Ancient Aliens & JFK by Mike Bara

 

Mike Bara may be knowledgable regarding NASA and Ancient Aliens but he doesn’t know Beans about the Kennedy assassination.

If you have ever watched Ancient Aliens on the History Channel you’ve seen Mike Bara along with other experts giving their opinions on how aliens arrived on earth in the far away past and advanced human evolution and technology.  It makes for entertaining television and the show makes it apparent that sometime in ancient human history there is evidence of what appears to be high technology and engineering being used at a time when civilization was supposed to be in a primitive state.  So the Star People came and gave us free advice on how to climb down from the trees and into the savanna.   

Bara is a retired engineer and has written numerous books on this subject and NASA space programs.  Most of his books bears the “Ancient Aliens” title (here, there and everywhere!).  He hosts a 6 day a week channel on Youtube and is a conspiratorialist with some reservations.  For example he is a supporter of the Apollo Moon landings but he swerves into the John Kennedy Jr. conspiracy that he faked his death to escape being murdered by the Deep State (a popular theory among the Q followers).  To someday reappear like the Second Coming of Jesus.  And do what precisely?  So Bara is reasonable and then sometimes not.

Mike Bara’s main thesis in this work is that President Kennedy had knowledge of contact with Aliens and was planning to share this knowledge with the Soviets as a peace entreaty.  This in turn sent the President on a collation course with the Deep State and ended his life.  Farfetched to say the least.

It is interesting that while Bara does conclude there was a conspiracy in the death of JFK and resorts to using the same old tired arguments of the Lone Nut crowd. Which in turn, harkens from the easily discredited Warren Commission Report. Bara follows the well trodden path of Oswald being a good marksman to the Magic Bullet Theory. I shall explore this in greater detail below and show why he is wrong on all of these matters.

MJ-12 Documents

One of the controversial issues in UFO research is the release of alleged documents about the MJ-12 group.  One day in 1984 a UFO researcher Jaimie Shandera checked the mail and found a package containing a set of microfilm documents from an anonymous source.  The Majestic 12 legend was born and launched thousands of arguments both pro and con.  Now that the dust has settled down a bit, the MJ-12 docs are considered a hoax. (For more on this you can check out Seamas Coogan’s Magnus Opus, JFK and the Majestic Papers: The History of a Hoax.  LINK)

Mike Bara seems reluctant to let it go.  As he said on page 38, “I am less concerned with the question of authenticity than I am with the content.”  He should be!  He ponders what if the documents have traces of truth in them (the 12 members were real men at least) and then precedes thru the chapter to discuss connections to the documents as if they were real.  Such as he does on page 42 when he suggests that JFK knew of aliens. “But if Kennedy was taken out of the loop on what MJ-12 knew, how then was he even aware of an alien presence?”  Bara wants to believe, regardless.  Most of chapter 2 flows like this and the rest of the book will feature similar confusing episodes.  

Nevertheless, Bara’s reasoning that JFK was aware of aliens wanting to share this with a Cold War enemy ultimately set in motion his death, is totally absurd.  Kennedy had a multitude of enemies that hated him worse than speculating about flying saucers.

  

The Magic Bullet Theory one more time…

Also known as the “Magic Bullshit Theory” was developed when the Warren Commission discovered they had more bullets flying in Dealey Plaza than Oswald could have fired.  So their lawyers created the fiction of one bullet wounding two men.  The problem was the shooter was firing from a high elevation while Kennedy’s wounds were low to high for the single bullet to allegedly traverse his body and hit Governor Connelly, besides the trajectory angles being incorrect.  It was a political solution to the problem.  There could only be one gunman.

But there is much wrong with it and too much to go into here and Bara’s response to it is no different than what a standard Warren Report defender would say.  Probably the most complete rebuttal comes from the testimony collected by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1996.  Namely the testimony under oath of four autopsy witnesses.  They were FBI special agents James Sibert and Francis O’Neill, and autopsy technicians James Jenner and Paul O’Conner.  All four men testify witnessing at the autopsy the sounding probe (flexible aluminum rod—used to trace bullets through bodies) inserted into Kennedy’s back.  The probe went a few inches in and downward.  It was not a pass-through.  So there is no exiting bullet through Kennedy’s throat.  Bara has shown in his sloppy research that he knows nothing about this and does great disservice to his readers by ignoring this important fact. 

Likewise for his handling for the CE-399 the so called “pristine” bullet found on Connelly’s stretcher and was alleged to have passed through two men breaking bones along the way.  Of course it is not pristine and shows marked flattening on one side.  Bara believes this bullet could have done all the damage it did, especially to Connelly breaking three ribs and fracturing the radial bone in the wrist and still remain largely undeformed.    

As I stated in one of my posts regarding this issue:  “The Warren Commission in 1964 tasked ballistic experts doctors Dolce and Light to conduct tests on cadavers using Oswald’s rifle at the U. S. Army Edgewood Arsenal.  As Dr. Dolce stated in an interview in 1986, each of the ten test fired bullets were in his words, “markably deformed.”  Dr. Dolce was not called to give testimony to the Warren Commission and his findings were buried in a report, published in March of 1965, that was classified “confidential” for 8 years before being placed in the NARA.”

Mostly likely CD-399 was a low velocity bullet with not enough grains in the shell hence the shallow impact.  It’s the one that fell out. Bara while writing of the magical properties of CD-399, failed to mention the numerous bullet fragments found in Governor Connelly’s body and also in the interior of the limousine.  One fragment he carried in his left thigh for the rest of his life.  As can be plainly seen, CD-399 is not fragmented.

Officer Tippit as Badge Man

This has to be the most unfortunate part of the book.  In my study of the Tippet killing I have never found anything that suggests he was the grassy knoll shooter.  Bara hangs his theory on the scant evidence of a Jack White digital reinterpretation of the Mary Moorman photo.  The famous Badge Man image cloaked in shadows on the grassy knoll.  There are various versions of this online and they all have one thing in common.  They are blurry.  Yet somehow Mike Bara finds enough data in the image to confidently state it was Tippit there and he was firing the fatal shot.

Due to Tippit’s movements and behavior that day, Tippit did not have the time to arrive in Dealey Plaza in order to assassinate the President.  He would need to be there early, at least by noon.  The President was killed at 12:30.  At noon Tippit was called to Hodge’s SuperMart to arrest a woman for shoplifting.  He was 7 miles away from Dealey Plaza at that point.  He would need to drive the woman back to headquarters to be booked, wasting valuable time if he was going to be an assassin.  No witnesses saw him in the Dealey Plaza location.

Some have suggested that Tippit may have been involved in the outer edges of the conspiracy.  His actions on the 22nd were peculiar as documented by Myers, Armstrong, McBride etc.  Tippit that morning was racing here and there.  At one point he rushed into the Tiptop record store and made a frantic call to someone who never picked up.  Whatever it was he did not display the actions of a normal police officer on patrol.  He was acting nervous and agitated.  Was his job to meet up with Oswald and take him out?  That seems far more plausible than looking at a blurry Photoshopped image and coming to a conclusion.

Officer J. D. Tippit as Badge Man is another poorly researched area of Bara’s book and a huge insult to the Tippit family.  All Bara has is a blurry picture.  Even the minimal facts I have presented here are not in Bara’s book.  Whatever Tippit’s involvement was that fateful day, he does not deserve this.

Conclusion

Overall, the Kennedy assassination chapters in Ancient Aliens & JFK are flawed.  The rest, including the secret space program, moon landings, etc, are competently researched and presented.  Sometimes as a researcher you can get into fire fighter mode.  So much incorrect information flows around the subject you are researching that the need arises to stamp it out.  It’s a constant process of reeducating and setting the record straight.  Mike Bara’s book is an example of that.  Obviously, this is not a serious look into who JFK’s killer was or other aspects of the assassination. The absurd notion that JFK had inside info on Aliens and what they are doing on earth is a joke. Bara is trading on the Ancient Aliens TV show name for traction.  It’s a pot boiler.  Reader beware.

Notes

p.100, Oswald was court martialed twice in the Marines.  Not three times as Bara wrote.

p.103, James Jesus Angleton was Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence.  Not the Deputy Director of the CIA as Bara states.  This error implies Angleton was #2 at the CIA.  He was not.

p.107, Bara calls Oswald a good marksman.  He was starting out but faded.  His first marksman test was excellent.  His score was lowered in the second test and barely qualified in the third test.  After the Marines during the Russia phase, when Oswald went hunting with friends he was loaned the shotgun—for obvious reasons. 

A reviewer on Amazon S. Harris, charged that some pages and at least one whole chapter of Ancient Aliens & JFK, are cut and pasted from Bara’s other books such as Dark Mission and Who Mourns For Apollo.  As Harris said  “Self-plagiarism is no crime…” yes, just the habit of a lazy writer.  As I said previously, a pot boiler. (Highly recommended you read the review on Amazon.  The reviewer points to other factual errors not mentioned in my review.)

Researcher Jones Harris once told me his theory that the grassy knoll shooter was Roscoe White.  Roscoe was former military intelligence.  He was seen walking around Dealey Plaza wearing a Dallas police officers uniform but not wearing the required hat.  But he wasn’t officially a police officer.  He wouldn’t attend police training till early December of 1963.  He was working for them as a clerk at this time.  As told to me by Harris, only those people that had completed training would be allowed to wear the uniform of the Dallas police department.  Could Roscoe White be Badge Man?  I suppose it makes for a better story to pin the crime on a more well known man rather than one who is not.

Sources

Why Officer Tippit Stopped His Killer by Jack Myers.  A very detailed and accurate account on the Tippit murder and Tippit’s movements the day of the assassination.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/why-officer-tippit-stopped-his-killer

John Armstrong’s detailed account of the movements of J. D. Tippit on 11/22/63.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/harvey-lee-and-tippit-a-new-look-at-the-tippit-shooting

JFK and the Majestic Papers: The History of a Hoax, Introduction by Seamas Coogan.  All nine articles are listed on this page.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-and-the-majestic-papers-the-history-of-a-hoax-introduction

Briefer account here by Philip Coppens:

https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/majestic12/

Book.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1939149991/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Book Review: The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union by Peter Savodnik

An over-hyped book of little substance...

As soon as I discovered that a book was being published on Lee Oswald’s Russian period I started to speculate how the author might handle the notion of Oswald defecting to be operative there.  The book blurbs on Amazon showed it was going to be yet another, lone nut book.  True enough, author Peter Savodnik states in the introduction says that Oswald acted alone and we can see how he did so by studying his life in Soviet Russia.  As he stated on page xi:

“It is the facts of his life (Oswald’s), and especially his life in the Soviet Union, that tell us what we need to know to conclude that he alone was responsible for killing President Kennedy.”

Good!  No need for an investigation then.  Towards the end of the page he follows up with this whopper:

“The Interloper is an attempt, at long last, to make sense of this person we have we have never known.”

At long last?  As if nobody else ever tried?  As if Peter Savodnik knows him by interviewing his friends.  At this point I’m wondering if Savodnik is having an attack of advanced hubris to spit this line out or the marketing department jammed it in.  Of course, there are plenty of researchers have delved into Lee Oswald, his character, and exploits before the guns went off.  Authors such as Norman Mailer, Oswald’s Tale (1995); John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee (2003); John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (2008), and space does not permit a listing of many others. 

The course is set from here and what evaluation we will find of Oswald’s character and actions could just as well come out of the well-worn pages of the Warren Report.  

Time Spent in Russia

Peter Savodnik credentials including writing for the New York Times, Harper’s, Time, Atlantic Monthly and other northeastern liberal yankee publications.  He was based in Moscow for a number of years and wrote extensively about Russian issues.  Since Savodnik spent a lot time living and working in Russia he at some point–never explained–developed an interest in Lee Oswald’s life and was able to interview a lot of people that knew Lee Oswald during his time there. The picture Savodnik paints of Oswald is a one of a sad, pathetic, and often angry figure; an out of place young man that isn't very bright, struggles with the native tongue of his newfound homeland, and is ignorant of the culture he has just landed in.

Probably most surprising, is Savodnik's assertion that Oswald was a poor Russian speaker.  In fact, I know of no other book written on Oswald that ever doubted his ability to speak, read, and write the Russian language competently.  Even the Warren Report with its faults admits to his Russian speaking abilities which he supposedly learned from a Marine officer.  According to Savodnik, Oswald needs tips and lessons from co-workers and an interpreter at some phases of his work at the Minsk TV factory.  This fits in with Savodnik's angle of Oswald being a guy that isn't very clever, troubled in mind and intellect–only it’s not true.  The author is not being honest with his readers at this point.

Why? Because there is a lot of evidence that Oswald was a very good Russia speaker, good enough for his future wife Marina to comment that upon their first meeting she thought he was a local because he spoke with a Baltic accent.  While it is true that Oswald rarely spoke in Russian while there, the idea that this could have been a cover for his true identity is contrary to Savodnik's narrative.  Arriving back in America in 1962, Lee and Marina were befriended by the White Russian community there, and George De Mohrenschildt in particular.  De Mohrenschildt testified to Lee speaking Russian competently and reading Russian literature written in Russian.  Another Russian speaker who know Oswald said that his language skills were good enough to be a translator.  But Savodnik never tells his readers this.

Mistakes in the Narrative

For a writer good enough to be published in noted literary journals and travels the world doing research, Peter Savodnik can sure makes some goofs.  

One of the biggest involves the early days of Oswald’s life and the constant moving around he and his siblings endured.  Savodnik states that the shortest time the Oswald’s spent at a residence was six weeks in Manhattan.  Well, they never lived in Manhattan!  They lived in the Bronx.  Even the address Savodnik lists, E. 179th St., implying Manhattan, is a Bronx location (Google maps).  In actually, after getting kicked out of older brother John Pic’s apartment after Lee threatened Mrs. Pic with a penknife, they moved to 1455 Sheridan, Apt F.  They later moved to their final residence in New York at 325 E. 179th St.  Both residences are in the Bronx.  John Pic and family lived in the Bronx as well.  Marguerite Oswald did work odd jobs in Manhattan and Lee briefly attended PS117 in Manhattan, but they never lived there.  

Do publishing houses hire fact checkers anymore?

The length of time in New York is wrong too.  Lee and his mother arrived there in August of 1952 and Savodnik contradicts his tale by having them returning to New Orleans in January of 1954.  Obviously a lot more than six weeks passed here.

Of course herein lies one of the problems with the narrative.  Under the official account Lee is supposed to be attending PS44 in the Bronx in fall of 1953.  However, there is another set of educational records showing Lee attending part-time at Beauregard Junior High School in the fall of 1953 as well!  Researcher John Armstrong (see links) found this oddity in volume 22 of the collected Warren Commission hearings.  And there are more than just documents, there are a host of important events going on as well in 1953.  For example, Lee going truant, being evaluated by two psychologists, being sent to a youth home for a while, and his mother being interviewed by probation officer John Carro.  By the fall of 1953 things heat up with Carro attempting to get Marguerite and Lee in family court for counseling services and other issues, but he is checkmated every step of the way.  All of these events are happening in New York while another Lee Oswald is in school in another state in New Orleans.  Strange, huh?

As you can see, by taking the conservative approach with a simple narrative from the Warren Report, and staying out of those pesky 26 volumes of collected hearings and evidence, one can eliminate great difficulties in exploring the case.  One can direct the flow away from conspiracy very easily.  Especially if somebody doesn’t want that reported.  Logically, Savodnik can’t discuss it anyway because it disrupts his “Lee is a nobody” story.

The False Defector Program

A major omission by the author is the False Defector Program being run out of Nag’s Head, North Carolina with the sole purpose of placing operatives behind the Iron Curtain.  It’s too hot to handle because Peter Savodnik makes no mention of it.  One would think this issue should be properly explored if one were doing an honest investigation into Oswald’s Russian period.  But if you are a hack, then by all means, ignore it and type away!

Senator Richard Schweiker who had seen the classified files said,  “We don’t know what happened (in Dallas), but we do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there are the fingerprints of intelligence.” He further stated to author David Talbot that Oswald–“...was the product of a fake defector program run by the CIA.”  Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti stated this as well (Peter Janney, Mary’s Mosaic). 

Otto Otepka, Deputy Director of the United States State Department's Office of Security, uncovered the false defector program soon after JFK’s election. A security file listed Lee Oswald as a “tourist.” to the Soviet Union.  And while in the Soviet Union Oswald came into contact with Michael Jelisavcic, a known CIA operative at American Express.  A declassified document lists Jelisavcic as a CIA asset. 

Notwithstanding, if Oswald were a false defector this would greatly add to what his real motivations were during his Russian phase.  There is a great deal of bias for the official story that blinds the author to any other alternatives.  Oswald as false defector is an important part of the story if true, and the author finds it not worth mentioning or looking into.  He has to avoid the subject or else it messes up a nice tale.  

And it should be noted that Oswald was not the only defector.  Robert Webster (a dead ringer for Oswald in looks) was another who left the same year, 1962, that Oswald did (Lee knew him and Webster knew Marina, facts the reader isn’t told either).  There were in fact, a whole host of American defectors, many leaving that year as well.  

Another Important Point Omitted
However, what is commonly left out of the story is who exactly decided to allow Oswald to stay after his suicide attempt.  According to Joseph J. Trento in his book, The Secret History of the CIA, it was the most powerful woman in the Soviet Union, Yekaterina Furtseva.  The first female member of the Politburo, who took a personal interest in this hapless American defector and gave the order to let him stay.  According to Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko, it was Furtseva that ordered the KGB not to recruit Oswald as a possible KGB mole.

One would think this a very important point.  But Savodnik totally ignores Furtseva’s control of this issue.  It shows that Oswald’s entry as a defector into the Soviet Union was closely watched and made the hierarchy of Soviet government very suspicious.  The Russians have a long history of espionage and are very successful at it.  They probably spotted Oswald early on as an operative and someone not to be trusted.  

The idea that Savodnik would ignore this crucial fact is a serious lapse of judgement and good research.  He has to have an Oswald that is so unimportant, and such a failure in life, that nobody would have an interest in him.  But people of great import did.

The Real Interloper

The Interloper is the standard tale of the disgruntled loser with delusions of grandeur arriving at the Socialist Worker’s Paradise only to grow disillusioned there too.  Then later, the bad thing happens.  Hey, hasn’t Norman Mailer already written that book?  At last he gets a few mentions but Savodnik treats Mailer like a grumpy old uncle, capable of committing embarrassing disruptions, and whose insights are best ignored.  Might as well be, since Mailer wrote the better book on the subject of Lee Oswald and his time in Russia.  Mailer’s research includes KGB transcripts from the Oswald’s bugged apartment in Minsk, and while basically being the bickering of a young couple, it at least offers insights into their relationship.  The Interloper adds nothing to the mix.  Even the word “interloper,” used as a mantra in this book, is just a literary device Savodnik uses to propel along a well-trodden story.  

In the end, the real interloper in this book is the author himself.  His stuffy dismissal of conspiracy or its believers shows that his search for the truth is one reined in by the Gatekeepers that praise his book on the back cover blurbs.  Peter Savodnik’s portrayal of Lee Oswald as being out of place unstable misfit, unable to find a niche in wherever he travels, has been made so many times before it’s a yawn.  Some men seek the truth and other men just go along to get along.

Savodnik, like his subject, he has no sense of place either. He acts as if the Warren Report was the only investigation and nothing has happened since.  The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in their final report that there was a possibility of a conspiracy but they had not the time or finances to pursue any leads.  You will not see that mentioned in this book.  He considers Oswald's lack of motive as unimportant, dismisses conspiracy all too easily with a wave of a hand, travels the world for research only to restate old details, gets simple facts wrong or important ones omitted, he interviews only the people that will tell him what he wants to hear, and the author depends on the incomplete research and record of the Warren Report for his bedrock truth.

So what new revelations is the reader going to find?  Not much.  If you have an interest in biographies of Oswald’s friends and acquaintances in Minsk, or how long it took him to walk from his apartment to his job at the TV factory, then this book is for you.  

Otherwise, this tome features nothing new, much of which is rushed and summarized to begin with.

The Interloper serves as yet another vehicle for the Establishment to maintain their stranglehold on the mainstream media’s unyielding devotion to the long gunman myth.  Conspiracy...such a naughty word these days for this bunch of true-believing herd thinkers.

Hardcover: 288 pages

Publisher: Basic Books (October 8, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0465021816

ISBN-13: 978-0465021819

Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 9.2 inches

Addendum #1 
Although I didn’t give Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale high marks, it is in retrospective a far better account of Lee Oswald’s life and search to find out the inner man, than The Interloper is.

Addendum #2 
Easy made it to my list of worst JFK Books.  LINK

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, iBooks/iTunes

Book Review: Hit List

Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination by Richard Belzer and David Wayne.

The mysterious deaths of witnesses and participants in the aftermath of John Kennedy’s assassination has given rise to much speculation over the years.  Jim Mars in his classic book Cross Fire, documented the untimely deaths of many of the witnesses.  Warren Commission defender Vince Bugliosi in his mammoth tome, Reclaiming History, just dismissed the deaths as largely from natural causes and not in any way suspicious.  Of course, for someone as biased as Bugliosi, an ardent cherry picker of the evidence, nothing is shifty in the case of Kennedy’s assassination.  However, the cases I’ve looked into show there is more going on with the deaths of these people, which Jim Mars wrote comes in waves and those waves usually center around up and coming investigations.

In Hit List, noted actor Richard Belzer, along with co-author David Wayne, have completed probably the most comprehensive investigation into the deaths of these people.  Fifty people are documented from the famous and powerful to the poor and obscure.  Each entry is broken down by name, bullet points, and the various details involving their demise.  Each entry is throughly documented from sources in print, web, and author correspondence with family or acquaintances of the victims.

There are many thought provoking chapters in the book.  Two of which caught my attention and taught me some new things are the deaths of police officer J.D. Tippet and columnist Dorothy Kilgallen.  The authors do a good job documenting Tippet’s comings and goings, curious behavior, and then the Warren Commission’s machinations in dealing with issues they couldn’t prove in their attempt to link Oswald to the murder.  It’s probably the best recording of Tippet’s movements before his death and the resulting evidence that contradicts Oswald having been his killer.

Another good accounting is the sudden death of columnist and TV game show star Dorothy Kilgallen.  (My article on her passing happens to be the most popular article on this blog.)  The authors go into exhaustive detail involving the strange and out of place events that occurred before her death and surrounding her passing, from being found on the wrong floor of her townhouse to the chemical make-up of the heavy-duty barbiturates which are supposed to have taken her life.  This chapter alone is probably one of the best written anywhere in regards to Kilgallen’s alleged drug overdose, although it does leave out a few issues that I document in my article, The Lonesome Death of Dorothy Kilgallen.  In spite of that, it’s a fascinating and very detailed accounting.

The death of Dorothy Kilgallen is important as it displays the meme for most of the deaths listed.  Since people carry on common routines in life, most of the people indexed exhibit the occurrence of doing things outside of their normal life patterns.  Such as, the person that is found death from a gunshot with the gun in the right hand--they are left handed.  It is as if the killers setting this up are not informed about all of the victim’s personal habits.  So anomalies always abound in these things.

Robert Kennedy?
I did find it incongruous that one final death on the list was that the president’s brother, Robert Kennedy.  I don’t see his death in the same category of the others since most of the deaths reported are very private in nature.  RFK’s murder was quite public with a world watching in horror of the unfolding event.  There is no display of out of place behavior as with the others on list.

Besides Robert Kennedy, there is J. Edgar Hoover and Jimmy Hoffa.  While those two men both having suspicious events surrounding their demise, never the less, either of these men could have been placed in a different accounting (meaning another book) of untimely deaths, or in the case of Hoffa, disappearing altogether. They had 50 slots so I guess the needed filler.

I was disappointed that Edward Voebel’s name was left out.  He was Oswald’s best friend in junior high and gave testimony to the Warren Commission of his time with Oswald in school.  He essentially had nothing bad to say about him.  He was just a normal kid.  What may have put Ed Voebel in the crosshairs is that he gave an account of visiting Oswald and meeting his mother at the 126 Exchange Place address.  Under the official narrative, they were supposed to be living several miles further away.  Voebel has Oswald’s mother working at bars for tips which she wasn’t supposed to be doing at the time (1954-55) either.  Voebel took ill in the early 1970’s and was at one point asked by his doctor had he been around any poisons.  Voebel replied he had not.  He took a turn for the worse and soon died.


Verdict
Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination, is a good entry into a well trod field of dubious witness deaths.  Well sourced and documented, it makes for a good source volume for any JFK researcher delving into this issue.  Stand-out chapters are the ones on Dorothy Kilgallen and Officer Tippet.  It’s also a good book for keeping the general pubic informed on this important side-history of the assassination.  It’s an impressive effort and highly recommended.


Addendum
This review is from the e-book version purchased via iTunes.

Addendum 5.7.13
There is a mistake on page 401 of Hit List claiming that country singer Jim Reeves knew Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald.  This is not correct, according to Larry Jordan's excellent biography, Jim Reeves: His Untold Story–which is sourced in Hit List.  As stated in the biography, Reeves knew Ruby but had only seen Oswald in the crowd at the Longhorn Ballroom, twice (p.885).  No dates given for this.  Reeves was known to have a photographic memory for names and faces, hence his telling friends he had seen Oswald before.  But Reeves never knew Oswald personally.

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Hit-List-Investigation-Mysterious-Assassination/dp/1620878070/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366468469&sr=8-1&keywords=hit+list