Lee Oswald: The Pamphleteer

Traveling down the rabbit trial again I keep crossing paths with Oswald handing out the Free Play for Cuba pamphlets on Canal Street in New Orleans. There are a lot of things at play here and many other things that remain a mystery to this day. As I trek down this trail I see there is a lot more going on here than just a guy handing out flyers; this story travels far and wide from New Orleans to Montreal.

First of all, Lee H. Oswald is the only member (and president) of the FPFC committee in New Orleans. An organization for the support of Castro and communist Cuba that was established in 1960 and went out of operation soon after the assassination. Even after all of the publicity Oswald gets on local TV showing him handing out the pamphlets, has his altercation with anti Castro Cubans, gets arrested, does his TV interview and radio debate—he’s still the only member. Nobody ever joins. After he later moved to Dallas, he never hooked up with the FPFC committee there.

The pamphlets he is handing out are stamped with “554 Camp Street” address. Warren Commission apologists maintain that Oswald had no rented office at the address. Guy Banister, the conservative, anti communist former FBI agent turned private eye, did maintain an office there. Under the official story, Oswald did not work for Banister, nor did they know each other. Independent researchers maintain they did, based on numerous eyewitness reports, including Banister’s secretary who said she saw Oswald passing through the office on more than one occasion. 

It is all self-defeating. Because if Oswald does not maintain any connections to the Camp street address, then nobody can get in touch with him after he passes out the pamphlets. Isn’t that one of the purposes? Besides spreading the word? And apparently, nobody ever does. 

Even more curious is Oswald’s letter to the FPFC headquarters in New York describing the altercation on Canal Street. The letter is postmarked 5 days before the incident occurs! This doesn’t make any sense, other than assuming the scuffle was a set-up, a covert undertaking, to craft a public image of Oswald as a Marxist. Or, a method to flush out Cubans with communist sympathies. If the scuffle was a prearranged event, then Oswald apparently mailed the letter on the day he thought the operation was to take place and for some reason, it was altered. Perhaps not enough Cubans on Canal Street that day to get into a quarrel with?

A side issue, but one of interest, is the printing of the leaflets themselves. It has been documented that they were printed at the Jones Printing Company of New Orleans. In the National Archives is the crude drawing Oswald did of the leaflet copy. The folks at the print shop recalled doing business with a man identifying himself as “Lee Osborne.” Neither the owner Douglass Jones, nor the secretary Myra Silver, could identify photos of Oswald as being the same man named Lee Osborne that ordered the pamphlets printed. Jones specifically said the man he dealt with had a huskier build, that of a laborer. So who was this guy? Another cog in the operation?

Osborne is a reoccurring surname. Oswald met a man named Osborne on his bus trip to Mexico City in September of 1963. And Osborne was from Montreal. (The significance of Montreal will be discussed below.)

After a while, the story starts to take a different turn. Oswald begins to show up handing out pamphlets in different places. He is spotted handing out leaflets at the port where the USS Wasp was docked. Here Oswald got into a heated debate with a port security official and was asked to leave, since he had no permission to be there. After a bit of arguing he did depart. There are surviving samples of the pamphlets he handed out at the dock and none were stamped with a return address. So once again, nobody is going to be getting in touch with Oswald.

It gets really strange when Oswald turns up again passing out pamphlets in Montreal, Canada! This suppressed story was never presented to the Warren Commission or later to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. It was chased down by researcher Gary Shaw who waged a long FOIA battle with the FBI, which resulted in a stalemate in 1984. Finally, the JFK Records act of 1993 forced the FBI to open their files and release photos and other documents about a possible Oswald trip to Montreal. 

What we now know about this account of Oswald in Canada comes from a reputable source—Jean Paul Tremblay, a U.S. Customs and Excise agent doing casework on Cuba in Montreal in the summer of 1963. In his documented report, he states that in August of 1963, he learned there was a fellow handing out leaflets for Cuba on St. Jacques and McGill Streets and walked up to the young man and got one, making note of his looks. He would later positively identify the man as Lee Oswald. He also took note that Oswald was not alone but accompanied by three individuals; two men and a woman. Two of three people, a blonde, freckle faced man and a short, heavyset woman, agent Tremblay would later identify from a photograph of participants in the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, which had occurred in June of 1963. Both of these individuals would later be identified as Fred Moore and Erika Enzer. It is unknown if there were follow up interviews with these people. If so, we would have two more witnesses to Oswald being in Montreal.

Under the government-approved narrative, Oswald can’t be in Canada. He’s dirt poor, his wife does not acknowledge any trips during this period and if he does travel there, where does he get the money? How does he go via bus, train, or plane? However, as John Newman points out in his book Oswald and the CIA, the FBI acknowledges Oswald's whereabouts from April to June in 1963.  Oswald is supposed to be working at the William Reily Coffee Company during this time, being terminated for theft, on July 19.

More importantly, Tremblay’s report made it to the upper channels of the government. In one released document, an Airgram that was sent to the Department of State by the United States Consul General in Canada. Two sources are listed. Agent Tremblay, and an unnamed police officer quoted as a source in a Montreal Star newspaper article dated from November 27. At first they discount the affair, but then add: "However, there may be something to the story."

We may never know what led them to this conclusion and what they followed up on.

I respect Jean Paul Tremblay’s account of what happened. He’s no Johnny off the street, someone with years of changing statements for the Bugliosi’s of the world to chew up and spit out. In fact, he is virtually unknown in assassination investigation chronicles. Tremblay was a trained investigator, a professional in the examination of people and situations. His account stands. Too bad we don’t have his copy of the FPFC flyer he retrieved. It may exist in some file somewhere in the bowels of the beast.

Once again we have a story with evidence of a cover-up (FBI withholding documents and fighting to keep them withheld) and circumstantial evidence of Lee Oswald on covert operations. This is an event known to the FBI and kept from the public and all investigative agencies of the government for over 20 years. Once again, if there is nothing to it then why not release this information?

If we just had a photograph of him on the streets of Montreal as we do on the streets of New Orleans.

Sources: http://somesecretsforyou.blogspot.com/; Google; Newman, Oswald and the CIA, Bugliosi, Reclaiming History; www.history-matters.com

Parallels Between the JFK Assassination and 9-11

The first person killed on that fateful September morning in 2001 was Daniel Lewin. He was seated in first class with Mohammad Atta and boys on Flight 11. When the hijacking started, Satam Al Suqami rose and allegedly shot him, though the account of whether he was shot or sliced with a box cutter is at best hazy. It was the dawn of a new century and for all intents and purposes it starts here with the death of one man.

Danny Lewin was an entrepreneur, best known for co-founding the Internet company, Akamai Technologies. However, Lewin was a former Israeli commando that had served in the Sayeret Matkal, a top-secret counter-terrorist unit that specialized in combating plane hijackings. Interesting. What are the odds of a counter-terrorist expert, a man that probably killed his fair share of terrorists in the service of his country, sitting among his very adversaries? Our government told us that they had no prior knowledge of the attacks. Right. Was Lewin there as an observer in case things got out of control? Or was this some type of covert operation that Lewin was overseeing just to be double-crossed and killed by his operatives? I find it hard to believe it was mere chance that placed him there, on that plane, with those men.

The real parallel between the 9-11 attacks and the Kennedy assassination lie in the intelligence connections. Peter Dale Scott has coined the phrase, “deep events” to better describe what is happening. He documents how deep events—those actions brought about by hidden maneuvering—have threads all through the assassinations of the sixties and the various wars that have been fought through the decades. Deep events can help to explain the anomalies, the appearance of conspiracy, the cover-ups, the sham investigations, the kooky theories, and so on. The truth can never be fully unveiled as it opens up too many cans of worms.

Former CIA officer Joan Roman admitted to researchers in 1995 that the CIA had a “keen interest” in regards to Oswald (officially, they still deny any interest). The CIA did the same thing in regards to hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaz al Hazmi. Though still highly classified, it is known that the CIA was playing around with both men, hoping to use them in operations and probably did. Meanwhile, the FBI had been trying to recruit both of them. The CIA does not tell the FBI what they are doing with these men, as they don’t want anyone poking around in their business. The old, “need to know basis” came into play here and ultimately became a great detriment to the safety of our country and the lives of our citizens.

Just as CIA officials lied to the Warren Commission and later to the House Select Committee on Assassinations on what they knew about Oswald prior to the killing of Kennedy, they also lied in regards to what they knew about the hijackers. George Tenet told the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9-11 that information linking al-Mihdar to Tewfiq bin Attash, (who masterminded the Cole bombing) had been given to the FBI. Later, the 9-11 Commission would mull this over and decided this was not the case. Tenet would not be rebuked for his deceptions. It’s as if the same spirit possesses them all down through the ages.

The 9-11 Commission’s report makes the Warren Commission report look like an exercise in open government. Because at least with their report, the collected evidence was published in 26 volumes so independent researchers could investigate the facts. (Which, by the way, contradicts the official report.) Allen Dulles wasn’t worried about this causing any difficulty as he assumed nobody would be interested in going through them all. Yet people did. The overlords once again think we possess no wit. With the 9-11 Commission’s alleged investigation there would be no volumes of evidence to go examine. It was their word or nothing. Maybe in 30 years we’ll learn more.

This time around they tidied up their act with president Bush making sure he had his own man, Philip Zelikow, as executive director to control the flow of the investigation and decide what evidence and witness testimony would be cherry picked to complete the narrative. It addressed none of the major issues, issued unnecessary details, had selective amnesia in not reporting president Bush’s delays and obstructions to the Commission, failed to mention Al Qaeda's CIA and MI5 origins, and featured none of the conflicts in the testimony such as the Mineta’s contradiction of Cheney’s timeline. It would garner the nickname, “The 9-11 Omission Commission.” Apply so. Nevertheless, the mainstream press accepted the report with little complaint as they did the Warren Commission Report when it was released.

The cover up of the Kennedy assassination is systemic in our government and what we can best define as the National Security State. The 9-11 cover up continues the tradition though this time around it’s more insidious. It’s deeper and darker and more secretive. This tragedy resulted in legislation like the Patriot Act, which basically gives the government unfettered access to spy on every citizen. The Military Commissions Act and many others have strengthened it, granting the president dictatorial powers. Our fear should not be the next terror attack, but what our government's reaction to it will be.

The end result of the killing of John F. Kennedy was a policy change that led to an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, based on a fraudulent incident in the Tonkin Gulf. The end result of the 9-11 was an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, based on fraudulent intelligence. And the Masters of War profit once again.

Come now people. When shall ye arise?

Sources: 9-11 Commission Report; Marrs, The Terror Conspiracy; Morley, Our Man in Mexico; www.history-matters.com; Google

assassination

The Tale of the Two Wallets

Students of the assassination are familiar with the chain of events. First, Oswald reportedly takes his three shots from the sixth floor. He is then seen in the second floor lunchroom calmly drinking a Coke. Next, he’s off to the rooming house via bus and taxi to retrieve a .38 revolver. In a typically odd Oswald scheme, he heads off to the movie theater where he is apprehended in a scuffle with Dallas police officers. Along the way he runs into officer J. D. Tippit who is allegedly murdered by Oswald. I say allegedly, because eyewitness testimony on the murder of Tippet is a controversy all of its own. I’ll leave that for a future post.  

Meanwhile, after Oswald is arrested at the movie theater he refuses to identify himself. After searching him, his wallet is retrieved, containing an ID for Lee H. Oswald and a second ID for the Alek Hidell alias. Here comes the rub. Back at the Tippit murder scene the wallet is now in the hands of Dallas police captain
W. R. Westbrook. FBI agent Robert M. Barrett appears and is asked by Westbrook if he knows who Lee Oswald or Alek Hidell is. Apparently Capt. Westbrook examined the contents. Barrett says no. You would think this would be a damning piece of evidence to put Oswald away for the Tippit murder, but that is not the case. The wallet seems to fade out of the story. Barrett does not report this incident in his official FBI report but does tell James Hosty when he is writing his book (Assignment: Oswald, 1966) about the details of his visit to the murder scene and being asked about Oswald/Hidell.

At the Tippit murder scene a wallet is found. It is unknown when or who first discovered it. Apparently most people arriving at the scene—police, detectives, ambulance crew—did not recall seeing it anywhere lying about. Evidently, the police officers seen in the tape (it’s on YouTube.com) found it first or were handed to them from someone else. Later, the FBI will list the two wallets as coming from his belongings taken out of Ruth and Michael Paine’s garage. However, neither of the wallets were initaled by the Dallas police investigators. Nor does the Dallas police list them in their handwritten or typed inventory of items taken from the Paine residence.

The arrest wallet and second wallet from the Tippit murder scene are separated for a time, with the arrest wallet going to Washington with the second wallet ending up for a while in Captain Fritz's desk drawer where it remained until November 27th. It is eventually sent to FBI headquarters in DC, but they forget to photograph it and the contents. A formal request to the FBI to provide photographs of it is ignored. 

The only thing that can be certain is that a wallet was found at the Tippit murder scene. That’s because a news cameraman, Ron Reiland, from WFAA was there at the scene to film two police officers, examining a wallet.  

I read with great interest Vincent Buglosi’s struggle with this issue in the Endnotes of his book, Reclaiming History (see review). He finally concludes it is Tippet’s wallet and moves on. But, it’s not that easy of a conclusion to come to. I have yet to find any evidence of a log listing Tippet’s wallet. Par to the course, there are meandering rabbit trails all through this further confusing the mess that it already is (i.e., photographic evidence). Buglosi settles for an assumption and I can see why he did. That matter gets obscured quickly. 

Obviously, no man runs around with two wallets on him with two sets of IDs, one set of which is an alias. Unless he really is the nut the Warren Commission and its defenders claim him to be, going about with two wallets on his person. To mistakenly leave a wallet at a murder scene would be damning evidence of Oswald’s involvement with Tippet’s murder, yet it was never utilized—one of the strangest parts of the whole episode. It is as if the whole thing embarrasses them. Unless of course, it was planted, framing Oswald. But why frame a guilty man?  And then, who are the framers?

I conclude that the Tippit murder scene wallet belongs to Oswald. This of course implies a frame-up. I base this mainly on the statements of FBI agent Barrett, a man with an excellent service record with the Bureau. He has no reason to lie about the incident and his recollections remain consistent. It’s also verifiable that Captain Fritz had a second wallet belonging to Oswald in his desk drawer for some days after the assassination. Oswald was either fated to drop one wallet at the murder site, or else it was planted by a person or persons unknown. We know there was a wallet found. Of whom did it belong to?

Harry's Regret

In Harry Truman's own words from 1963 (italics mine):

Limit CIA Role To Intelligence
By Harry S. Truman, Copyright, 1963

INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 2 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
  

I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.

Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.


But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.


Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department "treatment" or interpretations.


I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.
    

Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."
   

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.


I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
    

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.


I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.


But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.


We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

The Rabbit Trail

Studying the Kennedy assassination is like running down an endless series of crisscrossing rabbit trails. As researcher Nancy Wertz said, "seemingly random and innocuous or irrelevant information sometimes does form a pattern. It simply becomes a case of the sum of the whole equaling much more than individual components." There you have it—a fancier way of describing the nature of the rabbit trail system.

Trails can lead somewhere and sometimes they lead to a dead end, despite how purposeful they might first appear. At times I have to walk away from it all and take a breather and try to make sense of it all. It fatigues the mind.

My most recent trip down the trail came to a junction where the multiple shooters live. It seems to me that if there are more shooters than Oswald, they are either using silencers or else they are shooting from the rear. The best witness to Oswald shooting out of the window on the sixth floor is AP photographer Bob Johnson. His had just finished off a roll and was reloading when he heard the first shot. Looking around and then up he saw the rifle barrel from the sixth window and saw the shooter withdraw. He could not make out the shooter. He reported hearing three shots. He came so close to getting a photograph of the ages. As a photographer that has missed a few great photo opportunities myself, my heart goes out to him. It would hurt me for a long time; it would matter not that I was a witness to history. However, his testimony is consistent and reliable down through the decades.

But even with this witness testimony there are problems. If Oswald took the Magic Bullet Shot, the one that passed through Kennedy and struck John Connelly, it would have to zigzag around Kenney’s ribs and spine to exit the throat. The angles appear to be off. (One of these days I’m going to get a model skeleton—hopefully a computer model—and pass a rod through there and see what bones are actually in the way.) On the other hand, if Kennedy is hit in the throat from the front, and then again from behind in the back, those bullets don’t exit. In that case, the x-rays should show fragments lodged in the upper torso. They do not. That rules out a frontal shooter.

Of course the whole Magic Bullet scenario is riddled with problems (see The Black Hole entry below). The bullet, CE 399, is in too unspoiled to have passed through both men, shattering one’s fifth rib (once from entry and twice from exit). No ballistic tests into cadavers or animals replicate this. Not to mention the array of bullet fragments found in Connelly’s body—one of which stayed in his thigh for the remainder of his life—which could not have come off of the CE 399. Whatever bullet hit Connelly shattered, leaving a debris field in its wake.

So here is another problem. Neither the single bullet pass-through nor a frontal shooter makes any sense. It all seems so impossible. Yet, we are expected to believe this illogicality.

My trip down the trail has made me tired again. I must go and take leave. A nap is in order. I hope I don’t dream of rabbit trails.

The Last Investigation, back in print

Good news, Gaeton Fonzi’s account of his experiences of being an investigator for HSCA, The Last Investigation, is back in print. A highly recommended read. Updated for 2008 with a new epilogue by the author. Check it out at www.maryferrell.org.