LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND RICHARD CASE NAGELL

                                                  John Delane Williams

                                                Ocean Park, Washington

 

Background on Richard Case Nagell

 

 

Richard Case Nagell was born August 5, 1930 in Greenwich, New York. Nagell never knew his father. He was placed into foster care at 4, and at 11 into an orphanage. On his 18th birthday, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to paratrooper school. While in training, he spent his free time reading. On September 2, 1949 Nagell completed Enlisted Intelligence Specialist's School at Fort Riley.  Next he finished a Russian language course at the 525th Military Intelligence Group at Fort Bragg, April 3, 1950. Then, a Leadership School at Fort Jackson was completed in September 1950. Finally, Nagell completed Officers Candidate School at Fort Benning, with commissioning as a 2nd Lieutenant, occurring on August 1, 1951. At age 21, he became an instructor at Leadership School of the 5th infantry division in Pennsylvania. He had also taken an extension course in Mandarin Chinese from the University of California. In the Fall of 1951, he was shipped off to the Korean War. On Christmas Day 1951, he was promoted to 1st Lieutenant the same day that he received his first battle wound. Nagell proved to be a fearless fighter. A second wound took place on December 6, 1952, when hand grenade fragments struck him in the legs and in the face. On June 11, 1953 he sustained his most serious wound when fragments from a mortar or artillery shell struck him in the buttocks and face, and he received a concussion. Just as hostilities in the Korean War were coming to a conclusion, General Dunkelberg had Nagell's promotion to Captain backdated to July 15, 1953, making Nagell the youngest person ever to get a battlefield commission to Captain. While in Korea, Nagell was the only survivor of a plane crash, by quickly deploying his parachute from a low flying plane. [1]

 

Immediately after coming back to the United States, Nagell was assigned to the Army Language School in Monterey, California to study Japanese. Nagell was then assigned to the Army's Counter-intelligence Course (CIC). In mid-course, Nagell took a Thanksgiving leave to visit a girl in San Francisco. On November 28, 1954, he was returning to Fort Holabird in a B-25 Bomber, the only Army person among five Air Force personnel. The plane was approaching Andrews Air Force Base. Because of driving rain, they chose to turn the plane to Friendship Airport near Baltimore; the plane went down with Nagell the only survivor. This crash resulted in months for Nagell to be rehabilitated. He reported back to duty at the CIC training center in May 1955. In August 1955, he was designated a Counter-Intelligence Officer. In this role he would become a plain clothes man, where he would interview civilians suspected of some transgression against the military. Unfortunately, the disfigurement in his face frightened many of the persons whom he was to interview. He had a wide scar on the left side of his face and paralysis of an eyelid. His disfigurement was treated with some plastic surgery, and he was redeployed to the Far East. [2]

 

In the Far East, Nagell was working within Field Operations Intelligence (FOI) a unit within the service that was very secretive and funded by the CIA. Members of Nagell’s unit operated as special agents under the direction of the CIA. [3] It was in the Far East where Nagell first met Lee Harvey Oswald. [4] Nagell met Oswald at a German Beer Hall in Tokyo as well as at the Queen Bee bar. Russell suggested that Oswald and Nagell likely entered into a plan that involved developing a "cover" to do intelligence work against the Soviet Union. They both seemed to harbor an interest in Marxism.

 

Oswald's Touch of Success

 

Oswald's Marine experience early on was barely satisfactory, particularly with his poor shooting skills. When he started taking his Marine courses in aviation electronics things started to change for the better for Oswald. His next course, in radar operation, saw Oswald beginning to shine. At the end of the class, Oswald, after taking a battery of tests, finished 7th in his class of 30. He was designated an Aviation Electronics Operator. Oswald was then assigned to Atsugi, after a detour to El Toro Marine Base in California, where Oswald was a replacement trainee.

 

If we look at Oswald's probable state of mind, one could imagine that Oswald was feeling better about himself than he had previously experienced. When he got to Atsugi, his job had him at a base that had significant CIA involvement, he was a radar operator, among other things, monitoring U-2 flights, and apparently doing a good job. Oswald’s supervisor, Captain Francis J. Gajewski, noted in Oswald's record, six months after Oswald came to Atsugi, "As a matter of fact [Oswald] has done good work for me. I would desire to have him work for me at any time...he minds his business and he does his job well." [6]

 

The Meeting of Lee Harvey Oswald and Richard Case Nagell

 

Lee Oswald, then a private in the Marines was reported to have been to the Soviet Embassy in Tokyo, allegedly wishing to have some coins identified. Richard Nagell then sought to be introduced to Oswald; Nagell was “on loan” to the CIA. Nagell claimed that Oswald had been meeting with Colonel Nikolai Grigorievich Eroshkin. Nagell confided that he introduced Oswald to Dr Chikao Fujisawa, a person whom Nagell was trying to recruit to the CIA. Later, Nagell would determine that Dr. Fujisawa was actually already working with the KGB. [7]

 

The Queen Bee

 

The Queen Bee was a bar in Tokyo. It catered to patrons who had significant money to spend. It was one of the three most expensive nightclubs in Tokyo. It catered to elite clients, pilots (including U-2 pilots) and other upper grade officers and the few junior officers who had significant income beyond their military pay.  To take a girl out included not only her fee but also payment to the bar for using her time. There were several (over 100) very attractive hostesses, who typically cost between $60 and $100 for a "date". Oswald's monthly income was around $85. It would seem unlikely that he would have much success with the hostesses. The Queen Bee was yet another place that Oswald and Nagell would meet. [8]

 

Oswald told fellow Marine, David Bucknell, that Oswald had been in the bar alone when he was approached by a hostess who asked about his "top secret" work. Oswald reported the incident to his superior officer, who arranged a meeting between Oswald and a civilian (The "civilians" nearby were mainly personnel from the CIA). The civilian told Oswald that the woman was a known KGB agent. Oswald was given money and told that he could do a service for his country by giving the woman false information about the U-2 spy plane. Using these instructions, Oswald returned to the Queen Bee and began what was to be his first love affair; Oswald fell in love with this beautiful Eurasian woman. [9]

 

Oswald began pursuing his new-found love, even bringing her back to the base at Atsugi to show his girl to his Marine buddies. To a man, this relationship amazed them. Oswald, who had little money and little else to offer. Being with such a beautiful girl, Oswald seemed far out of his league with her. [10]

 

This point in Oswald's life may have been a time when he was perhaps almost ecstatically happy; he was after all living out his dream to be a spy, and he was very definitely doing work that would count as espionage, but he also did quite well in his classes to get there. He was seen as being a valued member of the Atsugi Marine community. And very importantly, he was in love with a beautiful girl, and he hadn't even reached his 18th birthday.

 

But this was to change. Right around his birthday, he found that his beautiful girlfriend had befriended another American serviceman, a 'buck" sergeant. [11] He also heard that his unit was scheduled to ship out to the South China Sea and the Philippines. A possible Marine landing in Borneo might have been in the offing. This prospect seemed disheartening to Oswald, perhaps because he might be unable to get his girlfriend back. In any event, on October 27, 1957, just after his 18th birthday, a gunshot was heard in the barracks at Oswald's bunk. It appeared that a shot grazed his arm, and he admitted that he had shot himself. Perhaps he thought such action might send him to the hospital, and he would be able to stay back from being shipped out, and then he could go back to the Queen Bee to win back the love of his beautiful girlfriend.

 

Still, Oswald was seemingly in good stead regarding the Marines. He did ship out with the other Marines in his unit. Oswald seemed to be interested in advancing his career. He was studying to try to pass the test to be promoted to being a Corporal. He did in fact pass that test on January 15, 1958 while they were stationed at Cubi Point, in the Phillipines, their place of deployment. Also on that day, Private Martin Schrand was shot to death while on guard duty. An investigation showed that Schrand was shot by his own gun. It was not possible for Schrand to have purposely shot himself in that the gun was too long for this to occur. It was surmised that Schrand accidentally dropped the gun and it discharged. [12] Persons wishing to involve Oswald as a shooter in the assassination of President Kennedy, to bolster the idea somehow that Oswald would have a propensity to violence, to justify claiming him as the assassin, tried to implicate Oswald in this shooting of Private Schrand. No evidence for Oswald to be involved in Private Schrand's death was to be found.

 

Back at Atsugi, Oswald's shooting of himself in October 1957 wasn't going away. Had the gun used been a military issue, the incident could have simply been an accident. In fact, Oswald reported that he shot himself with a military issue .45 caliber automatic pistol. The bullet that wounded him was a .22 caliber pistol, which was his own gun that he was not authorized to have. Having an unauthorized firearm on base was a court-martial offense.  Oswald was court-martialed. On April 11, 1958, Oswald was convicted of having an unauthorized weapon. Oswald was reduced in rank to private, fined $50 and sentenced to 20 days at hard labor. The 20 days of hard labor was suspended for six months provided that Oswald kept out of further trouble. Being reduced in rank nullified his having passed the test to move to being a corporal. Further, his officer in charge put him on mess duty, taking him away from working with radar. Oswald was not allowed back to radar duty, even though his radar officers had requested that he be returned. [13] The officer refusing to allow Oswald to return to his duty as a radar operator was Technical Sergeant Miguel Rodriguez, who was the person who replaced Oswald as the person of interest with his Eurasian girlfriend. Oswald eventually retaliated by pouring beer on Sgt. Rodriguez, which resulted in Oswald being court-martialed and sent to the brig. [14]

 

 

A Changed Man

 

After getting out of the brig, Oswald, according to his fellow Marines, was a changed man. Oswald became cold, withdrawn and bitter. Oswald spent more time with his Japanese friends and less with his fellow Marines. Oswald apparently found a new girlfriend, one who had been a housekeeper for a naval officer.  Again, she also was seemingly out of Oswald's class. She was a Russian-Eurasian. Purportedly, Oswald asked her to help him with his learning Russian. [15]

 

Recruiting Oswald to Go to the Soviet Union

 

It was revealed at the House Select Committee on Assassination (1976) that Oswald had been recruited by the CIA when he was stationed at Atsugi to be a double-agent in the Soviet Union. This was testified to by James A. Wilcott, a CIA finance officer. Wilcott testified that he had personally handled the funding for Oswald's mission. Other CIA employees denied all knowledge of such a mission. [16] That the other CIA officers would testify that they had no knowledge of such a mission could have been true, and there still could have been such a mission. If they did have knowledge of such a plan, they could still be expected to testify otherwise, to protect the agency. [17]

 

 

 

Oswald's First Trip to Mexico City

 

Sometime in July, 1963, Oswald took a short trip to Mexico City [18]. That may have been July 25 to perhaps the morning of July 27. Oswald took a plane from New Orleans to another city. Oswald stated that he needed to get materials for The Project on this trip. He would be back to New Orleans in time for his seminar at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. [19] In Mexico City, he met Richard Case Nagell at the Luma Hotel. He reportedly also visited the Cuban Embassy. Apparently, pictures were taken of Oswald at the Cuban Embassy. While the reason for this trip was not stated by Nagell, the two went to an area where they could shoot guns at a cactus. Nagell's assessment was that "Oswald couldn't hit the side of a barn." [20]

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 23-27, 1963; A Meeting among Oswald, Nagell and Two Other Persons

 

On August 23-27, or fewer days within those dates, Lee Harvey Oswald met with Nagel and two other people in a place described as Houston. A third person at the late August meeting was "Angel" and the fourth person was not identified. [21]

 

This information on Nagell and Nagell's relationship to Oswald in Japan paints a different picture regarding the meeting that took place between August 23-27,1963 in "Houston". The location was neither Houston, nor Texas. The subject of conversation in the "Houston" meeting was the assassination of President Kennedy. The beginning of the meeting transpired in Spanish; Nagell translated for Oswald. Later the conversation proceeded in English. The name of Sergio Arcacha-Smith, a Cuban exile, came up. The name Raul came up as well ("Raul" was a cover name allegedly used by David Atlee Phillips.) Nagell surreptitiously tape recorded the meeting. [22] As a final note on this incident, it should be pointed out that neither John Armstrong nor Judyth Baker have any indication of the whereabouts of Lee Harvey Oswald ( “Harvey" to Armstrong) for the dates in question (August 23-27, 1963) for this meeting. [23].

 

The New Orleans Project

 

Dr. Alton Ochsner was the Director of the New Orleans project, and Lee Harvey Oswald played an important role in the project. Dr. Ochsner had been the Chairman in the Surgery Department at the Tulane University Medical School. He also founded the Ochsner Clinic in 1942. He was credited with being one of the first scientists to document the relationship between smoking and lung cancer. He wrote several books on the subject, and was the President of the American Cancer Society in 1949. [24] Dr. Ochsner was a prolific scholar. He had 584 published articles, many of them with co-authors. Of these articles, there were 135 different co-authors. The person most often a co-author was Ochsner's best student, Michael DeBakey, who co-authored 71 of the articles. DeBakey is remembered for developing several medical devices and procedures. He co-developed with Robert Jarvik the first artificial heart. [25]

 

The year 1956 brought the end of Alton Ochsner's Chairmanship in Surgery; the claim was made that he was spending so much time at his clinic, he was not properly addressing his chair duties. Ochsner fought this decision bitterly, but to no avail. In 1961, Ochsner was subject to mandatory retirement at the Tulane Medical School; though Ochsner fought the process, he was unable to get around this obstacle. [26]

 

Ochsner was, in 1963, an even more complex man. Ochsner had become an adamant anti-communis; like many of his wealthy Southern patients, his politics could be described as being right-wing. While he had earlier been involved with the FBI in classified research activities, they allowed Ochsner to conclude his relationship with them (in 1959) in order to work with another government entity (most likely the Central Intelligence Agency). [27]

 

The year 1959 (On January 1) was the beginning of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. As Castro moved closer to the Soviet orb, various government agencies were working on means to remove Castro from power. The project had as its purpose removing Fidel Castro from power in Cuba. As we now know, several other groups were working toward the same objective, albeit with different means of accomplishing that outcome. The rationale behind enlisting Dr. Ochsner and his team of medical scientists would clearly be in the medical arena. It would seem likely that they would be enlisted in developing a biological weapon to incapacitate Castro. Perhaps considered were either a poison or infecting him with a disease that would quickly disable him. As it happened, Dr. Ochsner and his associates were proficient working with cancer and its cure. Perhaps they could change their direction to developing a fast acting cancer, and coincidentally, also learn how to stop it. It's just that, in Castro's case, the last part wouldn't be necessary.

 

It is known through the testimony of CIA Director Stansfield Turner that the CIA funded 159 medical research centers to do classified medical research. It is highly likely that one of these centers was Alton Ochsner's facility. [28] It was shown by Haslam that Ochsner's team had access to a particle accelerator. [29] In most cases, the information on the particle accelerator had to be meticulously documented, but apparently not for secret covert research being conducted through the CIA. [30] In fact, Haslam has gone to great lengths to show the existence of a particle accelerator in New Orleans, and the likely relationship that the accelerator was involved in the mysterious death of Ochsner’s close associate, Dr. Mary Sherman. Prior to Haslam's research, the existence of a particle accelerator (LINAC) was covered up. [31] It is most likely that the particle accelerator was already installed prior to the beginning of the project. Dr. Ochsner received millions of dollars in donations from right-wing oil millionaires who despised both John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro.

 

The project, (The New Orleans Project) was brought into existence within a week after Attorney General Robert Kennedy approved removal of Fidel Castro from Cuba, likely with extreme prejudice (assassination). This approval came in March 1962. With this came the approval of using the already functional linear accelerator. Undoubtedly several such projects were approved to such an end. The major planners were Dr. Ochsner and Dr. Mary Sherman, with some inclusion of David Ferrie. As they developed the plan, Numerous colonies of mice were to be raised, with little or no knowledge of the plan to be known by the mice's caretakers. A group of mice would be injected with cancerous materials, which originated from monkeys that had the SV40 virus, a virus that infected some of Jonas Salk's monkeys in developing his polio vaccine. The viruses (there may have been other viruses beyond SV40 in the monkeys) were then subjected to the LINAC, then injected into mice and then placed in the care of another set of handlers until the mice were deemed harvestable. Those mice with the largest tumors were then sacrificed, their most aggressive tumors removed, and then the tumors were put into a blender to create a material from which the virus mix and selected cancer strains could be identified and cultivated. This product would be injected into a new set of mice. This process would continue for several iterations. At a point in 1963, marmosets replaced the mice. The marmosets were then replaced by green monkeys. Eventually, the developed biological weapon would be injected into a "volunteer", to test the efficacy of the weapon. Given Fidel Castro's well known habit of smoking cigars, it would seem plausible that Castro's cancer was due to his smoking. [32] A more complete description of this process is given in Baker [33]

 

 Oswald’s Meeting with Richard Case Nagell in New Orleans   

 

“In September 1963, ”Laredo” (a code name unknown to Oswald) met with Oswald in Jackson Square in New Orleans where both were photographed.” [36] “Laredo” was a code name for Richard Case Nagell. This probably occurred shortly before September 17, as Nagell departed New Orleans on September 17. [37] This meeting was at the discretion of Nagell. Presumably, Nagell wanted to know more about Oswald’s future motives. Nagell had been given the job of killing Oswald at the behest of the KGB; the CIA had “loaned” Nagell to the KGB. To Nagell, this involved murdering an American citizen at the request of a foreign government, which he would not do on U.S. soil. It could take place in Mexico when Oswald went there later in the month. [38]

 

Nagell was not the most forthright person in relaying pertinent information; Dick Russell was able to pick out the codename “Laredo” as -being a codename for Nagell himself in the previous paragraph. Thus, we do not know precisely what Nagell and Oswald spoke about in New Orleans; Nagell reported that Oswald denied involvement with plots against President Kennedy. Nagell also reported criticizing Oswald for attempting to interfere with the revolution in Cuba. What we do know is that Oswald was directed to get a 15 day Visa to Mexico, which Oswald applied for on September 17. [39] By inference we know the decisions Nagell made in relation to their meeting. Nagell entered the conversation with the possibility of killing Oswald in Mexico; his decision was to not only not kill Oswald, but Nagell also would deliberately commit a crime a few days later, guaranteeing that he would be in jail/prison when Oswald was in Mexico, and if President Kennedy would be assassinated, be in jail/prison at that time. Also, Nagel would send Oswald $500 and plane tickets to get to Mexico. [40]

 

This would suggest that Nagell supported Oswald’s assignment in Mexico. One might consider that Oswald gave some information to Nagell about his efforts in New Orleans, and his role in delivering the bioweapon for the elimination of Fidel Castro, hopefully thereby ending planning for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

 

   Another Oswald Impersonator  

 

An interesting detail was later revealed probably emanating from Nagell:

“Leon Oswald, Male, Caucasian, American, 24-26, 150 lbs., 5’ 9”. Alive on September 14 or 15, 1963. Not alive after September 19, 1963.” [41] This information was not elaborated on, but one of the Lee/Leon Oswald impersonators apparently was eliminated. Russell was unable to determine just how it related to Nagell, but it does add to the number of Oswald impersonators.

 

Nagell in El Paso, September 20, 1963

 

On September 20, 1963, Nagell drove around the streets of El Paso, perhaps trying to decide exactly what he would do. Nagell parked his Ford Fairlane in an alley near the post office, by a “No Parking” sign. He had written three letters, one to Desmond Fitzgerald, then Chief of the CIA Cuban Task Force, and previously, from 1957-1962, Chief of the CIA Far East Division. A second, and nastier letter went to an unnamed CIA official at the Langley Headquarters; the third letter was to Lee Harvey Oswald, which contained five $100 bills, and an airline ticket to Mexico City. Later, Nagell Indicated that the FBI was aware of this letter. [42] In the week prior to this, Nagel had sent a letter to F.B.I. Director, J. Edgar Hoover, warning him of a planned assassination against President Kennedy [43] In a letter written in 1974 to lawyer Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., in replying to Fensterwald’s question, “Why did Oswald take the bus to Mexico City, instead of the plane to Mexico in an effort to ‘make a few bucks’ ”. Nagell responded, that he had “… cause to believe that he (Oswald) was never given, or did not receive, the five hundred dollars.” [44]

 

Nagell mailed the three letters at the downtown post office. Nagell then walked across the street to the State National Bank and shot two bullets into the wall. In that Nagell had threatened no one and did not attempt to rob the bank, he presumed that he would be charged with only a misdemeanor. He then casually left the bank, went to his car, and waited to be arrested. Finally, a young policeman, James Bundren arrived and asked, “Why did you try to rob a bank?” Nagell replied, “I didn’t know there had been a robbery.” Nagell left several clues about what he was doing; he said his actions would keep anyone from following him. Nagell also stated, “All my problems have been solved for a long time, and now I won’t have to go back to Cuba.” [45]

 

Nagell would be right about his last statement. However, instead of being charged with a misdemeanor, Nagell found that firing a gun in a bank was a felony. He was to spend several years in prison. Finally, he was released from Leavenworth Federal Prison on April 29, 1968. [46]

 

Re-addressing the meeting in New Orleans between Oswald and Nagell, it can be remembered that Nagell was deciding what he might do with regard to Oswald, in that he had been given the assignment of eliminating Oswald, which Nagel would only consider outside the United States, if at all. We know that Nagell not only removed himself from having any possibility of eliminating Oswald, we can infer from Nagell’s castigating Oswald for being involved with a plot against Castro, and yet attempting to fund Oswald’s trip to Mexico, that, all things considered, given the direction that Oswald might go, trying to avoid the assassination of President Kennedy was preferable to saving Castro, if those were the only choices available.

 

The Curious Relationship of the Teenager and the Grizzled Veteran

 

The foregoing described relationship between a 17 year-old Marine and a 26 year old veteran who had already crammed in seemingly multiple lifetimes by the time of their first meeting.  What attracted Oswald to Nagell? Russell opined “In a way, Oswald may be seen as a younger alter ego of Richard Nagell. Their life paths are so similar it is eerie: Both from broken homes, both military men who were students of Marxism, both walking down the perpetually winding corridors of American and Soviet Intelligence agencies both caught up in a conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States.”  [47] Another possibility is that Nagell may have had tasks for Oswald to complete, perhaps in an apprenticeship in spying. [48]

 

The Deaths of Oswald and Nagell

 

Oswald’s death was witnessed by perhaps millions of television viewers on Sunday November 24, 1963 in his shooting by Jack Ruby. Though not widely reported, Jack Ruby had known Lee Harvey Oswald since Oswald was a young boy, through Dutz Murret, an associate of Carlo Marcello, and an uncle to Oswald. [49] Nagell died unnoticed for several days, found in a bathroom in his apartment in Los Angeles, dying of an apparent heart attack on October 1995 at age 65. [50]

Notes:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

1. Russell, D.(2003). The Man Who Knew Too Much, New York: Caroll & Graf Publishers., pp. 42-45.

2. ibid., pp. 46-51.

3. Victor Marchetti telephone conversation with Dick Russell, January 28, 1977, in Russell, p. 51.

4. Russell, pp. 71-72. 

5. ibid., pp. 81-82.

6. Gajewski, cited in Epstein, E.J. Legend-The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 68.

7. Russell, pp. 71-72.

8. ibid., p.76.

9. Russell, pp. 76-77.

10. Epstein, p. 12.

11. ibid., p. 72.

12. ibid., pp. 75-76.

13. ibid., p.73-78.

14. ibid., p. 78.

15. ibid., pp.82-83.

16. Benson, (2002). Encyclopedia of the JFK Assassination. New York: Checkmark, p. 199.

17. Weisberg, H. (1974). Whitewash IV: JFJ Assassination Transcript. Frederick, MD: Author, p.62.

18. Russell, pp. 237-248. Judyth Baker wrote in an email (July 11, 2017) that she thought this trip to Mexico might have occurred during August 5-9, 1963.                                                                            19.Baker (2010) p. 414.

20.Russell, pp. 237-241.

21. Russell, p.275.

22. ibid., p.275.

23. Armstrong, J.A. (2006) Harvey & Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald. Arlington TX: Quasar; Baker (2010) 

24.Wilds, J. & Harkey, I. (1990). Alton Ochsner: Surgeon of the South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, pp. 177-187.

25. ibid.

26. ibid.

27. Haslam, E.T. (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. 182.

28. ibid., p. 181.

29. ibid., pp. 243-272. .

30. ibid., p. 245.

31. ibid., pp. 243-271.

32. Baker, J.V. (2014). Ferrie: Mafia Pilot, Participant in the Anti-Castro Bioweapon Plot, Friend of Lee Harvey Oswald and Key to the JFK Assassination. Walterville, OR: Trine-Day, pp. 185-199.

33. Baker (2010).  Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald. Walterville OR: Trine Day, pp. 207-211.

34. Russell, p. 282.

35. ibid., pp. 282-283

36. ibid., p. 282.

37. ibid., p. 286. Oswald went to the Mexican Consulate in New Orleans sometime before noon on September 17, 1963 to obtain a tourist permit. He used his birth certificate, rather than his passport to obtain the tourist permit. He was directly behind William George Gaudet in line. Gaudet was a New Orleans based CIA agent.

38. ibid., p. 286.

39. ibid., p. 288. Russell obtained this from New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison’s files on Richard Case Nagell. p. 290.

40. Letter from Richard Case Nagell to Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., August 26, 1974, quoted in Russell, p. 290.

41. Russell, pp. 288.

42. ibid., p. 290.

43. ibid., p. 242.

44. ibid., p. 290.

45. ibid., pp. 291-292.

46. ibid., p. 418.

47. ibid., p. 464.

48. Personal communication with Dick Russell, November 22, 2019. See also Williams, J.D. (2019). Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon Johnson and the JFK Assassination. Walterville, OR.: Trine Day.

49. Baker (2010), p. 236.

50. Russell, pp. 450-453.

 

Published in The Dealey Plaza Echo, July 2020, 23, 1, 15-19

                                                        INTRODUCTION

The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy has fascinated readers from, as they say, Day One. In the reporting of the assassination and surrounding issues, initially, the traditional news sources reported what they had come into their hands. At a very early stage, there were anomalies. One such anomaly came from Christchurch, New Zeeland. Within an hour of the taking of Oswald to the police station, the Christchurch Star published an article about Oswald’s background, including his having lived in the Soviet Union (Russia). This story was out in a regular edition about four hours after Oswald was arrested. (Christchurch Star, November 23, 1963)

Sometimes ordinary citizens found themselves in circumstances that belied the official stories that came out of Dallas. One of these involved Junior Moore in Mobile Alabama on November 21, 1963. Junior was told to come down to FBI office four blocks away. There, he was asked whether he knew anything about Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps the question came either because Oswald had given a lecture on Russia at Spring Hill College in Mobile the previous Summer, or the interest could have been spurred on by the telegram received at the New Orleans FBI on the previous Sunday about a possible assassination attempt in Dallas, November 21-22. [1] Were the FBI to have acknowledged that they had in fact interviewed someone regarding Lee Harvey Oswald just before the assassination, the FBI trying to maintain that they had little or no information on Oswald just before the assassination would be seen to be a lie.

A second anomaly relates to a neurophysiologist, Adele Edisen. She was reentering the workforce and had obtained post-doctoral fellowship at Tulane University. An administrator at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness (NINDB) Dr. Jose Riviera, had conversed with Edelson at a National gathering. A number of quirky incidents occurred in their conversations. Riviera asked Edelson if she knew Lee Harvey Oswald. Riviera indicated that Oswald would be moving to New Orleans soon, and Edisen should meet Oswald and his Russian wife. He gave Edisen Oswald’s telephone number when he got to New Orleans. And told Edisen to tell Oswald to shoot the chief. The information that Riviera gave Edisen seemed bewildering and nonsensical—until November 22, 1963. [2]

A third anomaly was that of Rose Cherami (nee Melba Christine Marcades), who, was with two unknown men on the early morning of November 20, 1963, driving down the highway near Eunice, Louisiana. One of the men threw Rose out of the car as they were driving down the highway. Rose was picked up and taken to a hospital, and then to a police station. Rose was said to have told those who would listen that President Kennedy would be killed in Dallas, two days later. No one seriously took what she said as being of any value. [3]

The Rose Cherami story is the only story of these three that surfaced any time near the assassination. It would be the 1990’s before the first two stories would see the light of day.

One anomaly that did become a controversial issue is that of the “magic bullet”. Initially, the Warren Commission had hypothesized three bullets, two hitting President Kennedy, and one hitting Governor Connally. Since one bullet missed the Presidential limousine entirely and hit a section of curbing that broke loose and hit Donald Teague as he was watching the motorcade, it became necessary to revise the scenario if the number of shots were to be limited to three. [4] It came to Arlen Specter, a lawyer serving on the investigative team to come up with the magic bullet theory, wherein a bullet fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository that struck President Kennedy in the back of the head, exit his throat, make a 90 degree turn to the right and then entered Governor Connally, leaving several serious wounds and the bullet somehow end up in a stretcher in the hospital, still in pristine condition. One more bit of magic was that the wound in President Kennedy’s front neck gave the appearance of an entrance wound and the wound in the back of his head gave the appearance of an exit wound! [5]

Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald has been characterized, first by the Warren Commission as a loner, a traitor, and a person who was unable to have sufficient income to support his family. Further he did not have any knowledge of Jack Ruby or David Ferrie. This is the “legend” that the CIA wanted to construct regarding Oswald. None of it was true.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s life is a major part of the present writing. What is different here is that the entirety of his life is addressed. Two big chunks of his life that are omitted from most presentations are Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union (Russia) and his time in New Orleans in 1963. Oswald’s time in Russia was written about by his best friend there, Ernst Titovets. [6] At the time of Oswald’s being in Russia, Titovets was a medical student. Titovets received his medical degree and subsequently two scientific doctorates; his career was as a medical researcher. Titovets was unaware of the characterizations of Oswald’s life in Russia by American authors. For example, John Armstrong made the statement that Oswald never spoke Russian in Russia, except possibly with Marina. [7] When I contacted Titovets about this, he said that, once Oswald learned to speak Russian (in Russia), whenever Oswald and Titovets were with friends, they spoke Russian all the time. [8]

A second area that is most important is Oswald’s time in New Orleans from April to September 1963,’. In April, 1963, Oswald met Judyth Vary (who shortly became Judyth Vary Baker upon her marriage to a fellow University of Florida student Robert Baker). It is Judyth Baker’s story that fills this gap in Oswald’s life. [9] Not only is Oswald not a loner; two of his good friends were David Ferrie and Jack Ruby. Oswald met Ferrie, when Oswald was a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol, where Oswald was taught to be a pilot by Ferrie. In the Summer of 1963, Oswald was a currier for a secret medical research project in New Orleans funded by the CIA, under the direction of Anton Ochsner, M.D. [10] Oswald, Judyth Baker, and David Ferrie all worked closely with Mary Sherman, M.D. During the late Spring and early Summer, Jack Ruby came to New Orleans and met with Oswald and Judyth Baker. It was during this time, that, as a patron to the research project that Ruby found out about the development of fast acting cancers, intended for use on Fidel Castro. This also gave Ruby the heads up, after his murder conviction was overturned, that he was injected by a physician with likely cancer cells, that he also was being murdered. [11]

There is the issue of Oswald’s financial circumstances. Oswald was directed by the CIA to give the appearance of being poor. While as a son of a widow in his early life, there was little unique about Oswald. It was the depression at that time, and many were in frugal circumstances. Once he entered the military at age 17, though his take home was not high, he seemed to have more resources in Japan In Japan, Oswald was recruited to be a false defector. In that capacity, his needs were likely met. He seemed to be getting money from the CIA, and the FBI on his return to the United States. His good friend George deMohrenschildt was given several thousand dollars to save for Oswald until some later point in time. He had also given Mrs. Paine money to buy a car for Marina. Oswald gave Judyth Baker $400 to help when they were able to reunite in Mexico. During his last two months in life, Oswald received $3665.89. according to a report by Richard Mosk, a staff lawyer for the Warren Commission, and Phillip Barson, an IRS Supervisor, which was turned over to the Warren Commission. This is not the financial information one would expect in 1963 for a poor man. [12]

It is a goal of this presentation to show that Oswald was not only a patsy for the persons planning the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald was in fact trying to intercede to avoid the assassination of President Kennedy.

One other difference with other books about the assassination is the inclusion of the presidential terms of Lyndon Johnson. At a minimum, Johnson knew about the plan to assassinate President Kennedy, though he may not have known long about that plan before he went to the Murchison’s home and went into a meeting taking place there. Most likely he made statements there about the assassination scheduled for the next day. He revealed as much to his longtime mistress. Madeleine Brown, directly after leaving the meeting. [13]

The reason to address Johnson’s time in office is to compare it to what could be expected from a continued Kennedy presidency. In one sense, Johnson was very successful in getting Kennedy’s initiatives passed much more quickly than President Kennedy might have. Ironically, Johnson had cautioned President Kennedy to proceed slowly on civil rights and other Kennedy social programs. Invoking Kennedy’s name, Johnson used all the hand shaking and arm twisting to get the programs through. However, one could interpret Johnson’s behavior as a prelude to getting his “Great Society” programs passed through congress. Put another way, President Kennedy’s programs dovetailed perfectly with Johnson’s Great Society. There were two differences. Johnson was perfectly willing to help the military with their agenda in Vietnam. The Vietnam agenda was the undoing of the Johnson presidency. Additionally, there was the deliberate loss of the USS Liberty during the Six Day War in 1967, as a pretense to enter the war on Israel’s side. The treatment of the survivors of the USS Liberty was inhumane. The deliberate attack on the USS Liberty was treasonous. [14]

An important issue to address is the legacy of President Kennedy, and what was lost forever with his assassination. One of the most important parts of his legacy was not known during his lifetime (and as of this writing, still not widely known) was that at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, between 95-100 of the 172 Soviet missiles were operational. The Joint Chiefs had every intention of bombing the missile sites; only the steadfastness of President Kennedy kept them from their goal. [15] Among the losses occurring by the assassination of President Kennedy, beyond the dynamic young president, without doubt the most glib of presidents to that point, was the carnage in Vietnam. It was President Kennedy’s goal to remove all military, except for advisors, from Vietnam by the end of 1965. Instead by the end of 1965, Vietnam had become a bloodbath. As President Kennedy foresaw, we did have men on the moon before the end of the decade

Notes:

1. Williams, J.D. (2004). Was the FBI Searching for Oswald the Day Before the Assassination? The Dealey Plaza Echo, 8, 2, 46-52.

2. Edisen’s story was first published in the Third Decade, a JFK Assassination research journal, under the pseudonym K.S. Turner; Albarelli, H.P. (2013). A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity of the JFK Assassination. Walterville, OR: Trine Day, pp. 127-162.

3. Elliott, T.C. (2013). A Rose by Many Other Names: Rose Cherami & the FK Assassination. Walterville, OR: Trine Day.

4. Tague, J.T. (2003). Truth Withheld: A Survivor’s Story. Dallas: Excell Digital Press.

5. Groden, R.J. & Livingstone, H.E. (1989). High Treason: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy What Really Happened. New York: The Conservatory Press, pp. 54-61.

6. Titovets, E. (2010). Oswald’s Russian Episode. Minsk Belerus: MonLitera Publishing House.

7. Armstrong, J. (2003). Harvey & Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald. Arlington TX: Quasar, pp. 339-340.

8. Williams, J.D. & Titovets, E. (November, 2013). Did Oswald Speak Russian in Russia? 50^th Anniversary Conference, Arlington, TX. Also published in JFK-E/Deep Politics Quarterly, (2014). 1, 3, 21-34.

9. Baker, J.V. (2010). Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald. Walterville OR: Trine Day.

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

11. 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. See also, Haslam, E.T. (1997). Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus: The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory. Albuquerque NM: Wordsworth Communications,

 12. Shenon, P. (2013). A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination. New York: Henry Holt & Co., p.452.

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

14. Allen, R.J. (2012). Beyond Treason. Create Space. (Available Through Amazon.com).

15. Norris, R.S. & Kristensen, H.M. (2012). The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Nuclear Order of Battle, October and November, 1962. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 68, 6.

In Williams, J.D. (2019). Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon Johnson & the JFK Assassination. Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 1-5.

Why is Oswald Stll Considered the Assassin?

                                                   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:

Victoria Adams was interviewed by David Belin, a staff member working for the Warren Commission, on April 24, 1964. In this interview, a curious sentence appeared to have been added, different from Victoria Adams' FBI statement, that she had encountered Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady on the first floor after coming down the stairs, directly after the assassination. Her encounter with Shelley and Lovelady actually occurred several minutes later, after she re-entered the building.

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

.Published in the Dealey Plaza Echo, 2016, 19, 2, 14-22.