The Garrison Papers

New Orleans DA Jim Garrison

I am late to the party here.  Former New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s files were scanned and released as one massive zip file of 180 PDF files uploaded in 2016.  There is a lot to go through here for both researchers and people with an interest in JFK assassination research.  This is truly a deep dive so set your time accordingly.  

The zip file is 1.9 gigs and the unzipped basically the same size.  

https://archive.org/details/GarrisonPapers/Additional%20Thornley%20material/

And I also highly recommend Kennedy and King’s “Creating the Oswald Legend: Appendix” by Vasilios Vazakas.  It’s a long and detailed look at the cast of characters involved in JFK assassination research.  

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/creating-the-oswald-legend-appendix

Also posted on my Substack.  https://open.substack.com/pub/georgebailey/p/the-garrison-papers
 

The Women in Lee Oswald’s Life

From left: Marguerite Oswald, Marina Oswald Porter, Marilyn Murret, Ruth Paine

What impact did women have on the life of Lee Oswald?  There seems to be few studies completed on this subject.  Obviously there is no evidence of any woman being influential enough to push Lee along a path towards political assassination, that is if he were involved, or provide guidance for his political views.  Undeniably his mother plays the first and longest influential role, though one strained from a haphazard upbringing for not only Lee, but brother Robert and half brother John Pic.  Into adulthood, the three brothers would have little interaction with their mother.  Oswald’s only experience with a father figure was with Edwin Ekdahl, his mother’s third and final husband, and that didn’t last long.  Basically, most of the notable women in his life were family.

What follows is a look into four of the most important women in Lee Oswald’s life and a common thread that bonds them all together.  

The Mother

Now here is an odd bird.  Many of the Warren Commission members considered Marguerite Oswald to be a total kook, besides a rambling, annoying person.  She lived a life of multiple marriages, low paid jobs, moving here and yon, and a host of peculiar dealings.  For example after Lee went truant from school, Marguerite was interviewed by probation officer John Carro.  She could barely give any information that was correct.  She fumbled through names, death dates, marriages, and falsely claimed that her family owned property in Corning, Texas, a town that never existed in the state.  She couldn’t even get Lee’s birthday right, missing it by a day.  Some have suggested that this woman was not really Marguerite Oswald at all but instead, an impostor.  And what would be the purpose of that?She was peculiar but never gave evidence of being psychotic.  She was however, a habitual and lifelong liar, making numerous false statements from local to Federal authorities, all the way to the Warren Commission.  

She had a history of baffling business dealings as well. For example, she once bought a house and paid more than the asking price; she then sold it below its market value.  She neither paid a reasonable fee nor made a profit when she could have accomplished both.  A transaction only a nitwit would make.  She wanted the house quickly and needed for unknown reasons to unload it as swiftly.  In fact, she had a history of buying and selling houses often with no steady income to finance the mortgages and in some cases, requiring no mortgage at all.  

Whatever she did to raise her three sons (at one point placing John and Robert temporarily in an orphanage, keeping Lee with her; eventually Lee joined them), they grew up to have little to do with her.  In the now recorded home movie of the final family gathering at Thanksgiving of 1962 with the three brothers and their families, all were in attendance save for one...Marguerite.  And she lived in town.  Robert Oswald told the Warren Commission that she never knew of the gathering, was never invited and her name was never mentioned.  That was cold.  

She always maintained that her son Lee was some sort of government agent.  When asked, she never had any real proof.  It would have been a hard thing to prove anyway as no agency such as the CIA or the FBI would ever admit to it, especially after the assassination had taken place.  

But here is the oddest thing about this odd bird.  Her tax returns from 1956 to 1962 are classified.  Generally speaking, if your returns are classified, then it means the person was doing something classified for some agency of the government.  Your work history and living arrangements are listed in an IRS return.  If it lists “Department of Treasury” as an income source then you are working for the government in some capacity.  Her work history is one of menial jobs so perhaps this extra income would allow her to buy the many properties as she did.  Notice also this is within the time frame of Lee joining the Marines in 1956, defecting in 1959, and returning to the United States in 1962.  Senator Schwicker said there was a false defector program to the USSR.  If Lee is one of those defectors, then he is working for the government or the DOD.  Oswald’s tax returns of 1957, 1960 and 1961 have never been released.  When Marina applied for her Social Security survivor benefits she only got credit for two work years, 1962 and 1963.  All of Lee’s other income years were ignored.  Perhaps some of these returns would show a Department of Treasury income stream?

If Lee Oswald is a mystery then his mother remains another enigma. A researcher that interviewed her told me that she was languishing away for money, as in some sort of government pension, as if she were entitled to tax payer money for her son being involved in an enormous national tragedy.  She seems to be two totally different people to those that knew her.  Some people describe Marguerite as a tall, attractive, and pleasant woman.  Others knew a Marguerite that was short, poorly dressed, unlikable, and didn’t get along well with others.  It’s rare for people to have such a divergent impression of another person’s appearance and character.  Unless of course, she is being impersonated as John Armstrong suggests in his book, Harvey and Lee.  If Lee is an intelligence agent then most likely Marguerite is going to know to some degree.  Her sealed tax returns are a sign of deeper intrigue in the case than first imagined.  

Basically, what was she up to for 7 years that the government doesn’t want us to know?

The Cousin

Marilyn Murret was the daughter of Lillian Claverie Murret, Marguerite Oswald’s younger sister.  Lee stayed with the Murret’s several times during the course of his life.  His uncle Charles was a full-time steamship clerk, but also was a bookie on the side for Carlos Marcello.  Marilyn is an interesting character.  A school teacher by profession, she didn’t limit her educational skills to New Orleans and was quite the world traveler teaching in foreign countries.  The FBI investigated her background and found that Marilyn had traveled to Japan, Lebanon, Egypt, India, Iraq, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and many other countries.  She was once detained in East Berlin for twelve hours for unknown reasons.  She would be called to give her testimony for the Warren Commission and later, in 1978, for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.  

Marilyn Murret’s Warren Commission testimony in April of 1964 makes for an incomplete read.  Staff attorney Liebeler unfortunately spends most of it asking leading questions or questions regarding unimportant events, and then omitting the questions he should have asked.  For example, regarding Marilyn’s overseas treks, he asks her about her employment in those countries (only three and then as a teacher) but rarely asks her about her employment in New Orleans or during Lee’s childhood.  Does Liebeler ask about why she was doing so much traveling in so many countries or how she financed the trips?  No.  One trip was a 3-week vacation to Europe.  What did she do in those countries she didn’t have employment in?  Also, during her testimony she reaffirms the myth that Marina could not speak English other than rudimentary sentences.

Was Marilyn Murret an operative?  There are hints that she was.  As stated above, she gave her sworn testimony to the HSCA and all 23 pages of her testimony were classified and never released.  Even before she spoke to them, the Committee had to seek permission from the CIA in order to talk to her.  If she had no prior relationship with the Agency then why go to that trouble?  

Researcher Jones Harris, who briefly worked with Jim Garrison during his criminal investigation of Clay Shaw, told me of the time they brought Marilyn Murret into Garrison’s office for questioning.  A tall, attractive woman arrived accompanied by a gaggle of lawyers.   She sat and said little while the lawyers did all the talking.  Nothing came of this encounter and she was never called to testify at the trial.  Apparently she came prepared to do battle if called to be a witness and wisely let others do her talking for her.  It worked.

Dick Russell has even more intriguing news on Marilyn in his book about intelligence agent Richard Case Nagell entitled, The Man Who Knew Too Much.  Russell was told by Houston Post reporter Lonnie Hudkins that a CIA source had told him that Marilyn Murret was a CIA agent assigned to Japan in the late 1950’s and helped facilitate Oswald’s trip to Russia.  She arrived in Japan in September of 1959 and started teaching at an all-English school.  Was she teaching the children of the military?  Or the children of diplomats and government agents stationed there?  While that is unknown, it should be pointed out that all three of the brothers, John, Robert, and Lee as part of their overseas military service, passed through Japan.  In fact, it was Marilyn that told John Pic while stationed in Japan in 1959 of Lee’s defection (in a minor squabble, John said it was Marilyn and Marilyn said it was John’s wife–I side with John Pic’s account).

Russell also reports that CIA officer William George Gaudet told his lawyer that Marilyn may have worked for the Agency in New Orleans (Russell, p.120)

Marilyn has been asked if she was ever connected with the Agency and she vehemently denied it.  Despite her denials, Marilyn Murret, with her numerous and unexplained world travels, employing old espionage tricks such as using false birth dates of her parents on her passport applications (Lee did as well), the HSCA requiring a CIA nod to interview her and then her testimony is sealed, and having a former CIA officer admit that she may have worked for the Agency, it is very likely that she was involved in intelligence work for the government of the United States.

The Wife

Of all the women here, Marina Prusakova is the one with the most dubious background.  She has long been suspected as being a KGB operative.  That largely comes from several different aspects of her life. First off, her upbringing in Russia which includes graduating from pharmacy school at the age of 17, traveling widely around Russia, and her time in Leningrad where she may have been part of a Honey Trap.  In her personal life she was known as a rounder.  Secondly, her first years in the United States where she led everyone to believe that she could not speak English, when she could.  And lastly,  the amount of lying she did as a witness in front of the Warren Commission.  

Lee’s courtship and marriage to Marina was a rapid affair.  They met at dance, knew each other for a few weeks, got married, and had their first child not long afterward.  It’s no secret that it would be very hard for a Russian woman marrying a foreigner to leave the USSR with her husband, as she would need state permission to marry.  If allowed to leave, they would be expected to operate as a mole for the KGB in their new husband’s country.  Marina was allowed to get permission for all of this with minimal bureaucratic obstruction leading one to believe such an arrangement was made.

While friends and family members saw them as being a happy young couple, their marriage was apparently a stormy one with spats, separations, and allegations of Lee being an abusive husband. 

One of Marina’s gambits is maintaining her image of an innocent in America.  To the world, this poor, petite waif could only understand a few words of English.  However, this was far from the truth.  There were many instances of Marina speaking and reading English competently.  

The first hint came from the other defector, Robert Webster, who said he met her in Russia and she spoke English well enough, though with an accent.  Marina denies meeting him.  While still in the USSR, Lee mailed her letters in English.  In the National Archives, researcher John Armstrong found Marina’s notebooks in her handwriting, in English.  Robert Oswald after the assassination wrote an 15-page report for the FBI and said that Marina understood English and detailed a chat about her business contract with no translator present.  A few months later, Robert would surprisingly deny her language skills in his 1964 WC testimony.  Her business manager James Martin in his testimony to the HSCA in 1978 said Marina understood everything said to her in English.  And after all of this, Marina needs a Russian language translator to give her testimony to the Warren Commission!  

For more on Marina’s background and English speaking abilities you can read my article, From Marina Prusakova, With Love.

Was Marina working for Russian authorities during the early years of residence in America and beyond?  The CIA suspected so and documented their beliefs in a 29-point report.  Marina’s story of her life is basically of her own making.  There was no way at the time to double-check her account of anything she reports.  Marina’s ruse of pretending not to speak English when she could is unnecessary and leads to the notion that she had something to hide, especially from American authorities such as the FBI and the US Secret Service.  Lee followed a similar strategy, rarely speaking in Russian while in the USSR even while he was a very good Russian speaker.  Their apartment in Minsk was bugged, and he most likely did not want to be suspected of being a spy and hence arrested.  Perhaps Marina had the same fear of being exposed.  

Marina must have not be cut out for the spy business as she was caught lying numerous times with everybody from the FBI to the Warren Commission.  At one point Senator Richard Russell accused her of lying on six different issues.  This brought Marina to tears.  Being the star witness, she signed a deal with Tex-Italia to produce a film on her life.  She was paid a six-figure sum before film makers disappeared and no film was ever made.  Nice, uh?  No one thought to question her about this deal at the time.  She did her best to incriminate her husband in the crime.  In recent years, without the pressure exerted on her, she’s turned around and no longer considers Lee guilty of killing President Kennedy. 

Lastly, their relationship can be summed up best by Marina’s wistful reflection:

“I had two husbands: Lee, the father of my children, an affectionate and kind man; and Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy.”

The Friend

Ruth Paine, the gaunt Quaker will always be an integral part of the tragedy since it was she who arranged for Lee Oswald to get the job at the Texas School Book Depository while providing housing for Marina and her two children.  Her gaunt looks belay an intelligent but pinched looking character and many of her actions are indeed dubious and in principle, clearly deceptive.

The Paine’s met the Oswald’s in February 1963 at a gathering held at a friend’s apartment.  In attendance were George De Mohrenschildt, a Russian émigré and well known in the White Russian community in Dallas.  In an odd pairing, De Mohrenschildt befriended the young couple and was impressed with Oswald’s ability to speak Russian and read Russian literature.  Eventually Marina would come to stay with Ruth and her two children after Ruth succeeded in helping Lee find a job in the TSBD.

The hints of intelligence were all around Michael and Ruth Paine.  Jim Garrison uncovered in his investigation of the couple that there were numerous files on them and family members that were classified, such as Michael’s sister and other relatives.  Ruth’s father and brother in-law were employed by the Agency for International Development, a known CIA front company.  After the assassination her husband Michael would be employed by them as well.  (Trivia: Barack Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham would be employed by this same outfit in their Indonesian branch. Fellow travelers, all.)  Ruth’s sister is now known to be a former CIA agent.  

Similar to Marguerite Oswald, the Paine’s tax returns are classified as well, from 1956 to 1958.  In an affidavit of the Dallas Police Department, Michael listed his employment as a farmer and Ruth as a farmer’s wife during the 1958-59 period.  What reason is there to classify a farmer and his wife’s tax returns?  Obviously, the Paine’s were doing more than farming in the late 1950’s.  Quite a career leap then, to go from farming to mechanical engineering with Bell Helicopter, a major DOD contractor, upon moving to Texas.  

With evidence we have now, it’s apparent that Ruth Paine is lying under oath in both her Warren Commission testimony and later on during her New Orleans grand jury testimony.  Two of the things she lied about were Marina’s alleged inability to speak English and that Lee could not drive.  For example in page five of the grand jury testimony in New Orleans, she said Lee didn’t want her to learn English which Ruth thought was unjust.  Or maybe Ruth was just out of the loop on Marina’s language skills.  Whatever the case, she was a part of the myth making that started early on.

In her testimony to the Warren Commission, Ruth also backed up the story that Lee couldn’t drive as did her husband, Marina, and brother Robert.  They all testified to this and they all lied.  Ruth said she was supposedly giving Lee lessons in late November of 1963.  In her New Orleans grand jury statements she said Oswald was such a novice that he didn’t know how to turn the stearing wheel to make the wheels straight.  Researcher John Armstrong on his web site lists 29 people that saw Lee Oswald driving a car (32 listed–3 didn’t see him drive but claim to have seen a Texas driver’s license with Lee Oswald’s name on it–LINK).  

There is much more that could be related on Ruth and to a certain extent her husband Michael in regards to actions before and after the assassination but space does not permit.  Such things as a curious phone call between the two naming Lee as the assassin an hour before he was arrested for the crime.  Or Ruth turning over bits of evidence after a thorough FBI search of her home.  And what about that metal box filled with the names of Castro sympathizers that was found in the garage?  What happened to that?  

Now in her later years Ruth Paine has that weary look of someone maintaining a fable for too long.  When asked she defends the Warren Report saying they did a “...really excellent job.”  It must be a heavy burden to bear for an otherwise decent person committed to Quaker pacifist values to maintain a narrative that isn’t real.

The Common Thread 

So what do these women all have in common?  Besides the fact that all four are liars, they are all evidently doing work in some capacity for government agencies, both domestic and in Marina’s case, foreign. They are all hiding something here, something under deep cover,  and it must go beyond the assassination of a President.  If Oswald is being doubled, that could be part of the reason why their behavior and statements regarding Lee Oswald’s life all correlate.  Notice Marina’s statement about her husband being a Lee and a Harvey.   The common defense that people can’t keep secrets so a real conspiracy would air, is not true and certainly not with these women.  Whatever they are party to, they have kept it to themselves.

Sources

http://oswaldsmother.blogspot.com/2009/10/from-marina-prusakova-with-love.html

Lee Oswald driving

http://harveyandlee.net/Driving/Drive.htm

Marilyn Murret Warren Commission testimony

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/murret_m.htm

Books

The Man Who Knew Too Much, author, Dick Russell

Harvey and Lee, author, John Armstrong

On The Trail of the Assassins, author, Jim Garrison
A Heritage of Stone, author, Jim Garrison

Some James Garrison Reading

James Garrison

I know full well that Jim Garrison is considered by many in the research community to be the Patron Saint of conspiracy research.  But dig a little deeper and one will see that he was as flawed as the rest of us.  Some of his investigation was spot on and sincere and some of it was utterly unethical. 

Long-time researcher Jones Harris worked with Garrison for a bit in the Clay Shaw investigation.  He told me right up from that in his view, Jim Garrison was a “charming charlatan.”  I was surprised to hear this at the time as I had never heard or read of anybody that worked with Garrison utter some an evaluation.  The main incident that Harris remembered was asking Garrison if Carlos Marcello was in the Mob and he was told that Marcello was no longer in organized crime and was now a New Orleans businessman.  Obviously this is not true, since Marcello was a career mob boss in New Orleans. 

Below is a link to a 1992 New Yorker article by Edward J. Epstein about Jim Garrison and some of the shenanigans he pulled in the case he prosecuted against Clay Shaw.  Recommended reading before you start to feel inclined to see a halo around Garrison’s head.

Link

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/garrison.htm

Book Review: Destiny Betrayed - JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case

Vincent Bugliosi in his End Notes for his book, Reclaiming History, calls Jim DiEugenio “a sincere conspiracy theorist.”  When reading DiEugenio’s second edition of his book, Destiny Betrayed, one is struck with just how little theory is involved.  It’s all a solid mix of history, fact, and proper historical context for the events that are to follow.  Jim DiEugenio said in a recent interview on Black Op Radio that he didn’t want to caught up in the minutia of details regarding the assassination in this new volume, but instead wanted to pursue an examination of how and why it happened and how it got covered up.  And that is what readers  will experience as they read this book.  

Destiny Betrayed begins in the Cold War shadow wars, a mix of skullduggery and dirty deeds where even the President is kept in the dark in regards to what is going on.  As DiEugenio shows, CIA Director Allen Dulles was attempting to dupe Kennedy into foreign policy and military actions he was not wanting to be a part of.  Dulles took the Central Intelligence Agency far from its original intent of intelligence gathering to a machiavellian, duplicitous outfit overthrowing democratically elected governments under the guise of combating communism, replacing them with controllable right-wing dictatorships, and for the most part, setting the stage for the profiteering of American corporations.  So manipulating Presidents for CIA objectives has become the modus operandi of the Agency that lasts to this day.  Meanwhile, the American public sleeps through these affairs being distracted with the communistic threat, the baby boom, pop culture, sports and so on.  The National Security State descends and much of American history becomes a secret locked away in warehouses.

As DiEugenio’s documents in the first part of his book, the leaders of the National Security State knew early on they had a problem with John Kennedy.  He wasn’t for war mongering, turning down attempts to pump troops into Vietnam and launch preemptive nuclear strikes.  Kennedy was not a believer in the Domino Theory.  The Bay of Pigs fiasco, well detailed in Destiny Betrayed, is a CIA run military op destined to fail so American troops could be called in it finish the job. Kennedy found out none of this till he ordered an inquiry into what happened and  the ever duplicitous Allen Dulles and other top CIA officials lost their jobs. 

The Pioneers Get All The Arrows

The star of the book is Jim Garrison.  His coming around from true believer in the Warren Report to a believer in conspiracy and pursuing a trial against an alleged conspirator is an compelling story.  He was flawed man, but a brave man who paid a terrible price for seeking the truth with his future career in politics destroyed.  The full weight of the federal government fell on his head like a ton of bricks.  His reputation was pillared by a hostile press, some of whom were government informants, who were to attack and expose his every move in the national media.  Kennedy bagman Walt Sheridan (former ONI, FBI, and NSA) was sent down to harass witnesses and later put together a slanderous, over the top attack on Garrison on NBC (which was so bad they had to let Garrison have an on-air rebuttal). And the attacks on his character raged from 1967 to this very day. (For example, Gerald Posner in his 1993 book named Garrison a child molester and Vince Bugliosi in his 2007 book labeled him, “symptomatically psychotic.”)  After the trial of Clay Shaw was over, and lost, Garrison was indicted twice and acquitted.  As you can see, charging headlong into the Status Quo is not for the faint of heart.

As Jim DiEugenio points out, in actuality, Jim Garrison’s attempt to prove conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination was flawed before it started.  Even his staff advised against it after lead witness David Ferrie died.  But Big Jim decided to press on. It didn’t help his cause much by trusting people that he should have left alone.  Men such as Bernardo Detorres, William Gurvich, and Gordon Novel. These men were not rubes–they were all experienced operatives and functioned as spies embedded within his investigative operatus, funneling information to Garrison’s chief tormentor, Walter Sheridan, and journalist/government shills such as Hugh Aynesworth and James Phelan.  DiEugenio documents in great detail how the FBI and CIA were formally engaged to see this Louisiana state trial of Clay Shaw fail.  

And this of course raises the biggest question of them all–if the Warren Report is correct and Lee Oswald is the only assassin, and there is no conspiracy, then why does the government, along with allies in the press, have to take these extreme measures to make sure a conspiracy verdict is not reached in a state trial?  The Justice Department sent down their lawyers to coach witnesses in how to answer questions at taxpayer expense, bug the District Attorney’s phones and transcribe everything said, plague his operation with informants, and have the DOJ successfully killed off subpoenas to top officials. It was a Federal government takedown from top to bottom.  If Garrison is wrong then why not let him fall on his own sword if their account of the President’s death is true?  What would they have to fear?

Plenty apparently.  It appears they overplayed their hand.

The Shaw Trial

Destiny Betrayed does a good job in describing the intricacies of the trial, the legal wrangling, and what Garrison could of done in hindsight.  Important witnesses either died or faded away; other witnesses were assaulted or intimidated into changing their stories by the Sheridan Machine.  Lots of witnesses were never called such as the 16 people Garrison had in regards to Clay Shaw’s Bertrand alias (something that he was never allowed to prove in court). 

While too intricate to go into here, there were some highlights.  One important incident was when autopsy physician Dr. Pierre Fink admitted that he, and the other two other physicians present at the Kennedy’s autopsy, were under control of another military authority, whose name he couldn’t remember.  Another was a screening of the Zapruder film that Garrison had to wrestle from Time-Life.  A film up to that point few had seen, and it was a shock for all witnesses present in the courtroom.  Too bad it took till 1975 before the general public got to see it on Geraldo Rivera’s TV show.  

The End

Jim DiEugenio paints a vibrant world of 1960's New Orleans, a place of clandestine activity, informants, intelligence operatives, down and outers, sexual adventurers, conspirators, Cubans, hookers, misfits, and suspicious entanglements.  It's quite a contrast to the worlds envisioned by the Warren Report defenders where everything suspicious is an illusion, where every contrary witness is wrong, and everything is conveniently explained.  Their selective harvesting of the details strips the soul out of how fascinating all of this is and how a conspiracy to murder a President could really take shape.  

Destiny Betrayed is fascinating work, well paced, expertly organized, and properly sourced.  New document releases from the ARRB and other sources bolster the narrative and explain who is telling the truth and who is not.  It’s the definitive book on Jim Garrison and how tantalizingly close he came to blowing the case wide open.

Available now in bookstores and online at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and in ebook format for the Kindle and iPad. 

Details

ISBN-13: 9781620870563

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

Publication date: 11/15/2012

Edition description: Second Edition

Edition number: 2

Pages: 496

Conspiracy Is Not A Theory - Conspiracy Is A Crime

 My first impression of Taki’s Magazine is of a conservative news blog trying to be hip.  Cool graphics, a host of big names featuring eye catching titles such as:  How Bimbos Saved the American Republic, A Pox On Your Blankets and not to be undone, The Men Who Taste Jews in Their Sandwiches.  Too cool for school, huh? 

I got wind of this site since a link from one of my articles landed in the comments section to an article by Steve Sailer entitled, "That’s What They Want You to Think".  The title gives it away, doesn't it?  Sailer apparently wants to be considered a serious journalist so this article is a bushwhack of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. The Lone Gunman comes up for air once again.  To be fair, Sailer will admit to conspiracy in the deaths of Caesar, Lincoln and Archduke Ferdinand.  But in the long run it doesn't matter as conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination becomes the stumbling block for further intellectual inquiry.  For Sailor, he goes one step further and declares conspiracy in Kennedy’s death to be outlandish and that’s a step too far.

The mind of Sailor works in mysterious ways.  He says that the epitome of conspiracy kookiness is Oliver Stone's JFK film:

"The flagrant stupidity of most conspiracy theories popular during my lifetime, as epitomized by Stone’s 1991 masterpiece/fiasco JFK (in which the entire military-industrial complex plots to murder John F. Kennedy by hiring some flaming French Quarter homosexuals), serves to inoculate the powerful against the suspicion that they have influence (or responsibility) regarding events."

Excuse me, but real conspiracy craziness is saying that cruise missiles cloaked in airliner holograms crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11.  There is nothing crazy about believing in a conspiracy in JFK's death.  Certainly not for a man that had this number of enemies.  And Sailor's assessment of Stone's version of events in the JFK assassination and movie is completely ignorant.  If Stone followed the party line, or made prosecutor Jim Garrison appear to be a wrong-head fool, then the praise would abound.  But by thinking this way, the author displays a detrimental lack of fundamentals in the Kennedy assassination.  He looks at no serious flaws in the government's official story.  Instead, it's the critics that get the thrashing behind the woodshed. 

I don't get people like this.  It's as if their critical thinking skills have been suspended when it comes to this subject.  To be sure, the JFK assassination can be a Black Hole for speculation.  I know it’s a great thing to be considered fair minded and rational.  But many seem blinded by this impulse, trading in the truth for a spotless reputation.  Anomalies be damned.  A nineteen year old Marine can teach himself Russian, complete with a Baltic accent.  No problem.  And where is this kid going to hear Russian spoken with a Baltic accent to begin with?  No problem. We are told Oswald bought a money order to pay for his rifle on the morning March 12, 1963.  Yet, his work records indicate he never took any time off that morning.  No problem.  The money order didn’t have his fingerprints on it.  No problem.  The money order is missing all bank and USPS routing stamps.  No problem.  The money order is discovered in the National Archives and nobody can explain why.  No problem.  There are hundreds of other things I could bring up like this but you can read about those issues elsewhere on this blog. 

But Sailor just can't let a sleeping dog lie.  He goes on: "After all these years, it appears that the best explanation we can come up with is that Oswald and Ruby each acted alone. But just because that’s the best explanation doesn’t mean it’s a very good explanation. It’s merely somewhat less absurd than all the other specific hypotheses."

I see.  So having more than one gunman in Dealey Plaza is absurd.  The idea that all hypotheses are absurd is ludicrous and displays a lack of understanding regarding the basics of the case.  If one only pays attention to the numerous witnesses that heard shots coming from someplace other than the school book building (the Newmans, Zapruder, the Willis family, Nix, Powers, etc.) we get an inkling of a different story playing out.  Obviously, another shooter is a conspiracy.  Some people want to be the smartest guy in the room.  Unfortunately for Steve Sailor, in regarding the Kennedy assassination, that room is nothing more than a walk-in closet.

Conservatives and liberals make lock horns on many issues but they are in lock-step when it comes to the Warren Commission's conclusion of Lee Oswald as Lone Gunman.  The same conservatives that tell their readers in print and their listeners on the radio that one cannot trust what is coming out of Washington are the same people that have no problem believing the Warren Report.  There were no liars, criminals and plotters back in 1964?  I don't know of a single conservative in the media (radio, print or web) that believes in conspiracy in the death of John F. Kennedy.  And mainstream liberals are no better.  Chris Mathews on MS-NBC gives voice to the same view. 

Hence, all spout the partly line, "Kennedy was killed by a Communist."  But that is wrong.  Oswald never said he was a Communist but instead, a Marxist.  While the two political philosophies share a lot in common there is enough of a difference for Oswald to clearly state which side he (allegedly) was on.  (And there is much evidence to show what Oswald was on either side, but simply fronting for other parties.)  These critics of the critics don't even know the correct terminology right from the launch of their attacks, nor the implication of these two political doctrines. 

Conspiracy is not a theory–conspiracy is a crime.  A felony.  So prevalent it had to be documented as a crime in our criminal justice system.  Conspiracy is an integral element of human life and history.  Any book of history, the history of anything on a macro or micro scale, features conspiratorial components.  Plotting is what bad people do since they can’t do everything in the sunshine.

The phrase "Conspiracy Theorist" is a deriding term, a put-down, a form of punishment for not believing what your betters tell you and meant to ridicule any critic who is doubting an officially sanctioned narrative of an event.  While at the same time, bypassing the flaws in an account of how things happened, which are usually propagated by a governing authority.

You didn’t see anything here.  Now move along.

Addendum #1
Actually, there were some conservatives that believed in conspiracy in the JFK assassination but they are no longer on the air.  One was Rollye James, formerly on XM Radio.  Very much a libertarian she stayed on the constitutional side of most issues and is a lover of all things conspiratorial.  I miss her show greatly as she was nobody’s shill.  And the late Dale Sommers, AKA The Truckin’ Bozo, on the XM Radio’s Road Dog channel.  Sommers was fond of pointing out how Oswald left his rifle on the sixth floor and that a real Marine never leaves his rifle behind.  Sommers also served in military intelligence but I don’t know if that influenced his thinking on this issue.  I don’t know of any others that are on air nor do I know of any liberal radio hosts that support conspiracy in the assassination of JFK either.

Addendum #2
In regards to the “flaming French Quarter homosexuals” that Jim Garrison was investigating, we now know two salient facts.  Both were liars.  David Ferrie lied to the FBI about knowing Lee Oswald and Clay Shaw lied under oath at his trial about his involvement with the CIA.  Shaw also lied again in an interview published at the time.  They both lied about knowing Oswald.  Their involvement with behind the scenes Cold War intrigue is now well documented by witness testimony and latter-day document releases. 

Patterns, It’s All About Patterns

When Fox’s Fringe TV show first aired one of the plot themes involved looking for patterns. Since the first season they have seemed to have passed on that motif and moved on to other conspiracies involving alternate dimension themes. As with the Kennedy assassination, and for that matter other conspiracies, there are patterns flowing through them all. I’m currently reading American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell (author of excellent JFK book, The Man Who Knew Too Much). While Jesse deals with a smattering of his favorite conspiracies from JFK to Jonestown to 9-11, probably the most interesting thing to me are not the behind the scenes plots which he writes about but the patterns that can seen emerging in them.

It follows as thus: An attack, an assassination, or disaster like Waco happens. After the shock and outrage the government swoops in to investigate via a committee of political insiders often labeled as “Statesmen.” Actually, they are just a bunch of lawyers. From somewhere high up in the Establishment, the fix is already in. The Commission puts on a play called Investigation Theater and issues a report. The report will not differ from anything that was originally said 24 hours after the event occurred. Later, a well placed person in the mainstream press will issue a glowing article gushing over how well the Commission did its investigation. In the end there is no justice, the loose ends are never tied up, and the people are left in the dark. Any critics are dismissed as kooks and generally mocked by the very same shills in the press. Sometimes they end up with an untimely and suspicious demise.

You can see this pattern in every conspiracy that has ever gone down over the centuries. It really is amazing how little changes from the inception of the event, to the end results of the formal investigation. From the massacre of the MacDonald clan in Glencoe Scotland in 1692 to the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 the first explanation remains the same. Just ask a member of the 9-11 Commission about one of the controversies in the case and he will give the same response a member of the Warren Commission would give: “We stand by our report.” Gerald R. Ford gave the same response over the years as did many other Warren Commission members. The basic heart of man never changes, especially the heart that conspires. It amounts to an endless cycle of history.

Most likely, the government has a connection to the event, hence the repeating of history which creates the pattern.

Another pattern over time is you find out the connections between the players. A lot more information is available in books and online for the average person sifting through the JFK assassination than the original investigators had. One thing you find out is a lot of the major players are not who they say they were. The political theater that is being played in the background is astonishing. Who knew, for example, that when Lee Oswald got into the altercation with the Cuban exiles on Canal street in the summer of 1963 that he was a player in cast of characters, all of whom were connected to government agencies? Of the three Cubans, two were FBI informants; the third had CIA connections. Oswald of course, as I have documented elsewhere here, did have linkage to the CIA and the FBI. Even the TV station photographer filming the incident was an FBI informant as well. Later, when Oswald is invited to a live radio debate with three others, they are all connected in one way or the other to the FBI and the CIA as well. Every team is represented and they all have players in action. What political theater this all represents! I long wonder how much more of this is still going on. Is everything we see going on around us like this? With secret goings on hidden from us? We’ll only know when the files are released, if ever.

So government agents seem to always be part of the pattern. They can often appear as average citizens, staff lawyers, or journalists. They all seem to fulfill the same role, to support whatever the government claims even if common sense dictates otherwise. It has been pointed out that most of the defenders of the Warren Report are in some way or other connected to the CIA. There is no evidence to support Arlen Specter being a government shill in the Warren Commission but he sure acts like it. I still don’t know who put him up to this or why he would care so in proving the government’s case. Maybe he felt it a part of the job. It should have been to find out the truth, but lawyers often do not settle for the truth--they settle for an answer that is politically acceptable to the powers that be, in other words, the Establishment. Specter starts out as a low level staff attorney and rises above the fray as a major player with his Magic Bullet tale. The lone bullet theory is now part of the lore and controversy of the case. One day, maybe a FOIA lawsuit will break something loose on him. All we can know is there are way too many lawyers involved and they are not truth seekers--their purpose is to take care of their clients--the government.

One alleged journalist that we know was allied with the government was Hugh Aynesworth. Starting out with the Dallas Morning News and later migrating over to Newsweek, he was instrumental in bedeviling Jim Garrison during the months of the Clay Shaw trial and grand jury investigation. Documents that have been released show him applying to the CIA although it is unclear if he was brought in as an agent. Never the less, he maintained strong contacts with them and the FBI and it is clear in his articles he had inside information into the inner workings of the Garrison investigation. Big Jim could not keep anything quiet with the huge amount of informants and spies infiltrating the investigation. This makes Aynesworth hardly an objective newsman but he was not the only one so tied in. Edward Epstein wrote a book mocking Garrison’s trial of Shaw called Counterplot. He later admitted to working closely with the CIA. In a well-known 1970’s article in Rolling Stone, Carl Bernstein reported that there were hundreds of journalists working with the CIA in order to further the federal government’s interests. No telling how many are there now.

It all about patterns. Keep an eye out. They are changing all the time.



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How CBS Screwed Orville Nix

In 1967 CBS News ran a series of programs on the Kennedy assassination. Par to the script, they came to the conclusion as practically all TV investigations since have gone—that Oswald was guilty of the crime and there was no conspiracy in the death of John F. Kennedy just as the Warren Commission said.

One of the people interviewed was Orville Nix, a man who filmed the assassination from across the street from Abraham Zapruder’s position. Nix worked for the General Service Administration as an air conditioning repairman in the Dallas Secret Service building. He sold his footage to UPI for $5000 in 1963.

When interviewed by CBS about what he witnessed, Nix stated he heard shots coming from the direction of the grassy knoll. They would then say to him “Cut!” each time he answered. Finally, they asked him what the Warren Commission said about the shots. Nix stated, the schoolbook depository building. When they edited the tape for broadcast Nix is saying he heard the shots coming from the schoolbook depository building. His original statement had been cut out! Nix always maintained he heard shots coming from the grassy knoll.

What CBS did here is completely unethical and outrageous. When there were only three networks this type of deception was a piece of cake. CBS producer Bernard Birnbaum, who worked on the documentary, denies any of this happened to Nix. As he said, "We never tried to put any words in anybody's mouth, absolutely not." I believe Birnbaum is a liar. After all, somebody edited the tape, right? If we could see the unedited version the lie would be exposed, thus modifying Nix’s original testimony as to what happened. Nix always maintained he heard shots coming from the knoll. His honesty in this is assured.

By CBS doing this they were going to great lengths to support the Government’s case. By why? What would be their interest in helping the government out? Was it because then president William Paley was a former OSS agent and entwined with the National Security State? If the government’s case is so firm then why resort to this trickery? What is in this for CBS?

There would be a replay of this in the early 1980’s when Jim Garrison was interviewed for Speak Up America TV program. Executive Producer George Schlatter made sure the tape was edited to have Garrison saying there were “32 shooters” in Dealey Plaza. Originally he had been asked how many people were involved in the conspiracy. Garrison answered thirty-two. Supervising producer John Barbour (see his excellent documentary interviewing Jim Garrison HERE.) asked Schlatter why he did this and he replied, “Garrison is a nut.”

Where did George Schlatter learn his ethics from—Bernard Birnbaum? There were grounds for libel but Garrison declined to pursue it. As one can see these media insiders love to influence public opinion rather than uncovering the truth. They have largely failed though.

However, there is a silver lining in this cloud. After all the government machinations, undying media support of the Warren Commission’s story, corrupt TV producers, and denigrating of witnesses like Orville Nix, the American People still don’t believe what they are being told.

Thank you American People for your common sense!


Sources:
Mark Lane interviewing Orville Nix. Says frames are missing. Says shots came from the fence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8KgkTtl3qk&feature=related

Nix’s film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xboWTRPEWW0&feature=related

John Barbour audio interview:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/


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The Garrison Tapes by John Barbour

Jim Garrison in his own words. An excellent documentary with a full set of interviews of Garrison by John Barbour, creator of Real People. He did a great job of allowing Garrison to tell his side of the story uncensored or made to look like a fool as the mainstream press tried to do. Great stuff for the historical record and a must see for all with an interest in the JFK assassination. Ten segments await you at Above Top Secret.

Link HERE

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