of Army Intelligence in Dealey Plaza must begin with the amazing testimony of Col. Robert Jones before the HSCA.[SIZE=-2]12[/SIZE] Excerpted below, Jones, in 1963 was commanding officer of the military intelligence region that encompassed Texas called the 112th. Did Military Intelligence personnel identify themselves as Secret Service agents on the grassy knoll?

The committee did obtain evidence that military intelligence personnel may have identified themselves as Secret Service or that they might have been misidentified as such. Robert E. Jones... told the committee that from 8 to 12 military intelligence personnel in plainclothes were assigned to Dallas to provide supplemental security for the President's visit. He indicated that these agents had identification credentials and, if questioned, would most likely have stated that they were on detail to the Secret Service.

The committee sought to identify these agents so that they could be questioned. The Department of Defense, however, reported that a search of its files showed "no records...indicating any Department of Defense Protective Services in Dallas." The committee was unable to resolve the contradiction. (HSCA Report, pg. 184)
Testimony of Colonel Robert Jones
Mr. Genzman: Colonel Jones, I next would like to ask you about the liaison operations between military intelligence and the Secret Service.
Mr. Jones: At any time that the President, or Vice President, or anyone at the Secret Service has responsibility for physical protection, would be scheduled to arrive in the area, they would contact our Group Headquarters or our Regional Headquarters and we would augment their force, if necessary to provide some type of physical coverage, that is, a man on the street, or an observation of people, vehicles, communications, or any other information or support that we could provide.
But in every case, to my knowledge, our people were under the control and supervision of Secret Service. We never assumed responsibility for the President's protection.
Mr. Genzman: Would you characterize these operations as supplementing the manpower of the Secret Service?
Mr. Jones: Yes, I would.
Mr. Genzman: With specific reference to President Kennedy's trip to Texas, would you release to the committee your connection with liaison operations with the Secret Service?
...
Mr. Jones: We provided a small force - I do not recall how many, but I would estimate between 8 and 12 - during the President's visit to San Antonio, Texas, and then the following day, on his visit to Dallas, the regions also provided additional people to assist, that is additional people from Region 2.
Mr. Genzman: Did these people which you provided include sources who were in contact with the various local law enforcement agencies?
Mr. Jones: The people who were in contact with either the intelligence division or the State Police or the Police Department or the FBI or Secret Service, were reporting either directly to me or to the Regional Operational Officer if necessary, or to the FBI, but it was normally channeling through the region or to the group headquarters. This information would then be made available to the requesting investigating agency.
...
Mr. G.: I have several other names I would like to ask you about. Was James W. Powell one of these liaison personnel?
Mr. J.: Yes, he was a Captain and also wore civilian clothes and was assigned to Region 2 of the 112 MI Group.
Mr. G.: Was he, in fact, on duty the day of the assassination?
...
Mr. J: Yes he was.
...
Mr. G.: Colonel Jones, I would like clarify several points. How many people did the Department of Defense Intelligence have on duty assisting the Secret Service in Dallas on the day of the assassination?
Mr. J.: I would estimate between eight and twelve.
Mr. G.: How many of these people would have been in plain clothes?
Mr. J.: All of them.
Mr. G.: Would any of these Military Intelligence personnel have been carrying Secret Service credentials as a part of their liaison work with the Secret Service?
Mr. J.: They would have not have been carrying Secret Service credentials. They would have been identified with some type of sign, or something on their lapels, or some code or communication that could be identified in the crowd.
This was handled by the Secret Servicemen and they would always advise our people on the type of signal or sign to wear, but they did not have Secret Service credentials.
-end of excerpt-
(Executive session testimony of Col. Robert E. Jones, April 20, 1978, House Select Committee on Assassinations)

Remember, this is the same Robert E. Jones, operations officer of the U.S. Army's 112th Military Intelligence Group Fort Sam Houston, Texas, who contacted the FBI offices in San Antonio and Dallas and gave those offices detailed information concerning Oswald and A. J. Hidell, Oswald's alleged alias, from the Army Intelligence files. The HSCA rightly felt this information suggested the existence of a military intelligence file on Oswald and raised the possibility that he had intelligence associations of some kind. Jones was directly responsible for counterintelligence operations, background investigations, domestic intelligence, and any special operations in a five-state area. (HSCA Report, pg. 221-222)

When the Oswald military intelligence file was requested by the House Committee, the Department of Defense relayed that they "destroyed the file as part of a general program aimed at eliminating all of its files pertaining to nonmilitary personnel." (HSCA Report, pg. 223; Letter from Department of Defense to House Select Committee on Assassinations, June 22, 1978, pg. 6 )

James W. Powell
James Powell is important in assassination research for several reasons. According to his ARRB statement Powell had been in Dealey Plaza when the shooting occurred and had taken several photographs with a 35mm Minolta camera. One, of course, is his famous photograph of the Texas School Book Depository taken just seconds after the shooting of the president which shows the full length of the TSBD. It was released by the FBI in 1976 and first published in an assassination book.[SIZE=-2]13[/SIZE] None of the other Powell photos have ever been published and he has rarely been interviewed.

Let's return to the beginning of this article with the ARRB's interview of Powell by Timothy A. Wray, ARRB chief Analyst for Military Records.[SIZE=-2]14[/SIZE] What does Powell say about his activities on November 22, 1963?

His background:

Wray: And what was the nature of your duties (at the time of the assassination)?
Powell: Well, I was a member of the 112th INTC (Intelligence Corps) Group. I ran security investigations for security clearances on both military and civilian personnel that worked, for instance, on missile bases or wherever. As long as some part of their life was in our area: Dallas, Texarkana, Amarillo, that sort of thing. I'd be responsible for checking into their background. Checking possibly police records. I went out interviewing references they might have given, character references, and developing additional character references from those that were given by the people we were running the security clearances on.
Wray: You also had special training in photographic investigation?
Powell: Right, investigative photography.
Wray: How did that play in your duties? Or was it just an additional skill you didn't use that very much?
Powell: It was primarily an additional skill. It was like anything else you do in the military, you get trained for it in the event that you have to use it someday. We were trained in investigative photography, both from the standpoint of taking actual pictures of ­ well, let's say we were expected to go out and photograph spies, or whatever, or follow suspected people that we were suspicious of doing something involved with the military against us. We were trained to be able to seek these people out, to photograph, to cover, to do surveillance on them, that type of thing. I was trained to do the photographic end of that, not only from the standpoint of taking pictures but developing them as well.
Wray: Okay. Now, just to mention some things here that I think are already in the record. Ordinarily you did your, you performed your duties in civilian clothes?
Powell: Correct.

Wray: You had some kind of identification credential, didn't you, separate from your military ID card, that identified you as a special agent?
Powell: Yes.
Wray: Something like this? [Wray shows Powell his ARRB identification, which is a bifold wallet-type credential showing owner's picture and employing federal agency.]
Powell: something in your pocket you opened up. Like that exactly. [Laughs] And there you are, Mr. Wray. Exactly.

Wray: In the files that I've been able to search, I saw the immediately after the assassination you wrote a memorandum, and you may have been interviewed by some other people, FBI or something like that. But an indication that you also were interviewed by some people for, I think, the Church Committee ­ that was the Senate committee on intelligence ­ in approximately 1973. Later the House Select Committee on Assassinations had a couple of people talk to you. Is that correct?
Powell: The House Select Committee I remember. I don'tmaybe the other one also on the phone. I don't' remember a direct interview with them. But the House Select Committee people did come out here to Los Angeles and I met them in a hotel in downtown L.A. Couple of gentlemen. The identified themselves and I talked with them, and I got correspondence back from them sort of confirming our meeting and so forth.
The events of November 22nd
Wray: Let me turn now to the events around the 22nd of November, 1963. Do you recall when or how you learned that the President was going to visit Dallas? Did you learn the day before, two days before, a week before, a month before? Do you have any impression of how long you learned about this?
Powell: To be very honest with you, no. I'm sure like everyone else I read it in the paper and heard about it. It was interesting enough that I asked for time off, a leave of absence from my regular duties so I could see the motorcade, so I could go out to the airport and see the president. And I was hoping to get a few pictures. But I don't remember specifically how long before. I'd say in the neighborhood of a week, probably.
Wray: do you recall any discussion with other members of the 112th in anticipation of the presidential visit? Other people that were going to try to get time off to go see it, or anything else that anybody was going to be doing in connection with that? With the visit?
Powell: To be very hones with you, no. That's surprising when I think about it. I know others were there, they were on duty, or they were working the normal things that they do and did not ask for time off to do this.
Wray: Do you recall any discussion, or activities the 112th was going to do related to providing security for the President?
Powell: No. Not at all.
Wray: Do you recall any occasion previous to that, or for that matter subsequent to that, when the 112th did provide any kind of security ­ if not for the President, for any other kind of activity?
Powell: We did not.
Wray: Okay, now you mentioned that on the 22nd of November that you had asked for time off. I understand, I'm just clarifying something here. Some members of the unit were still ­ maybe most members of the unit ­ were working that day. Is that correct? But you had specifically asked for time off?
Powell: Right. Because if you're In my capacity I'm expected to be out ­ I have leads that are given to me. When I'm given a lead, I'm expected to go out and interview references and look for records and that type of thing during the course of the day, and then file a report on each one of those. That's what the other agents were doing except for those that, there was always a staff in the building ­ in this case the Rio Grande Building ­ and there were probably three or four of those people there at the time when I had my time off. The other agents were just out doing their regular job.
Wray: Let's go over here, sort of what happened that day. Did you go, do you recall whether you went to the office that day before you went out to Love Field? I mean, you were on pass that day, so
Powell: No.
Wray: Did not go to the office?
Powell: No need to.
Wray: So you went to Love Field. Were you there for when the President initially arrived?
Powell: Yes. Yes.
Wray: And did you take pictures at that time?
Powell: Yes, I did.
Wray: And how many pictures?
Powell: Not many. Probably three or four as they came off the plane. And I was a pretty good distance away, and unfortunately without a telescopic lens. [Laughs] You see these very small people coming off this great big plane.
Events in Dealey Plaza
Powell: I know exactly where I was. He'd come down Main Streetturned right onto Houston and left essentially on Elm and then down under the freeway. When I took the pictures I was back here ­ again, I honestly can't remember if these things have published the main streets, but it was one of the east-west streets. The motorcade was coming down, I was approximately a block away, over here which is off this sketch taking photographs of the motorcade as it went by. Once it went by meI was on Main because I went one block back to Elm Street and I was coming down this way and I was almost at this intersection when the motorcade came around and started down Elm Street, down the hill. I was probably half way down the block when I heard the shots fired. At that time, not expecting anything like that, you weren't sure if we had backfires going on or fireworks or actual shots. Obviously, it turns out that shots were fired.
Wray: In terms of distance, how far would you estimate you were from the intersection of Elm and Houston then?
Powell: Maybe a hundred feet.
...
Powell: I knew that when I got to this intersection, there were people pointing up at the Book Depository Building indicating that they had heard shots coming from there.
Wray: If I could ask you, when you say "people," you mean more than one person?
Powell: People. Yes. More than one person: A couple. At least one pointed up at the building, and another standing near that person ­ I think this gentleman corroborated that. I crossed the street over to the Book Depository Building and walked on down. There were, there were police officers, a few police officers there that had just been around the area, plus some ­ at least a couple ­ from the sheriff's department that were there. Sheriffs. In group we kind of went to the parking area behind because there were, again, a lot of civilians standing around watching the motorcade coming down who'd said they thought they heard, that they thought they'd heard someone running through that area. So we all went together back there but didn't see anything obvious, other than just this stampede. Nobody carrying a gun or anything like that. So I left the group and went back to the Book Depository Building, it being the closest building that looked like it might have a phone in it, and went in there to call my office.

Powell: When someone pointed up at the building and said they'd heard shots coming from up there, I wheeled around with my camera and took a picture of the building at that moment.
Powell's identification
Wray: Okay. Let me ask you this question. Were you carrying your special agent ID?
Powell: Yes, yes.
Wray: Do you recall whether you showed that to anyone at the time you were walking around behind the School Book Depository in the vicinity of the railroad yard? I mean, to stop and ask people anything, did you show them that identification?
Powell: I recall that I, I basically recall that I did. Because the officers were curious as to why I was joining them and I just flashed my credentials to show them and that was sufficient at the time and I put them back. I had my camera and so forth. We all sort of walked together back to that area behind the building. But then I left them in place.

Wray tries to get Powell to admit he would call himself Secret Service:

Wray: When you show somebody the credential, how would you identify yourself verbally? You'd say
Powell: Well, I'm Jim Powell and I'm with the, with the military intelligence corps.

Obviously disappointed in his attempts to lead the witness, Wray tries again.

Wray: Would you say that you were a special agent?
Powell: Yes.
Wray: You would say that you were a special agent?
Powell: Yes.
Wray: So you might have said, I mean, something like, "I'm James Powell, I'm a special agent"

Although Powell cannot help but see where Wray wants him to go, he continues to state his identification correctly, though somewhat modified.

Powell: I'm a special agent with military intelligence. And show my credentials. It seemed like the logical thing to do at the time. [Laughs] It worked that time. It didn't work the second time, but anyway ­ when I was coming out of the building, but that's something else altogether.
-end-

We now have a better understanding of Powell's activities and the time sequence while in Dealey Plaza. He could not have been the knoll agent for several reasons:

• The time: he stopped to take his well-known photo of the School Book Depository building,
• His actions: he was with a group of what he terms "Sheriffs." They were probably the ATF Agents.
• Lastly, this not unimportant exoneration is that Powell, himself, reminds us that he had a camera. Officer Smith and the others surely would have remarked upon that in his description of the mysterious knoll agent. Was Powell on duty as his supervisor stated? Could he have had someone under surveillance? Or was he simply a witness to history as he claims.

CONCLUSION:
As stated at the beginning, this article will not show who the knoll agent is but I believe it has shown who it is not. The evidence that someone was on the knoll moments after the shooting in Dealey Plaza is established. As historical researchers, we may have to accept that we may never know who he was. For myself, I will continue to search.

[SIZE=-1]NOTES:[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]
1. Officer Joseph Smith's description to author Anthony Summers quoted in Conspiracy, The Definitive Book On The JFK Assassination, Updated and Expanded Edition, 1989, New York: Paragon House, pg. 50.
2. The complete HSCA Jones deposition (RIF 180-10116-10200) was a gift to JFK Lancer from Stewart Galanor.
3. Go here for Baetz and Booth documentsURL="http://www.jfklancer.com/docs.maps/ATT.GIF"][COLOR=#660000]1[/COLOR][/URL URL="http://www.jfklancer.com/docs.maps/ATT-2.JPEG"][COLOR=#660000]2[/COLOR][/URL. Also available to order from JFK Lancer Resource Mail Order is the complete booklet of all documents in this article including the testimonies of Jones and Powell.
4. Michael Parks recently came across evidence of even another witness to the knoll agent. He relayed this to from Mrs. Charles Blankenship: Her husband, Charles "Charlie" Blankenship was with the DPS office from another county other than Dallas. She recalled him working out of the Fort Worth office but was not sure. He was off duty on 11/22/63 but had come to Dallas to see the president with other officers stationed in Dallas. He was standing on the east side of Houston Street in front of the Records Building. He heard the shooting and, like many other lawmen, ran to where he felt the shots had originated, this being the knoll area. He supposedly encountered two men in suits that stated they were Secret Service agents. They told him he could go no further and he turned and left Dealey Plaza. He was not interviewed by any agency and kept this story to his immediate family until his death. It was known that he had a relative on the Dallas Police force.
5. "The Man Who Wasn't There," by Chris Mills, December 1995, Assassination Chronicles. Viewing films and photos from the motorcade creating a timeline, it is not possible for Johns to have had time to interact with anyone and immediately catch his ride. This is illustrated in the article "The Man Who Wasn't There, Was There, Fake Secret Service Agents In Dealey Plaza" by Michael Griffith from the Spring 1996 Assassination Chronicles.
6. Uniformed Officer W. B. Barnett was assigned to the corner of Elm and Houston. Uniformed Officer J. W. Foster was assigned to the railroad tracks over the triple underpass. (Reports reproduced in Chief Curry's book Assassination File, pgs. 104 and 106.) Former Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry stated in 1977 that the man encountered by Officer Smith "...must have been bogus." Said Curry, "I think he must have been bogus--certainly the suspicion would point to the man as being involved, some way or other, in the shooting since he was in an area immediately adjacent to where the shots were--and the fact that he had a badge that purported him to be Secret Service would make it seem all the more suspicious." (Summers, pg. 51)
7. HSCA Report, pg 184
8. In Hosty's own book "Assignment Oswald," he writes, "That morning, I had a prescheduled meeting to compare notes with Agent Ed Coyle of the Army Intelligence unit and Agent Frank Ellsworth of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau about a weapons" Hosty does not address his claims regarding Ellsworth on the knoll. (Assignment Oswald, pg. 201, James P. Hosty, 1996 Arcade Publishing, New York)
9. WH 4, pg. 461
10. See his book, "Live By The Sword," pg. 473, for more revisionist statements from SS agent Mike Howard, Robert Gemberling, and Frank Ellsworth, a Dallas ATF agent, on the likely agent on the knoll. ("Live By The Sword," 1998, Bancroft Press, Baltimore, MD)
11. These agents are named in the Booth documents (attachment to the Secret Service document in this article.).
12. Robert Jones' initial contact with the HSCA was by a HSCA staffer named Harold Wheat. During this interview with Mr. Wheat, Jones admitted that he was aware of Oswald's trip to Mexico before the assassination. He also stated that he did not believe Oswald acted alone. "To believe that you would have to assume it was a suicide mission." Jones told the HSCA that to his surprise neither the FBI, Secret Service, CIA nor Warren Commission ever interviewed him. Read more on Jones here.
13. Cover-Up, J. Gary Shaw and Larry R. Harris, publisher, Gary Shaw, Cleburne, Tex., 1976.
14. Powell's statement, April 12, 1996. Taken in California by Timothy A. Wray, ARRB Chief Analyst for Military Records -- and apparently the source for Max Holland's article. No RIF number for his statement was attached.[/SIZE]

fergus o brien

here is an articale i found intersting (its quite long sorry but it will take about 3 to 4 posts )but i hope you will enjoy it.

The Spider’s Web: The Texas School Book Depository and the Dallas Conspiracy
By William Weston

There is a very large spider guarding this web of secrecy. I have entered other webs, but this one is different because the spider leaves the web and stalks its prey – sometimes for many years.
Elzie Glaze [1]

Abstract:
Journalist Elzie Glaze compared the Texas School Book Depository to a spider that can leave its web and stalk its prey. This article posits the view that behind Glaze’s metaphor was a weapons and narcotics smuggling operation moving under the guise of schoolbooks. Controlled by ultraconservatives, the depository harbored spies, who infiltrated left-wing organizations. It also had law enforcement agents, who monitored and controlled the drug traffic within the city of Dallas. These operatives acted at the instigation of the national security establishment. When President Kennedy threatened to break up that establishment, a plot developed to assassinate him. The schoolbook workers became involved in the plot, when they relocated into the seven-story building that overlooked a 120-degree turn at Elm and Houston Streets. The turn made the President an easy target, because it slowed his limousine down to a crawl. After the assassination, the victors of the coup imposed extra security measures at the schoolbook depository in order to protect ongoing smuggling activities.

Introduction

The pilot of a Dallas-bound commercial airliner made an announcement over the intercom: President Kennedy and Governor Connally were hit by gunfire while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Among the passengers hearing the news was Joe Bergin, regional manager for the Scott Foresman Company in Dallas. His office was in the same building, where Lee Harvey Oswald purportedly fired a rifle from a sixth floor window.

On the sixth floor that day William Shelley and his crew of five men were adding new plywood to the old floor. How they failed to notice the lifting and moving of two dozen boxes, each weighing 55 pounds, to make the sniper’s nest at the southeast corner window has never been explained. Also unexplained is an incident after the assassination: Shelley spoke with Oswald just prior to the latter’s escape in a Nash Rambler.

A veil of secrecy conceals the company that employed these men. The Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) moved into the seven-story, 411 Elm Street building during the summer of 1963, but exactly when is unknown. Ruth Paine, while driving on the freeway, saw the company name on a four-story warehouse and thought that Lee worked there, not realizing that a larger building, also within her view, was the place where he really worked. [2] Evidently a new sign was added later, but exactly when is unknown. The difficulty of obtaining specific details is of course due to the building’s role as a shooting platform, but there is something else to consider. From clues derived from a variety of sources, company executives used schoolbooks to disguise shipments of firearms and narcotics. Although the picture is still unclear, the story of Joe Bergin adds an important piece to the puzzle. It is a story he never would have told himself, but thanks to his son, it is told here for the first time.


Background

Born in Alvin, Texas on August 12, 1899, Joe Lyons Bergin was the son of a Methodist minister, John W. Bergin, who in his early years traveled the preaching circuit with his wife and children. After four years as a pastor in Corsicana, John went to Georgetown, where he served as president of Southwestern University from 1935 to 1942. His son Joe went to the same university in the fall of 1918, where he excelled as a football player. After graduation, he taught history and athletics at the Lake Forest High School in Dallas. In 1930 he went to Greenville (50 miles northeast of Dallas), where he became the principal of a high school. Two years later, he won a four-year term as superintendent of the school district. People admired him for his intelligence and courteous manners. He was also a delightful conversationalist. As superintendent, he worked hard to raise the academic standards back up so that its secondary schools could regain their accreditation. For this achievement he won the gratitude of the citizens of Greenville. [3]

Joe’s wife Jewell was a strong, confident woman, musically talented with a splendid voice, who loved to sing and play the piano. In the backyard, she kept a beautiful garden with lots of iris, her favorite flower. In 1934, as president of the Eclecta Literary Club, she invited women from twenty-six other clubs to her home in order to found the City Federation of Women’s Clubs, an organization dedicated to advancing music, art, drama, dance, literature, and other cultural endeavors in the city of Greenville. In 1937 she served a one-year term as president of the federation. On top of this busy social life, Jewell had a baby – Joe, Jr., their only child – born on February 10, 1935.

Meanwhile, her husband was getting involved in law enforcement. During the Great Depression, many outlaws such as Machine Gun Kelly, Raymond Hamilton, and Bonnie and Clyde were finding Texas a congenial haven. To restore order, Governor Miriam Ferguson augmented the Texas Rangers, which at that time numbered 32 men with 2300 Special Rangers (volunteers who assisted the professionals without pay). Bergin enlisted as a private in the Special Rangers on January 3, 1934. On his oath of enlistment, he described himself as 5 feet 11 inches, fair to ruddy complexion, dark brown hair, blue eyes, 175 pounds, 34 years of age. He re-enlisted on August 9, 1935 and at this point the service records for the Special Rangers in the public domain ends. However, Bergin may have continued as a Ranger, since according to his obituary he was a “veteran of World War II,” and the Texas Rangers functioned as a military unit as well as a state police force.

The Drugs and Guns Connection

During the latter part of the 1930’s the Rangers shifted their focus from bank robbers to drug smugglers. Drug importation reached record levels, largely because the federal government secretly allowed Nationalist Chinese to import opium. The Chinese needed cash to pay troops and buy weapons in its fight against the Communist Chinese. A two-way traffic developed with guns leaving the United States to supply China, and drugs coming in to pay for them. To protect the Nationalist Chinese from political repercussions, the drug trafficking was blamed on the Red Chinese. According to Joseph Douglass, author of Red Cocaine, Mao Tse-Tung ordered the cultivation of opium on a grand scale. He had two objectives: obtaining exchange for needed supplies and "drugging the white region." [4] However Douglas Valentine, author of Strength of the Wolf, interviewed former Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) agents and gathered a lot of documentary evidence to present a stronger case that the primary culprit was Nationalist China.

Information about U.S.-Chinese connivance in the drug trade came out during the Opium Scandal of April 1927. The unhappy wife of Leonard Huser divorced him and revealed a lot of his secrets. She said that in 1924 Huser negotiated a deal whereby he delivered 6600 Mausers from Italy to Chiang Kai-Shek in exchange for $500,000 worth of opium. This was done at the knowledge of the State and War Departments. The affair ended when a judge sentenced Huser to two years in a federal prison.

After the communists took over the mainland in 1949 and Chiang Kai-Shek moved his government to Taiwan, Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave his blessing to a diplomatic mission to Taiwan consisting of businessmen and military officers, led by William Pawley, to facilitate the importation of drugs from Burma. Providing most of the funds for this mission was Texas oil man, H. L. Hunt. One of the points of entry for Chinese heroin was across the Mexican border into Laredo, Texas.

In a July 1959 report “The Narcotics Situation in South Asia and the Far East,” Garland Williams, a top official in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), accused the Central Intelligence Agency of encouraging the Chinese to produce drugs. According to Valentine, the CIA and its Nationalist Chinese allies operated the largest drug-trafficking syndicate in the world. [5]

Towards the end of World War II, Mexico became another source of drugs. In 1945, Eva Ruby and Paul Roland Jones were partners in picking up opium delivered to Dallas from the Durango area of Mexico and sending it to Hyman Ruby in Chicago via shipments of iron pipe. As a volunteer in the Texas Rangers, Bergin would have seen and heard much of the guns and drugs trade.

The Schoolbook Companies

In 1938, in the middle of his second term, Bergin submitted his resignation to “go into business,” according to a newspaper article. [6] He left the security, prestige, and lucrative salary of a school superintendent in order to go to Dallas and sell schoolbooks for Scott Foresman. If he was seeking a better way to make money, then his career change made little sense. On the other hand, if he wanted to broaden his opportunities in law enforcement, then Dallas was a major step forward. Not only was he moving into a center of organized crime, but he also was getting a job that placed him in a unique position to monitor and control illegal items moving under the guise of schoolbooks.

Scott Foresman, the predominant publisher of elementary-level schoolbooks and best known for its Dick and Jane readers, had its headquarters in Chicago. Bergin was the manager of its Dallas office, located on the third floor of the Santa Fe building on Main Street. The staff, virtually all female, ranged from eight to ten employees to as many as twelve to fifteen during the summer when the demand for schoolbooks was high. Bergin’s assistant, Dora Newman, a small, frail-looking woman, yet full of energy, was adept at maintaining harmony and discipline in the office and even had a touch of class.

Sharing the third floor were the offices of other schoolbook companies, such as Bobbs-Merrill, Lyons & Carnahan, McGraw-Hill, and Southwestern. In spite of the competition, all the managers had friendly contacts with one another and took turns giving parties. Joe hosted parties with no alcoholic beverages, for he disapproved of drinking.

The main occupant of the third floor was the Hugh Perry Book Depository, a privately owned company, incorporated in 1927 and the predecessor of the TSBD. Hugh Perry acted as an independent agency for a group of publishers to warehouse and distribute textbooks to schools in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. Not far from the TSBD on 707 Browder Street was the Lone Star Schoolbook Depository, a rival company, which also warehoused and distributed schoolbooks.

As part of his job, Joe Bergin worked as a lobbyist at the state capitol, where he met with legislators and competed with other publishing companies in the politics of book adoption. In the state of Texas, the legislature had the authority to decide what books schools should have. A different practice was used in Oklahoma and New Mexico, which allowed principals and superintendents to decide what books to get. Bergin went to these states with a carload of books and basically functioned as a salesman. As his responsibilities grew, he hired others to do the business trips while he remained at the office to do the paperwork.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Eighth Service Command took over the Santa Fe building, compelling its occupants to go elsewhere. The schoolbook companies found a crumbling building at 2210 N. Pacific Avenue that used to be a parking garage. In spite of the dreariness of the place, Dora Newman somehow made the Scott Foresman office livable and attractive.

On October 29, 1945, Hugh Perry hired a mysterious clerk named William Shelley. [7] According to news journalist Elzie Glaze, who met him in 1974, Shelley said he was an intelligence agent during the war and afterwards joined the CIA. [8] Since his previous job was a brief stint working in defense plants, it is possible that he served as an informant for some counterespionage unit. This undercover work carried over into Hugh Perry, where schoolbooks concealed clandestine shipments of guns and drugs. The second part of Shelley’s statement shows that, after the CIA came into existence in 1947, it took over this operation – and the agents assigned to it.

fergus o brien

The Activities of Jack Ruby

Money generated by the sale of drugs required laundering, and gambling was one way to do that. In November 1946, Paul Roland Jones approached Sheriff Steve Guthrie and promised him a starting salary of $150,000 a year if he allowed his friends from Chicago to bring slot machines and floating crap games into Dallas. Jones said that Jack Ruby was in charge of this operation and that he was due to arrive in the spring of 1947. Guthrie said he would think it over and agreed to another meeting. However, Guthrie was an honest man and turned to the Texas Rangers for help. Led by W. E. “Dub” Naylor, the Rangers made a secret tape recording of the second meeting between Jones and Guthrie. It took a month to gather enough evidence to arrest or drive out these gangsters. Among those arrested was Jack’s sister, Eva Ruby, the owner of a restaurant in Dallas and (as previously mentioned) a partner with Jones in sending opium to Chicago. Victory over these mobsters was short-lived, for Jack Ruby arrived the following year and started various gambling enterprises around the city. As a Special Ranger, Bergin may have participated in Naylor’s surveillance operation.

During this same period Jack Ruby was involved in counterintelligence. Officially, he was an aircraft mechanic in the Army Air Corps from May 1943 until February 1946 at various bases in the South. His brother Sam was also in the Air Corps as an informer, keeping an eye on communists and nazis and writing letters to his brother Jack about his observations. Although Sam wrote the letters as if they were to his brother, he actually addressed the envelopes to a counterintelligence officer. [9] On three separate occasions in about summer 1943, early 1944, and early 1947, Ruby went to a union hall in Muncie, Indiana to participate in meetings with communists. The union hall was on the third story of a three-story building, where gambling often happened during evenings and weekends. Ruby met with Russian Jews, some of whom were communists. [10]

Additionally, Ruby was an informer for the FBN. After the shooting of Oswald, Mort Benjamin, an FBN agent in New York, found a file showing that Ruby had been an informer since the 1940s. When Benjamin returned to read the file again, it was missing. Apparently, someone had taken every document related to the FBN’s relationship with Ruby. [11]

Ruby’s work as an informer is comparable to that of an employee at the TSBD. Joe Molina, credit manager for the TSBD since February 1947, knew Bill Lowery, an undercover agent for the FBI. In 1955 Molina and Lowery became interested in a leftist group called the American GI Forum, an organization that had the goal of fighting injustices perpetrated against people of Mexican descent. Molina and Lowery were among six individuals who formed the Dallas chapter of the GI Forum. The following year Lowery nominated Molina as chairman. [12]

In testimony given at a hearing of the Subversive Activities Control Board in 1963, Lowery admitted he was an FBI informant infiltrating the GI Forum. By implication his friend Molina was an informant too. The Dallas police became interested in Molina after the assassination and investigated him as a suspect. They publicized his connections to alleged communists, and as a result Molina lost his job at the TSBD. If Molina was an undercover agent, then he was one of four such operatives in one location. The other three were Shelley, Bergin, and Oswald.

Ultraconservatives and the TSBD

In 1947, Hugh Perry changed its name to the Texas School Book Depository. Five years later, the schoolbook companies moved into the first floor of the Dal-Tex Building. Clear glass partitions and a hallway separated the companies. Everyone could see what everyone else was doing. The Scott Foresman office had the most desirable spot, a sunlit corner with a view of the County Records building across Elm Street, the Sexton grocery warehouse across Houston, and a white, four-story TSBD warehouse just north of the railroad tracks.

During these years, Jewell was an avid enthusiast for Dallas, doing much to beautify the city and enhance its culture. As vice president of a club devoted to cultivating flowers, she led the effort to plant an iris garden in Samuels Park on Grand Street. She was also a member of an organization that sponsored musicians and musical events. This interest in the fine arts, as well as her devotion to Catholicism, led Jewell to become an active volunteer in the 1960 presidential campaign of Senator John F. Kennedy.

In supporting a Democratic candidate, Joe and Jewell were unlike the top people of the TSBD. Roy Truly, a shipping clerk, hated Kennedy for fostering domestic policies that led to interracial marriages. [13] Jack Cason, the president, was the commander of American Legion Post 53 in Dallas, a right-wing organization. His wife was an outspoken ultraconservative. According to M. Theodore Taylor, an employee of McGraw-Hill, Mrs. Cason declared in the spring of 1961 at a social engagement that the President was so bad in his liberal policies that someone ought to shoot him. [14] In spite of these political differences, Joe Bergin was a good friend of Cason and Truly and respected their efficiency and promptness in getting out the books. (The ultraconservative ideology was also prevalent at the Lone Star Schoolbook Depository, where Vice President Ross Carlton was a segregationalist, who hated both Kennedy and Johnson for their civil rights policies. [15])

In 1963, Jack Cason decided to get a lease on the 411 Elm Street building. The owner was D. Harold Byrd, an ultraconservative oil tycoon. Byrd was a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) for Texas and Louisiana. Serving under him as a CAP commander was David Ferrie, a CIA contract pilot. [16] Among Byrd’s cadets were Lee Harvey Oswald and Barry Seal. As a cadet, Seal was a gun smuggler, flying wooden crates filled with guns and ammo from the La Combe airfield in Louisiana. Ferrie paid Seal $400 a week to fly this cargo. [17]

Byrd was connected to the Mafia through his employee J. R. Stanley, an associate of E. E. Wallace, who in turn had business dealings with those involved in the aforementioned Chicago syndicate’s invasion of Dallas in 1946. Byrd was a co-director of Dorchester Gas Producing with Jack Crichton, an oil man and member of the Army Intelligence Reserve. [18] Crichton and George H. W. Bush raised funds for anti-Castro Cubans and for Operation 40, a group that upon receiving orders assassinated military or political leaders in foreign countries. [19] Crichton also arranged for key Russians in the oil industry to act as interpreters for Marina Oswald at Dallas Police headquarters.

Byrd bought the 411 Elm Street building from the Southern Rock Island Plow Company in 1936 in order to start an air conditioning factory. When that venture did not work out, Byrd leased it to the John Sexton Company, a wholesale grocery firm, which had it for twenty years. For the schoolbook companies to move in, extensive remodeling had to be done.

Thoughts of the upcoming move were on Bergin’s mind, when his son walked into his office. He arrived in downtown Dallas on a bus and needed a ride home. As a soldier in the army stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, he spent his time off visiting his parents. Bergin told his son he was not happy about leaving the comfortable setting of the Dal-Tex building, where the routine was established and predictable. Moving to the new building was like starting over. Furthermore, each company had to bear the cost of refurbishing its own office, and as a thrifty man, Bergin worried about the price of everything from light fixtures to window shades.

Bergin invited his son on a tour of the proposed site for the new office. They walked across the street, entered the old grocery warehouse through the main entrance, and approached the back of the building. They saw two antiquated freight elevators, which needed an overhaul and so could not be used. Near the elevators in the corner was the staircase, which they used instead. Ascending them was hard for the elder Bergin, who was 64 years old and out of shape. They reached the fourth floor and looked around. It was empty, dark and gloomy and had the appearance of being abandoned for years. As a future site for a Scott Foresman office, it did not look promising.

Boxes Too Large for Books

About a month or two later, Joe Jr. bypassed the Dal-Tex with its now empty first floor, and went into the newly refurbished building. It was around 6:00 pm, and almost everyone had gone home. He entered a newly installed passenger elevator and went up to the fourth floor. The elevator opened onto a short hallway and across the hall was the entry door for Scott Foresman. Before entering, Joe opened a door to the right and saw an open storage area that took up two-thirds of the fourth floor. He saw numerous cardboard boxes, four feet square by five feet high, filling the storage area. Since no forklifts were on hand, Joe wondered how the warehouse men moved them up there. Four feet square by five feet has a capacity of 80 cubic feet, and a cubic foot of books is about 30 pounds, so 30 x 80 = 2400 pounds. Obviously not containers of books, these oversized boxes may have concealed contraband items – probably lightweight, bulky materials, such as camouflage netting or waterproof tarps.

Henry Hurt, author of Reasonable Doubt, met a conspirator named Robert Easterling, who said that the assassin’s rifle, a 7 mm Czech automatic, was smuggled into the TSBD in a wooden box, 36 x 48 x 60 inches, with a false bottom. Hurt doubted that such a large container could be moved into the building inconspicuously, since the largest typical box was cardboard and measured 12 x 14 x 18 inches (and when filled with books weighed 55 pounds). However, while visiting the vacant TSBD in 1983, Hurt went up to the sixth floor and found seven heavy, wooden boxes stamped with the names of publishing companies. They had been left there since the time the TSBD moved out of the building in 1970. One label read Texas School Book Depository, 500 Red Pony books by John Steinbeck, from Bobbs-Merrill. Three boxes appear in a photograph in his book. By comparing the window next to them, which measured 14 inches off the floor, one box was about 15 x 30 x 60 inches, and thus had an estimated capacity of 15 cubic feet. If filled with books it might have weighed 450 pounds – too heavy to move without a forklift. The discovery of these boxes plus a photograph printed as Warren Commission Exhibit 491 showing two large wooden boxes being used as storage bins satisfied Hurt that Easterling was correct about the mode of entry for the assassin’s rifle. [20] Unfortunately, Easterling was a false confessor who may have had a small part in the assassination but who fabricated many of his claims. It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with those claims, yet Hurt’s discovery of large boxes impractical for books yet ideal for smuggling is significant.
CIA finance officer in Japan, James Wilcott said that “several different individuals or firms in Dallas had been involved in one way or another with acting as cut-outs for arms shipments to Cuban exiles for the invasion. This we concluded from putting various pieces of information together. I remember hearing about some CIA people who had somehow helped the right-wing Minute Men in Texas to get arms, originally intended for the invasion.” Among the firms that Wilcott was referring to was the TSBD, run by right-wing ideologues. [21]

Bobbs-Merrill and the National Security Establishment

Hurt’s mention of Bobbs-Merrill is intriguing, because whether he knew it or not Bobbs-Merrill employed a suspected planner and organizer of the JFK assassination. Located in Indianapolis, Indiana, Bobbs-Merrill was noted for publishing intellectual books, mostly biography, history, and literature. It also published law books and schoolbooks. In November 1958, after years of losing money, the publishing house was sold to another Indianapolis firm, Sams Publishing, which at that time was twelve years old. The owner, Howard Sams, got his start by doing repair manuals for Radio Corporation of America (RCA), headquartered in Indianapolis. Sams did not have permission from RCA, so he got the wiring diagrams by taking the backs off radios, photographing the interior, and applying reverse engineering. David Sarnoff, the head of RCA and an extremely litigious man, surprisingly did not initiate a lawsuit. The lack of legal action is an indication that a secret deal was made.

RCA was part of the national security establishment. During World War II, RCA along with International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) intercepted telecommunications leaving the United States and turned them over to the military intelligence services. This operation continued after the war, and in 1952 President Truman formalized the arrangement by creating the National Security Agency.

After Howard Sams bought Bobbs-Merrill, he started a new line of books with a geopolitical slant. Someone at Bobbs-Merrill contacted Jules Dubois in order to publish a book about Fidel Castro. Dubois was a colonel in army intelligence and a correspondent for the right-wing Chicago Tribune. He played an important role in the 1954 coup of Guatemala. In 1957, he was with Earl Williamson, the CIA agent implicated in the Cienfuegos conspiracy, a plot to assassinate Bautista, during the revolt of the Cuban Navy at the port of Cienfuegos. [22] Bobbs-Merrill rushed Dubois’ book to press and it came out in April 1959 as Fidel Castro: Rebel - Liberator or Dictator? It presented a laudatory view of the Cuban dictator. Dubois took a more cautious approach in September 1959 with a second book published by Bobbs-Merrill, Freedom is My Beat in which he expressed the hope that Castro’s naiveté would not lead him down the road to communism. Bobbs-Merrill published a third book by Dubois called Danger over Panama in 1964 in which the author strongly denounced his erstwhile hero.

Shortly after Castro came to power on January 1, 1959, Jack Ruby contacted gun-smuggler Robert McKeown and told him that he was "in with the Mafia and had a whole lot of jeeps he wanted to get to Castro." Ruby also wanted advice on how he could gain the release of a couple of friends imprisoned in Cuba. The deal fell through when McKeown demanded an advance payment of $5,000. During the period of 1958 through 1959, Ruby was heavily involved in smuggling arms to Castro’s forces. He also met with the FBI nine times over the course of the year 1959, presumably to talk about his travels to Cuba.

After Castro became a dedicated proponent of communism, the CIA wanted to get rid of him. CIA operative William Harvey, who came from Indianapolis, and his partner Johnny Roselli, a Chicago mobster, plotted to kill Castro. Noel Twyman, author of Bloody Treason, presented evidence showing that these two men were also involved in the planning of the JFK assassination.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis Harvey ordered commando raids that were never authorized by the White House. For this insubordination he was removed from his post as head of Operation Mongoose and sent to a lesser post as chief of station in Rome, Italy. This was a humiliation that intensified his already seething hatred for the President and his brother Robert F. Kennedy. It is not clear how much time he actually spent in Rome but he was absent without leave from February through June 1963, when he met with Johnny Roselli in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Clearly Harvey had the motive, means, opportunity, and the state of mind to get involved in the assassination, and his meetings with Roselli were preparatory steps. [23]

Jumping ahead to the late 1960’s, Harvey retired from the CIA and became the law editor for Bobbs-Merrill. [24] Since no one really retires from the CIA but goes from one cover to another, Harvey’s employment at Bobbs-Merrill shows the bond between the schoolbook company and the intelligence establishment. By extrapolation, other schoolbook companies were part of this establishment.

fergus o brien

Moving into the 411 Elm Street Building

In 1963 when the national security people wanted to eliminate President Kennedy, they became interested in a vacant building in Dallas that overlooked a unique 120 degree turn from Houston onto Elm. The turn made the President an easy target, for it compelled his limousine to slow down to a crawl. (After the assassination, the FBI and other government agencies collected every home movie made in Dealey Plaza and suppressed footage of the limousine completing the turn. They wanted to minimize inquiries into why that particular route was chosen. [25])

To set the stage, the conspirators needed a suitable company to move into the building and bring in the patsy. TSBD president Jack Cason became involved in the plot when he decided to take a lease on the old grocery warehouse. He said it was a great bargain, although the building needed extensive renovation, requiring the expenditure of large sums of money.

Bergin showed his son around his new office. It was about the same size as the old one, yet far superior in amenities. Heating and air conditioning conduits gave easier temperature control. Illumination was better with fluorescent lights recessed into lowered ceiling panels. Fine-grade carpeting covered the floor. Light tan wood panels covered the walls. Near his desk were custom-made cabinets filled with books. Bergin was quite pleased with the results.

After viewing the new office, father and son went downstairs to see the rest of the building. Although they could have used the passenger elevator, they used the newly refurbished freight elevators in order to appreciate their antique character. Although safe and reliable, they were still rickety and screeched loudly whenever they went up or down. The third floor had the offices of other textbook publishers, such as Allyn & Bacon, American Book, Macmillan, and McGraw-Hill. Due to their smaller market share, they had smaller offices than Scott Foresman. (Bobbs-Merrill discontinued its office in Dallas in the early 1950s but it still used the TSBD to distribute its books.)

On the second floor just past the lunchroom was a large open area where the TSBD clerical staff had their desks. In the northwest corner was Jack Cason’s office. Few people were allowed inside the office, and earlier in the day, Bergin got permission to show it to his son. Bergin unlocked the door and opened it. The office was modest in size, measuring 12 by 27 feet with two windows that overlooked Houston Street. Dominating the room was a huge, 17th century French desk, resembling an enormous table, magnificently covered with ormolu, or gilded bronze ornaments. It might have looked great in a museum but in a book depository it seemed strangely out of place. Cason and his wife loved French antiques and for many years collected them.

The construction of new offices, the installation of a new elevator, and even Cason’s desk required large sums of money. Most of the funds came not from the limited financial resources of the schoolbook companies but rather they came from those who profited from the guns and drugs trade.

The Arrival of Lee Harvey Oswald

On October 15, Roy Truly hired Lee Harvey Oswald to be an order filler. “He looked like a nice young man,” said Truly, supposedly unaware that he hired an outspoken Marxist, a former defector to the Soviet Union, and a card-carrying member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.[26] “Who is that queer duck?” asked Geneva Hine, TSBD office worker, who wondered why Oswald never smiled or said “hello” or “good morning.” [27] Of course there was more behind the hiring of Oswald than a mere desire to supplement the labor force. The truth was that the conspirators needed a patsy.

Yet Oswald was not just another sign-waving protestor lured from a street demonstration. From October 1962 to April 1963 he worked as a cameraman for a typesetting company called Jaggers Chiles Stovall (JCS). Although most of his work was commercial, some of it consisted of top secret projects for the Navy Bureau Materiel and the Army Mapping Service. [28] According to George Carter, a reporter for the Dallas Times-Herald, Oswald was one of the employees that worked on maps of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. While working on
sensitive projects, he made no secret of his sojourn in the Soviet Union. He kept up a correspondence with the Russian Embassy in Washington and communist organizations in New York. On one occasion, he wrote a letter to the Hall-Davis Defense Committee (an organization set up to defend two Communist Party leaders), offering to donate photographic services. [29] Obviously JCS would not tolerate such a blatant security risk unless there was a hidden agenda, namely counterespionage.

From May to July 1963, Oswald worked for the William Reilly Coffee Company in New Orleans. During this time, he was involved in a lot of pro-Castro activity, such as handing out literature on street corners. Next door to the coffee company was Adrian Alba’s parking garage where the Secret Service, FBI and CIA parked their cars. Oswald often went to the garage and read gun magazines. In reality he was an agent provocateur under former FBI agent Guy Bannister, and Alba saw an agent in an FBI car deliver envelopes to Oswald on two occasions. If JCS and Reilly hid Oswald’s undercover activities, then Oswald’s third place of employment, the TSBD, hid them as well. While at the TSBD, Oswald saw others who were leading double lives including Joe Molina, a friend of undercover agent Bill Lowery and possibly a spy himself; supervisor William Shelley, a CIA man; and Joe Bergin, office manager of Scott Foresman, who was involved with the Texas Rangers.

Although the activities of the schoolbook operatives often overlapped those of Jack Ruby, the only verifiable link was Lee Harvey Oswald. There were many witnesses testifying to an association between Ruby and Oswald, but the most credible is Daniel T. McGown. On March 31, 1963, McGown accidentally found a letter at the Carousel Club addressed to “Jake Rubinstein” with a return address from “Lee Oswald,” at 1106 Diceman Street in Dallas. McGown later confirmed that “Lee Oswald” was indeed Lee Harvey Oswald. [30]

Planning the Ambush

On November 14, in the office of the Locke and Purnell law firm, Eugene Locke presided over a meeting to discuss the motorcade route for the upcoming visit of the President to Dallas. Locke was an associate of E. E. Wallace, serving as chairman of Wallace Investments. The chosen route led through Dealey Plaza underneath the windows of the TSBD, owned by D. Harold Byrd, whose employee J. R. Stanley was an associate of Wallace. The last stop on the route was the Trade Mart, which was built and owned by ultraconservative Trammell Crow. He was an investor and future director of Wallace Investments. [31] Protecting the President were police officers all along the route. Significantly, no protection was arranged for the President from the Trade Mart back to Love Field. The motorcade planning committee decided it was not necessary. [32]

Jewell Bergin was excited about the President coming to Dallas. She also looked forward to a dinner party that same evening, at which she planned to wear an outfit that was sure to make an impression. A few days before the President’s arrival, someone at Neiman Marcus told her confidentially that Jackie Kennedy was coming to Dallas wearing a pale pink tweed outfit with a black velvet collar. Jewell bought an exact copy of the outfit. She was quite proud of it and showed it off to her son (who recently got his discharge from the army). It cost a great deal of money, and she apologized to her husband for buying it. Sadly, she never wore that dress.

On November 22 while Bergin was flying home from a business meeting in Chicago, his employees were preparing to watch the parade. Avery Davis, Judy McCully, Jane Berry, and Betty Thornton were outside standing in front of the building. Mary Hollies and Betty Foster were on the fourth floor looking out of a window in the stock area between the Scott Foresman office and the west wall of the building. Inside the office were Yola Hopson and Ruth Nelson at a window on the west side, and to their left were Dorothy Garner, Sandra Styles, Victoria Adams, and Elsie Dorman grouped around two more windows. Elsie brought her husband’s movie camera to film the motorcade as it entered Dealey Plaza. [33]

As the President’s limousine passed the building, they heard (according to Victoria Adams) three loud booms like cannon fire at a football game, coming from the right and below (the grassy knoll) rather than from the left and above (the sixth floor sniper’s nest). Adams and Styles decided to go outside and see what happened. Running downstairs, they reached the first floor and saw Shelley and Lovelady standing near the freight elevators. Adams said, “I believe the President’s been shot.” The two men did not respond. [34] Their calm and indifferent behavior was suspicious because about a minute or two before Adams and Styles came down, someone in a brown suit coat exited a freight elevator, ran by Shelley and Lovelady, and escaped out the back door. [35]

As doctors began treating the mortally wounded President at Parkland Hospital, the Bergins’ maid heard the news over the radio. She sobbingly went to tell her mistress. Overwhelmed with grief, Jewell collapsed, wailing. The maid helped her to a bed.

Not long after Joe Bergin came home, members of law enforcement agencies were knocking on the door – not on official business, but in an informal capacity. These visits were frequent and continued into the weeks to come. Joe sometimes introduced them to his wife and son as agents of the FBI or detectives from the police department; other times he declined to introduce his guests. These “informal visits” are puzzling, since Bergin was not a witness to the assassination. Perhaps they were visiting him in his capacity as a Special Ranger. The visits seemed more like discussions among colleagues – going over leads, exchanging information, and sharing ideas and opinions.

Extra Security to Protect the TSBD

When Bergin went back to work, he saw more such agents. Two agents in a Secret Service car patrolled the immediate area, continuously going around and around the building. A guard stood at the main entrance, and more guards kept watch inside. The agents imposed a lot of rules in the interest of security. They said that all visitors must submit to a screening by Roy Truly and state their business. Informal visits were strictly forbidden. Even Scott Foresman executives from Chicago had to abide by these rules. The agents also told everyone not to discuss the assassination with outsiders, or else they may suffer dire consequences. This was a difficult rule to follow, since curious strangers were constantly pressing them with questions about the assassination.

The media soon developed the story that Oswald was the lone assassin. To guard against revelations contrary to the official version, censorship and obfuscation was necessary, especially concerning the time when the TSBD moved into the building. The move actually took place during the summer of 1963. Truly told the FBI on November 23 that the TSBD moved in several months before that date. [36] This statement correlates with city directories and with the memories and records of former Sexton employees who said that the building was vacant for at least a year after the grocery company moved out on November 14, 1961. [37] However, the interval between move and assassination was too short to forestall bothersome inquiries. The solution was to displace the move back several years. On November 24, 1963, the Dallas Times Herald reported that in 1960 the TSBD took a 15-year lease from Byrd. During the Warren Commission hearings Truly contradicted his earlier statement to the FBI. When reference was made to the wooden boxes that were made into storage bins, he said that they were in place for “nearly two years.” [38] O.V. Campbell, vice president of the TSBD, said the move took place five years before the assassination. [39] Spaulding Jones, regional office manager for Macmillan, said it took place around 1958. [40] Mary Lea Williams, an employee of Allyn & Bacon, said three years. [41] Either willingly or unwillingly, these people were part of the cover-up. [42]

The new regime of intrusive security agents created tension at the office. Every day, Joe Bergin came home in an agitated state. He acted as if everything was normal, but he could not hide his frustration. One day his son ventured to ask a question about the assassination. Normally a calm and affable man, Bergin flew into a rage. He emphatically told his son to mind his own business and never bring up that subject again. Surprised and chagrined, his son did not trouble his father with any more such questions.

Bergin’s health was declining. He lost weight, and he developed a stoop as he walked. His hair and facial features aged rapidly. A problem with his colon required an operation at Baylor Hospital. All this he suffered stoically. One of his few complaints concerned the parking situation. He used to have a parking spot in front of the building, but now he must park his car at a lot several blocks away. Considering his age and poor health, the extra distance was hard on him.

Adding to the strain were hate letters that came in the mail. Transient ruffians cruising Gaston Avenue yelled curses at them from the windows of their cars or threw half-empty beer bottles and other trash at the house. At odd hours of the night, a single car double-parked in front of the house for several minutes and then drove away. One time someone stood outside the house shouting angry words. His son went to the door to see who was shouting, but Bergin stopped him and told him not to concern himself with the person outside.

The Bergins suspected that their telephone was tapped. Sometimes the phone rang and no one answered. Other times they received anonymous threats. One time Jewell answered the phone and got a death threat. Friends and acquaintances stopped visiting them and snubbed them in public. They had the attitude that it was because of the people at the Book Depository that the shame of the assassination destroyed the reputation of Dallas.

One day Jewell came home from a shopping trip, crying. When her son asked her what happened, she only said that she met a woman who used to be a friend. She said that the incident was of no consequence, but it was obvious that she was deeply hurt. There were at least two other times when she came home weeping. Despite the bad treatment, she still retained her affection for the city of Dallas.

The Bergins were not the only ones suffering harassment. Dora Newman, Joe’s faithful assistant, became so ill, she went into early retirement. Because of intimidation from “federal authorities,” Roy Truly lived in fear until his death in 1985. [43] One day Jewell answered the phone, and Cason was on the line. He sounded like a man at his wit's end. Tormented by relentless adversaries, he eventually moved out of his home in University Park. Cason used to be a stocky, robust man, but after the assassination he became thin and sickly. Joe, Jr. saw him at the TSBD and could not believe how much he changed.

Joe Bergin wanted to retire in 1965, but the company persuaded him to stay until it got through a difficult period. Four years later Scott Foresman and Southwestern moved to a new facility on Gemini Street. At the same time, William Shelley quit his job at the TSBD and went to work for Scott Foresman. [44] Security was just as tight at the new facility as it was at the old. A woman told Glaze that she applied for a clerical job at Scott Foresman in 1969. Her supervisor was Shelley. Shortly after getting the job, she and another employee were approached by two men who showed identification and said they were agents of the FBI. They gave them a written questionnaire asking for opinions on current social issues. After the two employees completed the questionnaire, the two agents asked them point blank if they were members of the CIA. [45] Whether they said yes or no cannot be determined from the skimpy details provided by Glaze, but this odd episode seems to indicate that intelligence operatives controlling Scott Foresman were defending themselves from infiltration, perhaps from rival agents within the CIA.

As Glaze investigated the TSBD’s connections to the assassination and heard the above story as well as the fact that Shelley was in the CIA, he was treading on dangerous ground. One day, he heard a commotion outside his apartment. He looked out the window and saw an estimated twenty Dallas policemen pulled up in front. They lingered for nearly an hour, shouting in a highly threatening manner and pointing their pistols at his window. Frightened for his life, he immediately left the city. In a letter written in 1989, he said the TSBD was like a spider that can leave its web to stalk its prey.

Aftermath

After Joe Bergin retired in 1969, he wanted to move out of the city, but Jewell was too ill to move. The shock of the assassination plus the ongoing hostility broke her health. No longer the confident, fashionable luminary of high society, she became a frightened and reclusive woman. She had to have surgery done to her digestive tract. After the operation, her health grew worse, and she was in and out of hospitals. She died in 1969. One of her last requests was to see her beloved iris garden in Samuels Park.

The following year, Joe, Jr. was washing windows on the second floor of the house, when he fell off the ladder and broke his femur and injured his hip. It was a messy accident that left him permanently disabled. Joe Bergin said to a former employee, “I don’t know what my son would do if he did not have a rich father.” [46]

Soon after the accident an unexplained incident occurred. One evening when no one was home, someone broke into the house and set it ablaze. The fire was so ferocious that firemen used chemicals to put it out. It was a total loss. Joe Bergin had a hunch that the fire was assassination-related. After the destruction of the house, the hostility gradually diminished, and eventually Joe’s life returned to normal. In 1986 he married his second wife.

In the aftermath of the assassination Bobbs-Merrill formed closer ties with the intelligence establishment. In 1966 IT&T (which along with RCA formed the basis of the NSA) bought Sams Publishing, and shortly afterwards, the subsidiary of Sams Publishing, Bobbs-Merrill, published more books of interest to the intelligence services. Seymour Hersh, author of Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal,was a Bobbs-Merrill book published in 1968. Malcolm Browne wrote The New Face of War printed by Bobbs-Merrill, 1968, which detailed the problems that led up to the Diem Coup in 1963. The LaGuardia Report, titled The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York, was not widely available to the public until 1966, when Bobbs-Merrill reprinted most of it as The Marihuana Papers, by David Solomon.

Bobbs-Merrill published a book by Harold Abramson called The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism. Abramson worked with CIA mind control expert Pasquale Carone on a study injecting LSD into the crania of goldfish. Pasquale’s brother was Mafia-CIA man, Al Carone, one of the “unofficial” shooters in Dallas (meaning he had a gun handy and fired it at the President during the fusillade of authorized shooters). [47] The LSD provider was drug company Eli Lilly, which like Bobbs-Merrill was based in Indianapolis. George Bush, the head of the CIA during the Ford administration, was a director of Eli Lilly from 1977 to 1979. He sat on the board of directors with Dan Quayle’s father and that is how Dan Quayle became vice-president. Quayle is an important publisher and one of the controllers of Indiana. Indianapolis was a key city in the national security establishment and quite likely in the plot to kill Kennedy.

Little is known about William Harvey’s work at Bobbs-Merrill, but apparently he was the one behind the suppression of Peter Dale Scott’s book, The War Conspiracy, which dealt with the CIA, oil companies, and the manipulation of foreign policy to escalate the war in Vietnam. After keeping the book on the shelf for a year, Bobbs-Merrill finally published it in 1972, but only after Scott agreed to the removal of three chapters. Even then, the book still did not get out to the public, because Bobbs-Merrill did not distribute it. Brad Ayers, who wrote The War That Never Was: An insider's account of CIA covert operations against Cuba in 1976 also had trouble with Bobbs-Merrill, which published his book but did not distribute it.

Conclusions and Summary

Joe Bergin worked for Scott Foresman from 1938 to 1969. Over this period Scott Foresman and other schoolbook companies were involved in a variety of relationships and connections that form a circular dynamic: (1) law enforcement and intelligence services with media assets look for communists at home and abroad in order to suppress them; (2) ultraconservatives sound the alarm against communism and apply political pressure to support dictators threatened by left-wing radicals; (3) gun smugglers deliver military equipment to anti-communist regimes; (4) drug producers and drug smugglers controlled by the Mafia raise the cash needed to pay for weapons and supplies; and back to (1) law enforcement and intelligence agencies monitor and control the drug traffic. The schoolbook industry, as a component in the national security establishment, operated in all four arenas, as can be seen from the following.

(1) TSBD credit manager Joe Molina was a friend and possibly an undercover partner of FBI agent Bill Lowery. They were among the six individuals who started the Dallas chapter of the leftist organization GI Forum.

(2) Howard Sams, a right wing publisher with connections to the national security establishment through RCA, was the owner of schoolbook company Bobbs-Merrill. The people who ran the TSBD were extreme in their opposition to Kennedy. The man who owned the building, D. Harold Byrd, was an ultraconservative. His building was in a unique location in that it overlooked a sharp turn that forced large vehicles to slow down to a crawl. Highlighting the importance of the building is a negative template within the extant film record of the assassination. Footage of the President’s limousine turning from Houston onto Elm was removed from all films.
(3) Joe Bergin, Jr. saw cardboard boxes four feet square by five feet high in 1963. Henry Hurt discovered large wooden boxes stamped with publisher’s names on the sixth floor of the TSBD in 1983. Because of their large sizes, these boxes contained contraband, perhaps sometimes under a shallow layer of books. CIA finance officer James Wilcott said that several Dallas firms were involved in smuggling arms to Cubans. Among these firms was the TSBD.

(4) During the 1930’s the Texas Rangers shifted their efforts from bank robbers to drug smugglers. Joe Bergin joined them in 1934 as a Special Ranger. It is possible that his career move from school superintendent in Greenville to schoolbook salesman in Dallas had something to with a desire to advance his opportunities in law enforcement under the cover of schoolbook publisher Scott Foresman. He may have been among the Texas Rangers in Dallas monitoring the drug and gambling activities of Jack Ruby and his friends. Since Jack Ruby was also involved in smuggling arms, the Texas Rangers may have monitored that activity as well.

Jack Ruby operated on a parallel track with the schoolbook people. Like Joe Molina, Ruby was infiltrating leftist or communist cells. Like Cason, Truly, and Byrd, Ruby promoted the ultraconservative ideology, mainly by getting people to read the literature of Dallas oil man H. L. Hunt. Given the common milieu within which they operated, some or all of the above probably heard about Ruby and his activities. These were the same people involved in the plot to kill Kennedy.

Recently, Wilmer Thomas, a friend of Jim Garrison and a philanthropist in New York who funds the Metropolitan Opera, approached Arthur Schlesinger, historian for the Kennedy administration, and asked him who was responsible for the assassination of the President. Schlesinger replied, “We were at war with the national security people.” [48] When President Kennedy declared that he would break the CIA into a thousand pieces [49], the intelligence community formed an alliance with the Mafia to bring him down. Although Joe Bergin as a Special Ranger was dedicated to fighting crime, his position as a schoolbook office manager drew him into a world of intrigue that compelled him to serve the interests of those who committed the crime of the century.

Postscript: Joe Bergin remarried in 1986. On November 2, 1990, he died at the age of 91. Joe Jr. lived alone with his three cats depending for his income on the charity of his father and disability checks. He died on August 29, 2001 at the age of 55. William Shelley retired from Scott Foresman in the late 1980’s. On March 20, 1995 the author called up Shelley, and asked him about Oswald’s attendance at work. Shelley responded that he was there every day. He refused to answer any more questions and referred me to his testimony to the Warren Commission. He said, "Everything that I have to say on that subject is in the public record. You'll have to go with that." He died in Irving, Texas on September 6, 1996 at the age of 70.

killerking

It's quite clear the three shots were fired and two struck Kennedy in the head and neck.

fergus o brien

here is an interesting article regarding jfks head wounds.

Zapruder JFK Film Impeached by Moorman JFK Polaroid

For OpEdNews: Jim Fetzer - Writer

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't need to worry about answers". -- Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW (1973).

Madison, WI (OpEdNews) March 27, 2009 -- A debate has been raging just off the radar of the main stream media over the significance of a Polaroid photograph by Mary Moorman, which appears to impeach the famous Zapruder film of the assassination. Although most attention has focused on an argument initiated by legendary photo-analyst Jack White--that the photo reflects a line-of-sight that places Mary in the street, while the film shows her on the grass--a more serious threat emerges from its photographic content, which shows JFK's head tilted downward and slightly to the left. Surprisingly, this removes the final resistance to impeaching the film based upon the medical evidence.

The features of the film that are the center of this latest controversy have been explored by an Australian physicist, John P. Costella, Ph.D., who has a specialty in electromagnetism, including the properties of light and the physics of moving bodies, who is the leading expert on the Zapruder film in the world today. Some of his studies may be found on my public issue web site at http://assassinationscience.com and are archived there as "The JFK Assassination Film Hoax: An Introduction". Indeed, Roderick Ryan, an expert on cinematic special effects, told Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON (1997), p. 160, that the bulging brains (sometimes called "the blob") had been painted in. Ryan would receive a 2000 Academy Award for lifetime achievement. But Costella's studies and Ryan's observations have not brought an end to the controversy for those dedicated to Zapruder authenticity.

The principal protagonists in the debate occurring on several of the leading JFK research forums has pitted Josiah Thompson, author of SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS (1967), an early study largely based upon the Zapruder film, against me, editor of ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998), of MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (2000), and of THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX (2003). Most of our arguments in the past have been directed to the line of sight argument advanced by Jack White and to the validity of an experiment conducted by David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., the leading expert on the medical evidence in the world today, and me, using a transit in Dealey Plaza, which I summarized in an recent article, "Moorman/Zapruder Revisited", at http://JFKresearch.com/Moorman which has as now appeared in a British journal, THE DEALEY PLAZA ECHO 13/1 (March 2009), pp. 6-33.

In that article, I observed that, while there are many indications that the film is a fabrication, the most important proof is the inconsistency between the impact damage to the cranium, which is the film's most stunning feature, showing brains and gore bulging out to JFK's right-front, and the medical evidence, which shows a massive defect at the back of his head just to the right of center. Indeed, Escort Motorcycle Officer Bobby Hargis, who was riding to the left-rear, was hit so hard by the blown-out brains and debris that he though he himself had been shot. Thus, the question has become how such a massive blow-out of brains and gore at the back of the head could appear to be to the right-front in the film.

In an earlier article, "New Proof of JFK Film Fakery" that appeared in OpEdNews (February 5, 2008), I laid out multiple indications that the Zapruder film is a fabrication. But none of those proofs even reaches to the mutually reinforcing deceptions of (a) the blow out to the right-front in the Zapruder film, (b) the missing right-front in the anterior-posterior X-ray, and (c) the publication of 313 in LIFE magazine with a caption saying that the bullet had entered the back of his head and blown out the right-front--a caption rewritten twice after breaking the plates. And it implicates Abraham Zapruder in the deception, when (d) he described a blow-out to the right-front during a televised interview that that night (HOAX, page 435)!

None of it was true. Jackie herself reported that, from the front, he looked just fine but that she had a hard time holding his skull and brains together at the back of his head. None of the witnesses or doctors reported it. Not even the mortician! Indeed, the massive defect can even be seen in late frames of the film, including 374. During a phone interview with Joe West, a private investigator, the man who had prepared the body for burial, Thomas Evan Robinson, described the wounds on May 26, 1992, as follows (MURDER, p. 116; HOAX, p. 9):

* large gaping hole in back of head patched by stretching piece of rubber over it. Thinks skull full of Plaster of Paris.

* smaller wound in right temple. Crescent shape, flapped down (3")

* (approx 2) small shrapnel wounds in face. Packed with wax.

* wound in back (5 to six inches) below shoulder. To the right of back bone.

* adrenal gland and brain removed.

* other organs removed and then put back.

* no swelling or discoloration to face. (died instantly)

Those who want to persist in defense of the film, however, observe that Bill and Gayle Newman, Abraham Zapruder and his secretary, Marilyn Sitzman, had reported wounds to the right side of JFK's head. These observations are consistent with the entry wound to the right temple, which caused the massive defect to the back of his skull, but probably also resulted from observing the brains when the flap that the mortician describes was briefly opened when the frangible (or exploding) bullet entered his right temple, creating the flap (which promptly closed) and apparently damaging his right ear.

Indeed, according to E. Z. Friedel, M.D., THE JFK CONSPIRACY (2007), his ear was so badly destroyed that those who wanted to conceal the truth causes of his death brought in an expert to perform a reconstruction. Friedel characterizes his book as a work of “fiction”, but what he has to tell us about these wounds appears to coincide with what witnesses have had to say in describing them. Rich DellaRosa, who founded and moderates JFKresearch.com, has been communicating with him for over a year and believes he has had access to inside information.

Barb Junkkarinen, arguing the other side of the question, recently observed on the JFK forum, jfk-research@yahoogroups.com, that the Newmans, a couple who were on the knoll side of Elm Street at the time of the shooting, had described damage to the right side of his head. Bill, for example, reported,

"By this time he was directly in front of us and I was looking directly at him when he was hit in the side of the head" [Affidavit 11-22-63] and



"At that time he heard the bullet strike the President and saw flesh fly from the President's head." .... "He said the president was hit on the right side of the head with the third shot ..."[FBI report 11-23-63]

Similarly, his wife, Gayle, reported,

"Just about the time President Kennedy was right in front of us, I heard another shot ring out, and the President put his hands up to his head. I saw blood all over the side of his head." [Affidavit 11-22-63]

During the trial of Clay Shaw by Jim Garrison in New Orleans, they both reported seeing him hit in the right temple, but she elaborated in the following way:


"Q: Now what was the effect of this shot upon the President's head if you were able to observe?
A: The President, his head just seemed to explode, just bits of his skull flew in the air and he fell to the side."

Her husband offered additional observations tha were also dramatic:

"I caught a glimpse of his eyes, just looked like a cold stare, he just looked through me, and then when the car was directly in front of me, well, that is when the third shot was fired and it hit him in the side of the head right above the ear and his ear came off. "

None of this, of course, could salvage the authenticity of the film unless it could explain how a blow out of brains and gore from the back of his skull could appear to have been blown out to the right-front in the Zapruder film. I was so puzzled by the argument that the Newmans, Sitzman and Zapruder had observed such effects that I wrote to leading experts with whom I have collaborated in the past.

Mantik confirmed that, "Of course!", the medical evidence falsifies the film, which I found highly reassuring. Costella, who has demonstrated that the Zapruder is a fabrication at http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro had a telling observation about why there may have been so much controversy over the Moorman from scratch. Ironically, Costella had been in agreement with Thompson ("Tink") about the line of sight argument, which placed him on Tink's side on that question against Mantik, White, and me. So what he had to add on March 19, 2009, was especially striking:

Dragonblaster

Re Ruby ruthlessly gunning Oswald down to shut him up and "stop him naming names":

Oswald had a press conference at which he could have said, "OK, press boys, get your pencils and notepads out - this is gonna knock your socks off." As I understand it, Ruby was even there. Before that, he'd been interogated by the police for several hours.

Why did Ruby (change) not strike then? Surely the press conference was a far more dangerous time than when he was being moved?

Come to that, how come he even got to leave the TSBD alive? Why was there no picture of Oswald's body dead slumped over his Mannlicher-Carcano in the sniper's nest itself? Why not simply murder the poor, poor innocent guy and pose him with his own rifle (not a Mauser brought along as a stand-in), accurately-posed shell cartridges and Dealey Plaza sitting right in his gunsight?

Some fake cop or SS agent who "happened" to be in the TSBD could have done it easily - hear the shots, run up to the sixth floor, catch the dead "assassin" in the act and blam-blam (one shot deliberately firied out of the open window so the number of bullet-holes on the corpse matched).

Why all this extra staging of getting an actor to kill an innocent policeman and run into the same theatre that Oswald just happened to be in, having legged it from the TSBD for some utterly innocent reason?

Why go to the trouble of concocting all the elaborate, obviously-fake and supposedly laughable paper-thin back-story for Oswald? Why not just say "I don't know why he did it, but the guy was found bang to rights shooting the rifle at Kennedy right out of the book depository window, and an officer shot him?"

Why not have the street stuffed with bought people ready to swear that all the shots came from the book depository, rather than ignoring the public and bribing major public officials to do their lying for them?

The expert (and therefore utterly unlike Oswald) marksman on the Grassy Knoll: supposedly, he just got away with it, unlike the blameless Oswald. For some reason this guy has to be protected at all costs; God forbid he should ever be set up!

Now, why finger one totally random guy who's utterly innocent, with the concomitant need to cook up loads and loads of fake evidence, but preserve the life of the guy who did it at all costs?

For that matter, I quite enjoy shooting, but I'm no US Marine Sharpshooter. The US Marines are probably trained to the highest shooting standard in the world - viz Charles Whitman, the Texas sniper (also "only" classed as a Sharpshooter, as was Oswald).

If I couldn't have shot a target the size of Kennedy's head, using iron sights (let alone a scope) a scope, at that kind of range, moving 'vertically' at slow speed when I was at school, I'd have been shot by the school RSM. Even two out of three would have seen me kicked out of the OTC shooting corps

It is such bollocks to claim it took Deadeye Dick or Annie Oakley to make those shots.

On the other hand, firing from the Grassy Knoll behind a bunch of people, or from a storm drain.... tricky.

It really wouldn't have been hard to get a reasonably decent marksman who could have made those shots from the TSBD - why does the assassin have to be Vice-President or the Chairman of the Illuminati or Capo di Tutti Capi; someone who absolutely must be protected at all costs?

Why not double-cross the REAL assassin, caught bang to rights?

On the other hand, if this guy just HAS to be protected, why not set up a Marine who was a decent shot instead of picking one supposedly unable to tell one end of a rifle from the other? The USMC has thousands of guys who could shoot the balls off a midge at 500 yds: its almost the standard. Why pick the ONE guy who supposedly was more likely to shoot himself than what he was aiming at?

For that matter, why not pick Whitman, or at least someone like him? He lived in the same state, was a crack shot, paranoid, violent, and at that time out of the Marines (he later went back and only got an honorable discharge because they were happy to get rid of him; although not for his shooting ability).

Why pick on some random bozo who had zip to do with guns and couldn't shoot, fake photos of him with guns he never owned, get someone who never looked like him to shoot a cop outside a theatre he just happened to be in having capriciously run away from his place of work, evading a roll call.

Then you murder some witnesses who say the wrong thing but leave others, such as the awkward and shrewd Jim Garrison standing (a fairly senior guy, but not the ****ing President, after all).

Then you get guys from a photo lab to mess with all the photos and films of the assassination ("Goddammit, I told you shooting the guy from the FRONT would look wrong!"), presumably ensuring their silence with money or threats.

The whole idea is RUBBISH! If I were asked to plan the job on my own, i'd do better than these conspirators supposedly did en masse.

Garbage, crap, tosh, ****e, retarded bollocks, the whole JFK conspiracy thing.

If CIA or FBI, it would have been cunning and competent.
If Mafia, the boss would have been somewhere else at the time, but made sure EVERYONE knew who'd done it ("We can get the friggin' PRESIDENT, cabron, so what makes you think we can't get you; capisce?")

Rant over.

However, I still think a lone nut is far more plausible than a whole country of raving tossers who can't see how ludicrous their stupid Tellytubbies scheme is.

Dragonblaster

Of course, you would fix it so you'd have to tell people that the shots had actually come from the other side that you thought it had.

Cunning: threats always convince by-standers that they were wrong, and they never remember that you told them you'd kill them if the EVER BREATHED A ****ING THING OF THIS, WORM.

Isn't it much, much better than faking it well in the first place, as if you'd had at least half an hour to plan it?

Stop all this crap about whether this bullet is the right shape, or how a passer-by said the person who killed the policeman was a little taller; tell me what whack-job thought this stupid world-wide 40-year conspiracy was a good idea, and which evil Illuminati boss said "Looks like a great plan - do it!"

Whoever it is, I wouldn't ask him to park my ****ing car. Come to that, I wouldn't rely on him to sit the right way up on a toilet.

Sorry, still drunk after last night. But I really do mean it, and I can pretty much spell too. Mark me up one over the mastermind of this stupid plan to kill one man who was sitting in a car without armour plating in a public space.

I'm sorry JFK's dead, I think the world is worse for it. But why did evil, still-nameless people need Buzz Lightyear to mastermind an open shot in a guy in an open car from a difficult angle and blame it on a total nobody who had nothing to do with it but who just happened to work in a place that gave him a perfect shot for anybody who'd ever shot from a rifle?

It is ludicrous.

Dragonblaster

Ah, got it! It just so happened that the one really good place you could shoot from happened to have a guy who was a Marine in there - even though he couldn't shoot - so you could shoot JFK from a really hard place instead, and blame it on him.

Why, why, why? Why is Oswald so clean and saintly?

stevejazzx

Dragonblaster wrote: »

Re Ruby ruthlessly gunning Oswald down to shut him up and "stop him naming names":

Oswald had a press conference at which he could have said, "OK, press boys, get your pencils and notepads out - this is gonna knock your socks off." As I understand it, Ruby was even there. Before that, he'd been interogated by the police for several hours.

Why did Ruby (change) not strike then? Surely the press conference was a far more dangerous time than when he was being moved?

Come to that, how come he even got to leave the TSBD alive? Why was there no picture of Oswald's body dead slumped over his Mannlicher-Carcano in the sniper's nest itself? Why not simply murder the poor, poor innocent guy and pose him with his own rifle (not a Mauser brought along as a stand-in), accurately-posed shell cartridges and Dealey Plaza sitting right in his gunsight?

Some fake cop or SS agent who "happened" to be in the TSBD could have done it easily - hear the shots, run up to the sixth floor, catch the dead "assassin" in the act and blam-blam (one shot deliberately firied out of the open window so the number of bullet-holes on the corpse matched).

Why all this extra staging of getting an actor to kill an innocent policeman and run into the same theatre that Oswald just happened to be in, having legged it from the TSBD for some utterly innocent reason?

Why go to the trouble of concocting all the elaborate, obviously-fake and supposedly laughable paper-thin back-story for Oswald? Why not just say "I don't know why he did it, but the guy was found bang to rights shooting the rifle at Kennedy right out of the book depository window, and an officer shot him?"

Why not have the street stuffed with bought people ready to swear that all the shots came from the book depository, rather than ignoring the public and bribing major public officials to do their lying for them?

The expert (and therefore utterly unlike Oswald) marksman on the Grassy Knoll: supposedly, he just got away with it, unlike the blameless Oswald. For some reason this guy has to be protected at all costs; God forbid he should ever be set up!

Now, why finger one totally random guy who's utterly innocent, with the concomitant need to cook up loads and loads of fake evidence, but preserve the life of the guy who did it at all costs?

For that matter, I quite enjoy shooting, but I'm no US Marine Sharpshooter. The US Marines are probably trained to the highest shooting standard in the world - viz Charles Whitman, the Texas sniper (also "only" classed as a Sharpshooter, as was Oswald).

If I couldn't have shot a target the size of Kennedy's head, using iron sights (let alone a scope) a scope, at that kind of range, moving 'vertically' at slow speed when I was at school, I'd have been shot by the school RSM. Even two out of three would have seen me kicked out of the OTC shooting corps

It is such bollocks to claim it took Deadeye Dick or Annie Oakley to make those shots.

On the other hand, firing from the Grassy Knoll behind a bunch of people, or from a storm drain.... tricky.

It really wouldn't have been hard to get a reasonably decent marksman who could have made those shots from the TSBD - why does the assassin have to be Vice-President or the Chairman of the Illuminati or Capo di Tutti Capi; someone who absolutely must be protected at all costs?

Why not double-cross the REAL assassin, caught bang to rights?

On the other hand, if this guy just HAS to be protected, why not set up a Marine who was a decent shot instead of picking one supposedly unable to tell one end of a rifle from the other? The USMC has thousands of guys who could shoot the balls off a midge at 500 yds: its almost the standard. Why pick the ONE guy who supposedly was more likely to shoot himself than what he was aiming at?

For that matter, why not pick Whitman, or at least someone like him? He lived in the same state, was a crack shot, paranoid, violent, and at that time out of the Marines (he later went back and only got an honorable discharge because they were happy to get rid of him; although not for his shooting ability).

Why pick on some random bozo who had zip to do with guns and couldn't shoot, fake photos of him with guns he never owned, get someone who never looked like him to shoot a cop outside a theatre he just happened to be in having capriciously run away from his place of work, evading a roll call.

Then you murder some witnesses who say the wrong thing but leave others, such as the awkward and shrewd Jim Garrison standing (a fairly senior guy, but not the ****ing President, after all).

Then you get guys from a photo lab to mess with all the photos and films of the assassination ("Goddammit, I told you shooting the guy from the FRONT would look wrong!"), presumably ensuring their silence with money or threats.

The whole idea is RUBBISH! If I were asked to plan the job on my own, i'd do better than these conspirators supposedly did en masse.

Garbage, crap, tosh, ****e, retarded bollocks, the whole JFK conspiracy thing.

If CIA or FBI, it would have been cunning and competent.
If Mafia, the boss would have been somewhere else at the time, but made sure EVERYONE knew who'd done it ("We can get the friggin' PRESIDENT, cabron, so what makes you think we can't get you; capisce?")

Rant over.

However, I still think a lone nut is far more plausible than a whole country of raving tossers who can't see how ludicrous their stupid Tellytubbies scheme is.

There are some ridiculous conspiracy threads in this forum, none so more than the recent water shortage one but JFK hardly qualifies.
Understanding the politcs of the situation would be a start in understanding how someone like Oswald came into a position where he was ripe for being made a patsy. Jim Garrison had accepted the Warren Commision report until, 3 years after the fact, he found that the report had some serious flaws. Work from LBJ, Alan Dulles through to Nixon and the House Assination report of Kennedy and MLK.
This was probably the corrupt time ever in American polictics. You don't accept one lone nut theory you have to accept at least 2, Oswald and Ruby and you might as well add in there Sirhan Sirhan for Robert Kennedy. The Kennedy brothers had been a nightmare for the CIA (JFK had begun dismantling the CIA after the Bay of Pigs diaster) and Robert Kennedy was a real threat for the presidency had he lived; that's when he was running against Nixon by the way - Nixon eventualy won.

Dragonblaster

Why was it absolutely necessary to silence the totally innocent patsy Oswald, but allow the equally innocent patsy Sirhan Sirhan to survive all these years?

Dragonblaster

stevejazzx wrote: »

You don't accept one lone nut theory you have to accept at least 2, Oswald and Ruby and you might as well add in there Sirhan Sirhan for Robert Kennedy.

Easier to believe than a 40-year conspiracy involving possibly hundreds of people, none of whom has breathed a word.

stevejazzx wrote: »

The Kennedy brothers had been a nightmare for the CIA (JFK had begun dismantling the CIA after the Bay of Pigs diaster)

JFK was murdered nearly 3 years after the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Bobby Kennedy over 7 years. Patient, these CIA Svengalis. Shame their conspiracies are so poorly-constructed that a 2-year old can see through them.

stevejazzx wrote: »

and Robert Kennedy was a real threat for the presidency had he lived; that's when he was running against Nixon by the way - Nixon eventualy won.

JFK also ran against Nixon, but Nixon didn't murder him to stop him from winning. Are you saying Nixon went to the CIA and said "Will you please kill the President for me?"

Could be a bit of a career-buster if the guy he asked wasn't an evil homicidal psychopath. Or is that a necessary quality to be promoted to high office in the CIA?

Dragonblaster

Oh, and far from "shutting his mouth permanently" as was supposedly done with Oswald, the authorities commuted a death sentence on Sirhan Sirhan to life imprisonment.

Aren't they worried he'll blow the whole thing?

stevejazzx

Dragonblaster wrote: »

Easier to believe than a 40-year conspiracy involving possibly hundreds of people, none of whom has breathed a word.

Pleanty of people have spoken out about JFK.
Jeez man do some homework. You chose not only to ignore them but the fact that there is a them; amazing. Also it is recorded that an extraordinary amount of people involved in Jim Garrisons investigation died wihtout being able to give evidence.

JFK was murdered nearly 3 years after the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Bobby Kennedy over 7 years. Patient, these CIA Svengalis. Shame their conspiracies are so poorly-constructed that a 2-year old can see through them.

This notion you have about the obviousness and lack of sophiscation about how the conspiracies (if any) were handled and carried out is non sensical becasue you and I speak from an incredible perspective.
To add to this you appear to know hardly anything of the polictical history (based on your initial post, for I imagine if you did know you would have at least referenced it somewhat) and to round matters off you appear to believe that its not a conspiracy becasue of the supposed transparency of the claims being made against the CIA. I hope for your sake that you understand that contradiction you make.
Here's the hypothetical
If a person doesn't believe for one minute that a conspiracy has taken place when one actually has taken place then they (the conspirators) must have done a good job; that's using your likemindedness. In this exmaple (JFK) your own complete rejection of any conspiracy belies this idea you have that the conspiracy theory is childish and hopelessly transparent. I don't think you really understand that.

I've read a couple of books about the Nixon and JFK; I'm willing to venture you haven't read any. Oh and by the way Nixon and the CIA are historically and factually entangled both morally and politically, also both were shown as being highly corrupt and involved in conspiracies.

Could be a bit of a career-buster if the guy he asked wasn't an evil homicidal psychopath. Or is that a necessary quality to be promoted to high office in the CIA?

Oh dear. Is that that's how you imagine it should work?

No multi faceted political ideologies in conflict? Just Nixon saying
"Hey can you like kill this guy"

I don't why I'm debating this with you. Go off and read it; and not just the conspiracy but that era of politics.

killerking

Why would the government go to the trouble of getting a team of assassins to shoot the President, create an elaborate frame up for Oswald, intimidate/murder hundreds of witnesses etc etc when they could have simply bugged a bedroom during one of his sexual encounters and exposed him as an adulterer?

Dragonblaster

Originally Posted by Dragonblaster
Easier to believe than a 40-year conspiracy involving possibly hundreds of people, none of whom has breathed a word.

Pleanty of people have spoken out about JFK.
Jeez man do some homework. You chose not only to ignore them but the fact that there is a them; amazing. Also it is recorded that an extraordinary amount of people involved in Jim Garrisons investigation died wihtout being able to give evidence.

But has anyone gone on the record vis a vis fitting up Oswald, naming the second gunman, naming people involved in the cover-up?

No, they haven't.

As for the dead potential witnesses, it seems a very haphazard way to silence people. The fact that the awkward (and occasionally bullying) Garrison and people like the imaginative Perry Russo survived the hearings makes it look as if the CIA are like chickens with their heads cut off, killing at random.

This notion you have about the obviousness and lack of sophiscation about how the conspiracies (if any) were handled and carried out is non sensical becasue you and I speak from an incredible perspective.

What does "talking from an incredible perspective mean?

Poorly faked photos to implicate an innocent guy, allowing him to get away from the scene of the crime, therefore necessitating the shooting of a policeman so they can blame it on Oswald?

Only "shutting Oswald up" after a potentially disastrous press conference?

Shooting from the opposite direction to the supposed assassin and therefore having to tamper with autopsy evidence?

Killing some witnesses to shut them up while leaving others alive?

Yes, a highly sophisticated and cunning plot.

To add to this you appear to know hardly anything of the polictical history (based on your initial post, for I imagine if you did know you would have at least referenced it somewhat) and to round matters off

Obfuscation. Name what I said was incorrect and put me right.

you appear to believe that its not a conspiracy becasue of the supposed transparency of the claims being made against the CIA. I hope for your sake that you understand that contradiction you make.

Absolutely wrong. I don't believe it's a conspiracy because of the ludicrous nature of the claim. The whole idea is ridiculous. For example, for all the effort that was put into framing Oswald, suppose he'd been sick on the morning of 22/11/63 and didn' turn up? What a waste of good fakery!

Or was there a back-up patsy standing by for oblivion?

Here's the hypothetical
If a person doesn't believe for one minute that a conspiracy has taken place when one actually has taken place then they (the conspirators) must have done a good job; that's using your likemindedness. In this exmaple (JFK) your own complete rejection of any conspiracy belies this idea you have that the conspiracy theory is childish and hopelessly transparent. I don't think you really understand that.

So, the fact that it doesn't look like a conspiracy proves it is one? Outstanding argument!

My "childish" argument is based on the idea that all the supposed evidence of conspiracy is genuine for the reasons stated by believers: I don't believe it is. This is a standard method of showing the absurdity of an argument, starting by considering that is true.

I've read a couple of books about the Nixon and JFK; I'm willing to venture you haven't read any. Oh and by the way Nixon and the CIA are historically and factually entangled both morally and politically, also both were shown as being highly corrupt and involved in conspiracies.

Venture all you will: I'm a voracious reader and have read more than a couple of books on the subject. I wouldn't have trusted Nixon with my kid's piggy bank, and the CIA plotted to kill Castro amongst others (it wasn't followed up, though). None of this however, makes the supposed "proof" of the JFK plot look any more brilliant.

Oh dear. Is that that's how you imagine it should work?

No multi faceted political ideologies in conflict? Just Nixon saying
"Hey can you like kill this guy"

Sounds clever and erudite, but meaningless. I was exaggerating for humorous effect, but at SOME POINT, someone has to broach the subject for the first time, be that Senator Nixon or Richard Helms or John McCone.
The ultimate "open kimono" moment. Or was there a kind of telepathic gestalt, and lots of tapping fingers on the sides of noses?

And then they have to tell underlings, none of whom ever blows the whistle.

I don't why I'm debating this with you. Go off and read it; and not just the conspiracy but that era of politics.

You're not debating at all; you're trying to patronise me by lauding a greater understanding without proving it.

FYI, I am pretty much up on the sociopolitical scene at the time, and yes, I know JFK blamed the CIA for Bay of Pigs going wrong and threatened to sack the whole lot, but that does not prove they then determined to kill him.

The mores of the time are backdrop, not evidence of conspiracy to murder a President. Lots and lots of groups had grudges against JFK, viz the mob, the Teamsters, all kinds of red-neck neo-Nazi groups... pick one.

However, there is no proof that any of them actually carried it out.

Dragonblaster

killerking wrote: »

Why would the government go to the trouble of getting a team of assassins to shoot the President, create an elaborate frame up for Oswald, intimidate/murder hundreds of witnesses etc etc when they could have simply bugged a bedroom during one of his sexual encounters and exposed him as an adulterer?

Absolutely. Now THAT sounds like a CIA plot, and one that has a lot fewer consequences for the conspirators.

As I mentioned earlier, I wonder what would have happened to the intricate plot if Oswald had just had a tummy-ache on the morning of the 22nd November 1963, or if he'd been knocked down and killed on the way to work?

"Damn it! Our cunning, elaborate plan in tatters! What can we do?"

"Can't we just send our volunteer Jack Ruby in to take the blame for shooting Kennedy? He says he doesn't mind being arrested or executed."

"We don't have any faked evidence on Ruby."

"All he has to do is confess and say it's a fair cop."

"Sorry, Helms, it's just too obvious."

stevejazzx

killerking wrote: »

Why would the government go to the trouble of getting a team of assassins to shoot the President, create an elaborate frame up for Oswald, intimidate/murder hundreds of witnesses etc etc when they could have simply bugged a bedroom during one of his sexual encounters and exposed him as an adulterer?

Kennedy was the Government?
Also the phrase 'getting a team of assasins' was never mentioned by me. So in using both those phrases you really just showing that you haven't an iota of a notion of what you're talking about; otherwise why use those words/phrases.

To answer you question regardless assuming that you meant CIA when you said Governemnt

Again if history is understood you'd know

1. Bay of pigs; after this they despised Kennedy. His brother was also DA and was bent of crime reform; they had made enemies.

2. Your method (described above) wasn't guaranteed to get rid of JFK.

stevejazzx

Dragonblaster wrote: »

Originally Posted by Dragonblaster
Easier to believe than a 40-year conspiracy involving possibly hundreds of people, none of whom has breathed a word.



But has anyone gone on the record vis a vis fitting up Oswald, naming the second gunman, naming people involved in the cover-up?

No, they haven't.

I'm sorry; you're either joking or not paying attention.
As I said earlier you need to read about this before discussing otherwsie you sound ridiculous.
You want someone to magically name a second gunman? The point is there was one (in all proabability) and that is on record via the HSCA; established by the state and as it is the last known offcial investigation into JFK, currently the most authoriative.

As for the dead potential witnesses, it seems a very haphazard way to silence people. The fact that the awkward (and occasionally bullying) Garrison and people like the imaginative Perry Russo survived the hearings makes it look as if the CIA are like chickens with their heads cut off, killing at random.

Yes that's true. Do you imagine that any part of the CIA ever had anyone killed?

What does "talking from an incredible perspective mean?

47 years, benefit of technology; hindsight, political autobiographies, official disclosures from government; declassified material on Oswald and the CIA etc. etc etc.
I'm begining to think you're a troll tbh.
You seem in this for
"ahhh, look someone who thinks there was a conspiracy, eejit" I'll tell him so I will".

Only "shutting Oswald up" after a potentially disastrous press conference?

This comment is ridiculous.
Who knows what Oswald was prmoised (release after trial) or what he feared (his wife and family) there are plenty of reasons why on his day he never said anything. It certainly doesn't mean he had nothing to say.

Shooting from the opposite direction to the supposed assassin and therefore having to tamper with autopsy evidence?

It's apparent that did they interfere with the immediate aftermath.
I don't think that bothered them. They can explain the Z footage of the head going to the rear after being shot from the rear.

Killing some witnesses to shut them up while leaving others alive?

Well if it is true that they did kill some witnesses and leave others behind then one assumes they killed key witnesses? No real mystery there.

Obfuscation. Name what I said was incorrect and put me right.

You need to first put yourself right by understanding the politcial history. To this point you have shown zero underrstanding of it.

Absolutely wrong. I don't believe it's a conspiracy because of the ludicrous nature of the claim. The whole idea is ridiculous. For example, for all the effort that was put into framing Oswald, suppose he'd been sick on the morning of 22/11/63 and didn' turn up? What a waste of good fakery!

I can just as easily suppose a Jack Ruby understudy, or a David Ferrie.
If we're going to suppose things we can suppose there were numerous guys that may have taken the fall in Oswalds abscence. But thats only if we're supposing things. You seem incapable of understanding that a conspiracy sometimes branches out amoung various fractions of an organsiation and mutates and that the conspirators won't necessarily all have equal amounts of knowledge about said conspiracy.

So, the fact that it doesn't look like a conspiracy proves it is one? Outstanding argument!

Yes thats what I said. Well done.
:rolleyes:

My "childish" argument is based on the idea that all the supposed evidence of conspiracy is genuine for the reasons stated by believers: I don't believe it is. This is a standard method of showing the absurdity of an argument, starting by considering that is true.

Now you have two things to read;
1. The history of the time involved
2. The post by me to which you attribute the mangled nonsense above.

Venture all you will: I'm a voracious reader and have read more than a couple of books on the subject. I wouldn't have trusted Nixon with my kid's piggy bank, and the CIA plotted to kill Castro amongst others (it wasn't followed up, though). None of this however, makes the supposed "proof" of the JFK plot look any more brilliant.

Perhaps then you could introduce into your posts less words like 'ludicrous and stupid' and more historical references to back up your points?

You're not debating at all; you're trying to patronise me by lauding a greater understanding without proving it.

FYI, I am pretty much up on the sociopolitical scene at the time, and yes, I know JFK blamed the CIA for Bay of Pigs going wrong and threatened to sack the whole lot

There was no threat - The directors and deputy directors were all forced to resign, he did sack them. There is simply no way you wouldn't know that were you in any way 'up' on (as you claim above) on the subject.
Allan Dulles, then head of ther CIA, would later sit on the Warren Commission.

Dragonblaster

OK, Steve, so why don't you clearly state exactly what you believe happened with regard to this plot.

No need to continue lambasting us for not being brilliant historians with instant grasp of the early '60s zeitgeist, unlike you with your couple of books.

You consider me ignorant, stupid, lacking in any kind of sociopolitical historial insight and obstinately unwilling to accept the inevitability of your transcendent thesis.

I've got the message. Honest.

So instead of just reiterating how mind-blastingly brain-dead I am, can you please state what you believe actually happened?

Maybe then we can delve into how you know these things, but if your argument is going to consist of "you don't know the state of 1960s America as insightfully as I do," someone as Mensianically (sic) brilliant as your erudite self should be able to tell that this is hardly likely to win the laurels at a debating contest for its cogency and detail.

I understand that you believe Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA because of his post-Bay of Pigs threat to decimate it. Got it. Motive. OK. A motive no better than his and Bobby's turning their backs on the Mafia, but a motive nonetheless.

I understand, OK?

But I think you'd find a court of law would need a little more detail.

In place of the apparently ludicrous "lone nut with a rifle" explanation which I am such an idiot for believing in, can you please say what your version is?

Dragonblaster

I'm sorry; you're either joking or not paying attention.
As I said earlier you need to read about this before discussing otherwsie you sound ridiculous.
You want someone to magically name a second gunman? The point is there was one (in all proabability) and that is on record via the HSCA; established by the state and as it is the last known offcial investigation into JFK, currently the most authoriative.

Chock-full of detail. Marvellous. Can you tell me where to look this up and why it is more authoritative and accurate than other works?

As for the dead potential witnesses, it seems a very haphazard way to silence people. The fact that the awkward (and occasionally bullying) Garrison and people like the imaginative Perry Russo survived the hearings makes it look as if the CIA are like chickens with their heads cut off, killing at random.

Yes that's true. Do you imagine that any part of the CIA ever had anyone killed?

Oooh, cool argument. That PROVES they had their president killed.

47 years, benefit of technology; hindsight, political autobiographies, official disclosures from government; declassified material on Oswald and the CIA etc. etc etc.

NAME IT!

I'm begining to think you're a troll tbh.

Kettle, this is pot. You need a bath, mate.

You seem in this for
"ahhh, look someone who thinks there was a conspiracy, eejit" I'll tell him so I will".

And you seem to be in it for, "I know the standard explanation is false because I'm clever. You are stupid for not knowing it. What standard, respected works provide the proof of a conspiracy?

This comment is next to idotic.
Who knows what Oswald was prmoised (release after trial) or what he feared (his wife and family) there are plenty of reasons why on his day he never said anything. It certainly doesn't mean he had nothing to say.

Who know,indeed? Obviously you don't. He obviously wasn't threatened or bribed enough to cough for it.

It's apparent that did they interfere with the immediate aftermath.
I don't think that bothered them. They can explain the Z footage of the head going to the rear after being shot from the rear.

A bullet does not have the energy to force a head away from the line of fire. Do the maths.

Well if it is true that they did kill some witnesses and leave others behind then one assumes they killed key witnesses? No real mystery there.

If. Yet again, if.

You need to first put yourself right by understanding the politcial history. To this point you have shown zero underrstanding of it.

You seem to have zero proof of anything other than, "the time was right for an assassination"

You seem incapable of understanding that a conspiracy sometimes branches out amoung various fractions of an organsiation and mutates and that the conspirators won't necessarily all have equal amounts of knowledge about said conspiracy.

As evidenced by... what?

Now you have two things to read;
1. The history of the time involved
2. The post by me to which you attribute the mangled nonsense above

.

I want to read what you believed HAPPENED.

There was no threat - The directors and deputy directors were all forced to resign, he did sack them. There is simply no way you wouldn't know that were you in any way 'up' on (as you claim above) on the subject.
Allan Dulles, then head of ther CIA, would later sit on the Warren Commission.

I AM aware of that. All of it. Motive for political murder? I don't know. What normally does the trick on other occasions when the CIA carry out a coup d'etat in the continental US?

Dragonblaster

Oh, BTW, Bush fired the CIA head of counter-terrorism for not "being on message" with regard to coercion/torture of terrorism suspects.

Wasn't he taking a huge risk, especially since he really has to be in the know about what happened to Kennedy?

stevejazzx

@DB

I don't time have for this multi quote stuff

Point 1. Name it?
The House select comittee on assinations - read it.
It's the most authoritive official investigation.

Point 2. What I believe may have happened. You seem obsessed with the word proof or prove. I don't use that word very often. Here's what I imagine could have happened.

A disgruntled fraction of fanatic anti-communists fed by the CIA plotted Kennedys assination to please both sides of their intrests and indeed sponsors - the mob and the CIA.

As I've already discussed this in some detail before I bow out now but I recommend this
http://www.betterworldbooks.co.uk/1960-lbj-vs-jfk-vs-nixon-id-1402777469.aspx

Dragonblaster

Point 1. Name it?
The House select comittee on assinations - read it.
It's the most authoritive official investigation.

I have. It concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy. It believes there was a conspiracy but states it is unable to name the conspirators.

It also specifically concludes that the American Secret Service and CIA were NOT involved.

So the report is not going to help me to agree with your conclusions. You must have more to believe that the CIA did it. So WHAT?

Point 2. What I believe may have happened. You seem obsessed with the word proof or prove. I don't use that word very often.

OK, fair enough, but don't blame me for not buying into your personal conjecture.

Here's what I imagine could have happened.

A disgruntled fraction of fanatic anti-communists fed by the CIA plotted Kennedys assination to please both sides of their intrests and indeed sponsors - the mob and the CIA.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations report you cited specifically excludes both the CIA and the mob. It's therefore not much good as proof that the CIA and the mob DID do it. So why is it the best reference?

As I've already discussed this in some detail before I bow out now but I recommend this
http://www.betterworldbooks.co.uk/19...402777469.aspx

Instead of making me pay out for a book, can't you just SAY what convinces you?

Dragonblaster

From the report from the House Select Committee on Assassinations, that Steve cites as the best proof that the CIA murdered Kennedy:

The committee carefully considered various charges of Government complicity and coverup. A major portion of its resources were devoted to examining a variety of allegations directed at the Secret Service, the FBI, and the CIA as well as the Warren Commission. As the investigation proceeded, the committee carefully sought evidence that Government agents had foreknowledge of an assassination, took advantage of it after the event, or afterwards covered up information relevant to ascertaining the truth. The committee made a conscientious effort, for example, to determine if the autopsy materials were authentic. Had they been tampered with, it would have raised the most serious of questions. The committee also carefully assessed the performance of the Secret Service in the planning and execution of the Dallas trip for signs that it may have actively sought to bring about the President's death. In addition, the committee carefully examined the relationship, if any, that Lee Harvey Oswald might have had with various governmental agencies, particularly the FBI and CIA. Over the years, there has been speculation that. Oswald might have been an FBI informant or an agent of the CIA. However Oswald is seen--patsy or perpetrator--his relationship to the agencies of the Government was crucial to assessing the question of Government complicity. If he had had a relationship with one or more of the agencies, serious issues would be raised. If he had not, the question would be less pressing.

I guess it must be my stupidity and lack of awareness of the 1960s political scene that makes me see this as less than a slam-dunk proof of CIA involvement.

I rather suspect that Steve hasn't read it.

stevejazzx

Dragonblaster wrote: »

From the report from the House Select Committee on Assassinations, that Steve cites as the best proof that the CIA murdered Kennedy:



I guess it must be my stupidity and lack of awareness of the 1960s political scene that makes me see this as less than a slam-dunk proof of CIA involvement.

I rather suspect that Steve hasn't read it.

The above (HSCA) was posted in realtion to you asking had anyone gone on the record citing a conspiracy or second shooter. The answer was yes;
many elected officals. It does not proport to cover my beliefs fully.
I have read it and had you cared to look you can find some of that on here. I understand it's overall implication regading Oswald but that wasn't the point; the point is it's concession on conspiracy and a second shooter. You've insisted from the off a lone shooter hypothesis makes more sense which made me suspect you were completely ignorant of the HSCA; so it's rather sad and pathetic now to read your counter accusation that I haven't read it. As I've already mentioned you can find examples of me debating it historically on these threads so perhaps next time you post try to achieve something more constructive than petty one upmanship. And before you try to claim that that was my tactic I refer you to the fact that you mentioned zero political history until challenged and even then nothing of substance in that area, or, going by this thread, any other. So I'll leave it there.

Dragonblaster

Best you do, my friend.

You impliy that you know so much more than stupid people like me, but all you have is a guess. If you knew any more than that, you'd be keen to tell us all about it.

You don't see anything more in this report than anyone else sees. All you do is say you know more than the rest of us.

What makes you think this report shows that it's more likly that the CIA killed Kennedy than not?

Or are you just stabbing a finger in the air about something you would prefer to be the truth than not?

You know no more than I do. All you do is shout about how clever you are and how stupid I am.

The report concludes that Oswald DID shoot JFK (my belief), and that the CIA and the Secret Service were NOT involved.

How does this imply your faith of the CIA being behind it?

fergus o brien

i read a lot of threads on various jfk assassination forums and i am a member on two forums , on the whole there seems to be two categories of people on these forums ,so called CTers and LNers .

my own personal experience is that a large majority of people (if not all)on these forums who believe one man killed jfk and tippit (oswald ) enjoy the arguments with other members a lot more than actually looking for the truth. often rather than providing valid and proven evidence to make a case for the lone killer scenario they choose to take the approach of insulting and attempting to bully other people on the thread .

i dont think that sort of behaviour should be allowed on any forum ,if people choose to believe lee oswald is the lone killer so be it ,we are all entitled to our opinions however we are not all entitled to be abusive towards other people because they hold a different belief.

for me this case comes down to what can be proven ,proven by video/photographic evidence ,documents and witness testimony not speculation or a persons own beliefs .i would ask that any discussion of the jfk assassination on this thread be based only on the available evidence and proven facts .

killerking

stevejazzx wrote: »

The above (HSCA) was posted in realtion to you asking had anyone gone on the record citing a conspiracy or second shooter. The answer was yes;
many elected officals. It does not proport to cover my beliefs fully.
I have read it and had you cared to look you can find some of that on here. I understand it's overall implication regading Oswald but that wasn't the point; the point is it's concession on conspiracy and a second shooter. You've insisted from the off a lone shooter hypothesis makes more sense which made me suspect you were completely ignorant of the HSCA; so it's rather sad and pathetic now to read your counter accusation that I haven't read it. As I've already mentioned you can find examples of me debating it historically on these threads so perhaps next time you post try to achieve something more constructive than petty one upmanship. And before you try to claim that that was my tactic I refer you to the fact that you mentioned zero political history until challenged and even then nothing of substance in that area, or, going by this thread, any other. So I'll leave it there.

The central plank of the HSCA conclusion of the high probability of a second shooter is the motorcycle radio dictabelt which conspiracy wackos claim has 4 noises that they believe to be gunfire.

It has since been proven that the recording was not made at the time of the shooting in Dealey Plaza and the noises could not be gunshots.

None of the witnesses on the grassy knoll saw any rifleman hiding behind the fence nor heard any shots. No rifle was recovered, no spent hulls were recovered etc. No photographs or films show any evidence whatsoever of a gunman behind the fence.

All the physical evidence shows that the shots that struck JFK and JBC came from the 6th floor window and from Oswald's rifle.

The HSCA concluded that the fatal shots were fired by Oswald.

They could find no evidence about who his supposed accomplice was or what association Oswald had with him/her.

There was no evidence of any links between Oswald and Jack Ruby or any links between the CIA, the Mafia, the KGB, Cuban exiles or the Cuban government or another organisation or government.

The whole case for a second shooter hinges on the interpretation of the dictabelt which is now proven to have been erroneous by later scientific study.

The conspiracy theory is complete balls dreamed up by a bunch of cynical authors out to make a quick buck from a gullible public.

Dragonblaster

@killerking

Sorry, mate, stevejazzx will just tell you to read more. He has read "a couple of books" in his own words, so he knows MUCH more than you or I.

He knows everything, but he can't tell you more than that, or he'd have to kill you.