Unexplained Mysteries Of The JFK Assassination

(Updated with corrections at my Substack site.  https://georgebailey.substack.com/p/unexplained-mysteries-of-the-jfk)

Actually, the killing of John F. Kennedy is one long, drawn out mystery. Because something happened here that was so far out of normalcy. Every single thing involved with it is problematic; even the simple things like Oswald buying a money order to purchase a mail order rifle is rife has problems. Conspiracy can be debated forever, but one thing is for certain–the reasons regarding the death of President Kennedy were covered up by a multitude of government agencies both Federal and State, the military, and the media. But why? Either they did it, or else somebody else did and they never could find out what happened and couldn’t tell the public they couldn’t figure it out. Never the less, there was a swift rush to judgement to the point where Lyndon Johnson was being told by Joint Chiefs on the flight back to Washington that there was no conspiracy and the lone gunman was in custody. Amazing! How could they have known that so quick just hours after the event? Before any investigation had taken place? The Dallas police were still in the process of collecting evidence. This appears to be standard operating practice as this modus operandi would be repeated many times later, most notably the September 11 terror attacks where within hours of the disaster the government was relaying through the cable news networks that the crime was perpetrated by Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization. Once again, no investigation had started, nor any evidence collected from the smoldering crime scene to arrive at this conclusion. But somehow, they came forward with this no matter how strange this looks. Then years later, when they had the official government investigation, they issue a report arriving at the same conclusion they established on the day of the disaster, within hours of it happening. Nothing changed! The exact same thing occurs on November 22, 1963. Perhaps this nonsense is an easier sell within moments of a national tragedy than days or weeks later. However, it’s a recurring pattern that occurs over and over again. This is just one of many mysteries of the JFK assassination. Although there are enough to fill, and have filled, many volumes of books, what follows are a few more to consider. Oswald’s Money Order As with all things Oswald, this one episode is fraught with trouble too. In my article, Who Bought The Guns?, I chronicle the strange ends and outs of obtaining his guns. The problem is the money order he used for ordering the Mannlicher-Carcano from Kline’s Sporting Goods of Chicago is missing important routing codes. The routing codes are important as they trace the instrument through the banking system, insuring that each institution is only paying once. Only the endorsement stamp of Klein’s is visible. Missing are the stamps from the First National Bank of Chicago, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and finally, the Federal Postal Money Order Center in Kansas City where all good MO’s go for their final resting place. However, the money order was not found there in the but in the National Archives in Virginia. Mystery: Why are the routing stamps missing? Where are Oswald’s fingerprints on the money order and the order form? Why was the money order purchased at one post office and then mailed from a different one miles away? How did Oswald’s MO arrive in the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, VA? Or for that matter, who thought to look for it in the National Archives in the first place? The Otepka Incident Otto Otepka, a successful security analyst for the Department of State’s Office of Security, had his career destroyed by Lee Harvey Oswald. Or rather, his interest in the man. One day in June of 1960, while viewing a routine security file on defectors to the Soviet Union, Otepka noticed that one of defectors was listed as a tourist. The man’s name was Lee Oswald. Curious, Otepka contacted both the CIA and the FBI requesting more information on the man. After all, it was odd to see a defector listed as a tourist. He also was interested in uncovering if this man was really a defector or possibly, someone working for intelligence. This all sent ripples through the upper echelons of the government bureaucracy. What Otto Otepka did was look too closely at an individual that was under a national security blanket. This resulted in John Francis Reilly being placed in charge of the Office of Security in 1962. He would later state under oath that Robert Kennedy had placed him there. In essence, Reilly was to keep an eye on Otepka who by then had started his own file on Oswald. By 1962 he had his office phone tapped. In June of 1963 Otepka’s office safe was broken into and guess what file got stolen? Of course, the Oswald file. In the same month he was removed from his job. By September he had ten criminal charges brought against him which he was eventually successful in fighting off. However, this all has a genesis in Otto Otepka’s first and only meeting with Robert Kennedy which occurred in December of 1960. One of Otepka’s duties was issuing security clearances. There were several Kennedy appointees that he had denied. Bobby showed up late and agitated. Otepka calmly gave his reasons for denying the appointees and Bobby exploded. Otepka held his ground and Bobby, seeing this man was not easily rolled, left in a huff. For many years Otepka thought his troubles with Bobby began with the security clearances. Doing his own research years later he came to believe it was his curiosity in Lee Oswald that destroyed his career in government service. More powerful figures didn’t want him snooping around there and apparently, Robert Kennedy was one of them. By sending out inquires to other agencies Otepka inadvertently brought attention to himself–by those in the loop and those not in the loop. And he believed the Attorney General was behind it all. Mystery: So what did Robert Kennedy know about Lee Oswald and when did he know it? As early as 1960-61? Certainly by 1962 to have sent his people in to keep an eye on Otepka. What is the basis of the interest in Oswald at this early date? And what brought this to Bobby’s attention? Who learned of Otepka’s Oswald file? Did Bobby not want Otepka researching Oswald? And to what end? Multiple Oswalds If you are a steady reader of this blog you will know I’ve done done a lot of writing on the Oswald as doppelganger theory. It’s an interregnal part of JFK assassination lore and possibility of Lee Oswald being impersonated runs deep. It is something that can be viewed as a fringe subject but a careful investigation of witness testimony and documents collected by the Warren Commission shows a wealth of loose ends and conflicts. There is a disparity in employment records, tax forms, school records, and medical records. Even his autopsy face sheet has conflicts. There are not a handful of people that interacted with Oswald when he should have been somewhere else. There are dozens of these encounters ranging from New Orleans to Montreal. Some of these loose fragments are tied up with having another Oswald in play but that by no means solves all the problems encountered here with this subject. Namely, who is running this and what happens to the other Oswald after the assassination? As John Armstrong (Harvey and Lee) discovered through his research that if Lee Oswald is being impersonated the it starts as early as the age of 13. If he was impersonated that young, then his mother Marguerite must be impersonated as well. Suddenly things are greatly entangled–two moms and two sons. And both sets have to resemble each other, a seemingly impossible task. Add to that two more sons from previous marriages and a frightening path lies ahead for anybody wanting to develop this as an intelligence operation. And to what end? To be involved with an assassination somewhere down the road? Indeed, high strangeness is all over this. Indeed, I can see why many would dismiss this doppelganger legend outright. However, the trail of this enigma does not start out with what Gerald Ford called “armchair investigators” but in the highest echelons of the government itself. J. Edgar Hoover sent a memo in 1960 to the State Dept. with a warning that a Lee Oswald was possibly being impersonated. In 1961 a State Dept. official sent a memo to another, warning that the next time Lee Oswald is issued a passport, make sure he gets it personally; that way the right Oswald gets the right passport as it was suspected he was being impersonated. The possibly of a second Oswald had apparently made the rounds. In September of 1963 Lee Oswald makes his fabled trip to Mexico City. CIA station chief Winston Scott believed that Oswald being impersonated after examining the tapes from the bugged Soviet and Cuban diplomatic compounds. Hoover had his agents, seven of them, review the tapes and they determined the man speaking on the telephone calls is not Oswald. Shortly after the assassination, Hoover related this information to Lyndon Johnson. The new President in turn, used this for the final arm twisting of Earl Warren to get him to serve on the Commission. Those in the loop knew Oswald was being impersonated from 1960 to 1963. And they kept this information to themselves. He was apparently more than just a malcontent with a delusions of grandeur. Other people were keeping track of him and his business for years. Lee Oswald remains the biggest enigma of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A mystery in life he as well in death as uncovered by Dr. Earl Rose when he did the autopsy. His report of the autopsy leaves out numerous scars which the body of the real Oswald should have had. Such as the three inch long mastoid scar on the left side of the neck, the two wounds in his left arm from the accidental shooting in the Marines, and his small pox vaccination scar. Later, mortician Paul Groody who prepared Oswald’s body for burial was contacted twice by the Secret Service in regards to Oswald’s left arm and twice he told them he did not see any scars just as Dr. Rose had not documented them either. Mystery: If Lee Oswald is being impersonated then what happens to the other “Lee” after the assassination? Or for that matter, his other mother? Are they put in safe houses or executed? Did the other Lee do the shooting leaving the real Oswald to be the patsy? Is this one of the fundamental secrets of the assassination and hence, the cover up? Classified Files One thing all investigations into the JFK assassination have in common is not what they uncover, rather, what they cover. They all add to the classified evidence pile. From the Warren Commission through the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission, and lastly the House Select Committee on Assassinations, they all take information and classify it so the general public can never see it. The Warren Commission supporters come along and say, “See? They did all these investigations and they uncovered nothing new. The Warren Report stands.” I hear you Mr. Bugliosi. Not really. New information is uncovered, it’s just buried through classification. Every so often a researcher will obtain documents through a FOIA request and it’s apparent why the files were classified to begin with. Researcher Harold Weisberg uncovered such gems as the 1/22/63 closed-door meeting where the Commissioners decided not to pursue any leads on Oswald being a government informant/agent (despite what they said to the contrary) and the CIA’s National Photographic Intelligence Center report, #1641-450, that examined the Zapruder film to determine the timing between shots one and two, which they determined to be a period of 1.6 seconds, which are impossible to do on a bolt action rifle. To fire off shots that fast would require a second shooter and hence, a conspiracy. So one can understand why these records are kept secret. Any evidence that leads away from the Lone Gunman is to be covered up by any means. And classification does that. After all of this time files are still classified from the beginning. Marguerite Oswald's tax returns from 1956 to 1962 are still sealed. They are marked, "referred...postponed in full." Of course many files on Lee Oswald are still withheld. Oddly, there is a John and Minnie Smith from the same exact time period, 1956-62 that are also classified and nobody knows who they are! Michael and Ruth Paine’s returns from 1956 to 1958 are classified as well, at time in their lives when they were listed as being employed as a farmer ad a farmer's wife. Lee’s cousin Marilyn Murret had all 23 pages of her testimony to the HSCA in 1977 classified. The list of classified information could fill many volumes–and goes deep in the belly of the Beast. But don’t be surprised. The government has yet to release the autopsy photos of John Wilkes Booth, held in storage for 145 years. Mystery: What is being covered up here? Could the tax returns being still being withheld from the public show just who Lee Oswald was working for during the 1956-62 period? Such as maybe the FBI, ONI, or the CIA? He’s in the Marines from 1956-59. So why hide his income from that? Also, many tax and employee documents on Lee Oswald are missing or withheld for various reasons. Just want kind of threat to National Security is there if Marguerite Oswald’s tax returns were released? Collins Radio The connections to the Collins Radio corporation has threads that run throughout the JFK assassination. A major defense contractor, journalist William E. Kelly wrote the following about them: “Collins Radio supplied and maintained the equipment used by the Voice of America, all manned NASA space flights, the Strategic Air Command (SAC), as well as all equipment used for the CIA’s Guatemalan and Cuban operations. Most significantly, Collins Radio was responsible for installing and maintaining all radio equipment aboard Air Force One, Air Force Two and the Cabinet’s plane." Kelly further adds, “Collins Radio not only installed and maintained the radios aboard most military and executive branch planes, they also operated the station known as ‘Liberty’ at their Cedar Rapids, Iowa headquarters, which served as a relay station for all radio communications between the White House, the Pentagon, Air Force One, Air Force Two, the Cabinet plane and Andrews AFB in Washington.” In one of the more stranger incidents recorded in the history of the assassination, mechanic T. F. White noticed a man sitting in 1958 two-tone Plymouth sedan. To White, he was acting suspiciously as the man watched a flurry of police cars speeding to the murder scene of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. White exchanged glances with the man, who drove off. White wrote down the license tag number: PP4537. Later, as Lee Oswald’s image was broadcast on TV, White recognized him at the man in the Plymouth. Later, authorities would trace down the tag to a car belonging to Collins Radio employee Carl Mather of Garland, Texas. When contacted, Mather’s wife responded that her husband was at work the day of the assassination. The important point to consider here is that T. F. White says he saw a man resembling Oswald occupying and driving off in Mather’s car. It should be added that Mather was a close friend of J.D. Tippit and later that afternoon drove to the Tippit residence to offer condolences. Even more peculiar, the FBI interviewed mechanic T. F. White later for additional details about his sighting but but do not interview Carl Mather. Even stranger, years later, The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) offered Mather immunity then never do question him under oath. It has since been uncovered through the JFK Records Act that investigators did talk to Carl Mather and discovered that he was responsible for installing the radio gear in Air Force Two, the Vice President’s aircraft. Nevertheless, this is basically a great lead that is never followed through on or adequately sussed out. Why? I think it is safe to assume that Mather possessed a high level security clearance for his work. I am not saying that Mather was a government informant but he does get the kind of coddling that an informant usually receives in an investigation. Collins Radio’s involvement in Military-Industrial Complex and National Security State operations, runs deep. Everything from hiring Paper Clip Nazis to leasing a ship, the Rex, that was used to place assassins on the shores of Cuba to assassinate Fidel Castro. Lee Oswald, upon returning to America was introduced to a Collins Radio executive by Russian emigrant George de Mohrenschildt for possible employment. Though trivial, Oswald’s widow, Marina married a former Collins Radio employee, Kenneth Porter. Mystery: What is the true Collins Radio link to the assassination, if any? Did T. F. White really see Lee Oswald in Carl Mather’s car? Did Mather know Oswald and loan him his car? The timeline is off–did White encounter an Oswald impostor? Why is Carl Mather treated so lightly to the point of being virtually ignored by investigators? The Kennedy Family One has the feeling at Kennedy family gatherings the death of John is the ghost in the room. Publicly, they support the Warren Commission’s conclusion. Privately, apparently not. David Talbot in Brothers, calls Robert Kennedy the first conspiracy theorist in the death of Presidential brother and told family confidants so. He did not believe in the Warren Report’s conclusion. In examining mysteries of the assassination I find nothing more mysterious than this large Irish-Catholic family’s silence on the issue. You would think somebody over time would break the hush. But so far, none have. It’s the job of the independent investigator to probe the depths of this thing. There is something deeply buried here that has insured their alliance to the myth. They won’t even speak up with John F. Kennedy is having his character trashed. Yes, Bobby okayed the wire taps on Martin Luther King. Yes, he was involved with the assassination plots on Fidel Castro. Bobby was very much involved with thwarting Garrison’s trial of Clay Shaw and had family henchman Walter Sheridan involved with all kinds of dirty business with that. One can only assume Bobby wanted to uncover the truth his way and on his timeline. Talbot in Brothers thinks it would be in another Kennedy administration in the oval office and hence Bobby’s fateful run. In a way Ted Kennedy sort of strikes back by his involvement with the Freedom of Information Act legislation which resulted in a number of revealing files being released. And that is about all we’ll ever get out of the Kennedys. Perhaps that is enough since the FOIA could break the case open one day. Mystery: What insures the Kennedy family silence to this day? Epilogue This is just a small sampling of mysteries in the Kennedy assassination. There simply is not enough space to list them all. I selected a few of my favorites. There are three main phases in the life of Lee Oswald: The Russian phase, the New Orleans phase, and the trip to Mexico City. Any one of these episodes have enough intrigue and weirdness to leave the mind wondering just what was this former Marine really up to? I think the intelligence angle is valid one and I return to it often in my research. Every single thing in the case gets more troublesome the deeper one delves in which makes it so difficult to decipher what is really going on here. No wonder, almost 50 years afterward, the search for the truth continues. Sources McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust; Proudy, R. Fletcher, The Secret Team; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; Garrison, James, On the Trail of the Assassins; Mars, Jim, Crossfire; Bugliosi, Vince, Reclaiming History; Mellen, Joan, Farewell To Justice; Talbot, David, Brothers Collins Radio Connections, by William E. Kelly http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/01/collins-radio-connections.html

Nested Conspiracies

The two words “conspiracy theory” are often seen together. However, conspiracy is not a theory, it’s a crime. A felony. Apparently so rampant that our legal system had to criminalize it as it is an integral part of any criminal enterprise.

Listening to the Rollye James Show (XM-158) the other night a caller made an excellent point about about conspiracy–that there is often more than one going on at the same time. He said several of his relatives had been involved in the Bay of Pigs operation and he described the outward and then behind the scenes workings around the event. It’s multi-layered. That is why it makes it hard to sort out why things happen as they do in major events like assassinations or terror attacks and why so many theories are spawned to try and explain them.

This in turn, reminded me of my web programming days and when we using nested style sheets. These were pages of code for often repeated things such as headers, footers, or graphics of the same style. It made coding easier and more organized for a web developer, particularly when a lot of pages were involved in a large corporate web site. However, for an event like an assassination, these multiple layers of plots can sometimes be operated by different players, or sometimes not. But they do qualify as being nested. A nested conspiracy makes nothing easy and in fact, often complicates the event. No wonder we still argue over how many shots were or were not fired in Dealey Plaza in November of 1963.

A nested conspiracy is an example of multiple operations in action. Since there are multiple theories on the assassination, many seem plausible; from LBJ being involved to the CIA or the Texas Oilmen. Everybody has something to hide and classify under the grounds of National Security. (Or should that be National Insecurity?) At any rate, these operations may be in tandem with each other or separate functions from various factions. Like it is widely suspected that the CIA in staging the coup in Chile had President Salvador Allende assassinated and made to look like a suicide. But William Buckley, a former CIA Beirut station chief who would one day be kidnapped, tortured, and killed by Hezbollah told a journalist that it wasn’t the Agency that did it. Somebody else killed Allende but they never found out who.

The Nested Conspiracy of Watergate
Another example of a nested conspiracy is Watergate. Much has been written about the greatest political scandal of 20th century, the seemingly obscure break-in of Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel that ultimately led to the downfall and the first ever, resignation of a sitting President, Richard Nixon. The official story on this scandal from the mainstream media was that Nixon was a big liar and a crook. The Washington Post concentrated on him to the exclusion of all else that was in orbit around the affair. But time reveals a lot of secrets.

But only one author Jim Hougan in his book, Secret Agenda, has written about the other side of the conspiracy–that which involves the CIA. At the time all the energy for the scandal revolves around Nixon and his aides and there was largely little focus on the five arrested burglars being active CIA agents (and all former active in the Bay of Pigs operation). Hougan suggests that the CIA’s involvement was not a take down of Nixon but more of a fishing expedition for blackmail material through the call girl ring operating out of the Watergate hotel. It was the CIA that offered technical help, the agents, safe houses for meetings, disguises, even the graphics that G. Gordon Liddy used for his famous Gemstone presentation to AG John Mitchell. Whatever the case, they did a great job at shielding themselves from being portrayed as participants in the affair–which according to Hougan they were.

Conversely, authors Lee Colodny and Robert Gettlin in Silent Coup head off in a different direction pinning most of the scandal on White House lawyer John Dean. The authors point out conclusively that Dean’s future wife’s name (Mo Biner) was found on a list of women that were part of the call girl ring operating out of the Watergate hotel. Dean then seeks to quash any information on this and is responsible for running his own clandestine intelligence operation behind Nixon’s back and then when it all blew up orchestrated the cover-up which Nixon took on and ran with. It is apparent that Dean was instrumental in setting Nixon up with his perjured testimony in front of Congress and in the many trials to follow. To be fair, Nixon had a proclivity towards intrigue to begin with which led him down his disastrous path. However, Colodny and Gettlin portray John Dean as the biggest liar in the whole affair, which may come as a shock to some people who lived through the Watergate scandal at the time.

So Watergate ends up with four forces at work here: The CIA on one hand digging for dirt and making sure their real aim is not revealed; the Washington Post and Woodard-Bernstein focused on Nixon to exclusion of all else; John Dean’s machinations behind the scenes as a one-man wrecking ball; and finally, Nixon and his aides doing cover-up for their crimes they so easily drifted into.

And maybe this is how it’s understood. But who can say for sure?

JFK and The Nested Conspiracy
How many nested conspiracies converge at Dealey Plaza? Author Philip F. Nelson in LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK's Assassination, provides a reasonable scenario for Lyndon Johnson setting up a conspiracy to have John Kennedy killed as outlandish as it might seem to our American sensibilities–our sense of American Exceptionalism–that we don’t do this sort of thing because of our special place in the world. In many ways it’s a hard thing to confront. It’s like reading about the Franklin child sex ring scandal. We know there is corruption in high places but it’s shocking to get a glimpse of how cold the evil really is. It sends chills down to the bone. Nevertheless, Johnson did all he could have done to set up a kill-zone for Kennedy. He was the architect behind the trip in the first place, a trip Kennedy didn’t want to take. His aides made sure the Secret Service were given detailed instructions on what JFK desired for his security whether it was true or not (it wasn’t). Kennedy never talks to the Secret Service because he is trusting them to protect him; conversely, the Secret Service never asks Kennedy what he wants as they are assuming Johnson and his aids are telling the truth. Afterwards the blaming starts from the Johnson camp to distance themselves from the disaster and deflect any inquiry. And it worked. The Warren Commission nor any investigative body that follows ever does a complete investigation into the security failures of the Secret Service. If they did, many of the roads would mostly likely lead to LBJ.

However, with the LBJ scenario seems to require a lot of helpers on the side. The CIA, always comes up as a culprit via guilt through association with numerous illegal and deadly clandestine affairs. Since one of their guys, Lee Oswald was mixed up in the affair it behoves them to play Cover One. (Not to mention that too much investigation would reveal too much about their operations.) We know there was a false defector program to the Soviet Union of which Oswald was most likely involved in. CIA documents feature an agent interviewing a former marine that re-defects back. Who seems very familiar to Oswald. The CIA opens a SIG 201 file on him in 1960, a file that is only opened on agents. Then you have the whole business of Oswald actions in New Orleans and later in Mexico City which bely a man conducting field theater, i.e., operations. The CIA has a lot to cover for here.

Cover Two is played by J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI. Hoover has to lie about what they knew about Oswald since the Bureau took notice of his defection in 1959 (memos on the defection were sent to all branches of the military and all major government agencies) and Hoover had been amassing weekly reports on Oswald from 1960 onwards. Plus, Hoover established the lone gunman theory within twenty-four hours of Oswald’s arrest which served to head off any inquiry into a conspiracy, along with Johnson’s aides pressuring every Texas law official into going along with the scheme. Then later, LBJ forms the Warren Commission to further head off any independent investigations that were brewing in Texas and in the Congress. Ultimately, Hoover leans on the Warren Commission enough along with LBJ (and the weak sister, Earl Warren) to direct it towards the true goal–lone gunman with no plot.

There were many other investigations to follow, each one never satisfying the public’s distrust of the official story. Each one ends up adding more levels of secrecy, with a never ending load of classified (concealed) evidence.

The Media Layer
And the mainstream press is there to add the final layer. Journalist Mike Golden has an excellent article, Assassination By Omission: Another Look At Serial Plagiarist Gerald Posner, where he describes how he ran head-on into it in 1998 when he scored the last interview with Dr. Martin Luther King’s alleged assassin, James Earl Ray in April of that year. He was preparing an article for Vibe magazine, a publication with a mainly black readership when the Editor-in-Chief Danyel Smith pulled the plug on the project without explanation. In fact, nobody in the media wanted anything to do with this. It was radioactive.

In Golden’s words:

“Every other mainstream publication I approached refused to even listen to the tape, much less read the transcript of the interview, for fear, I suppose, of possibly having to reveal information that could get them into deep trouble. With who and for what, I can’t tell you. After all this time, I still can’t put names behind who was calling the shots or what they were afraid of hearing come out of Ray’s mouth. But whoever they were, they were pretty high up the old totem pole, and they know more than you or I...”

Isn’t this a conspiracy going on here? Anyway, this is not unusual. John Barbour, creator of the popular Real People television show once had a popular radio program in the Los Angeles market. Just as he was getting ready to have Jim Garrison on for an live interview, his program was quickly pulled off-air. No explanation. He was finished in that radio market. Later he was doing a show, Speak Up America. He got in contact with Jim Garrison again and arranged for a three-hour taped interview. When it was broadcast it was edited to make Garrison look like a kook, with Garrison saying there were 32 shooters in Dealey Plaza when the unedited version he states there were three teams of two shooters per unit. A classic case of libel. The same thing was done to assassination witness Orville Nix (See my article, How CBS Screwed Orville Nix, HERE). John Barbour was appalled and complained to the producer. After that he was let go of Real People and the show went downhill from there.

Shades of Chuck Harder’s velvet hammer.

The Nested Conspiracy Forever
The Kennedy assassination is probably not the first nested conspiracy ever to be put into action but certainly is a good example of a modern one. All the ones that follow copy it to some degree. Just look at the controversy of the 9-11 attack. It’s the 21st Century version of the Kennedy assassination complete with bloodshed, never ending controversy, destruction of evidence, a resulting war, tons of new evidence to classify, a shoddy investigation with a shoddy report, and two camps of independent investigators slinging mud at each other.

In regards to the investigators, many can be highly educated, degreed people that make perfect sense in their arguments but then certain details don’t fit. Such as Dr. Steven Jones and his thermite research. When Dr. Judy Wood asked Jones where is thermite ever used to demolish a building he does not reply to her. Answer? It never is according to Dr. Wood (who is a proponent of an exotic technology being used instead of conventional explosives). Yet Dr. Jones’ research has a large following and his work has been peer reviewed. And the 9-11 research community is rife with this sort of goings on as are other research groups such as those in the Kennedy assassination crowd. There is disinformation going on here but from whom?

There are so many operations in effect there to even begin to write about it would probably cover many volumes. You start out with the Arab terrorists hijacking commercial airliners. Coinciding with the hijacking is a Pentagon simulation of a hijacking of said commercial airliners. Then you have Mossad agents filming the towers being attacked and falling down (their interrogation and film classified). Meanwhile, you have the destruction of large amounts of financial records that were stored in the buildings. The FBI is another player stating there were no black boxes found at Ground Zero, that is later contradicted by two firemen who say they found the recorders.

With so many players involved with so many controversial events, be they individuals and or government or corporate agencies, all serve to lead people astray. How can one sort any of this out with so many players involved? It’s extremely difficult if not impossible. Because it’s all nested. Everybody can write their books and post on their web pages in the hunt for an angle. And nobody is going to get close. Because it’s all nested.


Sources
Nelson, Philip, LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination; Hougan, Jim, Secret Agenda; Colodny, Lee and Gettlin, Robert, Silent Coup; Prouty, Fletcher, The Secret Team, McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust

John Barbour, Coast to Coast AM radio interview, 5/31/09.

Mike Golden
http://exiledonline.com/assassination-by-omission-another-look-at-serial-plagiarist-gerald-posner/

Dr. Judy Wood
http://www.drjudywood.com/

Rollye James Show
http://www.rollye.net/

The Oops! Moment

They tell us that Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger that killed the President of the United States. Too bad he didn’t bother to leave his fingerprint on the trigger.

Oops!

They tell us that the final kill-shot to the back of President Kennedy’s head was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald as he fired his rifle from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository Building. Too bad there was a live oak tree blocking the view.

Oops!

Lee Oswald allegedly snuck his rifle, dissembled, in a long paper bag he allegedly made. It was found in the so-called sniper’s nest on the sixth floor. Two weeks after the assassination, in the Dallas Post Office’s dead letter department, was found a package addressed to Lee Oswald but with the wrong street address on it. It featured no return address and was .12 short on the postage. When opened it was found to contain a second paper bag of the same make and dimensions of the first bag. Two bags for one rifle?

Oops!

Some people think Lyndon Johnson was behind a conspiracy to have John Kennedy assassinated. The two apparently argued about having John Connolly ride in the Presidential limousine for the trip through Dallas. But did LBJ let the cat out of the bag when he tried to talk JFK out of having Jackie ride in the limousine with him too?

Oops!

When Lee Oswald was appearing in a radio debate program, Conversation Carte Blanche, with Carlos Bringuier, Bill Stuckey, and Edward Butler, he was given a hard time about his time in Russia and his communist background. He blurted out the following: “I was under the protection of the...that is to say, I was not under the protection of the American government.”

Major Oops!

Lee’s Russian wife Marina’s understanding of English was supposed to be so bad that she needed a translator when testifying for the Warren Commission. However, during contract negotiations (see next Oops) Marina spoke privately without a translator to her brother in law Robert Oswald, in English, about why her agent’s commission had gone up. Lee wrote her letters when they were living in Russia and many were in English. She could read it but not speak it?

Oops!

Marina Oswald signed a contract with Tex Italia Films for them to do a film about her in the spring of 1964. She was paid a flat fee of $132,350. Shortly thereafter Tex-Italia Films went out of business and no film was ever made. Disappeared. Kaput. The three men running Tex-Italia Films were kicked out of their office for non-payment of rent. The FBI checked out their backgrounds and found nothing on them. They could pay Marina $132,350 but they couldn’t pay their rent? Why, we don’t have a key Warren Commission witness being bribed here do we?

Oops!

Gerald Posner, author of the pro lone gunman book, Case Closed, used to say he had documents that proved that Lee Oswald and David Ferrie were not in the Civil Air Patrol together in the mid-1950’s. Then the famous CAP bivouac photo was shown on a PBS Frontline special showing David Ferrie and a teenage Lee Oswald at camp.

Oops!

Lee Oswald ordered the 36” model of the Mannlicher-Carcano. The rifle found hidden in the boxes of books on the sixth floor was the 40” model that was no longer for sale at Klein’s Sporting Goods at the time Oswald allegedly ordered it.  Likewise, Oswald ordered the regular Smith & Wesson .38 revolver but on his person was found the Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver which at the time cost $10 more.

Oops!

The postal money order that Oswald allegedly used had the following batch number printed on it: #2,202,130,462. As researcher John Armstrong discovered, that was from a batch that should have been for sale in late 1964 or early 1965. The money order was also missing three of the four routing stamps, did not have Oswald’s fingerprints on it, and was not found in the final resting place, the Federal Postal Money Order Center in Kansas City. It was, in fact, found in the Federal Records Center in Alexandria, VA. Who thought to look for it in the National Archives? This is another...

Oops!

Philip Willis and his family were in Dealey Plaza the day of the assassination. Phil shot pictures using 35mm slide film that were soon after published in Look magazine. Shortly thereafter, the FBI requested the slides to study them. Years later they got them back though they noticed there was one slide that didn’t look right. It featured an image that was published in Look. Upon comparison from the transparency to the image published in the magazine they found the problem. The train visible in the Look magazine image was missing from the slide. While in Federal custody somebody had airbrushed out the train from the original transparency.  Destruction of material evidence is a crime should you and I do it. Can you say...

Oops!

Dallas on 11.22.63 was also the convergence of three men that would one day be President of the United States. They were, Lyndon Jonson, Richard Nixon, and George Bush Sr. Nixon in particular was in town for a bottlers convention being a lawyer for the Pepsico Company and flew out that morning. Initially, Nixon denied even being in Dallas the day of the assassination. But later he was reminded of statements made to the Dallas Morning News of his prediction that John Kennedy planned on dumping Lyndon Jonson off the 1964 ticket. He then had to say...

Oops!

When former counterintelligence chief James Angleton was giving his testimony to Congress, he was asked about the memoirs of Mexico City station chief Winston Scott. Angleton denied the memoir was fact, instead insisting it was fiction and also denying there was a chapter on Lee Oswald. Scott’s son Michael battled with the CIA for years to get a copy of his father’s book. When he finally got it most of the pages were redacted. Of the 221 pages, only 90 were readable, the rest classified. Of course that includes the blacked out chapter on Lee Harvey Oswald.

Oops!

The Bane Of My Existence, He Said...

The title to this piece is a quote taken from a caller to George Noory’s Coast To Coast AM show from Thursday night that featured Linda Moulton Howe discussing various topics for the late night UFO crowd. The caller claimed to be the son of a Dallas medical examiner that served from 1969 to 1973 and also did work for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He said his father knew Lee Oswald’s wife and mother. The caller seemed to be hinting of inside information into the JFK assassination and he used his insider approach to critique the JFK movie and cast doubts on the grassy knoll shot. (He brought up Kennedy’s back brace to limit the President’s movements for instance.) And for a while, he claimed, he was thusly involved with studying the death of Kennedy.

Overall, a good example of a disinformation agent (yes, I’m assuming this but just look up Operation Mockingbird) calling in to a talk show to sway the public because his information he provided, ultimately added nothing new to what actually happened. Even if the caller’s father was a medical examiner from the time he said, what new light could he possibly shed on the subject? It all went down in 1963. The autopsy was not done in Dallas, but at Bethesda Naval, a military instillation. If the Feds had obeyed Texas state law, Dr. Earl Rose would have done the autopsy. But that was not meant to be. So all evidence, including records, are whisked off to Washington to end up in the National Archives. There should be nothing of value left in Dallas for a later pathologist find out. Look at how much knowledge Dr. Rose did not have access to from being denied an investigation of Kennedy’s wounds. As if some Johnny-come-lately will? There is nothing the caller’s father could have known or added to what happened; he is too far out of the loop in time and geographical distance. Who would he know in the Coroners Office that would have anything additional on the subject since they didn’t do the autopsy?

And let me state for the record there is nothing wrong or suspicious with somebody having a differing opinion on the Kennedy assassination; but it gets my back up when someone calls into a radio program and starts making misleading statements . These disinformation agents (and those that disperse them) are banking that a person speaking authoritatively, while claiming deep connections, can shift the facts around for people who might have a basic knowledge of the subject. I admit, this guy was pretty good. Better than most. And the caller wasn’t done there; he then brought out his ballistics expertise not only of himself but his father as well. (Gee, these guys know how to cover all the bases!) He gave no qualifiers about the alleged ballistics knowledge. My whole point here is that he gave an account that was misleading on many levels and flat-out inaccurate on others. The story of his father simply doesn’t wash; we have no name to investigate further. So I must conclude it is another attempt to sway public opinion on a radio program that is heavy into conspiracy to begin with and is basically critical of most of the propaganda that the Federal government regurgitates.

And as usual they are very annoyed with Olivier Stone’s JFK movie. The caller took time to dismiss that as well, claiming that what people know about Kennedy’s fatal head wound they came from that movie. Never mind the Zapruder film is the true source, besides the multitude of witness testimony.

So ultimately, it is the “bane of existence” for the Government, via the National Security State, to keep the truth of the Kennedy assassination in deep cover. You would think they would give up over the years or cease talking about it but it is never ending. It is as if Hoover, Helms, Rankin, and other characters are still alive working the cover on this. Doubters are still called names and are still being marginalized. Old hacks like Vincent Bugliosi are hired to defend the Warren Commission with fat books of straw man theories and insults. They can’t even come up with new put-downs. They still use the “flat earth/tin foil hat” mockery.

So let us seekers of the truth continue the quest. I bet there is more buried here than a slain president. More than the truth. I bet it's something really far out.

Put A Quarter In...Get a Dollar Back

Immediately after the assassination of the John F. Kennedy, several remarkable events happened in quick succession that were long held secret.

It is common knowledge that aides to President Lyndon Johnson quickly brought pressure to bare on all Texas law enforcement officials to hand over everything they had on Oswald to the FBI. The President, allied with the FBI Director conspired to countermand Texas State authority over the crime investigation, the evidence, and the body itself, getting it transferred to a military hospital (Bethesda Naval) for the autopsy. This amounted to total Federal control of the incident. Apparently somewhere along the way they uncovered major issues with the evidence and sought to manipulate it so their story of a long gunman would hold up. It was a hurried and sloppy affair and they left lots of clues in their wake.

Largely unknown for years afterward was the ceremonial gifting of the evidence collected by the Dallas Police to the FBI on November 26, four days after the assassination. Notice the word “ceremonial.” Because this was not the first transfer of evidence to the FBI. It was actually the second. The first occurs within 24 hours after the assassination. This is admitted to by FBI document specialist James Cardigan in a deposition he gave to the Warren Commission, unpublished in their 26 volumes of evidence, but finally released to the National Archives in 1992.

Here is what Mr. Cardigan had to say:

“Initially, the first big batch of evidence was brought into the laboratory on November 23 and this consisted of many, many items...It was a very large quantity of evidence that was brought in.”

He added:

“Time was of the essence and this material, I believe, was returned to the Dallas Police within two or three days.”

However, this created a host of problems. All evidence obtained by the Dallas Police was initialized by the officer that discovered it. The makes an item traceable to that officer should there be any questions. This also is known as the chain of evidence. Incredibly, the Dallas Police got back more evidence than they sent off! The innovatory list grew from 5 pages to 21 pages. Which raises the question of, where did the FBI get all of this extra stuff? And so fast after assassination? Dallas was Oswald’s final place of action; Dallas is the vector. The FBI apparently added on to the inventory list with things from Washington, as all items belonging to Oswald and all items from the crime scene were in Dallas as gathered and documented by the Dallas Police. Since no initials from the FBI agents are used on the things they submitted, there is no way of sourcing where the new evidence came from. Normally, FBI agents use a series of forms, depending upon use, for collecting evidence such as a D-504a (Chain of Custody), or a FD-597 (Receipt for Property Received, Returned, Released, Seized). None of this documentation has ever been found. Most likely these forms were not issued because the FBI wanted to make it look as if all evidence originated from the Dallas Police. But as we see, it did not! So it must be stated then, that the only reliable evidence recovered is that found by the Dallas Police Department because it can be traced.

And what is the point of this? To erase any doubt that Lee Oswald was involved in a conspiracy. What other reason would there be? It makes no sense otherwise. We see some of this in action with the Minox spy camera. The FBI brought pressure on the Dallas detective that properly identified it as a camera, wanting him to rename it a “light meter.” What light meter has a lens and film in it? Since it’s a tool of the intelligence trade, and the FBI knew this, it had to be covered up so that Oswald would not appear to be more deeply involved, either with the government or a conspiracy. (Mind you, this is coming directly from Hoover.) The detective didn’t budge and the FBI renamed it anyway, only admitting years later that it was indeed, a camera and releasing photos made with it. This is probably a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes at the FBI crime lab in Washington as they were sorting through, adding and deleting the evidence in their possession. If there was a conspiracy, evidence of it was taken out of play at this point.

Even more problematic is that the Dallas Police photographed all the evidence they collected. On the first pass-back by the FBI, a large number of negatives were not returned. Police Chief Curry contacted the FBI about this and he got a direct response from Hoover himself, stating that the photographs, some 196, were destroyed because they exhibited “faulty technique” by the Dallas Police photographer. Which of course, is nonsense. If he were that bad a photographer he couldn’t have kept his job ruining that many frames. The 196 negatives that were destroyed represents over half the photographs taken of the evidence. With so much evidence tampering going on one can see the need to make sure these images disappear. No telling what sort of conflicts would have arisen.

John F. Kennedy’s body is barely cold and already elements in the government are tampering with material evidence and committing a huge obstruction of justice. This series of acts broke the chain of evidence in the case. These devious actions on the part of Hoover and the FBI, of squirreling away evidence and then staging a show for the public, hint at a larger, darker, behind the scenes machinations of the investigation. If Oswald had not been killed by Jack Ruby it would have been a heck of a trial! Think of the evidence that would have to have been tossed due to this hanky-panky.

The Convergence
The more one digs into this case, the nastier it becomes. One begins to see laid bare a dark undercurrent of malfeasance and treachery that resemble Roman court intrigues. Even though Hoover is dead and gone it is as if his spirit still resides in the Bureau. This came to light a few years ago when the FBI denied it had found any of the black boxes from flights American 11 and United 175 that crashed on 9-11. Since then, New York City firefighter Nicholas DeMasi and volunteer Mike Bellone, have come forward to claim they were responsible for finding three of the four Flight Data Recorders and were told to keep quiet about it. They only came forward when they heard the FBI’s claims that no black boxes were ever found.

Seem familiar? It should. There were plenty of witnesses to the assassination that were told to shut their mouths too. However, It is good that men like DeMasi and Bellone are still around. Men that honor truth and seek justice. I just hope they are not crushed by the Beast that emerged from the ashes of Dealey Plaza.

Sources: Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; Douglass, James, JFK and the Unspeakable; www.ctka.net (Probe Magazine article archive); www.history-matters.com; Horne, Douglas, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board

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Gerry Ford Beats a Dead Horse

I recently found a used copy of Gerald Ford’s A Presidential Legacy And the Warren Commission. Published back in 2003 for the 40th anniversary of Kennedy’s death, this 2007 edition of the Warren Report has a new forward by Ford, touted on the front cover as his “final thoughts” on the issue. Actually, they could have been his first thoughts! Nothing has changed in his world despite the numerous investigations that followed and thousands of documents released under the JFK Act. It’s all more of a rebuttal to the critics whom he calls, “armchair investigators” of which I suppose I am one. Which of course, this made me wonder what he thought he did in this whole mess except to say yea and amen.

With his poker face and humble demeanor Ford always came off as a regular Joe, a real nice guy from the upper midwest. Known for his go-along-to-get-along approach to just about everything in life and politics, this is the man that can blithely write, “Our conclusions have yet to be proven wrong,” and who knows, maybe he actually believed that. Ford was capable of saying things that beggar common sense and do so with a straight, or shall we say, poker face. Just as he did when caught years later moving bullet holes around (his own handwriting, first draft) and when asked responded that he was just trying to be more specific. Uh-huh. Well yes, if you are writing a novel, but this is supposed to be a search for the truth, not history as you go. The changing of body wounds on the victim is a misrepresentation of evidence in a murder investigation and presented to the public as a fact. And he seems not to get what he has done. I’m flabbergasted, really. I guess these political types swim in different waters than the rest of us.

Gerald Ford was not immune from getting into trouble with his relationship with the Commission. Shortly after the Warren Report was issued Ford decided to write his own book on the issue as the critics were getting too close for comfort. His publisher saw an initial draft of Portrait of the Assassin and advised Ford to spruce it up and spruce it up and he did--with information from Warren Commission executive sessions which were still classified at the time. He first denied it committing perjury under oath, then admitted it and said he was sorry. Six months after becoming President he signed an order declassifying the aforementioned documents. There were several other embarrassing slip ups such as this over the years that all point to Ford being out of his element in the big leagues.

Fordisms
Gerald Ford was capable of saying some amazingly odd things about the Kennedy assassination. I’ve dubbed these comments Fordisms. I’ve already mentioned one with the bullet wounds. Sometimes Ford acted like his grasp on the truth was tenuous at best, favoring ideas that were devoid of common sense. There are quite a number that caught my eye in his forward and I’ll start on the minor ones first.

The first was when Ford wrote, “There were no preconceived opinions or sacred cows.” Well, yes there were. There were plenty. Here is an example. One sacred cow was conceived at their very first meeting, behind closed doors on January 22, 1964, when they discussed the possibility of Lee Oswald being a government agent. It was decided if they looked any further and found out that he was, then the public may not believe the lone gunman theory. So they decided not to look any further into the matter. So far reaching was this decision that they decided to destroy all records of the meeting. But somehow, the stenographer’s tape wasn’t and made its way into the National Archives where researcher Harold Weisberg got it released under a FOIA lawsuit. This is all documented in great detail in Gerald McKnight’s Breach of Trust. This proves the fix was in early on to disavow any hint of John Kennedy’s death being the result of a plot and designating Lee Oswald as the lone assassin. This follows in line with J. Edgar Hoover’s thinking that Oswald was the lone shooter, something he hatched within 24 hours of the slaying. This was bolstered by the now famous Asst. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach memo to Bill Moyers shortly after the assassination (and before the 1/22/64 meeting) on how they would like to precede with the situation that stated:

“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”

Talk To Everybody?
Another point that grabbed me was when Ford stated the following: “...we cross-examined everyone.” Not so fast! There is a huge number of witnesses that were not interviewed by the Commission and in many cases not by the FBI either. Of particular note are those people that gave testimony of more than one shooter. Such as the two FBI agents Jim Sibert and Frank O'Neill who were witnesses at the autopsy and saw that Kennedy’s back wound was not transiting, and hence, implicating another shot from the front and spoiling the lone gunman scenario. Arlen Specter made sure their report was buried in the National Archives and they were never called to testify. Two of the most glaring examples were the President’s personal physician, Admiral George Buckley and Newman family. Dr. Burkley is an important witness as he was in the motorcade when the shots were fired, was present at the Parkland Hospital trauma ward as the doctors there tried to resuscitate the dying President, signed the death certificate (described the throat injury as an entry wound), accompanied the body back on Air Force One to Bethesda Naval for the autopsy, witnessed it and signed the autopsy face sheet. His testimony was never taken by the Commission and it was a major oversight but his documenting the throat wound as an “entry wound” made him persona non grata.

Bill and Gayle Newman can be seen in many films and photographs made seconds after the shots rang out lying on the grass covering up their children. As Bill Newman has said in many interviews through the years, he told the FBI that he heard the third shot coming from behind them, from the grassy knoll. Their natural reaction was to hit the ground and cover their children. The Warren Commission did not take their testimony; as Bill said they didn’t want anything to do with us. Incredible, considering they were the closest witnesses to the exact moment the kill shot happened (besides the occupants of the limo). So no, Mr. Ford, you didn’t cross-examine everybody.

(Ironically in the forward, Ford mentions the Newmans as witnesses to hearing shots from the knoll; however, he says their testimony was misrepresented by conspiracy theorists. Unbelievable! That anyone touting expert knowledge of the case would ignore the numerous filmed interviews the Newmans gave over the years, including the first one given on live TV a few hours after the assassination, in their own words and unencumbered by anyone. A true Fordism! This is one of those Ford moments when he’s in an alternate universe where he has the right to wave a magic wand and make everything right again. Very well then, why didn’t you depose them to find out what they really heard and experienced first-hand? But that was not done.)

Alex Hidell’s Guns
For some reason or other in his forward, Gerald Ford has to delve into the Tippet murder and issue of Oswald’s rifle and pistol. Here he makes a series of goofs on the ownership of the guns. In Ford’s words: “The JFK assassination weapon was mailed to a P.O. Box and alias used by Oswald--the very same alias and P.O. Box used for the revolver...” This goof-up is huge because Ford is contradicting the Warren Report itself! (Appendix X, pages 411&414.) The only time Oswald used the Alex Hidell alias for a P.O. Box address was in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, long after the guns were ordered as stated in the report. The rifle order was placed under his alias for his P.O. Box address in Dallas in March of 1963, as clearly shown on the order form. And, as I pointed in detail in my article, Who Bought The Guns?, this box was authorized for Lee Oswald only; his application in the evidence volumes verifies this. So the rifle would not have even gotten to him and the package would be stamped “return to sender.” There are a host of other problems with the ordering of the guns on both sides of this from buyer (Oswald) to seller (Klein’s Sporting Goods). Please refer to my article linked above for more details on this problematic area.

In regards to the pistol--it wasn’t even sent to Oswald’s P.O. Box address as Ford states because it was sent COD to the Railway Express Agency in Dallas, where the gun was allegedly picked up and paid for. This is Ford’s second major goof. I release he was old at the time and his mind probably not as sharp, but don’t these big publishing houses hire fact checkers? Also, no receipts or shipping notices exist for this, nor the required “certificate of good character” that was required under Texas State law for a handgun purchased by mail order. The truth fogs on the gun purchases and has the appearance of someone else buying and handling the guns. It would have been interesting to see all of this sorted out in court at Lee Oswald’s trial but that of course, will never be.

The Last Commissioner
As the last serving member of the Warren Commission Gerald Ford must have felt a need (or was it the need of the status-quo?) to write some final words on the work of the Warren Commission. It appears another attempt at reviving some credibility for its legacy since its critics have given such an effective thrashing in the woodshed over the years. Mr. Ford does his best but he writes like man lost in a fog hoping it will all go away. He’s trying to set the record straight for the up-tenth time and in the pursuit of this goal, contradicts the very report he help to create. The truth is out there but he meanders around it like a man flash-blinded. Sometimes men bury the truth to protect a greater need. The former model and college sports star was in the end a Company Man. He was rewarded in a way, by a fellow Company Man, George Bush Sr., who leveled a spirited broadside against us armchair investigators at Ford’s memorial service. The former President’s words were harsh and angry as a King would be at a bunch of impudent peasants. Well, I’m sorry if we don’t believe you, but we don’t. You only told us part of the story and then locked the rest away for safe keeping as you always do.

I really do want to like Gerald Ford. I think ultimately he was an average man, of average intelligence, caught up in things far bigger than him. He seemed vastly unprepared to participate in all the intrigue he found himself in. There is always a need in politics for the weak sister and Ford was a man the Establishment knew would tow the line. And he did so unto death.


Sources:
Ford, Gerald R., A Presidential Legacy And the Warren Commission; McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; www.history-matters.org

Bill and Gayle Newman interview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi3hKo7dwt0


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