The Lopez Report And The Road To Mexico

"This group's purpose and interest in Oswald is detailed in another section of this final report dealing with whether or not Lee Oswald was an agent or asset of the Central Intelligence Agency."

Lopez Report, p. 142

One of the most overlooked documents that was born of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970’s is the Lopez Report. That is mainly due to it being classified by National Security for almost 30 years. The product of two young lawyers, Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway were sent to Mexico City by one of the HSCA lead investigators Gaeton Fonzi, to investigate Oswald’s time there in the months before the assassination took place. Their declassified report, coined by Vince Bugliosi as a "giant dud" is hardly that—only a dud to the misinformed or in Bugliosi’s case, those who want to ignore the truth of one of the great crimes of the twentieth century.

Known as Oswald’s Mexico Mystery Tour, this phase of Kennedy assassination research is filled with cloak and danger deeds, odd happenings and coincidences, Oswald impersonators, missing tapes, straight out lying by top CIA officials, and Oswald’s own peculiar behavior. Like many areas of this investigation, none of it makes any sense at first glance, and becomes an exercise in bewilderment. Only until the circumstantial facts start piling up that Oswald was more than a long nut loser, and more of a man on a mission for clandestine services, do things begin to make a bit of sense. Though it is still a mysterious undertaking.

Oswald’s Mexico Mystery Tour
Suffice to say, Oswald’s trip to Mexico is a convoluted and complex issue. Better for the reader to go to James DiEugenio’s detailed account at CTKA.net, HERE.

As a summary, Lee Oswald in late September of 1963 boarded a bus for Mexico City. For unstated reasons he wanted back in the Soviet Union but assumed he would need to travel through Cuba first, so he proceeded to travel by bus to Mexico City to speak with the Soviets there at their consulate and obtain a visa. Upon arriving, he went to the Cuban embassy first and was told he needed the visa from the Soviets first. Proceeding there, he was told it would take weeks or months to obtain the visa. So, he returns to the Cubans and tells them he has it. Staff member Silvia Duran becomes suspicious, rings the Russians, and finds out the truth. Oswald had lied; not even basic paperwork had been filed. Being confronted with this, Oswald gets belligerent and is escorted out by security personnel. He hangs around in Mexico a few more days, allegedly calls both embassies inquiring about the visas before leaving.

However, this weird episode is not over here. The CIA had the Soviet and Cuban embassies wiretapped.

The person claiming to be Oswald uses broken Russian when talking to them. He uses excellent Spanish when talking to the Cubans. This is where the imposter claim appears and is most likely correct. FBI director Hoover believed it and told Lyndon Johnson that in a five-page memo (and a phone call). Oswald was an excellent Russian speaker, so good that his wife Mariana, upon meeting him, thought he was a local because of his Baltic accent. He was never known to speak Spanish to any degree. Also, FBI agents that were familiar with Oswald’s voice, upon listening to the tapes, state the caller was not Oswald. Another issue were the calls themselves. The speaker is asking questions about the visa process that Oswald would have known were finished, since he failed to fill out any forms and the visa process was dead.

Silvia Duran, mentioned above, describes the Oswald she spoke with as being short with blonde hair. (This description was omitted from the Warren Report.) Other witnesses describe meeting an Oswald with blonde hair as well. Nevertheless, a lot of phone calls were made that were of a suspicious nature and some were made on days when witnesses like Duran said she was not in the office. She is either lying or was impersonated as well as Oswald was. As a side note, one Oswald call was made in English. It was transcribed but the CIA has never released it.  

The CIA told the Warren Commission that they had no knowledge as to what Lee Oswald was up to prior to the assassination. This is blatantly a lie. The Soviet and Cuban embassies were thoroughly wiretapped and the CIA had a team of transcribers documenting every call. They knew every word Oswald, or his imposter, said. To make matters worse, top CIA officer David Phillips lied under oath and said that the tapes were destroyed before the assassination. They were not and can be easily proven so now such as CIA officer's Stanley Watson's testimony to the HSCA stating that the tapes were in existence after the assassination (and the 5-page memo from Hoover to LBJ saying his agents had listened to the tapes, 11/23/63). 

Plus, any American showing up at a communist embassy at the height of the cold war would be of operational interest as pointed out in the Lopez report. Oswald spoke to a Russian embassy official, Kostikov, who was also a top KGB agent, in charge of assassinations for the western hemisphere. Coupled with that, with Oswald being a former Soviet defector, and approaching a Soviet embassy, should have sent a bolt of electricity up the chain of command. We know from released CIA cables, this was not the case. Perhaps that was because Oswald was on a mission so no need to get excited? We know for example, as Lopez and Harden discovered, there were also false cables sent out as well to most likely cover up Oswald’s true reason for being in Mexico City. One had six agents signing it and they had to have known the information on it was false.

So who was the impostor? Jeff Morely in his excellent book, Our Man in Mexico, believes the impostor was a CIA agent. They did use operatives to investigate suspicious activities and did so on an American that had visited the Cuban embassy. The FBI arrested that man when he returned to Texas. Interestingly, there was no entrapment of Oswald going on like this and no one questioned him upon his return. And to think he was trying to travel to Cuba, which was and still is, against the law!

The Missing Section
Going back to the quote for the Lopez report above, it was mentioned that in another section of the report there was going to be information about Oswald’s relationship with the CIA. When the report was finally declassified that section was missing and is presumably still classified. Researcher James DiEugenio pointed this out personally to Ed Lopez, much to his agitation. As he said at the discovery, “They always hated that part…If I was them, I would have hated it too." The CIA hated anyone knowing how close they were with Oswald. And obviously, fashioned a cover up by deleting that section, just like they did with Mexico station chef Winston Scott’s memoir when they redacted his entire chapter on Oswald (and in fact, most of his memoir is classified also—see Morley). 

Questions Still Remain
What the Lopez Report documents is the tremendous amount of conniving going on with the CIA in regards to Oswald’s activities in Mexico City. Everything from phony cable traffic to top-level agents lying. It is known from document releases that Oswald’s SIG 201 file was under direct control of counter espionage chief James Angleton at his CI/SIG (counterintelligence/special investigation group) and had been since Oswald’s defection in 1959. It has been suggested that Angleton was running the false defector program to the Soviet Union. John Newman in Oswald and the CIA, believes Angleton was running Oswald on operations as an off the books agent and possibly using him to assassinate Kennedy. It was not an uncommon practice for Angleton to run ops around his own station chiefs without their prior knowledge—the “need to know” basis coming into play. James DiEugenio believes Angleton was running the show from HQ while David Philips was taking care of things from the field, in whatever exercise was going on here with Oswald. Both have been caught in numerous lies and you don’t do that unless you have something to hide. Hunter Leake, second in command of CIA station in New Orleans said in an obscure interview that Lee Oswald was used for low level currier work and that his purpose of moving to New Orleans was at the behest of the CIA for further operations. While you can’t prove anything substantial in the area of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination, you can prove the cover-ups. They are all over the place and everybody is involved. 

One question that still remains is—what was Oswald really doing in Mexico City and what was his real purpose there? The whole deal is screwy and fraught with incompetence. It hardly seems like something an experienced intelligence agency would plan and execute. Somebody would have to know that to get a visa from the Soviet embassy would take a long time. Shouldn’t Oswald have been furnished with a phony one to present to the Cuban embassy officials? Or perhaps it was a last minute venture hastily thrown together. Maybe it was a ruse to draw out other operatives? Some have suggested that Oswald’s real intent was to go to Cuba to assassinate Castro and the trip to Russia was just a ruse to provide cover. 

We know one thing for certain—at this late date over forty years later, the CIA is still withholding information on this affair.


Sources

The Lopez Report 

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/contents/hsca/contents_hsca_lopezrpt_2003.htm 

Morely, Jeff, Our Man in Mexico; Newman, John, Oswald and the CIA; Fonzi, Gaeton, The Last Investigation.

Transcript of Hoover and LBJ phone call.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=807&relPageId=2

assassination

James DiEugenio’s Take Down of Reclaiming History

At last, I’ve been waiting for a lengthy rebuttal of Vince Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History and it has arrived at last. Noted Kennedy assassination researcher and author James DiEugenio has published a seven-part piece at CTKA.net taking apart Bugliosi’s five-pound tome. I’ve long held that Bugliosi’s zealous defense of Warren Commission clouds his judgment of the case and James DiEugenio work bares that out. Masterfully done, DiEugenio dissects Bugliosi’s arguments piece by piece, striping them down to the bare bones and showing how wanting they are in substance. Bugliosi, who promises to never omit or distort any facts, and precedes to do just that through 1,600 pages and nearly a thousand pages more of end notes. Bugliosi’s hypocrisy is evident throughout, such as comparing conspiracy believers with people that believe that Elvis is still alive. Bugliosi is on the record for believing in a conspiracy in the death of Robert Kennedy but that is somehow more reasonable and doesn’t make him a conspiracy nut? What cheek!

DiEugenio pounds Reclaiming History hard through 7 web pages. Make no mistake; these are seven very long pages. It takes a long time to slog through it all but makes for fascinating reading. James DiEugenio’s presentation and analysis is quite impressive. He displays a keen mind and is in full possession of the minutia of facts of the sprawling Kennedy assassination case. He’s a gifted writer as well. I can find no better resarcher to tackle this subject and make a conclusive rebuttal to Reclaiming History.

I think more than anything else, DiEugenio shows that Bugliosi’s reasoning is steeped in a deep denial of the facts. He has to as he is presenting a nice, clean story as the Warren Commission did. Unfortunately the JFK assassination is anything but simple. Even in the most minor and ordinary of events strange and mysterious things abound. DiEugenio illustrates this well in the issue of Oswald buying a money order and mailing it. Sounds line a mundane detail, doesn’t it? It is not. Oswald has to get to the post office some 11 blocks away from work—one way. His work records show him not leaving the building the morning the March 12, 1963. Did he sneak out and get a friend such as Ruth Paine to drive him there? That is unknown how he got the post office that day but his handwriting is evident, using his Hidell alias on the envelope and money order. Postal records indicate Oswald had a window of between 8:30 to 10:30 AM to purchase the money order and mail it. Incredibility, the letter arrives at Kline’s Sporting Goods the very next day in Chicago. This is long before FedEx! Try to get a letter from Dallas to Chicago that fast today. Even odder is the money order is deposited in Kline’s bank account but with the wrong date on the deposit slip of February 12, instead of March 13. The money order has no internal bank stamping on the back from the First Bank of Chicago, as it should have had. Also, Oswald’s fingerprints were not recovered off of it either. Here we have a typical exercise in the mysterious nature of investigating this case. We see weird actions on Oswald’s end of things but it branches out into other areas as well.

Just the Warren Commission before him, Bugliosi ignores all of these details in order to tell his nice and simple narrative. And he just doesn’t do it here; he does it throughout his book. The denials turn into a parody of itself when Bugliosi tackles the more suspicious incidents. He pulls every lawyer trick out of his toolbox to the point of being intellectually dishonest. For example Bugliosi dismisses Oswald’s trip to register to vote in Clinton, Louisiana, in the company of Clay Shaw and Davie Ferrie, by asking where the witnesses are at and why didn’t the media report it? As if they would in a town that has no local newspaper! Here DiEugenio excels in showing Bugliosi as a lazy investigator who apparently never went to Clinton to talk to anybody. DiEugenio did and found a host of witnesses that still remember seeing the only white guy in line the day they had a huge turnout of African Americans for a CORE sponsored voter registration drive.

The only thing I take issue with is James DiEugenio’s treatment of Vince Bugliosi’s character. Maybe it has nothing to do with the work at hand and he chose not to mention it. DiEugenio says he admires Bugliosi perhaps for his good work in putting away Charles Manson and his followers for their heinous crimes. Probably best not to dirty one’s hands as Bugliosi does in his endless vitriol and insults he hurls when he compares conspiracy believers to be in the same league with Elvis worshipers and other general kooks.

But I think character matters. Shouldn’t it when a man promising to tell us the truth who has been sued for slander and lost? This is precisely what happened to Bugliosi when he stalked and slandered his milkman, Herb Weisel, who he thought was having an affair his wife. Bugliosi used his position of deputy district attorney to get their unlisted phone number and to locate Weisel’s place of employment. In 1973 Bugliosi settled for $12,500, cash, paid in increments of one hundred dollar bills. He also wanted numerous court documents including nine untranscribed depositions and all court reporter’s stenographer tapes. To say you settled, is tantamount to saying you won without having to admit anything. It’s a classic lawyer’s non-admission, admission of guilt. Only here, Bugliosi can only fake a win. The lawyer in the case, George V. Denny, charged that Bugliosi perjured himself abundantly in his deposition. He also called Bugliosi a “one man mini-Watergate” for covering up the ordeal by getting hold of the court records. Bugliosi also required as part of the settlement a $15,000 payment from all parties and attorneys who disclosed the terms of the agreement.

Okay, I’ll spare you the lurid details about an alleged assault on Virginia Cardwell, Bugliosi’s then pregnant girlfriend. Assault charges were filed and then dropped. You can read about that at the link below. Needless to say, both incidents portray an interesting portrait of the man who has bragged about writing the “book of the ages” on the Kennedy assassination. A man as flawed in character as the many people he casts such harsh judgment of in his book as if he has the God given right to do so.

Really Mr. Bugliosi…who put you up to this?

Sources:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_review.html; Bugliosi, Vincent, Reclaiming History; Pease and DiEugenio, The Assassinations.

Bugliosi character issues:
http://tatelabianca.blogspot.com/2006/06/bugging-installment-one.html

assassination

Spooky Action at a Distance

The Kennedy assassination is a deep, dark secret buried in the bowels of our government. Or better, in the depths of the National Security State that we have lived under since 1947 when the Act was signed into law. Theories come and go and everybody has one. I am not a theorist; however, I have been contemplating for some time that those in authority to discern and investigate this tragedy had no idea what really happened. The FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and many others may not have seen it coming. This massive sucker punch left them with an event with no reasoning behind it. They didn’t want the issue to go out unresolved so they took the simplest and quickest route—to blame it on the one man they had in custody—Lee Oswald. Never mind that so many pieces to the puzzle don’t fit. Even FBI Director Hoover admitted to the newly sworn-in President Johnson that they didn’t have much of a case on Oswald. Hoover, with the FBI’s reputation at stake they could not proceed to tell the public that people shooting at the President of the United States got away with the misdeed. This started the big rush to judgment and then the big rush to move on.

Of course some of us didn’t move on. There are too many irregularities here. Though I am at times concerned with the idea that if there is a conspiracy then why are we not allowed to know? What would be the harm in us knowing the truth of this? A loss in government trust? The trust is long gone for that matter. It died in Dealey Plaza followed by the inept investigation, the screwy explanations that defy logic, and the squirrelly characters that to this day, pound the gavel and demand we believe the earth is flat when we have traced its contours. 

Perhaps this is the basis for the many cover-ups. You can’t convincingly prove any conspiracy theory but you can clearly see the misdirection ploys, the decoys and agent provocateurs at play. Such as when the CIA lied and said they had no foreknowledge of Lee Oswald’s actions in Mexico City just months before the assassination. They had both the Russian and Cuban embassy’s phones thoroughly wiretapped. Not to mention a red flag placed on any American showing up at a communist nation’s embassy. Not only that but we know through released documents that the Mexico CIA station chief, Win Scott was kept deliberately out of the information loop on Oswald. A need to know basis that excluded the station chief and his staff. Why? Apparently the CIA’s “need to know” concept is extended to all. 

All of these shenanigans, from the Feds disrupting Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw, to the Willis family getting back film that had undergone photographic tampering, to Orville Nix having his statements edited by CBS to support the official story, just adds to the legend of mistrust. They brought it on themselves. The hurried Warren Commission Report in time becomes a political document; devoid of as its true purpose, filtered through the politics of the day. Moving bullet wounds around didn’t give these men any sense of embarrassment. Only a few had regrets and they didn’t live long enough to wage a revolt. Even the men closest to the event know things are not right but only whisper their doubts amongst themselves.

So they probably did know what happened but stuck to their plan no matter what. When Bill and Gayle Newman tell the Dallas police that they were lying on the ground protecting their children because they heard shots flying over their heads from the grassy knoll—and the Warren Commission doesn’t take their sworn testimony—the door is shut on the truth. They tidied up the mess and hurried along. They were not going to dig any deeper. And why would that be? Further research is needed to find the cause of that. 

assassination

They Are All Gone Now

With the passing of Ted at the age of 77, the Kennedy boys are one with the Ages. A huge chapter in American political history is closed. There many things about Ted I had no admiration of…particularly his personal life and resulting scandals, but he grew into his own after living in the shadow and legend of his brothers Jack and Bobby.

One thing Ted Kennedy did that I did that in my opinion was truly great and a truly a good thing for the Republic, was the Freedom of information Act. What a great research tool it has become! It has become a great boon to researchers of everything involving our government’s activities, particularly all things covert. It was the best tool that ever came along for Kennedy assassination investigators. The late, great Harold Weisberg’s FOIA suit resulted in uncovering the Warren Commission’s secret, January 22, 1963 meeting where they decided to put the lock-down on any investigation into conspiracy and went with the Lee Oswald as the lone assassin. (It seems somebody failed to destroy a stenographer’s tape.) While Ted was as mysteriously silent as the rest of the Kennedy family in regards to the deaths of John and Robert, the FOIA legislation opens a back door to the issue. Perhaps a subtle way Ted got payback for his brother’s murders?

Not mater, the truth is out there and we have a clearer path for finding it. While the Freedom of information Act has not unearthed any great revelations, certainly minor ones have emerged. And the potential is there for something explosive to emerge. Right now, author Jeff Morley, author of Our Man in Mexico, has been battling the CIA for months via the FOIA for records on deceased CIA officer George Joannides. Joannides was in charge financing and training for the anti Castro group, the DRE. (Lee Oswald would approach them to offer training too. Odd, since he was a public supporter of Castro!) Later, Joannides was photographed in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel the very night of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. The CIA as usual, is fighting the release of information long after all parties involved are long gone. If not for Ted Kennedy’s legislation, researchers would not have the means to direct their inquires and get access to files.

RIP Ted Kennedy.

Sources: McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust
Further Reading from my blog: The Investigation That Never Was


assassination

R.I.P. Don Hewitt

The well-known CBS news producer Don Hewitt and creator of 60 Minutes passed on at the age of 86 today. As I wrote in my piece, “The Insiders Always Know” Hewitt had an interest in the Kennedy assassination. An interest he never publicly pursued but he, as well as a number of media insiders, had their doubts about the official Warren Commission story. He asked around but apparently never got anywhere. Of note is Hewitt’s outrage over Sen. Howard Baker telling him about his experience of asking Nixon about the Kennedy assassination. Nixon replied, “You don’t want to know.” Hewitt was in indignation over the comment and probably fueled his doubts about what went down.

Rest in peace, Don. I just wish you could have used the talent around you to look into this thing. But your career probably wouldn’t have been as long as it was if you had.

assassination

The American Lone Gunman Mythos

The Lone Gunman has become an American mythology. A low level nobody shows up, kills somebody we like, has his show trial (or in the case of Oswald does not), and is neatly put away. He’s the archetypical loser. He can’t do anything right. But he has no problem shooting somebody even if his gun is junk, with optics not properly calibrated. He can have success and fame at that. And he never, ever shoots anybody truly evil for the wicked prosper. It is somebody we admire. And then, after the smoke clears, life goes on like before. Only we are left with questions. Questions that are never really get answered and as usual, two camps form to debate the aftermath for years and years to follow. The ways of the Lone Gunman are mysterious and he leaves a lot of things unsettled as conspiracy origins are frowned upon. But the People have that gut feeling that something ain’t right here. And of course it is not.

No conspiracy in the Lone Gunman Mythos? Down through our history there have been four presidents assassinated and five more have come close. Of all of the Lone Gunmen mentioned only John Wilkes Booth is the only one accredited to a conspiracy. The death of Lincoln is the only conspiracy we ever had in our history of presidential assassinations? I doubt it. We are left with the mysterious comings and goings of these men that do the crimes. As if these losers are capable of doing the deed single-handedly. There is most likely a facilitator. The Lone Gunmen are often out of work and out of money but they have no trouble paying for whatever they want, such as the afore mentioned travels. But there are always conspiratorial traces like vanishing footprints in the sand. It is seen in the things that don’t fit. Somebody will always say something cryptic leading to suspicions that launch endless debate.

The irony lies in the fact that the Lone Gunman is not alone. They are always around somebody. That somebody is usually a cloak and dagger chap or somebody as out of place and time as they are. A handler if you will. You can call them the CIA, DIA, ONI, or any name you like. They are the Secret Team, as Fletcher Proudy said in his book of the same name. They have no love for us.

A restless bunch, they constantly travel. Arthur Bremer, who came close to assassinating Gov. George Wallace in 1972, was such a traveler. He would fly to New York and stay in the Waldorf hotel; fly to Ottawa and stay at the Lord Elgin Hotel, the same hotel Nixon’s Secret Service agents used. Not bad for a man who had an income of $1,611. Lee Oswald’s travels are well documented. To and from Russia, sailing back (with a State Dept. loan) on the Holland America Massdam cruise ship with wife and child; a round trip bus trip from Dallas to Mexico City; a Customs agent in Toronto spotted him handing out pamphlets. James Earl Ray, unemployed after the alleged assassination of Martin Luther King had no difficulty buying a plane ticket to England. He was caught attempting to buy another boarding pass at Heathrow Airport. Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s killer, another guy with a spotty employment record, took a six-week trip around the world. John Hinckley Jr. made many trips around the country from California to Connecticut, finally making his way to Washington D.C. to take a shot at Ronald Reagan. Sirhan Sirhan, born in Israel, traveled with his family to New York before settling in California. All of these men were from someplace else and had been someplace else.

Although not of the Lone Gunmen category, Charles Manson comes to mind. Manson could almost be an amalgamation of all the characters previously listed here. Only throw in a dash of mind control. Mind control that actually works. It has been speculated that Manson was an MK-ULTRA test subject. With Charlie’s mojo he could teach the CIA a few tricks. With a mix of psychobabble, mind-altering drugs and sex, Manson quickly rounded up a bevy of cute hippie chicks to cater to his every need. But like the Lone Gunman he probably had his facilitators too. Released from prison in 1967, and even before his arrest for Tate-Labianca slayings in 1969, Manson had been arrested twice for statutory rape and released in each instance. Both instances should have sent to the Big House. “I want to know who was peeing on my leash?” Charlie asked. Implying he was under protection (and control) from an important someone and it was now over. Shades of Oswald saying, “I’m just the patsy.”

Maybe back in the nineteenth century when Leon Czolgosz shot President McKinley and Charles Guiteau assassinated President Garfield there really were lone gunmen among us. I’ll grant a few nutty loners out there. I just find it odd the Lincoln’s death is the only assassination officially listed as a conspiracy. Is that really possible?

So there you have it. The American Long Gunman Mythos. It’s our long running fairy tale and we are sticking to it. Conspiracy be damned!

Sources:
Pease, Lisa, The Assassinations; Mars, Jim, Crossfire; Gorightly, Adam, The Shadow over Santa Susana; Kauffman, Michael, American Brutus

assassination

The Phony Secret Service Agents

I have long been fascinated with the counterfeit Secret Service agent legend of the Kennedy assassination. First of all, it’s strange. They remind me of the Men in Black of UFO lore. While witnesses report these agents shooing them away from areas like the grassy knoll, the Secret Service claims that of the 28 agents assigned that day, they had no men on foot in Dealey Plaza. So who were these people, who were they with if not the Secret Service, and where did they go? The danger for a conspiracy is to have too many people involved. John Wilkes Booth considered that and cleverly had his conspirators all compromised with names on ledgers, public meetings in restaurants, and letters discussing the plot. Too many people involved means too many people that might blurt something out.

Within 24 hours of the assassination all Dallas SS agents were required to hand over their ID badges. So the Secret Service was aware of the allegation and needed to check it out. Former SS agent Abraham Bolden said to author and researcher Vince Palamara that it was widely known in the Service that an unauthorized person was using SS credentials the day of the assassination in Dallas. Hence, the service-wide surrender of all Secret Service agent’s IDs to Washington.

Vince Bugliosi, the main defender of the Warren Commission says the SS agent encounters were either plain clothed Dallas police officers or bystanders assumed the men in suits were federal agents. As usual with his debating style he omits various facts. He apparently did not interview a single Dallas police officer that was on foot in Dealey Plaza, out of uniform. He ignores testimony of officers such as Robert Craig that held they were prevented from doing extra security duty that day in Dealey Plaza. Most likely no officers in black suits walking about if that is the case. Also, some of the witnesses of the alleged agents were themselves Dallas police officers such as Joe Marshall Smith and Sergeant D.V. Harkness. Wouldn’t they have been familiar with their own men?

Here is a brief list of agent encounters:

• Dallas police officer Joe Marshall Smith encountered a man dressed in a sports shirt and pants that produced SS identification. Smith noted the man had dirty hands like that of a mechanic. He allowed him to go about his business.
• Sergeant D.V. Harkness sees several men in suits that in his words were “well armed” behind the schoolbook depository building a few minutes after the assassination. He approached them and they identified themselves as Secret Service agents, showing credentials.
• Malcom Summers goes the fence at the knoll and is stopped by a man in a suit wielding a small automatic firearm. He says to Summers, “Don’t you all come up here any further. You might get shot.”
• Gordon Arnold, a soldier on leave from basic training wishes to view and film the motorcade from the railroad overpass. He prevented from doing so by a man, with SS credentials.
• Shortly after the assassination, Texas HP pulls over a speeding car. Inside are three well-dressed men. They claim to be Secret Service agents and are pursuing leads to New Orleans. Later, the Secret Service will disavow sending agents to New Orleans that day.

Altogether, five police officers and six spectators reported encounters with men alleging to be Secret Service agents.

Author Gus Russo said he interviewed Secret Service agent Mike Howard who had been in charge of security for the Fort Worth leg of the JFK trip. Howard said they deputized everybody they could including agents from ATF, deputy sheriffs, Customs agents, Border Patrol agents, and so on and that these men were all over the place including Dealey Plaza. He added that ATF and Secret Service ID’s were virtually the same. (Except SS agents wore pins.) There was apparently a lot of overlapping that went on between the two agencies in 1963. Frank Ellsworth, a Dallas ATF agent at the time of the assassination, told Russo, "In 1963, if you would have asked me if I was a Secret Service agent, I most likely would have answered yes—our roles overlapped that much."

However, something does not seem quite ring true with this story. It has been well known that the weakest part of Kennedy’s security detail was the Dealey Plaza area. None of these deputized men have ever come forth or been interviewed by anybody including the two main government investigations. I’ve never read about this mass creation of security personnel any place else in my investigation. Secret Service expert Vince Palamara never mentions it in his research and none of the agents that he spoke to mentions this either. Gus Russo (who I might add is a lone nut believer) is the only investigator that comes up with this. Not only that but for a deputy sheriff or Customs agent to go around telling people he is a Secret Service agent when he is not, is a felony. If they were there, they were not a damn bit a good were they?

One thing is certain—not a single innocent bystander was behind the white picket fence on the grassy knoll. Those spectators that tried to get there were chased off by men in suits. If there is going to be a shooter back there behind the fence, that area needs to be cleared. And perhaps was?

Sources:
Mars, Jim, Crossfire; Fetzer. James, Death in Dealey Plaza; Buglosi, Vincent, Reclaiming History; Kauffman, Michael, American Brutus

Highly recommended:
Vince Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt. Online book on the Secret Service around the time of the Kennedy assassination. Features many interviews with SS agents and background details. Click HERE.

Good article on the phony agents at JFK Lancer:

http://www.jfklancer.com/knollagent/index.html