Dr. Mary’s Monkey—Edward Haslam, 

an Insider’s Access

                                                   by  John Delane Williams


Part One

In 1995, Edward Haslam self published the book, Mary, Ferrie, and the Monkey Virus. [1] Only 1,000 copies were produced. I’d heard about this fascinating, but inaccessible book. Finally, I was able to get a copy from Andy Winiarczyk (The Last Hurrah Bookshop). It was the most interesting and different of any work on the JFK assassination that I had seen. It addressed questions that I had never thought about before. When I lent this book out, I made a point of getting it back; getting another copy seemed remote. I was enthused that Haslam was in the process of updating and revisiting the issues that were brought up in his first book, as well as enlarging it with new information. That book is Dr. Mary’s Monkey. [2]. In Haslam’s own words, “You will find this book as much of a personal odyssey as a journalistic work. But that’s what happens when you investigate a murder only to discover an epidemic.” [3]

Edward Haslam, by virtue of his birth, had an insider’s access to activities in New Orleans, particularly to those issues relating to medical issues. His father, also Edward Haslam, was a Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Medical School of Tulane University in New Orleans. Hslam’s father would address questions that the young Edward would ask. As a 10 year old, he thought having a monkey for a pet would be fun. Dr. Haslam would explain about diseases and virus associated with monkeys. Then he told young Edward about research on monkeys at the Tulane medical school.

Edward T. Haslam, author of Dr. Mary's Monkey

At the death of Dr. Mary Sherman, a colleague of the older Haslam, young Edward learned that Dr. Sherman’s right arm was missing, a point not made in the newspapers at the time. (July, 1964). In a high school classroom at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, in March 1969, the day after Clay Shaw was acquitted, Haslam’s friend and classmate, Nicky Chetta, son of Dr. Nicholas Chetta, coroner for Orleans Parish) said that Jim Garrison got a raw deal. Chetta continued that someone, either from the FBI or the CIA had stolen/or photographed Garrison’s files on the Shaw case; that all of Garrison’s requests for extradition had been denied, as well as requests to subpoena former federal officials. David Ferrie and Guy Banister had been training anti-Castro Cubans for assaults on Cuba near Lake Pontchartrain. It was Nicky’s father who ruled there was no foul play in Ferrie’s death. The day after Ferrie’s death, Bobby Kennedy called the Chetta residence to talk to Dr. Chetta. When Bobby identified himself, Nicky thought it was a prank, and hung up. Kennedy called back, and talked to Dr. Chetta about the autopsy.

David Ferrie was found dead of "natural causes" soon after he expressed fears that he would be killed due to publicity in the Garrison investigation

Garrison thought that Ferrie was going about trying to figure out a way to use cancer as an assassination weapon against Castro. This discussion was in a 1969 high school classroom, when the general belief was that cancer was thought to be a spontaneous disease, and not caused by a virus. It was hard to believe all the things that Nicky was saying—but then a kid blurted out that there was a kid at the Tulane Medical School dying of the total collapse of his immune system. Then another student jumped up and said that they were developing a biological weapon! What if it escapes into the human population? As class ended, Haslam turned to Nicky and said, ”Well, the good news is that if there’s a bizarre global epidemic involving cancer and a monkey virus thirty years from now, at least we’ll know where it came from.” [4] (AIDs would not wait 30 years; the epidemic was identified in the early 1980’s.)  While Haslam was discussing the events in the classroom with his mother, she confided that research at Tulane did involve David Ferrie; the person working with him was Dr. Mary Sherman!

David Ferrie and Robert Morrow.

One important detail that was new to me was that Ferrie and Robert Morrow flew to Cuba on April 16, 1961. There, Morrow put in place equipment to collect radio signals from a mountaintop in the Camagueys. A reported large facility was under construction in a deep ravine in the Camagueys’ jungle.  The CIA suspected that the Soviets were moving missiles into Cuba. The intelligence they collected got back to Washington just in time for the Bay of Pigs debacle. A chapter is also devoted to a medical treatise on viral cancer which Jim Garrison assumed was written by Ferrie. Haslam’s analysis was that, while the treatise was in Ferrie’s possession, it was unlikely that it was written by Ferrie.

College Days

 In 1972, Haslam entered Tulane. At registration, he met a young woman, Barbara, who was working on her Ph.D. in anthropology. Haslam invited Barbara to a concert. Eventually, Haslam was invited to Barbara’s apartment at 3225 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. She had acquired the freshly painted apartment for far less than market value.. It seems she was the first tenant in years. She was told that many animals had been housed there. Another tenant said that terrible men had done terrible things to animals in what would become Barbara’s apartment. Barbara asked Haslam if he knew what the other tenant was talking about. Haslam said that he heard about a secret laboratory from the Garrison investigation. It was years later when Haslam realized he had been standing in the apartment that David Ferrie use to house animals for injecting cancer cells into mice.

Dr. Alton Ochsner

Dr. Alton Ochsner also merits a chapter in Haslam’s book. Ochsner was a well respected physician in New Orleans. He was a member of the Tulane University Medical School, and also ran the Ochsner Clinic. Upon Ochsner’s arrival in New Orleans, he unwittingly became involved in a controversy with Senator Huey Long (Long had Ochsner’s appointment at Charity Hospital terminated.). This would push Ochsner to the political enemies of Long, who were influential conservatives.

Alton Ochsner ran INCA, which produced this recording of Oswald in New Orleans. Ochsner (center photo) was described as perhaps the only person who knew, BEFORE this recorded broadcast, that Oswald had been a defector.

Ochsner later became President of the American Cancer Society, and had been one of the first to recognize that there was a direct link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. [5] Ochsner was one of the first to endorse polio vaccines. To illustrate his faith in the new vaccines, he personally inoculated two of his own grandchildren. The grandson died, and the granddaughter shortly developed polio. These events seemed to be related to events in his career: in 1959, Ochsner severed his relationship with the FBI so that he could begin a sensitive relationship with another government agency, presumably he CIA.  The CIA likely helped set up his new hospital as one of its 159 covert research centers.  It seems that an interest might have been in addressing problems with the monkeys used to culture the polio vaccine. Ochsner also was the surgeon of choice for many South American political leaders.

A linear particle accelerator (linac).  Haslam obtained evidence from confidential sources that a linac had vaporized a technician; he theorized that Dr. Sherman was mortally wounded by such a machine.

The Machine

It was while reading Chapter 11 on “The Machine” that I became aware that my ’97 edition was different than the original ’95 version. The 1997 edition had a chapter similar to the one in his current book regarding Haslam’s investigation into the possibility of a linear accelerator being used in New Orleans. He did his research on the existence of the linear accelerator after the original work was published. While I was familiar with Haslam’s making new chapters available over the internet I wasn’t aware that his original book had quietly gone through revisions. This is possible with small runs of self-published books. This chapter is a focal chapter; it bears on the death of Dr. Mary Sherman, and the possibility that the underground laboratory was changing monkey viruses through mutation, using the linear accelerator, into deadly cancers, perhaps including the development of the AIDs virus.

This chapter is perhaps his most important contribution.

He began by hypothesizing that no normal fire could have completely burned the bones in Dr. Sherman’s right arm. Nor would electricity cause the damage done to her arm and right side and yet leave the rest of her body and clothing virtually unharmed. A linear accelerator might be able to accomplish this outcome, but at the time, there was no public knowledge that there had been a linear accelerator in New Orleans. Haslam interviewed the man who installed the accelerator in New Orleans, who couldn’t tell Haslam the location of the linear accelerator because of a secrecy agreement. Haslam concluded that the CIA must have funded the project, given the unusual payment process. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s most research institutes would pay for an accelerator over a several-year period, as they came with price tags of upwards of $10 million. The one in New Orleans was paid for with 5 or 6 checks paid by different companies and drawn from different banks, all within a week. Haslam eventually concluded that the linear accelerator was located in the Infectious Disease Laboratory of the U.S. Public Health Hospital in New Orleans.

The Witness

On the eve of Haslam’s publication of Mary, Ferrie, and the Monkey Virus, a fellow writer informed him, “You have everything except a witness.” Five years later, 60 Minutes called him with information that they had a woman who told them she had worked in a laboratory that Haslam had described. It was 60 Minutes that would bring him his missing witness. Her story, beyond being a love story between herself and the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had serious political implications. Also disturbing to Haslam was that her name was Judyth Vary Baker, a person to whom he says he had been introduced in 1972.  Haslam was invited, in 1972, to a party because he had argued with people at a previous party that Ferrie had an underground laboratory, and that viruses could actually cause cancers in humans. Two weeks later, Barbara and Haslam were invited to a dinner by “Judyth Vary Baker”. When 60 minutes talked to Haslam, he thought this was the same person. 60 Minutes cancelled the segment on Baker, at least partly on Haslam’s report on the 1972 incident. But Haslam concluded that the two Judyth’s were not the same person; he was left with questions about the 1972 imposter “Judyth”. How did the imposter know so much about the real Judyth?

In 2001 Haslam was living in Bradenton, Florida, and Judyth was planning to visit her mother there. The two of them got together. She had binders with her -- collected documents.  Haslam decided to call the fellow writer who told him he had everything but a witness. The fellow writer assured Haslam that Judyth “…was a walking, talking, disinformation machine sent by the CIA to cause chaos among the JFK assassination research community, and that the documents I had seen were probably forgeries.” [6] But since Haslam worked at the Bradenton Herald, he was able to confirm those newspaper articles were genuine. Haslam thought it important to answer three questions:

1.      Is she the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida?

2.      Did Judyth know Lee Harvey Oswald in 1n New Orleans in 1963?

3.      Was Judyth trained to handle cancer viruses before going to New Orleans?

Haslam sorted through the evidence on each question. After thoroughly evaluating the evidence Haslam concluded:”Yes, I have my witness.” [7] He is quick to point out that she was a witness to activities in New Orleans, not Dallas. “However, we are not here to figure out who killed JFK. We are here to understand who was using radiation to mutate monkey viruses, and why.” [8]

References:

1.      Haslam, E.T. (1995). Mary, Ferrie, and the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory. Albuquerque, NM: Wordswoth Communications.

2.      Haslam, E.T. (2007). Dr. Mary’s Monkey. Walterville, OR: Trine Day.

3.      Ibid, p. 9.

4.      Ibid, p. 4.

5.      Wilds, J. & Harkey, I. (1990). Alton Ochsner: Surgeon of the South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University.

6.      Haslam, (2007), p. 289.

7.      Ibid, p. 298.

8.      Ibid, p. 301.

                                         Dr. Mary’s Monkey—Edward Haslam, an Insider’s Access

                                                                Part One   

                                                     John Delane Williams

In 1995, Edward Haslam self published the book, Mary, Ferrie, and the Monkey Virus. [1] Only 1,000 copies were produced. I’d heard about this fascinating, but inaccessible book. Finally, I was able to get a copy from Andy Winiarczyk (The Last Hurrah Bookshop). It was the most interesting and different of any work on the JFK assassination that I had seen. It addressed questions that I had never thought about before. When I lent this book out, I made a point of getting it back; getting another copy seemed remote. I was enthused that Haslam was in the process of updating and revisiting the issues that were brought up in his first book, as well as enlarging it with new information. That book is Dr. Mary’s Monkey. [2]. In Haslam’s own words, “You will find this book as much of a personal odyssey as a journalistic work. But that’s what happens when you investigate a murder only to discover an epidemic.” [3]

Edward Haslam, by virtue of his birth, had an insider’s access to activities in New Orleans, particularly to those issues relating to medical issues. His father, also Edward Haslam, was a Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Medical School of Tulane University in New Orleans. Hslam’s father would address questions that the young Edward would ask. As a 10 year old, he thought having a monkey for a pet would be fun. Dr. Haslam would explain about diseases and virus associated with monkeys. Then he told young Edward about research on monkeys at the Tulane medical school.

At the death of Dr. Mary Sherman, a colleague of the older Haslam, young Edward learned that Dr. Sherman’s right arm was missing, a point not made in the newspapers at the time. (July, 1964). In a high school classroom at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, in March 1969, the day after Clay Shaw was acquitted, Haslam’s friend and classmate, Nicky Chetta, son of Dr. Nicholas Chetta, coroner for Orleans Parish) said that Jim Garrison got a raw deal. Chetta continued that someone, either from the FBI or the CIA had stolen/or photographed Garrison’s files on the Shaw case; that all of Garrison’s requests for extradition had been denied, as well as requests to subpoena former federal officials. David Ferrie and Guy Banister had been training anti-Castro Cubans for assaults on Cuba near Lake Pontchartrain. It was Nicky’s father who ruled there was no foul play in Ferrie’s death. The day after Ferrie’s death, Bobby Kennedy called the Chetta residence to talk to Dr. Chetta. When Bobby identified himself, Nicky thought it was a prank, and hung up. Kennedy called back, and talked to Dr. Chetta about the autopsy.

Garrison thought that Ferrie was going about trying to figure out a way to use cancer as an assassination weapon against Castro. This discussion was in a 1969 high school classroom, when the general belief was that cancer was thought to be a spontaneous disease, and not caused by a virus. It was hard to believe all the things that Nicky was saying—but then a kid blurted out that there was a kid at the Tulane Medical School dying of the total collapse of his immune system. Then another student jumped up and said that they were developing a biological weapon! What if it escapes into the human population? As class ended, Haslam turned to Nicky and said, ”Well, the good news is that if there’s a bizarre global epidemic involving cancer and a monkey virus thirty years from now, at least we’ll know where it came from.” [4] (AIDs would not wait 30 years; the epidemic was identified in the early 1980’s.)  While Haslam was discussing the events in the classroom with his mother, she confided that research at Tulane did involve David Ferrie; the person working with him was Dr. Mary Sherman!

David Ferrie.

One important detail that was new to me was that Ferrie and Robert Morrow flew to Cuba on April 16, 1961. There, Morrow put in place equipment to collect radio signals from a mountaintop in the Camagueys. A reported large facility was under construction in a deep ravine in the Camagueys’ jungle.  The CIA suspected that the Soviets were moving missiles into Cuba. The intelligence they collected got back to Washington just in time for the Bay of Pigs debacle. A chapter is also devoted to a medical treatise on viral cancer which Jim Garrison assumed was written by Ferrie. Haslam’s analysis was that, while the treatise was in Ferrie’s possession, it was unlikely that it was written by Ferrie.

College Days

 In 1972, Haslam entered Tulane. At registration, he met a young woman, Barbara, who was working on her Ph.D. in anthropology. Haslam invited Barbara to a concert. Eventually, Haslam was invited to Barbara’s apartment at 3225 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. She had acquired the freshly painted apartment for far less than market value.. It seems she was the first tenant in years. She was told that many animals had been housed there. Another tenant said that terrible men had done terrible things to animals in what would become Barbara’s apartment. Barbara asked Haslam if he knew what the other tenant was talking about. Haslam said that he heard about a secret laboratory from the Garrison investigation. It was years later when Haslam realized he had been standing in the apartment that David Ferrie use to house animals for injecting cancer cells into mice.

Dr. Alton Ochsner

Dr. Alton Ochsner also merits a chapter in Haslam’s book. Ochsner was a well respected physician in New Orleans. He was a member of the Tulane University Medical School, and also ran the Ochsner Clinic. Upon Ochsner’s arrival in New Orleans, he unwittingly became involved in a controversy with Senator Huey Long (Long had Ochsner’s appointment at Charity Hospital terminated.). This would push Ochsner to the political enemies of Long, who were influential conservatives.

Ochsner later became President of the American Cancer Society, and had been one of the first to recognize that there was a direct link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. [5] Ochsner was one of the first to endorse polio vaccines. To illustrate his faith in the new vaccines, he personally inoculated two of his own grandchildren. The grandson died, and the granddaughter shortly developed polio. These events seemed to be related to events in his career: in 1959, Ochsner severed his relationship with the FBI so that he could begin a sensitive relationship with another government agency, presumably he CIA.  The CIA likely helped set up his new hospital as one of its 159 covert research centers.  It seems that an interest might have been in addressing problems with the monkeys used to culture the polio vaccine. Ochsner also was the surgeon of choice for many South American political leaders.

The Machine

It was while reading Chapter 11 on “The Machine” that I became aware that my ’97 edition was different than the original ’95 version. The 1997 edition had a chapter similar to the one in his current book (reviewed here) regarding Haslam’s investigation into the possibility of a linear accelerator being used in New Orleans. He did his research on the existence of the linear accelerator after the original work was published. While I was familiar with Haslam’s making new chapters available over the internet I wasn’t aware that his original book had quietly gone through revisions. This is possible with small runs of self-published books. This chapter is a focal chapter; it bears on the death of Dr. Mary Sherman, and the possibility that the underground laboratory was changing monkey viruses through mutation, using the linear accelerator, into deadly cancers, perhaps including the development of the AIDs virus.

This chapter is perhaps his most important contribution.

He began by hypothesizing that no normal fire could have completely burned the bones in Dr. Sherman’s right arm. Nor would electricity cause the damage done to her arm and right side and yet leave the rest of her body and clothing virtually unharmed. A linear accelerator might be able to accomplish this outcome, but at the time, there was no public knowledge that there had been a linear accelerator in New Orleans. Haslam interviewed the man who installed the accelerator in New Orleans, who couldn’t tell Haslam the location of the linear accelerator because of a secrecy agreement. Haslam concluded that the CIA must have funded the project, given the unusual payment process. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s most research institutes would pay for an accelerator over a several-year period, as they came with price tags of upwards of $10 million. The one in New Orleans was paid for with 5 or 6 checks paid by different companies and drawn from different banks, all within a week. Haslam eventually concluded that the linear accelerator was located in the Infectious Disease Laboratory of the U.S. Public Health Hospital in New Orleans.

The Witness

On the eve of Haslam’s publication of Mary, Ferrie, and the Monkey Virus, a fellow writer informed him, “You have everything except a witness.” Five years later, 60 Minutes called him with information that they had a woman who told them she had worked in a laboratory that Haslam had described. It was 60 Minutes that would bring him his missing witness. Her story, beyond being a love story between herself and the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had serious political implications. Also disturbing to Haslam was that her name was Judyth Vary Baker, a person to whom he says he had been introduced in 1972.  Haslam was invited, in 1972, to a party because he had argued with people at a previous party that Ferrie had an underground laboratory, and that viruses could actually cause cancers in humans. Two weeks later, Barbara and Haslam were invited to a dinner by “Judyth Vary Baker”. When 60 minutes talked to Haslam, he thought this was the same person. 60 Minutes cancelled the segment on Baker, at least partly on Haslam’s report on the 1972 incident. But Haslam concluded that the two Judyth’s were not the same person; he was left with questions about the 1972 imposter “Judyth”. How did the imposter know so much about the real Judyth?

In 2001 Haslam was living in Bradenton, Florida, and Judyth was planning to visit her mother there. The two of them got together. She had binders with her -- collected documents.  Haslam decided to call the fellow writer who told him he had everything but a witness. The fellow writer assured Haslam that Judyth “…was a walking, talking, disinformation machine sent by the CIA to cause chaos among the JFK assassination research community, and that the documents I had seen were probably forgeries.” [6] But since Haslam worked at the Bradenton Herald, he was able to confirm those newspaper articles were genuine. Haslam thought it important to answer three questions:

1.      Is she the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida?

2.      Did Judyth know Lee Harvey Oswald in 1n New Orleans in 1963?

3.      Was Judyth trained to handle cancer viruses before going to New Orleans?

Haslam sorted through the evidence on each question. After thoroughly evaluating the evidence Haslam concluded:”Yes, I have my witness.” [7] He is quick to point out that she was a witness to activities in New Orleans, not Dallas. “However, we are not here to figure out who killed JFK. We are here to understand who was using radiation to mutate monkey viruses, and why.” [8]

References:

1.      Haslam, E.T. (1995). Mary, Ferrie, and the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory. Albuquerque, NM: Wordswoth Communications.

2.      Haslam, E.T. (2007). Dr. Mary’s Monkey. Walterville, OR: Trine Day.

3.      Ibid, p. 9.

4.      Ibid, p. 4.

5.      Wilds, J. & Harkey, I. (1990). Alton Ochsner: Surgeon of the South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University.

6.      Haslam, (2007), p. 289.

7.      Ibid, p. 298.

8.      Ibid, p. 301.

                  Ultimate Sacrifice-The Whole is Less than the Sum of its parts

                                              John Delane Williams

There is a saying from Gestalt philosophy/psychology: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. The book by Lamar Waldron, with Thom Hartman [1] proves, to my way of thinking, to be a counterexample to that Gestalt maxim. That is, their whole contribution is less than the sum of its parts. They conclude that one of the many plans to remove from power Fidel Castro, which they term “C-Day”, and planned for December 1, 1963, was sidetracked by the mafia, and with the help of one person in the employ of the CIA ( David Morales, stationed in Miami) changed the objective of  “C-Day” to be the assassination of President Kennedy, to be accomplished in Chicago (November 2, 1963), Tampa  (November 18, 1963) or Dallas (November 22, 1963). It is their conclusion that I find to be unwarranted, particularly as it excludes other participants in Kennedy’s assassination. On the other hand, they have  completed research related to the JFK assassination that does make a contribution.

They investigated each of the two less known potential sites with their separate patsies. They address the framing of Abraham Bolden, the first Black member of the Secret Service. They give a much more in depth consideration to the involvement of Richard Cain, the chief investigator in the sheriff’s office  in Chicago. Cain was also a “made” member of the mafia, and connected to the CIA. This part of their research is a definite contribution. On the other hand, their conclusions about the “C-Day” operation would seem to be misguided; some might even term it “misinformation”.

                              The Aborted Chicago Assassination Attempt

Abraham Bolden, Richard Cain, and Thomas Arthur Valle were showcased in Waldron & Hartman’s research. Bolden was a member of the Secret Service stationed in Chicago,   and instrumental in bringing the information of the Kennedy assassination plans for Chicago, leading to the cancellation of Kennedy’s motorcade and cancelling his appearance at the Army-Air Force football game at Soldier Field. Bolden later traveled to testify before the Warren Commission, only to be framed by mafia members on a counterfeiting charge that would send him to prison. Had Bolden testified, he would have described a proposed attempt on Kennedy’s life by a group of four Cuban dissidents. This testimony would seemingly have left the lone assassin theory in shambles. Thomas Arthur Valle was to be the patsy in Chicago.                                                                           

Thomas Arthur Valle, like Lee Harvey Oswald, had served in the Marines; in Valle’s case from 1949-1952, and from 1955-1957, when he was honorably discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type, with manifestations of homosexuality and  femininity.

Valle had some involvement with the John Birch Society. Valle had trained Cuban exiles to assassinate Castro for the CIA. Apparently, Cain was privy to the information on Valle, and was poised to release the information as soon as JFK was assassinated in Chicago (in much the same manner as information was released regarding Oswald in Dallas twenty days later). The actual potential assassins were four Cubans,  whom Bolden reported on to other Secret Service personnel.

                              The Aborted Tampa Assassination Attempt

 Less is known about the Tampa attempt. A brief article occurred in the Tampa Tribune on November 23, 1963. It appeared in only one edition of the paper. Two persons were of interest (perhaps as potential patsies): Gilberto Lopez and Miguel Casas Saez. Lopez had a brother who was then studying in Russia; Saez had learned Russian in Cuba from Russian instructors. The CIA received two reports on Saez between the Chicago aborted attempt and the planned Tampa attempt. Lopez was actually a member of the Tampa chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), and attended meetings. There was a reported meeting between Oswald, Lopez, and a key member of the Tampa FPCC which purportedly took place the weekend before the proposed Tampa attempt, in Tampa. Apparently the rationale for such a meeting was to link  Oswald and Lopez.  Oswald might have been impersonated by someone else at this meeting. Both Lopez and Saez crossed into Mexico shortly after the assassination, returning to Cuba. Supposedly Oswald was expected to have left for Cuba at the same time. Lopez’s wife remained in the US and had not heard from him since November, 1963; they were never divorced.  

                                                  The “C-Day” Plan

The “C-Day” Plan, so-called by Waldron & Hartman (they appear not to have discovered a name specific to this plan) was but one of more than a score of plans to remove Fidel Castro from power, either by coup, or by assassination. Waldron & Hartman claim that Both John and Robert Kennedy were in agreement to support a “C-Day” plan to remove Castro from office. The problem was, that the plan of the Kennedys’ seems to vary from the plan of the other participants. Somewhere there was a disconnect between the expectancies of the Kennedys, the

Cubans, the CIA, and the CIA operatives (which includes some mafia members, as did other anti-Castro plots). A close reading of JFK’s intentions would show that,  were any US government involvement to take place, Castro would first have to be removed from power. (Shades of the Bay of Pigs). In JFK’s speech addressing the Cuban situation (November 18, 1963), which, according to Waldron & Hartman, had a special message to the “C-Day” coup leader (who was never identified by the authors, but presumably was Che Guevarra) that was to show the solidarity of JFK to the “C-Day” plan (scheduled for December 1, 1963):

      “...The goals proclaimed in the Sierra Maestra were betrayed in Havana.  It is important

      to  restate what now divides Cuba from my country and from the other countries of this                  hemisphere. It is the fact that a small band of conspirators has stripped the Cuban people

      of their freedom and handed over the independence and sovereignty of the Cuban nation

      to forces beyond the hemisphere. They have made Cuba a victim of foreign imperialism,

      an instrument of the policy of others, a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to               subvert the other American republics.

      This, and this alone, divides us.

      As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible. Once this barrier is removed,

     we will be ready and anxious to work with the Cuban people in

     pursuit of those progressive goals which a few short years ago stirred their hopes and

     the sympathy of many people throughout this hemisphere....” [2]

It seems clear that the phrase, “Once this barrier is removed, we will be ready and anxious to work with the Cuban people...” [3] indicates that the help would come after Castro was removed.

It does make sense for Kennedy not to repeat the foibles of the Bay of Pigs less than three years previously. Of course, this clarification may not have been the wished for response. Undoubtedly, Kennedy would have been aware that Castro was  less likely to be vulnerable in 1963 than he was in 1961. The stakes would have been higher in 1963, with a Russian presence still in Cuba. Were the Russians to provide tactical help, the US might respond, but the response could also remain hypothetical to keep the Russians from providing  tactical aid. One would guess that both the US and Russia would expect Castro to withstand an invasion that did not include US military aid. Thus, it is difficult to see how “C-Day” would succeed, though it is possible that it might. For example, Castro might be removed from power, allowing the US to intercede. It would seem that JFK’s understanding, which surely would be understood by his brother Robert, may have been different from the other “C-Day” participants.

 Waldron & Hartman would have us believe that the mafia had already compromised this plan, and had already had two assassination attempts foiled. There are still other problems with their conclusion that the mafia, together with the CIA’s David Morales, were the only persons responsible for the JFK assassination.

                           LBJ Wasn’t Involved in the JFK Assassination?

“Like Nixon,  LBJ was not part of the JFK assassination plot.” [4]  Showing someone was not part of a plot is very difficult. Given the evidence that does exist, avoiding that evidence does not prove anything other than either they were unaware of it, or they chose to disregard it in building their case against ths mafia. Without attempting an exhaustive list of evidence against Johnson, several writings are suggested; at the very least, Waldron & Hartman’s  conclusion is unwarranted. It seems likely that Johnson was aware of the plan to assassinate President Kennedy prior to the assassination ;  Madeleine Brown had indicated that, on the night of November 21, 1963, LBJ told her, “After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again–that’s no threat– that’s a promise.” [5]   LBJ had many persons who did his bidding for him, including Mac Wallace, Billie Sol Estes and Cliff Carter. Wallace was considered to be a henchman for LBJ, killing up to perhaps 17 people on behalf of LBJ . [6]

There was one unidentified fingerprint at the time of the initial investigation of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. [7] Finally, in 1998, this fingerprint was identified as belonging to Mac Wallace . [8] Estes [9] named Cliff Carter, an LBJ aide, as the master planner for the assassination. McClellan [10] wrote a book length effort on showing LBJ was behind the assassination. These writings are but the tip of the iceberg addressing LBJ’s involvement. While one might argue that  the information available on LBJ does not necessarily prove beyond any doubt that LBJ was involved, it is incongruous that a researcher would absolve Johnson without addressing the mounting evidence against him. Also when addressing LBJ’s involvement, no one seriously considers LBJ as a shooter himself; it would be hard to shoot a gun when he was  on the floor of a limousine with a Secret Service agent (Rufus Youngblood) laying on top him. [11] Rather, by discussing LBJ’s involvement implies a network of persons, many of them with something to gain by LBJ, rather than JFK, being president. This network would include persons close to Johnson, such as Mac Wallace, Cliff Carter, Ed Cark (implicated by McClellan [12]), Texas oil interests and perhaps persons from the military-industrial complex. Johnson’s own personal involvement most likely was  in regard to the coverup after the assassination. [13]

                       The CIA Wasn’t Involved in the JFK Assassination?

Waldron & Hartman limit the CIA’s involvement to David Morales: “Thanks to the research of Larry Hancock, we now know that in 1963, David Morales ranked higher in the CIA than David Atlee Phillips, which means Morales was in a position to manipulate Phillips by feeding him disinformation on certain operations.

As for the other CIA officials, there is no evidence of their involvement.” [14]                  

Were Morales the only CIA person involved, he still would have the ability to manipulate far more people than Phillips. But long after Morales left the agency, they have stonewalled on releasing documents related to the assassination,  totaling more than a million pages, which Waldron and Hartman point out several times in their book; to be involved in the cover-up of a conspiracy is to be involved in the conspiracy. It would probably be correct that at least the then director of the CIA, JFK appointed John McCone, would have not likely had knowledge  of unauthorized CIA activities. Perhaps as the missing pages are brought to light, much more will be known.

                                            The Secret Service?

To be fair, Waldron & Hartman do a decent job of reviewing aspects of the Secret Service, and do a commendable job in trying to exonerate Abraham Bolden, the agent who blew the whistle on the Chicago plot. They also review some of the work of Vincent Palamara.. Yet they don’t capture his concept of the security stripping test related to the Dallas trip. [15] What baffles me is their reaction to the Secret Service destroying their records related to the Chicago and Tampa trips:

 “ Secret Service agents in Tampa were probably subjected to the same pressure for secrecy as those in Chicago...It...explains why, in the mid-1990's, the Secret Service destroyed documents about JFK’s motorcades in the weeks before Dallas, rather than turn them over [to] the JFK Assassination Records Review Board as the law required. As noted earlier, that destruction occurred just weeks after the authors had first informed the Review Board about the Tampa attempt.” [16]   I have a hard time not calling the destruction of those records as malfeasance.  The Secret Service directly defied the law. By inference they had something they were hiding; why were they not called to task for their actions?

I find the conclusion that the JFK assassination can be laid at the foot of the mafia, plus David Morales, and none other, as indefensible. I would tend to agree with Walt Brown, “... doubt was cast upon the guilt of certain groups–the mob, the CIA, big oil, the right wing, corporate conglomerates simply because there was not enough data then to make a judgement (1993 when Brown wrote Treachery in Dallas) and point an accusatory finger at one of those groups. As time has passed, however, the finger can now be pointed at those groups as a collective...” [17]

References

1. Waldron, L. & Hartman, T. (2005). Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK. New York: Carroll & Graf.

2. Ibid., p. 693.

3. Loc. cit.

4. Ibid., p. 267.

5. Brown, M. (1997). Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Baltimore: The Conservatory Press.  p. 166.

6. Caddy, D. (1984). Letter to Stephen S. Trott. In Sardie, L. A Closer Look: Research Materials.

Www.booksonvideo. See also Brown, W. (2005). The Guns of Texas are upon You. Williamsport, PA: The Last Hurrah Press, p. 181.

7. Sloan, B. (1993). JFK: Breaking the Silence. Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co. p. 123.

8. Brown, W. (1998).TSBD Shooter Identified. JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly, 3,3, Extra. See several articles from 3,4 , JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly; also Brown, W. (2005).  p. 225-226.

9. Estes, B.S. (2005). A Texas Legend. Granbury, TX: BS Productions. See also Williams, J.D. (2005). Estes Named Cliff Carter as the Master Strategist in the JFK Assassination. JFK Deep Politics Quarterly, 10, #4, 13-19.

10. McClellan, B. (2003). Blood , Money, & Power: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K. New York: Hanover House.

11.  Wood, I.D. (2000). 22 November 1963: A Chronology. In Fetzer, J.H. Murder in Dealey Plaza. Chicago: Catfeet Press,  p. 37.

12. McClellan.

13. Williams, J.D. (1999). LBJ & the Assassination conspiracies. JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly, 4,2, 25-28.

14. Waldron & Hartman.  p. 584.

15. Palamara, V.M. (1997). The Third Alternative: Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the JFK Murder. Pittsburgh: Author.

16. Waldron & Hartman, p. 224.

17. Brown, W. (2005).  p. 128.

In  JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly. (2006). 11, 3, 15-22.

                 Oswald in North Dakota? Part Two

              John Delane Williams and Gary Severson

     In Part I of Oswald in North Dakota, we related our studying a reported Oswald sighting in Stanley, ND. In talking to current residents of Stanley, we came across a most improbable story- a second independent sighting of a person who could be Lee Harvey Oswald, or an Oswald impersonator. A mild mannered tailor, Lyle Aho, told us a story that bears being taken seriously. Lyle has been a lifelong resident of North Dakota, leaving the state on occassion to work in the oil patches of the upper Northwest part of the US. He was disabled by a car accident in 1976 and then returned to Stanley, eventually taking up tailoring to make a living. Since his arrival in Stanley as a small child, he has spent most of his time there. When he worked in the oil fields, he always wintered in Stanley. Winters in North Dakota begin earlier and last longer than in most other parts of the US. His wintering in Stanley could begin as early as September, or as late as December, going back to the oil patch by March or April.

     Aho, who now is 5'10", was relatively smaller than his age mates as a child. He moved to Stanley from Belden, ND, in the fall of 1951. Aho was born in Belden on May 9, 1939 (and thus is slightly older than Oswald). Belden was a small community 10 miles south of Stanley, and had perhaps 200-300 residents in the surrounding area, with 40-50 people in Belden. One interesting detail is that Belden, a predominantly Finnish community, also was a stronghold for the Communist Party USA. The party received several hundred votes in Belden and a nearby community of Plaza in elections in the 1930's [1]. Belden is now a ghost town.

     The crux of Aho's story takes place in either 1955 or 1956, he isn't sure which year. (He thinks 1956.) That summer, Aho spent a lot of time with a relative, Vern Buehler. Buehler was said to be less than a year younger than Aho (Buehler was born on September 27, 1943, making him more than three years younger than Aho). Aho was introduced to an "older" boy, perhaps 3-4 years older, whose name was Lee. Lee seemed to spend a lot of time with Vern Buehler. Aho thought that Lee might have been staying with the Buehler's. Lee told people that he was a furnace salesman, but Aho thought this was just a cover, since Lee didn't have anything like brochures or other material to back up this claim. He also didn't seem to spend any time trying to go door to door to sell furnaces. Lee said that the furnace salesman bit was just a cover. He actually worked for the government. He was trying to recruit Vern and Lyle Aho to get two years of training and then go to Cuba. They would make a lot of money. [2] Lee did seem to have considerable money to spend. Lee drove a '49 or '50 black Mercury. Lee would drive aound town with Vern Buehler, Doug Jellesed (see Part I) and perhaps Lane Evans (see Part I), Pat Feehan (see Part I), and Lionel Ellis. Lee seemed to always have enough money to go uptown and have pops and such for himself and the guys with him. He always seemed to have the money to buy a hamburger if he wanted one. 

Lee was about 5'10" at the time of their meetings; Lyle Aho estimates he was about 5'6" at that time. Aho described Lee as having dark hair. Aho was shown a series of pictures during two different interviews. [3, 4]

The pictures were taken from a number of sources, most of which showed Oswald, among other persons. The first picture he identified as possibly being Lee was the picture of Oswald as a 12 year old at the zoo in New York City:  "It's a poor picture, possibly, the guy was older than that." [See Groden, 5, p. 12]. The next tentative identification is a picture of Oswald in a classroom in New Orleans in 1955, in which Oswald is holding his head up so that the missing front tooth shows. See Groden. [6, p.16] The next picture which he identified as possibly being Lee is the picture of Oswald alone in Moscow [7, p.44]. Then the picture of Oswald with his coworkers in Moscow [8, p.46] gets the response, "Well, it could be, but you can't see the cheek bones very good." One page had reproduced 77 pictures of Oswald taken throughout his life. [9, p. 240] Lyle picked three of the pictures as , "kinda looking like the guy". They are the backyard photo's showing Oswald with the gun and copies of The Militant and The Daily Worker. In the cropped picture Aho saw, only the head showed. The last picture that Aho recognized as possibly being Lee was Oswald dressed in civilian clothes holding a gun while in the Marines [see 10, p. 63-14]

     Aho doesn't have any particular recollection of the assassination. He was probably in Stanley, but he doesn't recall with any clarity news of the assassination. He did not connect Oswald with the Lee he knew.

     He further described Lee as having a southern accent, probably Texan. He weighed about 150 lbs, and he wore baggy clothes; he was slender. Aho and Buehler thought he might be getting a gang together to rob banks or something.

     Lyle worked on construction for a company known as Brown and Root of Houston, Texas. When asked, "Who owned them?", Aho replied, "Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson". He saw her picture in the company magazine, Ground Builder.

     After the questioning was done, Aho asked of the pictures, "Who is this guy?" He seemed genuinely unaware that he had been looking at pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald.

                   Vern Buehler

     Vern Buehler would have been an important person to contact to corraborate or refute Aho's information. Aho thought Buehler had died sometime in the 1960's. Aho gave us a list of Buehler's siblings. Vern was found to be living in Seatle, WA with his younger brother, Dale. Vern remembered the person named Lee in Stanley, but he was not as close a friend as Lyle remembered him to be. Lee did not live with the Buehler's. Buehler remembered the talk about going to Cuba; he also remembered Lee as a fast talker.

[11]

                 An Age Discrepancy

     Aho thought Buehler was the same age as he, but Buehler was born in 1943, and thus would be approximately four years younger than Aho. This would suggest that part of Aho's determination of age was related to size. Lee was about 4 inches taller than him, so he must be somewhat older, by that reasoning. Thus, Aho describing Lee as 3-4 years older is not surprising, even if Lee was a mature looking, 5'10" 16-17 year old youth (which Oswald would have been). 

     What is to be Made of the Oswald-North Dakota connection?

Five hypotheses were addressed in Part I. The same five hypotheses are addressed regarding the Aho sighting:

1. Lee Harvey Oswald did in fact spend a summer in Stanley, ND, using the name Lee.

2. An imposter impersonated Oswald in Stanley, ND.

3. A coincidence occurred where a person innocently was mistaken for Oswald.

4. The report was a figment of the imagination of the reporter, perhaps as a way of gaining the spotlight.

5. The reporter was part of a process of building a "legend" for Oswald.

     Hypothesis four is the most easily discarded. Someone doesn't wait 43 years to get the spotlight. Further, the Aho sighting was confirmed by Vern Buehler, whom Aho thought had been dead for over 30 years. Building a legend for Oswald (hypothesis #5) is easily dismissable. Waiting the 43 years is just too late for the "legend" theory. Hypotheses two and three could be combined into a hybrid hypothesis that a person, whose actual name was Lee may have heard about the Cuba story either from Oswald or someone else. (Castro was in Mexico at the time training troops to get ready to go back to Cuba for the revolution [12])  He might have considered going and was seeing if there were any other takers. It is possible that the actual Lee Harvey Oswald was by the summer of 1956 already a CIA asset, and they had discussed infiltrating Castro's group, then training at Rancho Santo Rosa near Chalco, approximately 20 miles from Mexico City. Such a plan did not come to fruition for Oswald, who shortly thereafter enlisted in the Marines. It is hard to imagine that Oswald and/or his two Stanley companions would get much welcome from Castro. On the other hand, the training site mentioned to Aho might have been U.S. sponsored. Fresh with the idea of going to Cuba, and having enough time to go elsewhere, it is plausible that either Oswald or an Oswald imposter made a return trip to Stanley, which was still in an oil boom. It of course is also plausible that the two Oswald-like sightings are sightings of two completely different persons.

     Since the name Lee is pretty common in the South (Even Lee Harvey Oswald was named after Robert E. Lee), a person who was a Southerner named Lee could well have been in Stanley, ND who was about Oswald's age. The more intriguing aspect is that he was the same height and weight and closely resembled Oswald in looks. Thus we would conclude that an Oswald look-alike was in Stanley in the summer of 1956 (or 1955), who was very suspicious in behavior, with no visible means of support, and who said he was hired by the government to seek persons to go to Cuba. These descriptions might very well fit what we might have expected Oswald to do in the summer of 1956, shortly before he joined the Marines. We would conclude that a person who looked like and acted like Oswald and called himself Lee was in Stanley, ND the summer of 1956. There are a large number of coincidences here. If it wasn't Oswald, it was an Oswald double. If it was an Oswald double, it seems most unlikely that this resemblance would be entirely innocent.

References

1. Interviews of Mrs. Arlene Clark, Mountrail County Historical        Society, by John Williams and Gary Severson, 8/2/99 & 8/3/99.

2 Interview of Lyle Aho by John Williams and Gary Severson, 8/3/99.  3. Interview of Lyle Aho by John Williams, 8/8/99.  

4. Interview of Lyle Aho by John Williams, Gary Severson, & Jole      Williams 8/14/99.

5. Groden, R.J. (1995). The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald. New York:    Penguin Books.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Roberson, J. (1999). Denial #2. Volume Two. The John Armstrong     Research. Lafayette, IN: Author.

11. Interview of Vern Buehler by Gary Severson, 9/21/99.

12. Youngblood, J. & Moore, R. (1960). The Devil to Pay. New York:     Coward McCann.

From The Fourth Decade: A Journal of Research on the John F. Kennedy Assassination. (2000). 7, 3, 10-22.

                   Oswald in North Dakota? Part One

                John Delane Williams and Gary Severson

     For those familiar with the myriad of events surrounding Dealey Plaza, the idea that Oswald spent time in North Dakota seems a little far-fetched. As two North Dakotans who have followed the JFK assassination story, we likewise thought the idea to be novel, but unlikely. The information that we have recently came across would make us revise our prior expectancy regarding an Oswald, or Oswald like person, with a presence in North Dakota. We have come across two independent sets of coincidences that would suggest that either Lee Harvey Oswald, or someone wishing to be identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, can be found to have spent time in North Dakota. Part I deals with an earlier sighting, probably the summer of 1953. Part II deals with an independent sighting either in the summer of 1955 or 1956.

                      The Mosby Story

    On November 23, 1963, Aline Mosby filed a UPI report that presumably was widely published. In 1959, Mosby [1] interviewed Oswald regarding his defection to the Soviet Union. She asked why he wanted to remain in the Soviet Union. He replied, "I am a Marxist. I became interested about the age of 15. An old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs. I still remember that pamphlet about the Rosenbergs-I don't know why. Then we moved to North Dakota and I discovered one book in the library, "Das Kapital". It was what I'd been looking for. It was like a very religious man opening the Bible for the first time". (reprinted in [2]).

     Printed in the exhibits of the Warren Commission was Aline Mosby's notes of her interview of Oswald in Moscow. [3] A critical difference is that, in the printed notes, instead of "Then we moved to North Dakota..." is the phrase, "Then we moved to New Orleans..." No explanation has been given for this purported substitution. As long term North Dakotans, we observe that nobody goes to North Dakota by mistake, and mistakenly substituting "North Dakota" for "New Orleans" is incredible as well. Some of the other quotes of Oswald in the article are not direct quotes from the notes, but paraphrasing.  It would be useful to know whether these notes are the originals, or if there was some alteration of them after the Warren Commission began its work.

                      The Alma Cole Letter

     FBI reports indicate  three days of interviewing persons in Stanley, ND, and other locations precipitated by a letter written by Mrs. Alma Cole to Lyndon Johnson on December 11, 1963 (both a facsimile copy and a typescript are reproduced in [4]). The letter follows:

                                            Dec 11, 1963

President Lyndon B. Johnson

Dear Sir:

I don't know how to write to you, And I don't know if I should or shouldn't.

My son knew Lee Harvey Oswald when he was at Stanley, North Dakota. I do not recall what year, but it was before Lee Harvey Oswald enlisted in the Marines. The boy read communist books then.

He told my son He had a calling to kill the President. My son told me, he ask him. How he would know which one? Lee Harvey Oswald said He didn't know, but the time and place would be layed before him.

There are others at Stanley who knew Oswald.

If you would chech, I believe what I have wrote will check out.

Another woman who knew of Oswald and his mother, was Mrs. Francis Jellesed she had the Stanley Cafe, (she's Mrs. Harry Merbach now.)  Her son, I believe, knew Lee Harvey Oswald better than mine did.

Francis & I just thought Oswald a bragging boy. Now we know different. We told our sons to have nothing more to do with him. (I'm sorry, I don't remember the year.)

This letter is wrote to you in hopes of helping, if it does all I want is A Thank You.

                                    Mrs. Alma Cole

                                    Rt 3 Box 1 H

                                    Yuma, Arizona

             The FBI Investigation in Stanley, North Dakota

     The letter of Alma Cole had an immediate response. On December 21-23, several interviews of witnesses were conducted in Stanley, ND and elsewhere. The FBI interviewed the following people regarding Oswald being in North Dakota:

  Alma Cole, author of the letter

  Mary Wurtz, mother of Alma Cole

  William Henry Timmer, son of Alma Cole

  Delvin Douglas Jellesed

  Mrs. Harry Merbach, mother of Delvin Douglas Jellesed

  Jerry Evenson

  Bud Will, mayor and owner of the trailer court

  Lane Evans

  Walter Poulson

  Ralph Hamre, Sheriff

  Mrs. Elmer Nelson, mother of Jack Feehan

     The interview with William Henry Timmer took place in Spokane, Washington. During the summer of 1953, Timmer recalled that a person known as either Harv or Harvey Oswald, who appeared to be older than Timmer (born 5/14/1941; Lee Harvey Oswald was born 10/19/1939) was observed riding a bike with a chain that kept catching Oswald's clothes. Timmer met with Oswald several times (apparently between 5 and 12 times). Oswald was recalled with having communist literature, with a pamphlet by Marks (Marx) in his back pocket. Oswald is recalled as having been in a couple of fights. He recalled Oswald said he was from New York City and that, in referring to Stanley, "there wasn't much to do around this burg" [5]. Timmer invited Oswald to his house to see his pet rabbits; Timmer lived in a trailer with his mother on the grounds of his grandmother's (Mary Wurtz) house. When Oswald saw Timmer's mother, he took off. At another meeting with Oswald, Oswald announced "Someday I'm going to kill the president and that will show them", or words to that effect. Other boys named by Timmer as possibly knowing Oswald were Doug Jellesed, Jack Feehan, Lane Evans and Jerry Evenson. When Oswald left Timmer he would ride his bike south, in the direction of the trailer court owned by Bud Will, also the mayor.

     Timmer thought Oswald's father worked in the oil fields, but didn't really know. Stanley, which would have had a population of around 850 until 1950, ballooned to around 2500 during the oil boom years, roughly 1950 to 1960's or 1970's; Stanley is now back to around 850 residents. Timmer was sick at the time of the assassination and didn't pay much attention to events in Dallas. Timmer's mother sent Timmer a picture of Oswald asking him if that was the boy he knew in Stanley. Timmer recognised the face as being the Oswald he knew in Stanley, whom he recalled as tall and thin; he did not know Oswald's first name was Lee. Timmer was interviewed by Agent Donald H. Head. [6]

     Alma Cole, the mother of William Henry Timmer, was interviewed in Arizona. Mrs. Cole indicated others in Stanley who were acquainted with Oswald were Mrs. Francis Jellesed (now Mrs. Harry Merbach) and her son, Douglas Delvin Jellesed. [7] Mary Wurtz, 80 at the time of the interview, could not recall any of the persons her grandson, with whom William Henry Timmer had been  associated. [8]

     Interviews by the FBI of other persons did not seem to corraborate Timmer's report. Jerry Evenson, who was acquainted with Timmer, did not recall a person named Oswald from the summer of 1953. [9] Bud Will, Mayor of Stanley, and proprietor of the City Trailer and Motel, stated that his records did not show that Lee Harvey Oswald or his mother had ever stayed at his establishment. Will knew Timmer, but did not hear of a fight in the park involving Oswald. [10] Lane Evans stated that he vaguely remembered an incident at the park in Stanley, but that fights among youths at the park were not uncommon. [11] Delvin Douglas Jellesed, a lifelong resident of Stanley, ND, said he was

“unaware that Lee Harvey Oswald or his mother had ever been residents of Stanley, since this would have been common knowledge in a small town like Stanley, in view of the amount of publicity given Oswald” [12]. Mrs. Harry Merbach, the mother of Delvin Douglas Jellesed, indicated that she was not personally acquainted with Lee Harvey Oswald or his mother. She also intimated that Alma Cole, her third cousin, may have a mental condition. [13]  

     Ralph Hamre, Sheriff of Mountrail County (Stanley is the county seat) said that, "to his knowledge, Lee Harvey Oswald had never been a resident at Stanley, North Dakota."  Hamre knew of William Henry Timmer, who he described as an itinerant and unreliable. [14]

Another Stanley lifelong resident, Walter Poulson, denied ever having known Lee Harvey Oswald. [15]

                Other References to North Dakota

     On 12/20/63, J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, sent a teletype to SACS in Dallas, Phoenix and Minneapolis. In the communication Hoover states, "For information newspaper articles in one nine five nine [1959] when subject defected to Russia quoted him as saying he lived in North Dakota." [16] A note at the end of the letter indicates the December 11, 1963 letter of Alma Cole was turned over to the FBI on December 19, 1963. [17]

     On August 12-13, 1964, a hearing by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee was being held. On these days, Abba P. Schwartz was being questioned by J.G. Sourwine, Chief Counsel. On August 12, this interchange took place:

Mr. Sourwine: All right. You have yourself, of course, reviewed the state department file on Lee Harvey Oswald?

Mr. Schwartz: Yes, we went through that very carefully.

Mr. Sourwine: Does that reflect when Oswald moved to North Dakota?

Mr. Schwartz: North Dakota? I'm sorry. That doesn't ring a bell.

Mr. Sourwine: Does it show when?

Mr. Schwartz: I don't, I mean, the place doesn't ring a bell.

Mr. Sourwine: Does it show where he lived in North Dakota?

Mr. Schwartz: I have no recollection of North Dakota.

Mr. Sourwine: No recollection, no mention of possible Communist activities in North Dakota?

Mr. Schwartz: No sir, I have no recollection.

On the next day, the questioning continued. Mr. Schwartz reiterated he could recall nothing in the Oswald file about North Dakota. [18]

Note: J.G. Sourwine died July 22, 1986.

            Interview with William Henry Timmer

         

     William Henry Timmer was interviewed on October 27, 1994, by John Armstrong. [19] This was apparently the second time he had been contacted by anyone reseaching the assassination since he had been interviewed by the FBI in 1963. The first time occured in sometime in the 1960's by the BBC; that interview has as yet not been made available to the public. [20] Timmer confirmed his original statements made to the FBI in 1963, adding a few previously unreported details. Timmer said that Oswald's father, whom he never met, was reported to have been working in the oil fields. Oswald was remembered to be about 6-7 inches taller than Timmer in the summer of 1963. Timmer was 12 at the time, and perhaps smaller than his contemporaries. Timmer's adult height is 5'7'. Timmer had a heart problem that kept him from activities like playing baseball. In the interview, Armstrong gave two instances of Oswald saying he had moved to North Dakota, one in the article by Aline Mosby, and the second in Oswald's telling Lt. Francis Martello after his arrest in New Orleans for the disturbance related to distributing the Fair Play for Cuba leaflets.

Timmer apparently has tired of talking to JFK assassination researchers. Timmer has refused to talk about the events in North Dakota to both of these writers, most recently November 19, 1999.

                    Interviews with Alma Cole

     Two interviews were held with Alma Cole, mother of William Henry Timmer. [21] Several significant points were raised. First, Mrs. Marguerite Oswald was said by Cole to be living in Stanley for the duration of time Lee Harvey Oswald was in North Dakota. She was pointed out to Mrs. Cole in a Stanley dress shop by Cole's cousin Frances Jellesed, who had seen Mrs. Oswald at her restaurant in Stanley. Mrs. Oswald was loud and wanted everyone to know she was from Texas. Mrs. Oswald was described as having grey hair, glasses, and was at most, 5'3" tall. Also, Cole indicated that her son had told her that the boy wanted to be called "Lee Harvey" rather than just "Lee". Her son was with Oswald when he stole the book by Marx from a small library in a room of the Memorial Building in Stanley.

     Interviews with Jerry Evenson and Lane Evans

     Jerry Evenson has kept in touch with Bill Timmer and had visited him in the summer of 1999. Timmer has never talked about the Oswald incident to Evenson. Timmer is not a "bullshitter" in Evenson's view. Evenson has thought often about the FBI interview 36 years ago. Evenson's FBI interview took place at the Mountrail County Courthousein Stanley. The only person present other than Evenson and SA Fred Harvey was Sheriff Ralph Hamre. [22]

     Lane Evans does recall a fight on the south side of Stanley where the present swimming pool is. The fight involved an out of town person. Evans cannot recall who was present. The FBI did not tell him not to talk about the interview.  Evans was acquainted with Timmer, Jellesed, Evenson, Jack Feehan, Lyle Aho and Vern Buehler [23, for the significance of the last two persons named, see Part II.]

               Interview with Jack Feehan

     Jack Feehan was scheduled to be interviewed by the FBI. The FBI spoke to his mother, Mrs. Elmer Nelson; they then decided it was not necessary to speak to Feehan himself. We contacted Feehan through his son Greg.  Jack Feehan said that he had never discussed the Harvey Oswald experience with Timmer, though they have remained in contact. Feehan had no recollection of Harvey Oswald himself. [24] In a more recent interview with Greg Feehan, it was related that Jack Feehan called Timmer (after the 10/3/99 interview with Gary Severson) and asked about the Oswald circumstances. Greg Feehan was told by his father that Timmer denied knowing anything about the Oswald events. [25]. 

       Interviews with Keith Schulte and Russel Kilen

     Keith Schulte, States Attorney for Mountrail County, 1947-1957,  and 1960-1975, had never heard of the FBI coming to Stanley regarding investigations of the Kennedy assassination. He thought that Sheriff Hamre and Mayor Will would surely have told him about being interviewed by the FBI. [26] Similiar views were expressed by Russel Kilen, editor of the Mountrail County Promoter, 1946-1979. [27] In that both these gentlemen expressed friendships with the sheriff and the mayor, their expectations of commuications in these matters were not met. Dan Will, son of ex-Mayor Bud Will, said that his father never mentioned being interviewed by the FBI in regard to an investigation of the assassination. [28]

  What is to be Made of the Harvey Oswald-North Dakota connection?

     There are several hypotheses that could be made about these Oswald sitings in North Dakota:

1. Lee Harvey Oswald did in fact spend part of the summer of 1953 in Stanley, ND.

2. An imposter impersonated Oswald in Stanley, ND.

3. A coincidence occurred where a person innocently was mistaken for Oswald.

4. The report was a figment of the imagination of the reporters, perhaps as a way of gaining the spotlight.

5. The reporters were part of a process of building a "legend" for Oswald.

            Testing the Hypotheses Regarding Harvey Oswald

     Hypothesis three is the most easily discarded. It is most unlikely that a person would be named Harvey Oswald, be from New York City, be Lee Harvey Oswald's age, and be spending the summer in Stanley, ND, and not be in any manner related to "the" Lee Harvey Oswald. The fifth hypothesis, building a "legend", is improbable as well. Alma Cole was a legitimate Stanley-vicinity resident for much of her life prior to moving to Yuma, Arizona (probably around 1959) where she lived at the time of writing her letter to President Johnson. Her husband apparently worked in construction both before and after the summer of 1953; nothing in their background is suggestive of a clandestine nature. Bill Timmer has been a barber throughout his life. These are not the sort of people who are likely to attempt to create a legend.  The fourth hypothesis has little to recommend it either. Publicity seekers don't just tell their story to the FBI and then sit on the story for over thirty years. (There is the exception that Timmer spoke to the BBC in the 1960's in a still unpublished interview.) Timmer seems to be a very private person who avoids media contact; his recent denial to Jack Feehan can be interpreted in several ways. Our interpretation is that he wants to be allowed to live his life without revisiting the past. Alma Cole also has not attempted to seek circulation for her story. That leaves us with hypotheses one and two. If Oswald did in fact visit Stanley, ND in the summer of 1953, and proclaim that he would someday kill the president, then the government has long suppressed evidence that Oswald had a lifelong dream of being an assassin. The more dangerous hypothesis to the Warren Commission's findings is hypothesis two, an imposter was the Harvey Oswald in Stanley. Were hypothesis two true, then the developing of a legend seems to be the likely rationale. We assert that, with present evidence, either hypothesis one or hypothesis two is most likely. Either Oswald was physically present in North Dakota in 1953, or someone impersonating him was in Stanley.

References

1. Mosby, A. (1963). Oswald Interview Recalled: UPI Reporter Talked     to Defector in Moscow. UPI report; copy in Lee Harvey Oswald       Sightings. (1999). Dallas, TX: JFK Lancer.

2. Lee Harvey Oswald Sightings. (1999). Dallas, TX: JFK Lancer. 

3. WCE XXII:701-710.

4. Cole letter to President Johnson, Dec 11, 1963. FBI file           Minneapolis 105-2564; Dallas 100-10461. Reprinted in Robertson, J. (1999). Denial #2. Volume Two. The John Armstrong Research.     Lafayette, IN: Author.

5. FBI Interview of William Henry Timmer by SA Donald H. Head. FBI     file SE 89-47. Seatle WA.               

6. Ibid.

7. FBI report from SAC, Minneapolis to FBI Director, & SACS in        Dallas and San Antonio, 12/21/63. FBI file Minneapolis 105-2564;     Dallas 100-10461.

8. FBI Interview of Mary Wurtz by SA Fred Harvey in Stanley, ND       12/23/63. FBI file Minneapolis 105-2564; Dallas 100-10461.

9. FBI interview of Jerry Evenson by SA Fred Harvey in Stanley, ND     12/23/63. FBI file Minneapolis 105-2564; Dallas 100-10461.

10. FBI interview of Bud Will by SA Fred Harvey in Stanley, ND        12/23/63. FBI file Minneapolis 105-2564; Dallas 100-10461.

11. FBI interview of Lane Evans by SA Fred Harvey in New Town, ND     12/23/63. FBI file Minneapolis 105-2564; Dallas 100-10461.

12. FBI Interview of Delvin Douglas Jellesed by SA Douglas H. Smith    in Stanley, ND 12/21/63. FBI file Minneapolis 105-2564; Dallas     100-10461.

13. FBI report from SAC, Minneapolis to FBI Director, &SAC's in       Dallas and San Antonio, 12/21/63. FBI file Minneapolis 105-2564;    Dallas 100-10461.

14. FBI Interview of Ralph Hamre in Stanley, ND 12/21/63. FBI file     Minneapolis 105-2564; Dallas 100-10461.

15. FBI Interview of Walter Poulson in Stanley, ND 12/21/63. FBI      file Minneapolis 105-2564; Dallas 100-10461.

16. Letter of FBI Director, 12/20/63. Record Number 105-82555-1226.  17. Ibid.

18. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, 1963-65, 1232-1233.

19. Interview of William Timmer by John Armstrong 10/27/94; copy      from J. Armstrong.

20. Interview of Mrs. Alma Cole by Gary Severson, 9/24/99.

21. Interviews of Mrs. Alma Cole by Gary Severson, 9/8/99, 9/24/99.

22. Interview of Jerry Evenson by Gary Severson, 10/3/99.

23. Interview of Lane Evans by Gary Severson, 10/3/99.

24. Interview of Jack Feehan by Gary Severson, 10/3/99.

25. Interview of Greg Feehan by Gary Severson, 12/7/99.

26. Interview of Keith Schulte by Gary Severson and John Williams,     8/2/99.

27. Interview of Russel Kilen by Gary Severson and John Williams,     8/2/99.

28. Interview of Don Will by Gary Severson, 9/22/99.

From The Fourth Decade: A Journal of Research on the John F. Kennedy Assassination, 7, 3, 21-26.