Why Is Oswald Still
Considered the Assassin?
John Delane Williams
Initially,
Lee Harvey Oswald was labeled as the assassin of John F. Kennedy, first by
Henry Wade, the Dallas District Attorney, but also by the media, J. Edgar
Hoover and the FBI, along with the Presidential Commission handpicked by Lyndon
Johnson. Later, several well known authors (well paid for their efforts) wrote
books that continued to uphold the Warren Commission's findings, including Gerald
Posner [1] and Vincent Bugliosi [2]. For the most part, the main stream media
still considers Oswald to be the assassin.
A
Post-Assassination Conspiracy-The Warren Commission
John F. Kennedy's replacement, Lyndon Baines Johnson, immediately after taking office, appointed a Commission to investigate the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. As is well known, that commission eventually delivered to President Johnson what apparently was his desired document, in time for the 1964 election. But what sort of investigation was it? Fortunately, we have several documents and writings that help address that question. We, of course, have the document itself, with its 26 volumes of Appendices. [3] We also have, through the Freedom of Information Act, a transcription of the January 27, 1964 meeting of the President's Committee on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (more commonly referred to as "The Warren Commission"). [4] This first meeting of the Warren Commission is telling in regard to the direction of the "investigation". Harold Willens, a staff member for the Warren Commission, who came to the Commission from Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department, wrote a note following this first meeting of the Commission, "(W)hat the Commission was up to from the first (was) the search for a means of foisting off a preconceived conclusion, the deliberate hiding of what happened when JFK was killed." [5]
It
is argued in Williams [6] that the Warren Commission was, in fact, operating in
the arena of advocacy research, and from the prosecutorial viewpoint, arguing
for Oswald's guilt as a lone assassin. That is, the evidence that pointed
toward Oswald's guilt was, in the long run, the only evidence they wished to
entertain. Most of the investigation was actually conducted by the FBI. The
Commission's staff would choose which evidence to pursue and which evidence to
file away. Some investigations and interviews were conducted by the
Commission's staff. As we will see later, at least one staff member was
entering deliberately falsified information. Also, the Warren Commission chose
to not allow an advocate for the defense of Oswald to participate. Marguerite
Oswald (Oswald's mother) asked attorney Mark Lane to represent her son's
interests before the Warren Commission. The Commission denied Lane an
opportunity to act as Oswald's defense counsel before the Commission. [7]
One
Commission staff member, Wesley Liebeler, took issue with the nature of the
report being written, which he viewed as a
"brief for the prosecution" against Oswald. Liebeler [8] chose
to turn over most of his internal files to Edward Jay Epstein, who would
eventually write Inquest. [9] In a
remarkable book on the Warren Commission, Shenon [10] accepted Oswald as the
lone assassin, but then proceeded to dissect the work of the Commission,
pointing out many points of unethical conduct, the shutting out of the staff
from exculpatory information regarding Oswald, and the "rush to
judgment." It should be remembered that the investigation was proposed by
Lyndon Johnson. Johnson picked the seven commissioners, and Johnson wanted (and
got) the investigation completed in advance of the November 1964 presidential
election. Is it any wonder that none of the Commission's interests included any
investigation of Johnson himself? It would not be until 1998 when Walt Brown held
a press conference in Dallas that would announce that Mac Wallace, a convicted
murderer (who was sentenced to a five-year unsupervised probation by a Texas
court; Wallace was also LBJ's hit man), was the person whose fingerprint was
found on the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository (TSBD) directly
after the assassination. [11] Shenon bemoaned the unanswered questions about
the assassination, and the failure of entities such as the CIA to share
information; indeed, James Jesus Angleton swooped down to Mexico City in 1971
upon the death of the CIA station Chief Win Scott, collecting everything he
could find regarding Scott's tenure in Mexico City (which included the time of
Oswald's 1963 visit). [12]
Victoria
Adams and her Three Co-Workers: Proof that Oswald wasn't on the Sixth Floor at
the Time of the Assassination
Victoria
Elizabeth Adams was an employee of the Scott Foresman Co. in the TSBD, who along with three other
women watched the Presidential motorcade from a fourth floor window on November
22, 1963. Directly after the last shot, she and another employee, Sandra
Styles, went down the stairs to the first floor. They neither saw nor heard
anyone on the stairs. The only person they encountered on their way out of the
building was a large black man, who was also employed at the TSBD. A third employee had situated herself in a
chair by the stairs, where she would have noticed anyone going up or down the
stairs. It was several minutes before anyone passed her on the stairs. Those
persons were policemen going up the stairs to investigate. Collectively, the
observations of these three witnesses would preclude Oswald from being on the
6th floor at the time of the assassination. Among the four women, only Vicky
Adams was interviewed by the Warren Commission, though each had been
interviewed by the FBI (CE 1381). The report of the FBI interview of Victoria
Adams follows:
A
pertinent part of the interview follows:
----------------------------------------------------
Mr.
BELIN: When you got to the bottom of the first floor, did you see anyone there
as you entered the first floor from the doorway?
Miss
ADAMS: Yes, sir.
Mr.
BELIN: Who did you see?
Miss
ADAMS: Mr. Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady.
Mr.
BELIN: Where did you see them on the first floor?
Miss
ADAMS: Well this is the stairs, and this is the Houston Street dock that I went
out. They were approximately in this position here, so I don't know how you
would describe that.
Mr.
BELIN: You are looking now at the a first floor plan, or diagram of the Texas
School Book Depository, and you have pointed to a position where you
encountered Billy Lovelady and Mr. Shelley?
Miss
ADAMS: That's correct.
Mr.
BELIN: It would be slightly east of the front of the east elevator, and
probably as far south as the length of the elevator, is that correct?
Miss
ADAMS: Yes, sir.
Mr.
BELIN: I have here a document called Commission's Exhibit No. 496, which
includes a diagram of the first floor, and there is a No.7 and there is a
circle on it, and I have pointed to a place marked No. 7 on the diagram, is
that correct?
Miss
ADAMS: That is approximate. (Excerpt
from Victoria Adams' testimony, VI 386-393; also found in Ernest, B. (2013). The Girl on the Stairs. Gretna, LA:
Pelican, pp. 284-294.
Though
no one questioned this testimony at the time of the publication of the 26
volumes of Appendices to the Warren Report, on its face there appear to be
inconsistencies in the interview. There are eight couplets of dialog between
Mr. Belin and Miss Adams. The last couplet, where Belin introduces CE No. 496,
would seem to precede the other couplets. But there is also an issue in the
last couplet: how would Belin know where Victoria Adams encountered Mr. Shelley
and Billy Lovelady to the point that he would have pinpointed the location on
the first floor where Shelley and Lovelady were positioned already circled?
Would it not have been more appropriate for Belin to ask Miss Adams to circle
that place herself? The fourth couplet has Miss Adams looking at the first
floor plan. It would surely seem this would have occurred after the last
couplet. In retrospect, the unmistakable interpretation is that someone has
significantly edited the testimony of Victoria Adams. She only saw the
published transcript of her testimony years after it was published in Volume VI
of the 26 volumes of Appendices. Later, she vehemently denied that the
published transcript was accurate, when Adams was presented a copy of the
published version of her testimony by Barry Ernst in 2002, the first time she
ever saw it. She had previously only seen a typescript after the interview, at
which time she made several corrections. Multiple changes were made in her
deposition. The person she spoke to on the first floor was a large black man
who was near the door as she exited. She never spoke to either Shelley or
Lovelady, nor apparently did she even see them together. [13] She did not see
either person on her way out directly after the assassination. In Shelley and
Lovelady's depositions, Shelley said he saw Victoria Adams on the fourth floor
(Adams' work station) somewhat after the assassination. Lovelady wasn't even
sure he saw Victoria Adams. Neither Shelley nor Lovelady reported any
conversation with her. [14]
It
strongly appears Belin (or someone else within the Warren Commission staff)
added changes after Vickie Adams had seen the typescript of her statement.
Vickie was astonished by the changes, which she only became aware of years
later. The changes of course, would have allowed Oswald time to come down the
stairs, in that Shelley and Lovelady did not enter the building until five
minutes after the shooting. It becomes clear that the evidence was being
changed by the Commission staff to save the appearance that Oswald could have
been the shooter. By not interviewing any of the other three women, and
changing the testimony of Miss Adams, Belin was introducing a lie. Had a lawyer
such as Mark Lane been able to rebut the information inserted by Belin, the
Warren Commission might well have had a different outcome, apparently something
not desired by the powers that be.
It
can be seen that the testimony of Victoria Adams and her three co-workers would
minimally place in doubt the conclusions of the Warren Commission, and cast
David Belin as a person willing to bolster the case against Oswald and remove
evidence that was exculpatory to Oswald. Had her actual testimony, unaltered by Belin
(or someone else in the commission staff), been included in the testimonies in
the 26 volumes of Appendices to the Warren Commission Report, the United States may have had a very
different history since 1963; that history might have been much more truthful.
Highly
Unusual Reports on Oswald Prior to November 1963.
a)
Adele Edisen and her Encounter with Dr. Jose Rivera.
Here,
two different accounts are reviewed that suggest Oswald was known reasonably
well to persons employed by the United States government that render those
within the government who claim Oswald was
not on the government's radar to be guilty of falsehoods. The first is
regarding Adele Edisen, who was re-entering the workforce by applying for a
post-doctoral fellowship from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases
and Blindness (NINDB) at Tulane University in New Orleans School of Medicine,
working in neurophysiology; she was awarded a two year fellowship. She attended
a meeting in Atlantic City, NJ in April, 1963, where she met Dr. Jose Rivera,
who was in charge of grants at the NINDB, a subdivision of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). They made arrangements to meet in Washington a few
days later. Rivera, who had made reservations for dinner for the two of them,
began talking about his travels with his work. Rivera said, "When you go
to Dallas, you should go to the Carousel Club because it is a very nice night
club." Rivera then said, "Do you know Lee Oswald?" Edisen
replied she did not. Rivera told Edisen that Oswald had lived in the Soviet
Union, was married to a Russian woman, and had a child. They were living in
Dallas, and were moving to New Orleans. "You should get to know them,
because they are a lovely couple." From what was said, Edisen inferred that
Oswald was a scientist and a friend of Rivera's. [15]
Later,
as they were driving by the White House, Rivera, out of the blue, asked,
"I wonder what Jackie will do when her husband dies?" When Edisen
exclaimed, "What?", Rivera came back, "Oh. Oh, I meant the baby,
she might lose the baby." Shortly
thereafter, Rivera said, "Write down this name: Lee Harvey Oswald. Tell
him to kill the chief." When Rivera realized that Edisen had done
precisely what he had said, he exclaimed," No, no, don't write that down.
You'll remember it when you get to New Orleans. We are just playing a little
joke on him."
Rivera
then began to explain where "it" would happen. He explained there
would be men on the fifth floor. Only after the assassination did Edisen
understand that the assassination was referred to as "it". Rivera
also stated, "Oswald was not what he seems. We're going to send him over
to the library to read about great assassinations in history. After it's over,
he'll call Abt [16] to defend him. Again, after it's over, someone will kill
him. After it happens, his best friend will commit suicide. He'll jump out of a
window because of his grief." Then Rivera continued: "When does the
Shriner's Circus come to New Orleans? Oh, I remember, in November. It will
happen after the Shriner's Circus comes to New Orleans." Then, "After
it's over, the men will be out of the country."
Rivera
dictated a number for Oswald, 899-4244. On her return to New Orleans, Edisen
called the number and asked for Oswald. The man who answered said that there
was no one there by that name. Thinking she might have misdialed, she called a
week later, getting the same man. She again asked for Oswald. He said,
"Oh, they've just arrived. Would you like to speak to his wife?"
Edisen said yes, and a Slavic sounding woman said, "Hello." Edisen
asked if she or her husband knew a Colonel Rivera. Marina Oswald didn't know
but indicated Edisen could call back when her husband was home. The next time
Edisen called, the man (landlord) got Oswald on the phone, Edisen asked Oswald
if he knew of Colonel Rivera, who worked in Washington with the NIH. Oswald
replied, "No, I don't." Edisen replied, "That's strange because
he apparently knows you and your wife." Edisen then asked for the location
of the phone, and Oswald gave the address at 4909 Magazine Street, which Edisen
recalled was in a run-down part of town, a strange place for a scientist to
live.
When
Edisen called the Secret Service in New
Orleans after the assassination, she was asked to come down to the FBI office
As she entered the room, she was told that Oswald had just been shot. She
immediately remembered that Rivera had told her that, "After it's over,
someone will kill him. They will say his best friend killed him." A
liaison FBI officer joined the two of them. After Edisen gave her information,
the FBI officer asked if he could have the note with Oswald's phone number on
it. Edisen complied with his request. [17] It is clear that Dr. Rivera had
considerable detailed information that would strongly suggest he was privy to
detailed information known only to those planning the assassination.
It
should be noted that researcher Bill Kelly interviewed Edisen extensively in
1999, after which he revealed that "Edisen also believes that Rivera
surreptitiously gave her some drugs- a Mickey Finn, possibly an LSD psychotic
[inducing] drug, and she believes he was testing some sort of drug on her and
was involved in some sort of experiment or secret operation." [18]
'
b)
The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald in Mobile, AL on November 21, 1963
A
telegram was sent from Dallas to the New Orleans November 17, 1963, probably
sent by Oswald to J. Edgar Hoover, which warned of an assassination attempt on
the life of President Kennedy in Dallas, on November 22 or 23, 1963. This telegram was likely the rationale for FBI
agent James Ambrose, stationed in Mobile Alabama, to seek out Naif Michael
Moore, Jr. (Junior Moore), proprietor of Jimmy's Billiards in Mobile, and a
known gambler; being called upon by law enforcement to be a potential source of
information was quite common for persons such as Moore, who made their livings
outside the then current laws. Moore had been brought in and questioned
numerous times previously. [19] Moore voluntarily walked the four blocks to the
Mobile FBI office where he was questioned about Lee Harvey Oswald on the
afternoon of November 21, 1963, a time
the FBI would maintain that they had at most minimal information on Oswald.
This interview with Moore showed that such disclaimers by the FBI having no
interest in Oswald was an outright lie. Further, when Moore tried to contact
Ambrose in January, 1964, Moore was stonewalled about Ambrose's then current
location.
As
time went on, various things would be addressed in the media that would
rekindle Moore's interest in the meaning of his experience. In 1975, Moore saw
a Dan Rather television program, titled," The American Assassins." A
segment of this program involved William Walter, the FBI agent in New Orleans
who handled the teletype on November 17,
1963, about a probable assassination attempt on JFK in Dallas. Moore would
eventually get together with Walter. First, he tried again to tell the civil
authorities about his 1963 experience in Mobile. At this time (1975), Moore was living in Blythville,
Arkansas. Moore told his story to George
Ford, Sheriff of Mississippi County (which contains Blythville). Ford turned
the information over to Ed Cunningham, an FBI agent in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Cunningham passed the information onto his superiors, who in turn, asked
Cunningham to get a statement from Moore. Eventually, an 8 page report was
made, which included Moore's story and a denial by former FBI agent James
Ambrose that an interview of Moore regarding
Lee Harvey Oswald ever took place. [20]
After moving back to Mobile, Moore then told his story to a reporter,
Cathy Donelson from The Mobile Press Register. Donelson also
contacted both Ambrose and Cunningham, who both denied talking to Moore about
Lee Harvey Oswald. A few years later, the FBI report was released showing that
such conversations had indeed taken place. Donelson's article [21] was
published February 23, 1992. A few days later Donelson was fired. [22]
Moore
contacted William Walter, the former FBI agent who received the November 17,
1963 teletype at the New Orleans FBI station with the JFK assassination warning
for Dallas. They got together and a videotape was filmed by Ruby Moore, Junior
Moore's wife. Moore and Walter told their respective stories, with a discussion
between them about their respective roles. [23]
This is but another example of the lack of truthfulness in the Federal
bureaucracy when it comes to the JFK assassination.
The Telegraph sent to the New Orleans FBI
A
telegram was received by William Walter
and his wife Josey on Sunday morning, November 17, 1963 at the FBI office in
New Orleans. They made a xerox copy of that telegram. The telegram is reproduced herein:
“According to
William Walter, the security clerk on duty at the time of Oswald’s request, Quigley
asked Walter to check the security indices to determine if there was an
existing file on Oswald. Walter did indeed find a file on Oswald, which he
recalled carried an informant classification. He also recalled that
Special Agent Warren deBrueys’ name was on the jacket of that file. Amazingly,
Walter would testify that he had also seen a Telex shortly before the
assassination, warning that a "militant revolutionary group may attempt to
assassinate President Kennedy on his proposed trip to Dallas." Since no
other FBI employee could (or would) corroborate Walter’s revelations, the HSCA
chose to disregard his testimony. But the HSCA could not provide any motive for
Walter’s supposed subterfuge. He had no ax to grind with the FBI, he left the
Bureau on good terms, and started a career in banking. He also did not seek
notoriety or financial gain and believed the Warren Commission’s conclusions.
Walter summed up nicely for the HSCA his thoughts about his colleagues’
silence, "I had gotten the [gut] feeling from everybody I talked to that
‘we know it is true, but we are not going to talk about it.’" From
Walter’s Executive Session testimony to the HSCA, March 23, 1978, HSCA document
#014029.” [24]
Oswald
as a Covert Operator
We
don't have many extensive firsthand accounts about Oswald, but we have at least
two such accounts. The first was written by Ernst Titovets [25], regarding his
interactions with Oswald in the then Soviet Union, covering 1960-1962. The
second is by Judyth Baker [26], covering April 1963 to November 1963. Together,
they render the interpretation of Oswald described in the Warren Report as
highly untenable. What we can do is piece together Oswald's life circumstances
for the critical period from Oswald's repatriation to the United States.
What
was Oswald doing, or, more to the point, what did Oswald think he was doing? It
seems a reasonable hypothesis that Oswald desired to be a spy. This probably
did not go unnoticed by government agencies likely to have come in contact with
him. [27] It is conceivable that Oswald was, in his view, getting a chance to
live out this dream. His Russian episode has been interpreted as probably
acting as a spy for some U.S. agency or agencies. Otherwise, after attempting
to renounce his American citizenship in Moscow and living in the Soviet Union
for 32 months (October, 1959 to June, 1962), his repatriation on his return,
with a Russian wife and their Russian born daughter, without any apparent repercussions,
seems inexplicable. [28] Apparently, the American agencies may have seen that,
for a small investment, they might be able to use him in some future operation.
Oswald's employment by the Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall Company (referred to by the
Warren Commission as "a graphic arts company") could well have had a
clandestine direction for Oswald; Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall did secret
photographic work for the U.S. government. Oswald's employment there started
(October 11, 1962) just days before the
Cuban missile crisis. [29]
Perhaps both the CIA and the FBI may have had
some relationship with Oswald. It seems that this became intensified (more
likely with the CIA) when he returned to New Orleans in April 1963. Oswald was
hired by the William B. Reily Coffee Company, though much of his actual time
was spent as a courier for a clandestine research project headed by Alton
Ochsner, M.D., presumably funded by the CIA. The project involved developing a
fast acting cancer which might successfully be used on Fidel Castro. [30] As a
courier, Oswald received biological tissues from David Ferrie and took them to
either Mary Sherman, M.D. or to Alton Ochsner, M.D. or to the Communicable
Disease Laboratory at the US Public Health Service. Oswald also was scheduled
to take the developed cancerous materials to Mexico City to a drop where the
cancerous material would then be taken to Cuba by another person. [31]
Suggesting that this scenario is at least
tenable can be deduced from information regarding Oswald's income in the two months
preceding the assassination and by sightings of Oswald with David Ferrie and
Clay Shaw in Clinton, LA. Warren Commission
staff lawyer Richard Mosk and IRS supervisor Phillip Barson filed a report to
the Warren Commission on Oswald's income and expenses for September 25, 1963,
the day he left New Orleans for Mexico, until the assassination, slightly less
than a two month period. "His [Oswald's] income, including salary and
unemployment insurance, totaled $3665.89, while his expenses, including the
cost of the Mexico trip, totaled $3,497.79. It was a difference of $168, and
that money was apparently accounted for, since Oswald left the $170 in cash for
Marina in a drawer in the bedroom dresser." [32]
That statement is astonishing. Oswald's only
employment was at the TSBD, from October 16, 1963 until November 22, 1963, five
weeks and three days. At a wage of $1.25 per hour, Oswald would have earned
around $280 at the TSBD during his employment there. As to unemployment
insurance, Oswald cashed his last unemployment check from the State of Texas on
October 15, 1963, in the amount of $6. [33] Clearly, Oswald had other sources
of income. A likely source of some of that income was the CIA financed research
project in New Orleans headed by Dr. Alton Ochsner: "...Lee Oswald secretly worked as a team
member on Ochsner's bio-weapon project, that Oswald met with Ochsner
personally, and that it was actually Lee Oswald who requested that Dr. Ochsner
set up his media coverage to help position him as a pro-Cuban activist, so that
he could get into Cuba more easily and deliver their bio-weapon to sympathetic
doctors, who would use it to kill Castro." [34] The CIA, through the New
Orleans research project, would likely have funded not only his employment
through the clandestine project, most likely they funded his trip to Mexico as
well. The FBI likely also paid Oswald money during this period for some of his
activities (by some accounts $200 a month).
Was Oswald involved in a Conspiracy or
Conspiracies to Assassinate JFK?
This is an interesting question. Insofar as
Oswald is concerned, there are four different kinds of conspiracies he could
have been involved with. The first is an actual conspiracy, where all
participants were working together to effect the assassination of President
Kennedy. The second is where Oswald was the only participant in the conspiracy
actively pursuing JFK's assassination, with the other participants being
informants to some other entity. The third possibility is that Oswald had infiltrated
a group planning the assassination, and fourth, unbeknownst to the
participants, ALL were persons who were seeing themselves as infiltrators to an
actual assassination group, when in fact none of them were actually
participating in any plan to assassinate the president.
The first scenario, that all participants were
involved in an actual conspiracy, seems unlikely. If this were the case, they
presumably were all being paid by the same entities. What Oswald would bring to
such a group, other than as a patsy, seems questionable. The second
scenario, while a possibility, seems ludicrous. Given that Oswald was in the
lunchroom at the time of the assassination, or at least NOT on the sixth floor
of the TSBD, this scenario can be discarded. The third scenario, that Oswald
infiltrated a group planning the assassination probably seemed plausible to
Oswald. It seems this is how he perceived the situation. Still, the last
possibility seems the most attractive possibility. The actual planners of the
assassination may have prepared each of the participants as potential patsies,
while the actual assassination teams were going about planning the
assassination. This scenario had to be discarded, at least by the Warren
Commission, as the result the new president had in mind was a lone assassin.
Finding a conspiracy was too messy. The so-called conspirators (the potential
patsies) may be allowed to actually tell the truth, which could extend the
Warren Commission's "deliberations" beyond the time of the November
1964 election; Johnson wanted the assassination removed as an issue prior to
the November election. In fact, letting truth be known could have ended
Johnson's presidency. Besides, to many in government, Oswald was conveniently
dead. Any prior relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and his assassin, Jack
Ruby, could be denied.
Sorting
out the Conspiracy Scenarios- A meeting of "Conspirators" in late
August, 1963
We
know from the work of Dick Russell [35] that, according to Richard Case Nagell,
a meeting involving Oswald took place in an undisclosed location, but which might
have been Houston. The date of the
meeting was between August 23 and August 27, 1963. In attendance were Richard Case Nagell, Lee
Harvey Oswald, "Angel", and a fourth unidentified person. Nagell
claimed to have surreptitiously recorded the meeting; [36] Russell had never
found the recording. Nagell was serving as a double agent, somewhat to his
surprise. Nagell signed a contract in 1962, stating that he was employed by the
CIA. [37] But it appeared that his orders were coming from the Soviet KGB. The
Soviets were aware that there might be plots against President Kennedy; they
wanted Nagell to "eliminate" Oswald because they feared that, were
Kennedy to be assassinated, Oswald would be blamed and, by inference, because
of Oswald's having lived in the USSR, Soviet Russia may be seen as directing
his actions. Were Oswald dead, it would be much harder to blame the Soviets. [38]
Nagell
was in a quandary of deciding what to do. Nagell had gone to New Orleans in
mid-September trying to convince Oswald to abandon his efforts, particularly of
going to Mexico later that month. Then Nagell returned to Texas. He was in El
Paso on the night of September 19, 1963, when he decided on his course of action.
He did not wish to commit murder (on Oswald) particularly as it was being
dictated to him by Soviet Russia. Nagell felt he had been "given
over" to the KGB by the CIA, and he thus felt abandoned by the CIA. On the
morning of September 20, 1963, he mailed three letters: one, containing $500
and an airline ticket to Mexico City, was sent to Oswald in New Orleans. A
letter was also sent to Desmond Fitzgerald, CIA, and a "nastier' note to
another person in the CIA. [39] A question to be asked here, if Nagell was to
eliminate Oswald if Oswald wouldn't change his plans, is, why then did Nagell
personally pay Oswald's expenses and pay for the ticket to Mexico City? One
explanation is, this change of mind for Nagell occurred when he visited Oswald
in New Orleans. Likely, Nagell figured out that Oswald was also involved in
another CIA project (the project involving developing fast acting cancers to be
used on Fidel Castro), and in a manner somewhat similar to Nagell, was also a
double agent (CIA & FBI) and also trying to prevent Kennedy's
assassination. To this end, when Nagell showed up at the Consulate General's
Office in Barcelona on March 10, 1969 to discuss his circumstances with Consul
Richard C. Brown, Brown reported, "He [Nagell] said that the reason he was
arrested in the first place [in El Paso] was he had worked with Lee Harvey
Oswald in an assignment with a U.S. intelligence agency." [40] That would
also mean that the August meeting was bogus. It would have seemed likely that
perhaps all participants were playing a role for their separate handlers.
Another possibility of course, is that if some entity wanted to get a patsy for
the assassination, any one of the participants could have been used.
Nagell's
plan was to have him enter a bank, carefully shoot into the ceiling so that no
one was injured, and then walk out and wait to be arrested. Strangely, he
thought his actions would result in a misdemeanor. Instead, Nagell was
convicted of a felony, and he was imprisoned until 1968. [41]
Why
Oswald?
In
a word, Oswald was a convenient scapegoat. By focusing on Oswald, the
machinations and manipulations in the background would go undiscovered perhaps
indefinitely, for those involved in framing him. Perhaps one of the few blanket
statements that could be made about the JFK assassination is that Oswald was
not the shooter. But at this point, pinpointing the actual shooter eludes us. A
likely scenario is that the shooter or shooters were themselves fairly quickly
eliminated. Perhaps even those who eliminated them were eliminated themselves.
What that suggests is that those planning the murder of President Kennedy hoped
the truth would be skirted "long enough". Surely, long enough so that
the principals would avoid exposure during their lifetimes.
The
Maintaining of False Beliefs
One
of the false beliefs which was disproven centuries ago, but still maintains
adherents, is the concept of a flat earth. Even though disproven, there was
concern that explorers like Columbus might fall off the edge of the earth.
There still exists today a Flat Earth Society; their website is:
http://flatearthsociety.org. There are still those who maintain, probably for
religious reasons, that the earth is less than 11000 years old; geology can't
be right. Geology has made some mistakes, but suggesting the earth is much
older than 11000 years is not one of them. One of their mistakes which was
still being taught when I was an undergraduate student, is that there was no
such thing as continental drift, a theory proposed in the early 1900's, and dismissed
as impossible by
the
geologists of the day. In the middle 1960's, continental drift, under the new
name "plate tectonics", replaced the concept of stationary
continents. [42]
The
idea that the earth was the center of the universe held sway even after the
writings of Copernicus were published (shortly before and shortly after his
death) in 1543. Galileo took up Copernicus' theory, and added his understanding
of gravity. Still, Galileo was placed under house arrest for his final eight
years, dying in 1642. By 1758 the Catholic Church lifted the ban on his books
supporting Copernican theory. [43] And on November 4, 1992, Pope John Paul II
announced that the denunciation of Galileo was a tragic error. [44] It took 358
years for an apology to be delivered.
How
Does This Apply to Oswald?
It
is clear that there can often be a long time interval before appropriate
corrections get made regarding inaccuracies that have previously been accepted
as true. In Oswald's situation, a
political dimension impinges on accurate reporting. In most of the other cited
cases, either a political or religious/political dimensions was also present.
Changing the verdict at the official level could be perceived by current
stakeholders as endangering their position. Such a circumstance would lead to
foot dragging or other delaying tactics. One such delaying tactic, if the preponderance of opinion were to accept that
Oswald was not the shooter, would be to implicate Oswald in some other way,
e.g., reposition Oswald as being involved in a conspiracy.
So,
when will Oswald be exonerated?
Will
it take as long as Galileo? That was 358 years. Perhaps an issue is that
"solving" the assassination would be embarrassing to various parts of
the government, and to influential families whose patriarchs participated in
some way. Were we to know how parts of our government participated either in
the assassination or the cover-up of the assassination, it would be likely that
many of us would demand change. That change would likely be considered
dangerous to the status quo, which seems always to have its defenders. I would guess that the process for exonerating
Oswald will remain slow. A difficulty for some is that not only is Oswald a
poor candidate for being the assassin, there presently doesn't seem to be a
good replacement. Likely, the JFK assassination will move to the unsolved list,
and that would not sit well with many. But finding the actual killer is not our
present direction, though also highly sought. Getting the person wrongly
accused exonerated, however, is. It will take as long as it takes.
Notes:
1.
Posner, G. (1993). Case Closed. New
York: Random House. For those that posit a possible shot from the Dal-Tex
Building, Posner inadvertently shows the constructed ballistic evidence would
include the Dal-Tex Building as being in the cones of possible origin of the
shots. Posner eliminated this possibility by simply removing the Dal-Tex
building from the drawings, thus leaving a "gaping" hole in his
evidence. See Posner's Appendix A.
2.
Bugliosi, V. (2007). Reclaiming History:
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York: Norton.
3.
Report of the President's Commission on
the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 26 Volumes of Hearings
and Exhibits. (1964). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Incredibly, no index accompanied this voluminous work. Fortunately, an
excellent index was eventually completed by Walt Brown: Brown, W. (1995). Referenced Index Guide to the Warren
Commission. Wilmington, DE: Delmax.
4.
Weisberg, H. & Lesar, J. (1974). Whitewash
IV: JFK Assassination Transcript. Frederick, MD: Weisberg.
5.
Willens, H.P. (1974). In Weisberg & Lesser, p. 25.
6.
Williams, J.D. (2015). Advocacy Research. JFK-E/Deep
Politics Quarterly, (in press).
7.
Lane, M. (1966). Rush to Judgment.
New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, p. 9.
8.
Shenon, P. (2013). A Cruel and Shocking
Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination. New York: Henry Holt.
p. 500.
9.
Epstein, E.J. (1966). Inquest: The Warren
Commission and the Establishment of Truth. New York: Viking Press.
10.
Shenon.
11.
Brown, W. (1998). TSBD Evidence Places LBJ 'Hitman' in Sniper's Nest. Extra
Edition of JFK Deep Politics/Deep
Politics Quarterly, 3,3. A. Nathan Darby made a six point match of
Mac Wallace's fingerprint to the previously unidentified fingerprint found in
the sniper's nest at the TSBD. Later, a 34 point match confirmed Wallace's
presence on the sixth floor of the Depository, reported in Brown, W. (2001).
Malcolm Wallace Fingerprint: "It's Him!!" JFK/ Deep Politics Quarterly,
7,1,4-6. Among the critics of identifying Wallace from the fingerprint
were Glen Sample and Mark Collom, who earlier wrote The Men on the Sixth Floor (1997). Garden Grove, CA: Sample
Graphics. Sample & Collom had hypothesized that Wallace was present on the
sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository at the time of the
assassination. It seemed strange that they would question a finding that gave
evidence that their earlier assertion was likely true.
12.
Shenon, pp. 532-534.
13.
Ernest, B. (2013). The Girl on the Stairs.
Gretna, LA: Pelican. See also Williams, J.D. (2014).The Girl on the Stairs-Was
Oswald Even on the Sixth Floor at the Time of the Assassination? JFK-E/Deep Politics Quarterly, 1,
2, 3-16.
14.
The relevant parts of the depositions of Billy Nolan Lovelady and William H.
Shelley are given in Ernest, pp. 295-297.
15.
Turner, K.S. (1999). From April to November and back Again. The Third Decade, 8, 1, 2-5. K.S.
Turner was a pseudonym for Adele Edisen. She had also reported her experiences
on the then extant website, JFK Research. H.P. Albarelli conducted several
interviews with Edisen for his book, which also includes CIA clandestine use of
hypnosis. Albarelli, H.P. (2013). A
Secret Order: Investigating the High
Strangeness and Synchronicity of the JFK Assassination. Waterville, OR:
Trine-Day.
16.
John J. Abt was an attorney in New York City to whom Oswald attempted to place
a collect call, but the call was refused; Abt was out of town at the time.
Benson, M. (1993). Who's Who in the JFK
Assassination. New York: Carol Publishing Group, p. 4.
17.
Turner (1999), Albarelli (2013).
18.
Woody Woodland Interview of Bill Kelly on "Between the Lines" live
radio program on WSMN AM 1590, Nashua, NH December 29, 1999. See
jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/10/bill-kelley-interview-1999.html
19.
Moore, N.M, & Darring, W. (1992). Crossroader:
Memoirs of a Professional Gambler. Mobile: Regency Press.
20.
FBI File no. 62-109060-741; AARB record no. 124-10056-10063.
21.
Donelson, C. (1992). Did the FBI ask Him about Oswald the Day before Kennedy
Was Killed? The Mobile Press Register,
February 23, p. 1A+.
22.
A copy of that telegram can also be found in Williams, J.D. (2006). Was the FBI
searching for Oswald in Mobile on November 21, 1963? Dealey Plaza Echo, 8, 2, 46-52.
23.
Ruby Moore videotaped the meeting between Moore and Walter. Junior Moore sent
me a copy of the videotape.
24.
www://ctka.net/Let JusticeBeDone/notes.htm The copy of the telegram was
provided by Judyth Baker.
25.
Titovets, E. (2010). Oswald Russian
Episode. Minsk, Belarus: Mon Litera Publishing House.
26.
Baker, J.V. (2010). Me & Lee: How I
came to know, love and lose Lee Harvey Oswald. Walterville, OR: Trine-Day.
27.
Ibid, pp. 133-134.
28.
Ibid, pp. 132-133.
29.
Benson, M. (2002). Encyclopedia of the JFK Assassination. New York: Checkmark
Books, p. 179.
30.
Baker, pp.165-187.
31.
Ibid, p. 482, p. 486, pp. 491-496.
32.
Shenon, p. 452.
33.
Armstrong, J. (2003). Harvey & Lee:
How the CIA Framed Oswald. Arlington, TX: Quasar, p. 725.
34.
Haslam, E. (2007). Dr. Mary's Monkey: How
the Unsolved Murder of a Doctor, a Secret Laboratory in New Orleans and Cancer-Causing
Monkey Viruses are Linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK Assassination and
Emerging Global Epidemics. Walterville, OR: Trine-Day,
p. 337.
35.
Russell, D. (1992, 2003).The Man Who Knew
Too Much. New York: Carroll & Graf. The page numbers in the references
that follow relate to the 2003 edition.
36.
Russell (2003), p. 275.
37.
Ibid., p. 283.
38.
Ibid., p. 283.
39.
Ibid., p. 290.
40.
Ibid., p. 437.
41.
Ibid, pp. 1-3.
42.
Henderson, B. (2014).The Next Tsunami:
Living on a Restless Coast. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press.
43.
biography.com/people/Galileo
44.
lavistachurchofchrist.org/LVarticles/LearningFromTheVaticansReversalOnGalileo.html
.
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