VOL. 7, ISSUE 4 WINTER 2001 DEDICATED TO THE … John F Kennedy... · context of the JFK...

VOL. 7, ISSUE 4 WINTER 2001 DEDICATED TO THE STUDY OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

IN THIS ISSUE: • Jamey Hecht • John Williams • Larry Hancock • Rex Bradford

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2 JFK Lancer Kennedy Assassination Chronicles Vol. 7, Issue 4

VOICES

Look for links to documents orresource materials from this issue at

JFK Lancer Online:

Jamie Sawa regarding the Miller Center:Here is an update on the information put out by the Miller Center, in Virginia. They have a quarterly report

that I just received in the mail (I downloaded the prior versions from their website). They have been transcribingand releasing JFK transcripts and just put out a 3-volume set of JFK transcripts (I ordered a set from bn.com)along with a CD-ROM included of the actual recordings. Their website, in case you haven't heard of them, is: http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu

They have been releasing things over the last year or so on JFK in their reports. You can either downloadthe report from their website each quarter, or sign up for the free version by mail.Jamie Sawa via email

Joe Backes regarding Body of Secrets book Review:There is no news here. There is no “revelation” here. None at all. This material was an ARRB release

January 29, 1998. Bamford acts like he got this material declassified, he did not. That it's getting media atten-tion at all is because someone the media will pay attention to put it in a book, only after it was removed from allcontext of the JFK assassination, the JFK Act, and Board that got it declassified in the first place. That’sinsulting.

It’s getting “new” media attention to try to tie it into the September 11th attacks, as though the US govern-ment had similar plans to plow commercial airliners into buildings. The National Security Archive thought thiswas news in April - http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/

I think we are being used here, by Bamford to promote his book as Project Northwoods is somethinggetting a lot of attention from that book, and Bamford had nothing to do with getting it out to the public, we did.If you want to thank someone for them, thank Doug Horne.

I think JFK assassination researchers need to point out who got this material released. Also, it should not beseen as having any connection to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Here are the RIF numbers.1.) 198-10004-102042.) 198-10004-100383.) 198-10004-101474.) 198-10004-10150

Joseph Backes via the internet

http:www.jfklancer.com/kac_winter01/

Note: The Northwoods documents areavailable athttp://www.jfklancer.com/kac_winter01/

http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/

http://www.jfklancer.com/kac_winter01/


PASSAGESRepresentative John A. Young

January 22, 2002CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) - Former U.S. Rep.John A. Young, who was in the motorcade carryingPresident Kennedy when he was assassinated, died inVirginia. He was 85. Young, a Corpus Christi native,served as representative for 22 years, until he was de-feated in the 1978 Democratic primary. He later prac-ticed law in Washington, D.C., and in Corpus Christi,as well as working as a lobbyist.

During 1978, Young fought to get funding ap-proved to continue operations at Naval Air StationCorpus Christi to keep the base along. During the 1960s,Young pushed for an international airport in the cityand was a strong supporter of the Port of Corpus Christi.Young also served as a Nueces County judge, NuecesCounty attorney and assistant district attorney.

He was a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commanderand served during World War II.

Oris Burl “O.B.” Johnson: Longtime officerwith Dallas police

January 19, 2002By JOE SIMNACHER / The Dallas Morning NewsServices for retired Dallas police Officer Oris Burl"O.B." Johnson were on Saturday at Troy Suggs FuneralHome. Mr. Johnson, 86, died Thursday at BaylorUniversity Medical Center of complications aftersurgery last month for an abdominal aneurysm. He wasburied in Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas.

Mr. Johnson had a 31-year career with the PoliceDepartment, including stints as a patrolman, a trafficofficer and a youth detective. He retired in 1973 as asergeant in general assignments. Mr. Johnson was bornin Tool, Texas, and grew up in Henderson County. Ahigh school graduate, he joined the Dallas Police De-partment in 1942.

He was one of Dallas' first traffic officers, saidhis son, Dale Johnson of Mesquite. "He loved the job.He liked helping people," his son said. "He liked thecamaraderie."

Mr. Johnson was stationed at Dallas Market Hall,where President John F. Kennedy was to speak on Nov.22, 1963, when he was assassinated. Mr. Johnson wasa member of Friendship Baptist Church in Mesquiteand a member of James Ladd Burgess Masonic LodgeNo. 1305 for more than 50 years.

Roy “Kees” Higgins: Former Dallas policeofficer on duty when JFK was shot

January 19, 2002By JOE SIMNACHER / The Dallas Morning News

Services for Roy “Kees” Higgins, a former Dal-las police officer who was on duty when President JohnF. Kennedy was assassinated, will be at 10 a.m. Satur-day at Tyler Street United Methodist Church, 927 W.10th St. Mr. Higgins, 79, died Wednesday of cancer athis DeSoto home. He will be buried in Laurel LandMemorial Park.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Mr. Higgins was on a trafficdetail at the Dallas Market Center, where he was await-ing the arrival of the presidential motorcade when allavailable officers were summoned to Parkland Memo-rial Hospital, said his son, Doug Higgins of Arlington.

“He was very close to Parkland and pulled in sec-onds after the motorcade," his son said. "He assisted inthe removal of the president from his car.” Kennedywas declared dead shortly after his arrival at Parkland.

The historic day brought a second shock for Mr.Higgins. Officer J.D. Tippit was killed in the Oak Cliffneighborhood Mr. Higgins normally patrolled, his sonsaid. Officer Tippit is thought to have been shot andkilled by Lee Harvey Oswald less than an hour afterthe assassination of the president.

Mr. Higgins was born in Maypearl, Texas, wherehe graduated from high school. He served in World WarII as a medic in the Army Air Corps. He joined theDallas Police Department in 1948 and retired in 1973.He was a Dallas County constable's officer from 1973until his retirement in 1987.

In addition to his son, Mr. Higgins is survived byhis wife, Mary Lu Higgins of DeSoto; another son, TomHiggins of Carrollton; a sister, LaVerne Lewis ofWaxahachie; four grandchildren; and one great-grand-child.

Memorials may be made to the Tyler Street UnitedMethodist Church, 927 W. 10th St., Dallas, TX 75208.

In addition to his son, Mr. Johnson is survived byhis wife, Ima T. Johnson of Balch Springs; a daughter,Bettie Barnhart of Dallas; five grandchildren; sevengreat-grandchildren; and four great-great-grandchil-dren.


Charles A. CrenshawNovember 19, 2001

By DRAKE WITHAM and LINDASTEWART BALL / The DallasMorning News

Dr. Charles Andrew Crenshaw,one of several who treated PresidentJohn F. Kennedy’s gunshot wounds nearly 38 years ago,went to his grave insisting Lee Harvey Oswald was notthe lone gunman.

Dr. Crenshaw, chairman emeritus of the Depart-ment of Surgery at John Peter Smith Hospital, died ofnatural causes at his Fort Worth home Thursday. Hisfamily said Dr. Crenshaw’s health had been deteriorat-ing in recent years. He was 68 years old.

“He was quite a guy,” said Dr. David McReynolds,chairman of the surgery department at John Peter Smith.“He's one of those guys that demanded respect, earnedit, and got it. It wasn’t Chuck. It was Dr. Crenshaw orThe Chief.”

Dr. Crenshaw started the surgery department atJohn Peter Smith single-handedly in 1966, Dr.McReynolds said, and was its backbone in those earlyyears, on call practically every night.

But some controversy surrounded Dr. Crenshaw'slater years when he recounted his emergency room treat-ment of Kennedy and Oswald in two books question-ing the findings of the Warren Commission.

Dr. Crenshaw, an emergency room doctor atParkland Memorial Hospital on the days Kennedy andOswald died in November 1963, wrote about his expe-rience in the 1992 book JFK: Conspiracy of Silence.In it, Dr. Crenshaw detailed his contention that Kennedyhad been shot twice from the front, contradicting thefindings of the Warren Commission that Oswald wasthe lone assassin, firing from behind the president.

“It was just supposed to be this little book, a pa-perback in which he wanted to say what he saw,” saidhis wife, Susan Lea Crenshaw. “Then it just exploded,and he was getting all of this national, and even inter-national, attention.” “He was disappointed that someof the other doctors did not come to his defense,” Ms.Crenshaw said, adding that the few who did remaingood friends.

“I’m very sad that he died,” Dr. Bob McClellandsaid. The professor of surgery at University of TexasSouthwestern Medical School at Dallas was in the op-erating room at Parkland when Dr. Crenshaw, then a

resident, found him. The pair rushed to theemergency room to help tend to the president.“He was a very bright person,” Dr. McClellandsaid of Dr. Crenshaw.

“Of course, he got a lot of notoriety withthat book he wrote. He certainly was not writ-ing on the basis of his imagination. ... Unfor-tunately, there were some misconceptionsabout it on both sides of the fence – on hisside, and on the side of people who criticizedhim.”

The published account made him somewhat of ahero in the eyes of those who have said all along thatthere was more than one gunman. “Other doctors spokeout, but he was the most vocal of them,” said TomBowden, president of the Conspiracy Museum in Dal-las. “That’s the key.”

Mr. Bowden said Dr. Crenshaw was well knownamong those who discount the Warren Commission’sfindings. Many were eagerly awaiting his next book,released [last November]. “Unfortunately, a lot of thewitnesses of those days are dying off,” Mr. Bowdensaid. “That does create a loss for the conspiracy com-munity, those guys who believed in what we believein.”

Dr. Crenshaw’s second book, Trauma Room One,includes the first book, plus information about lawsuitsthat Dr. Crenshaw brought against his detractors anddetails that had come out since his first book was pub-lished, Ms. Crenshaw said.

“He was so happy that the book came out,” Ms.Crenshaw said. “He just wanted to live long enoughfor this book to come out so it would prove that whathe said in the first book was true.” But she said herhusband’s true passion was medicine. “His legacy isnot a book,” she said. "His life was building John PeterSmith Hospital, and that's his legacy.”

Dr. Crenshaw was born and raised in Paris, Texas,before graduating from Southern Methodist Universityin 1953 with a bachelor’s degree. He earned a master’sdegree in biology from East Texas State Teacher’s Col-lege, now Texas A&M-Commerce, in 1955 and a doc-torate from Baylor University in 1957. He earned amedical degree at the University of Texas Southwest-ern Medical School in 1960 and interned at the Veter-ans Administration Hospital in 1961. He completed hisassistant residency in surgery at Parkland in 1965 andhis senior residency in surgery in 1966.

He served as the chairman of the surgery depart-ment of John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth from1966 to 1992, and he was a member of several medical


Author’s Note:Why This Book Was Updated

By Charles A.Crenshaw

The book I origi-nally wrote with JenHansen and J. Gary Shaw,JFK: ConspiracyofSilence, was publishedin April, 1992 and waswell-received across thenation by the Americanpublic. I had broken the

“edict of silence” thrust uponus, those who tried to savePresident John F. Kennedy,and, two days later, his ac-cused assassin, Lee HarveyOswald. My observationscontradicted the “official”version of the assassination,as reported in the Warren Report. I stated that Presi-dent Kennedy was shot at least once, and I believe twice,from the front, and Oswald could not have been a “lonegunman.” I had anticipated criticism from some, but Inever expected the vicious attack from my medical col-leagues.

In May 1992, the editor and a writer for the Jour-nal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) calleda press conference in New York to promote a JAMAarticle which attacked me both personally and profes-sionally. They quoted some of my fellow physicianswho had been in the Parkland Emergency room on thattragic day, with statements that varied significantly fromthe testimony that they had sworn to before the Warren

associations.Services were held at the First Presbyterian

Church, 100 Penn St., in Fort Worth. Cremation pre-ceded the services.

Besides his wife, Dr. Crenshaw is survived by hisson, Charles A. Crenshaw II; his daughter, AdelaideAndrews; and two grandchildren.

Commission. I repeatedly asked JAMA for a retraction and cor-

rection and received correspondence denying our re-quest. My coauthor Gary Shaw and I were advised tosue JAMA, and on November 22, 1992, exactly 29 yearssince that fateful day in Dallas, we filed suit for “slan-der with malice.” In October, 1994, we agreed to court-ordered mediation and accepted a monetary settlementoffered by JAMA. The litigation details and exposureof JAMA ‘s unethical publication are included in thisbook in the section written by our attorney, D. BradleyKizzia.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations(HSCA) concluded in 1979 that President Kennedy’sdeath was the result of a probable conspiracy, but theirrecords were sealed until the year 2029. The 1992 Presi-dent John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collec-tion Act (JFK Act) was a unique solution to nearly thirtyyears of government secrecy, and the government wasrequired to release whatever information it had con-cerning the assassination. The JFK Act created an in-dependent board that would oversee the government’simplementation of the Act, the Assassination RecordReview Board (ARRB).

Many of the revelations from the ARRB havesubstantiated my allegations in the original book. Ac-

cording to SaundraSpencer, the autopsyphotographs of Presi-dent Kennedy thatshe developed at theNaval PhotographyCenter in 1963 weredifferent from thosein the National Ar-chives since 1966.

The ARRB Report also suggests that Dr. Humes, oneof three autopsy physicians, appears to have changedhis Warren Commission testimony when his deposi-tion was taken under oath by the ARRB. Additionaltestimony questioned the autopsy and brain photogra-phy that are now in the National Archive and RecordsAdministration.

I have no idea who shot President Kennedy orwhy. What I do know is that somehow and for somereason, there was a medical cover-up. The “official”autopsy photos do not depict the same wounds I saw inTrauma Room One at Parkland. The wounds I saw werewounds of entrance, and thus they could have not comefrom the rifle of Lee Harvey Oswald.Copyright 2001 Charles A. Crenshaw

“I have no idea who shot PresidentKennedy or why. What I do know isthat...there was a medical cover-up”


IN THE NEWSCIA Places “Electronic Reading Room”Online (Freedom of Information Act)

http://www.foia.cia.gov/default.aspThis new Reading Room replaces the clunky Elec-

tronic Document Release Center (FOIA). The site isfully searchable and has an advanced interface whichallows limiting by date. A browsable list of FrequentlyRequested Records is also available. From the site, “TheCIA has established this site to provide the public withan overview of access to CIA information, includingelectronic access to previously released documents.Because of CIA’s need to comply with the national se-curity laws of the United States, some documents orparts of documents cannot be released to the public.”

February 6, 2002New Tapes: JFK Questioned Value of

Nuclear Build-UpBoston: The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library to-day made public 240 minutes of newly declassified taperecordings of White House meetings and conversationsthat took place in the Cabinet Room on November 21,27 and 29, and December 5, 1962.

Portions of the tapes may be heard by visiting theJohn F. Kennedy Library’s web page athttp://www.jfklibrary.org

The conversations between President John F.Kennedy and his advisors took place shortly after theCuban Missile Crisis and centered on U.S. policy to-ward Cuba, the accuracy of American press reports onmatters of national security, the military budget, andthe value of nuclear weapons, both as a deterrent andas a practical weapon.

Of particular interest are President Kennedy’scandid views of nuclear weapons, nuclear war and de-terrence. At one point during the December 5 meetingwith Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and othermilitary advisors, President Kennedy questions the use-fulness of nuclear weapons as a deterrent, stating:

“If the purpose of our strategic buildup is todeter the Russians, number one; number two,to attack them if it looks like they are aboutto attack us or be able to lessen the impactthey would have on us in an attack…if ourpoint really then is to deter them…we have

an awful lot of megatonnage to put on theSoviets sufficient to deter them from everusing nuclear weapons. Otherwise what goodare they? You can’t use them as a first weaponyourself, they are only good for deterring…Idon’t see quite why we’re building as manyas we’re building.”

March 1, 2002Kennedy Library Opens Personal Papers of

Arthur Schlesinger

Boston: Researchers, libraries, members of the press, andmembers of the public are advised that the John F. KennedyPresidential Library has processed and made available forresearch four additional series of the Personal Papers ofArthur M. Schlesinger.

Arthur M. Schlesinger served in the Kennedy Admin-istration as Special Assistant to the President and is the au-thor of A Thousand Days and Robert Kennedy and His Times.

The Personal Papers of Arthur Schlesinger -- Classi-fied Subject File is now open for research. The documentsin the Classified Subject File cover the period from 1961 to1963 and are arranged alphabetically by subject. There are31 boxes in this open series. Highlights of the collection in-clude the folders on disarmament, British Guiana, Cuba, andthe United Nations. Researchers will note that classified por-tions still remain closed. Withdrawal sheets describing theclosed materials will allow the researchers to request addi-tional review.

Also opened today is the Personal Papers of ArthurSchlesinger -- Classified Chronological File that consists ofonce classified onion skin copies of memoranda and corre-spondence written by Arthur Schlesinger to PresidentKennedy and other members of the staff from 1961 to 1963.The file is arranged by year in reverse chronological order.Copies of many of these documents will be located in otherseries within the Schlesinger Papers. Researchers should usethis series in conjunction with the regular Chronological Fileof the Schlesinger Papers. Researchers will notice that thereis some duplication between these series.

The Personal Papers of Arthur Schlesinger -- Memo-randa to the President File is also now available for research.The series consists of memoranda written to PresidentKennedy by Arthur Schlesinger on various topics from 1961to 1963. They are arranged by year in reverse chronologicalorder. The Personal Papers of Arthur Schlesinger -- Remarksfor the President File is also now open and consists of speechand statement drafts written for President John F. Kennedy

http://www.foia.cia.gov/default.asp

http://www.jfklibrary.org


by Mr. Schlesinger. The two boxes are organized by title orlocation and date and are listed chronologically. Research-ers may find these speech files very useful when used inconjunction with the speech files already available in thePresident’s Office Files and the Papers of Theodore Sorensen.

The collections are available for research use in theLibrary’s Research Room. The hours of operation are Mon-day – Friday from 8:30 am - 4:30 pm, and appointmentsmay be made by calling (617) 929-4534.

Materials housed at the John F. Kennedy Library havecome to the Library through two routes. First, as Federalrecords which come from executive departments, commis-sions and committees of the Federal government. Access tothese materials is controlled by the originating agency. Inaddition, many of these materials contain national securityclassified information, which under laws and executive or-ders must be reviewed by the appropriate agency for pos-sible declassification. Some of the materials, such as civilrights cases or litigation, also have privacy restrictions.

Second, as personal papers, which come from indi-viduals under deeds of gift and deposit agreements negoti-ated between the National Archives and the donor or his/herheirs. These materials, called “donated historical materials,”comprise the bulk of the Library’s holdings. Deeds of giftand deposit agreements cover the administration of the col-

lections as well as the title, literary rights, and any restric-tions requested by the donor or necessitated by the nature ofthe materials. Many donors retain literary rights and/or re-strict personal financial or medical information. A review ofpersonal papers for national security classified informationalso sometimes occurs depending upon the nature of the pa-pers themselves. The Library’s holdings currently include246 personal papers collections, of which 175 are open fullyor in part for research use.

To document the life and career of President Kennedyand to provide insight into people, events, and issues of mid-20th century American history, the John F. KennedyLibrary and Museum collects, preserves and makesavailable for research the documents, audiovisual ma-terial and memorabilia of President Kennedy, his fam-ily, and his contemporaries. The Library’s Archivesincludes 36 million pages of documents from the col-lections of 340 individuals, organizations, or govern-ment agencies; oral history interviews with 1,300people; and over 30,000 books. The Audiovisual Ar-chives administers collections of over 400,000 still pho-tographs, 8,550,000 feet of motion picture film, 1,200hours of video recordings, over 9,000 hours of audiorecordings and 500 original editorial cartoons.

Johnson County Library, Overland Park, Kansas– Project JFK, Mark TaylorGrand Prairie City Library, Grand Prairie, Texas– Hoffman Family/JFK LancerDallas Public Library, Dallas, Texas– Self-SponsoredGreensburg Public Library, Greensburg,Pennsylvania– Bob SchwartzmillerCistercian Preparatory School, Irving, Texas– Chris MarcellosThe State Historical Society of Wisconsin– Self-SponsoredTulsa City-County Library, Tulsa, Oklahoma– Craig Roberts

Hughson Public Library– Bill MillsMary Parker Memorial Library– Jerry BallengerBrattleboro Union High School– William HolidayTippecanoe County Public Library, Lafayette,Indiana– Jerry RobertsonGallaudet University Library,Washington, D.C.– JFK Lancer, Ed Hoffman, and Ron FreidrichBrehm Prepretory School, Carbondale , Illinois– Self-SponsoredGoodland High School, Goodland , Kansas– Brad Parker

Please contact us to donate a Library Subscription ofthe Kennedy Assassination Chronicles.

Library PatronsOur list of those who generously donate asubscription of KAC to their local library.


JFK Lancer’s

NOVEMBER IN DALLAS2001 CONFERENCE

November 16, 17, and 18, 2001

OBSERVING THE 38TH ANNIVERSARY OFTHE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT

JOHN F. KENNEDY

I n the past five years since the initial November In Dallas Conference onthe Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, NID has become animportant annual forum for the presentation and exchange of in-

formation on vital research and new developments. Past confer-ences have consistently brought together witnesses and lead-ing persons from various backgrounds to address these is-sues.

This year’s conference theme was “You Are theJury.” A grand jury, to be exact. Unlike trialjuries, grand juries don't decide if someone is

guilty of criminal charges that have been brought againstthem. Grand juries listen to evidence and decide if some-one SHOULD be charged with a crime. What could agrand jury evaluate in the assassination of President JohnF. Kennedy. What is evidence? What is proof? What isopinion? What are the facts?

T he 2001 NID Conference presentedinformation that you should evaluate and hopefully,find answers to those questions.

A Message from JFK Lancer and November In Dallas 2001.

Debra Conway and Tom JonesJFK Lancer

YOU ARE THE JURY


Mary Ferrell - JFK LancerAwards 2001

New Frontier Award"In appreciation for your contribution of newevidence and futhering the study of the assassinationof President John F. Kennedy."

Mark Sobel

Legacy AwardsPresented in appreciation for your permanent

additions to the record of theassassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Larry HancockMalcolm Blunt

Ed Sherry

Student of the YearElizabeth Toleno, Honorable

MentionJoe Biles, Scholarship Winner

Continuing our tradition of documenting the record andsharing research materials.

1 0 JFK Lancer Kennedy Assassination Chronicles Vol. 7, Issue 4

SpeakersREX BRADFORD has devoted himself to scanning documents and digitalizing audio recordings related to

the assassination of JFK, most recently in relation to Lee Harvey Oswald's alleged visit to Mexico City. Anauthor and a designer of games for computers, he resides in Massachusetts.

AL CARRIER has an extensive background as a crime scene investigator and in weapons and ballisticswith military and police units. He has also attended the US Secret Service Dignitary Protection Course. Amonghis special interests in the death of JFK are the shot sequence, ballistic evidence, Secret Service failures, and LeeOswald's connections to US intelligence agencies.

GEORGE COSTELLO, a graduate of Johns Hopkins with a J.D. from Duke Law School, is an attorney forthe Congressional Research Service of The Library of Congress. He has authored several important book re-views of Gerald Posner's Case Closed, of Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation, and, most recently, of MurderIn Dealey Plaza, which appeared in The Federal Lawyer (May 2001).

TONY CUMMINGS has applied his unique understanding of computer graphics and digital enhancementsto the photographic record. In collaboration with Bill Miller and through his company, Interactive History, hewill present a presentation of some of the best visible details of the assassination that have ever been madeavailable to the JFK research community.

JAMES H. FETZER, McKnight Professor at the University of Minnesota and Co-Chair of NID 2001, hasorganized symposia and conferences on the death of JFK and produced a 4 1/2 hour video, "JFK: The Assassina-tion, the Cover-Up, and Beyond". He is the editor of two collections of new studies, Assassination Science andMurder In Dealey Plaza.

STEWART GALANOR is the author of the highly-acclaimed study, Cover-up, which Gaeton Fonzi hasdescribed as the single best book on the assassination of JFK. The author of Calculus: A Visual Approach and ofThe Paradox OF Tristam Shandy, he is a multimedia consultant and technical writer for financial institutions andthe television industry.

NICK GERLICH, Ph.D., an associate professor of marketing at West Texas A&M University, serves as theeditor on the subject of conspiracies for Skeptic Magazine and as an e-commerce and internet consultant. Largelya skeptic of conspiracy theories, he has written about the death of JFK and attended NID 2000, which was thebasis for a new piece for Skeptic that is forthcoming.

JAMES GORDON, a graduate of Edinburgh University, teaches Computing and English at Selkirk HighSchool in the Scottish Borders. His interest in the death of JFK is of long-standing and, in his courses, he uses theassassination as a subject for his students' writing assignments as well as conducting mock trials of Lee Oswaldfor oral presentations.

Hiawatha Daugherty, Litigation MediaBetty WindsorJessie, Office MaxDee, Ramada InnJim FetzerTony CummingsMary FerrellBeau CrouchTomie JonesSteve ConwayFamily and Friends Beau Crouch and Tomie Jones

Special Thanks to:


SHERRY GUTIERREZ, a court-certified seniorcrime scene analyst and court certified expert on bloodsplatter analysis, formerly headed the Forensic Inves-tigative Unit for St. Charles Parish of the LouisianaSheriff's Department. A consultant to district attorneysand other law enforcement officials, she is a memberof the International Association for Identification andhas served on its subcommittee for bloodstain patternevidence.

LARRY HANCOCK, co-author (with ConnieKritzberg) of November Patriots, a work of historically-based fiction concerning the death of JFK, has spentthe last thirty years dealing with computers and com-munications. Currently Marketing Director for ZoomTelephonics, Inc, he has expended considerable effortconducting research on intelligence aspects of the as-sassination, including the involvement of Richard CaseNagell.

BILL HOLIDAY, JFK Lancer - Mary FerrellTeacher of the Year, 1997. A 31 year teacher of SocialScience at Noblesville High School, Noblesville, Indi-ana, where he also serves as Department Chairperson.Noblesville's Board of School Trustees have recognizedMr. Hitchcock's students by regularly hearing presen-tations regarding their research and internship. Mr.Hitchcock , through his Congressman, Dan Burton, andDavid Marwell, Former Executive Director of the As-sassination Records Review Board, arranged, for the

summer of 1995, an internship oppor-tunity with the Review Board for thesestudents. Five groups from NoblesvilleHigh School, totaling 56 students, in-terned with the Board. Current student'sMichele Aleck and Elizabeth Tolenowill be assisting.

DAVID W. MANTIK, M.D.,Ph.D., practices radiation medicine atthe Loma Linda University MedicalCenter. He has made path breakingstudies of the original autopsy X-rays,the medical evidence, and the Zapruderfilm, which have been published in As-sassination Science and Murder InDealey Plaza.

BILL MILLER is an Illinois resi-dent who has researched the assassina-

tion for nearly two decades. His current interest is inthe analysis and the synthesis of the photographicrecord, especially in relation to witness testimony. Hisrecent findings have included hidden images on the 6thfloor immediately following the shooting and detect-ing features of JFK's rear head wound in several assas-sination films.

JIM OLIVIER, a Louisiana-based television jour-nalist, has been researching the assassination for morethan 30 years. He has produced numerous television

Author Craig Roberts in the “Book Room.”

Teacher Bill Holiday and his high school group talkwith Adele Edisen.


segments on various aspects of the assassination, in-cluding several with Jim Garrison, former District At-torney of New Orleans, who tried Clay Shaw for in-volvement in a New Orleans-based conspiracy to killPresident Kennedy.

JERRY POLICOFF became absorbed by the studyof the assassination duringthe mid-1960s, when he metSylvia Meagher, HaroldWeisberg, Mark Lane, andother critics of The WarrenReport. As an advertisingtrainee in New York, he be-came interested in mediacoverage of the event, whichled to a long piece on the roleof The New York Times inpromoting the cover-up. Hehas since published in NewTimes, The Washington Star,Rolling Stone, The VilllageVoice, and The New YorkTimes Op-Ed Page.

CRAIG ROBERTS, aformer Marine Corps sniperin Vietnam with extensivelaw-enforcement experi-ence, has authored KillZone: A Sniper Looks AtDealey Plaza, widely ac-claimed as an outstandingcontribution to studies of thedeath of JFK. He is an ex-pert on why many powerful

groups--including the CIA, the Mafia, and banking in-terests--preferred JFK not remain President.

KENNETH A. RAHN, is an atmospheric chem-ist and professor at the Graduate School of Oceanogra-phy, University of Rhode Island, where he has beensince 1973. He received a B.S. in chemistry from MITin 1962, and later a Ph.D. in meteorology from the Uni-

versity of Michigan in 1971.His specialty is measuringtrace elements in aerosols byneutron activation. He pres-ently offers courses in chem-istry, atmospheric chemistry,global change, scientificwriting, and the JFK assas-sination at the university. Hebecame interested in the JFKassassination in 1992, first itsgeneral aspects and later itsscientific aspects. Most re-cently, he has been focusingon the neutron activationanalysis of the bullet frag-ments by the FBI and theHSCA, and is continuallybeing surprised by how im-portant these results are turn-ing out to be.

MICHAEL SPARKSleads a non-profit think tank,The 1st Tactical StudiesGroup (Airborne), originallybased out of Ft. Bragg, NC,which field-tests military

Beau Crouch(head down), RexBradford, andStewart Galanorprepare equipmentfor the nextpresentation.

Crime scene expert Sherry Gutierrez


The conference audience listens attentively.

Debra, Tom, and Steve after the Awards Banquet

November In Dallas: A Reviewby Jamey Hecht, Ph.D.

November in Dallas 2001 was a success. The at-tendance was unusually low, because the 9-11 attacksreduced our mobility. And yet these same attacks addedan urgency to the proceedings. The whole country wasbuzzing with the phrase “wake-up call,” and suddenlythe things and ideas and institutions to which our orga-nization pays such anxious attention — violence, in-ternational traffic in arms and narcotics, governmentmalfeasance and deception, equal protection under lawand all that threatens it — began to draw very broadpublic acknowledgement. Although it felt a little riskyto get on a plane and fly to Dallas, it also felt like thatcity was the right place to be in the new millennium,confronting difficult truths and sharing the burden oflonging for an elusive justice. I couldn’t attend quiteall the sessions (so I can’t comment on them all here),nor meet quite all the attendees. But this was my firstNID conference and it was unforgettable.

Craig Roberts spoke persuasively about a widevariety of episodes and the linkages among them. Heseemed to me especially well acquainted with themachinations of the Nixon-Kissinger administrationduring the Vietnam War, and the criminal activities ofthose officials and their associates throughout the1970’s. I got the impression that his primary expertiselay in the heroin and banking adventures of that pe-riod, on which he was quite an arresting speaker. Buthe also made it clear that there was continuity betweenthe narcotics-banking fiasco of the old Nugan HandBank and BCCI, and more recent stuff in places likeAfghanistan. I got his autograph on a copy of his KillZone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza.

Stewart Galanor, the author of the celebrated

equipment and makes recom-mendations to the U.S. Army atno charge. His primary interestin his spin-off group, The 4thTactical Studies Group (Con-spiracy), is to solve the assassi-nation of JFK and to restoreconfidence in our government.

DONALD THOMAS,who specializes in entomologyand has been employed by theUS Department of Agriculturesince 1983, has also undertakenresearch on the death of Presi-dent Kennedy, including, most recently, a major studyof echo correlation in Dealey Plaza recorded duringthe assassination, which appeared in a British journalof forensics. He holds adjunct appointments at TexasA&M and at the Universidad Nacional AutonomaMexicana and is also a research associate of TheCarnegie Museum and The Nebraska State Museum.

STU WEXLER, currently a Web Developer, whograduated from Tulane University in 1998 with a de-gree in history and a minor in philosophy. He has beenresearching the JFK assassination since the 7th grade,and has made presentations on the subject at his highschool. Wexler's main interests in the case are Oswald'sbackground and the physical evidence.

JOHN WILLIAMS, Ph.D., has developed a keeninterest in the history and activities of the Foreign In-telligence Advisory Board, especially from November1962 to October 1964. A faculty member at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI, he offerscourses in its Department of Human Development,Family Living, and Community Educational Services.


Cover-Up, gave a witty and incisive talkabout the witnesses in Dealey Plaza and theway the Warren Commission and the HSCAoffered misleading and even mendacioussummaries of their testimony. In this as inso many other areas, the Commission andits successors falsified, omitted, and distortedthe sworn testimony of witnesses for whoseintegrity they cared not a whit, having soldtheir own in exchange for a place in the neworder of things. Galanor’s devastatingly spe-cific array of examples filled the audiencewith the too-familiar mood of frustrated in-dignation, along with a keen gratitude forhis labor and his integrity.

John Williams described the role of theForeign Intelligence Advisory Board in theKennedy Administration and contrasted itwith the use other presidents made of thesame body. This issue is part of a very im-portant area, since JFK’s vexed relationshipwith the intelligence community is at the heart of hismurder and bears strongly on his achievement — theKennedy vision of international peace, shared prosper-ity, and popular sovereignty. I found Professor Will-iams articulate, scholarly, and human. I hope otherswill emulate his clarity and the compassionate sense ofmission that animated his presentation.

I found the presentations by Jim Fetzer and DavidMantik compelling, detail-oriented, and insightful aboutthe medical evidence and the many forensic areas ofthe JFK case in which their expertise have purchase.On the other hand, I share some reservations about theirstyle, which sometimes struck me as needlessly defen-sive. The Zapruder-film alterationcontroversy has been surprisinglydivisive, since it doesn’t touch onthe most politically important as-

pects of the President’s murder. It’s painful to see themovement wracked by factionalism over issues that areproportionately tiny compared to our shared concernwith the big issues. It may be extra work to cope witha few graying alpha males in the room, but it’s gener-ally worth it: Jim Fetzer’s books are highly visible,valuable resources and his colleagueship is a tremen-dous asset to Lancer and its mission (particularly be-cause of his background in the philosophy of scienceand methodology). I was honored to meet the guy.

Rex Bradford’s Mexico City presentation washelpful because it took account of new document re-leases and audio-tapes. It was a very complimentary

presentation to the theMexico City picture alreadycome into sharp focus in1999, when John Newmanbrilliantly refined Peter DaleScott’s account of the story— the Oswald imperson-ation, the elaborate waltz ofphotos and tapes and lies thatthe Mexican DFS and theCIA danced around the FBIand the rest of us.

I was honored to meetEd Hoffman, who stood on the triple underpass in1963. I was honored to meet Debra Conway, whoseenergy and intelligence and devotion make the con-ference possible every year.The Award Banquet

Jim Oliver, Awards Banquet MC, Dennis David,KeynoteSpeaker, and Joe Biles, Student of the YearScholarship Winner. (Kelly Creech produced thegraphic on the screen and also the banquet film.)


Perhaps the movement’s most important public-ity achievement since Oliver Stone’s film (and PeterDale Scott’s winning of the University of CaliforniaPress as the publisher for his Deep Politics and theDeath of JFK) has been the vindication of the HSCA’sfindings on the dictabelt recording and the grassy knollshot. Donald Thomas presented a version of his “EchoCorrelation Analysis and the Acoustic Evidence,” thesame paper that recently won worldwide attention af-ter publication in a prominent British journal. Attend-ees congratulated Dr. Thomas and thanked him for hisimpact on the public.

For me, the most moving event of the day wasLarry Teeter’s long and spellbinding speech about theRobert Kennedy murder. Teeter is Sirhan Sirhan’s cur-rent attorney, and he knows the case as well as anyonedoes, perhaps better than anyone now living. He spokewithout notes, with thepassion and urgency of aninspired lawyer. If youonly know the JFK case,as I did, you risk missingthe horrific reach of theproblem, the way it un-dermines American juris-prudence, compromisesequal protection, vitiatesthe public will to electofficials of our ownchoosing, and fosters aculture of cynicism and even despair. Larry Teeterspelled out the long-range planning of RFK’s murderand the chilling chicanery of its judicial aftermath, theway it all ran on violence, deceit, bribery, and an impe-rious contempt for the law on the part of the guilty of-ficials and their confederates. As Ted Kennedy said atBobby’s funeral, “he saw war…and tried to stop it.”That’s why he’s gone.

At the Dallas conference, we come together toexpose ongoing deception, to offer our findings to ourcolleagues, to articulate hypotheses and to exchangeinformation, to speculate and to affirm and to mourn.Most of the people who killed the Kennedys and Dr.King are dead now. The methods of the unpunishedconspirators and opportunistic accessories continue andmany of their secrets remain hidden, despite the heroicefforts of the much-maligned Church Committee andits successors like the ARRB. So a conference like thisone brings up a great deal of difficult thought and emo-

tion, a yearning for possibilities lost and a bitternessover wasted human potential. If the Indochina War hadnever escalated, to choose just one example of CIA-driven aggression, another 58 thousand young Ameri-cans of all colors and a million Vietnamese might to-day be working, loving and laughing. If the idealismof the New Frontier were in the ascendant today —with its respect for learning and the arts, its genuine ifpolitically vexed love of peace, and its confidence inthe ability of the human intellect to identify and meetgenuine human needs — we might not be in the envi-ronmental, economic, and geopolitical peril that domi-nates our daily attention. November in Dallas is a hardexperience. But the act of telling the truth in the pres-ence of one’s fellow citizens has a remarkably salutaryeffect.

The poet Holderlin wrote, “where grows the dan-ger, there grows also thesaving power.” Thoughthe violence and the con-tempt for the law con-tinue, though the intelli-gence budgets are soar-ing and the world is mili-tarized as never before,people now know thatthe government routinelylies. They know that itdoes so when big busi-ness and the military sub-

vert popular sovereignty. And they are beginning torealize that the government is a public institution whichthey can collectively change for the better, so that itworks for peace and economic justice, educating thepopulation instead of jailing it. Though the world ailsmiserably, it is also rife with viable solutions waitingfor widespread acceptance. The kind of truth-tellingexemplified by, say, South Africa’s Truth and Recon-ciliation Commission may be the lever that eventuallyoverturns American denial, and turns our faces awayfrom current obsessions (sports, celebrities, cars, guns,beef, etc) and toward policy once again. JFK Lancerand its sister organizations in the political justice move-ment are a central part of this bright possibility, morecentral than is generally acknowledged. I’m proud thatI was there last November, and until we meet this No-vember I wish you all clean reading glasses, loud voices,sharp pens, and solidarity.

Perhaps the movement’s most impor-tant publicity achievement sinceOliver Stone’s film ... has been the vin-dication of the HSCA’s findings on thedictabelt recording and the grassyknoll shot.


FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16• NID01-V01 A MAJOR MOTIVE (1.5 hrs.) $20

Craig Roberts, JFK, THE CIA, AND THE SOUTHEAST ASIADRUG CONNECTIONS

• NID01-V02 THE STUDY OF DEALEY PLAZA WITNESSES (1.5 hrs.) $20James Gordon, Stewart Galanor

• NID01-V03 PIECES OF THE PUZZLE (2 hrs.) $30TEACHING JFK MODELS OF INSTRUCTIONBill Holiday, Michele Aleck, Elizabeth TolenoHOW TO THINK ABOUT CONSPIRACYMichael Sparks

• NID01-V04 DOCUMENTS UNDER THE JFK ACT (1.5 hrs.) $20John Williams, FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE ADVISORY BOARDLarry Hancock, ARMY INTELLIGENCE GROUP 112TH

• NID01-V05 MEXICO CITY DOCUMENTS AND AUDIOTAPES (1 hr.) $20Rex Bradford

• NID01-V06 Larry Teeter, Attorney for Sirhan Sirhan (3+ hrs.) $35Ron Redmon, JFK, RFK, AND MLK Similarities in the ThreeAssassinations

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17• NID01-V07 PIECES OF THE PUZZLE (1.5 hrs.) $20

Bill Miller and Tony Cummings, PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALYSISLarry Hancock, THE DAL-TEX PHOTO

* NID01-V08 JFK AND THE MEDIA, Moderator, David Mantik (2 hrs.) $30Nick Gerlich, George Costello, Jerry Policoff

* NID01-V09 THE FILM, THE PHOTOS, AND THE SHOTS (3 hrs.) $45Al CarrierDavid Mantik, REVIEW OF MOORMAN PHOTO EXPERIMENT

• NID01-V10 CRIME SCENE EVIDENCE (2.5 hrs.) $35Sherry Gutierrez, BLOOD SPATTER ANALYSISDonald Thomas, ECHO CORRELATION ANALYSIS AND THEACOUSTIC EVIDENCE

• NID01-V11 BANQUET and AWARDS CEREMONY (1.5 hrs.)$20MC: Jim OlivierAwards Presentation, Tom Jones, and Debra ConwayFilm Tribute, Kelly CreechBanquet Address, Joe G. Biles, 2001 JFK Lancer-# Winter2001 Vol 7 Issue 4Mary FerrellStudent Scholarhip WinnerBanquet Address, Dennis DavidConcluding Remarks, Jim Olivier

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18• NID01-V12 NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS (2 hrs.) $30

Jim Fetzer, Ken Rahn, Stewart Galanor, Stu Wexler

NID 2001 Videos

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Reports of the Presidents’ ForeignIntelligence Advisory Board:

An Introductory Overview

By John M. Williams Ph.D.

This significant series of reports is taken frommeetings of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board,which occurred during the terms of Presidents Kennedyand Johnson. By no means are all the meetings of theBoard included here. Only those deemed to have ma-terial pertinent to the Kennedy assassination have beenincluded in the present release.

The Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (FIAB)was originally appointed under President Eisenhoweras a tactic to forestall the creation of a bi-partisan“Watch Dog Committee” recommended in 1955 by theHoover Commission on Organization of the ExecutiveBranch of the Government. In January 1961, Presi-dent Kennedy decided that there was a continuing needfor a Presidential Advisory Board on Foreign Intelli-gence, but he temporarily delayed the appointment ofnew members for a later date.

Following the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, how-ever, the President very quickly acted to establish theFIAB by Executive Order. The Board was at work byMay, and Board Chairman, James Killian appointedhimself and three other Board members to serve on aBoard panel “. . . to study the extent to which the gov-ernment should be involved in political, psychologi-cal, propaganda, and paramilitary activities; and thepolicy which should be pursued by the U.S. Govern-ment in these matters.” (Excerpts from the Minutes ofthe President’s FIAB meetings with respect to CovertActions Matters: Undated Memorandum).

Under President Kennedy, this Board kept a busyschedule. In approximately two and a half years, theBoard met for 25 meetings covering a period of 39 days.Of these, only 10 meetings covering 19 days are in-cluded here. These reports provide an important, yetvery partial view of the Board’s work during this time.In accord with the purpose of this release, material fromfour Board meetings under President Johnson are alsoincluded. Further details concerning the Board’s his-tory are provided in a summary given by Clark Cliffordfor the first meeting with President Johnson on Janu-ary 30, 1964.

The reports given here cover Board meetingswhich occurredfrom November 9,1962 to October 2,1964. Some memo-randa from thesemeetings containmaterial, whichdates back as earlyas May 15, 1961.However, historiansand researchersmust be ready toface a “patchwork”of releases from theoverall reports,which might accu-rately be describedas an “AssassinationReview Board’sSampler.” This author cannot help wondering howmany chefs and what kind of chefs it took to cook upthis curious compilation of reports. We need to lookfurther at this question.

What, first of all, are some highlights of theseimportant reports?

1. The first highlight comes in the last cited meeting ofthe Board for this release on October 1 and 2, 1964.There we read that the Chairman, Clark Clifford, hadmet with President Johnson a number of times fordiscussion of various subjects, and on these occasionshad taken the opportunity to progressively acquaint thePresident with the work of the Board. “Mr. Cliffordpointed out to the Board that, unlike President Kennedy,who had reconstituted the Board in 1961, and wasTHOROUGHLY acquainted with its functioning,President Johnson had not been as intimately associatedwith the Board, PRIMARILY FOR THE REASONTHAT NO INTELLIGENCE RELATED INCIDENTSHAVE THUS FAR ARISEN in President Johnson’s

Clark Clifford: Presidentialadvisor and head of PFIABfor JFK


ing such matters as reports on the Mongoose Pro-gram, some concerns raised by the President con-cerning intelligence operations, and Allen Dulles’view of the importance of covert operations programswhich may have brought him into direct conflict withPresident Kennedy.

Readers must be prepared to find themselvesperplexed and frustrated by the number of postpone-

ments or deletions from the material which interruptthe flow of thought, or suddenly cut off discussion ofissues at hand. In many instances, the blocking out ofinformation, even on meeting agendas is crudely done.It suggests a reckless haste on the part of censors. Apartfrom blockages filling whole parts of pages, this readernoted the outright deletion of 328 additional pageswhich would have brought the Memoranda cited tonearly 750 pages rather than the 416 pages of text thatwere actually released. In a supposed democracy, thissort of crudity in censorship is unconscionable! It se-verely stunts the scope of these reports.

These omissions open up an important question:What were the criteria for determining the selection ofreports which were, at least in part, released? It maybe that the original order of releases gives some hintconcerning the criteria of selection for this series. Thefirst four selections in the series came from late 1963(2) and 1964 (2). This is where the meetings of No-vember 22, 1963 (last under Kennedy) and January 30,1964 (first under Johnson appear). This reader’s hy-pothesis is that the criteria for relating these meetingsto the assassination were not formed apriori, but weredeveloped in the process of selection with those hav-ing the most obvious connection selected first.

This makes the question of how this series wasseen as connected to the assassination an ambiguousone. With the paramount emphasis given to materialon Cuba, and intelligence operations connected to theCuba situation, this author wonders whether the select-ing editor suspected that the material might have somebearing upon the issue of whether an anti-Castro or pro-Castro Cuban force was motivated to be involved inthe assassination, or whether these documents mightthrow some light upon such a Cuban related motive.

Whatever the criteria may have been, what thesereports actually say or suggest to their readers may bevery different than what the selecting editor intendedor the criteria might have emphasized. To this reader,the struggle by members of the Board over the ques-tion who had de facto jurisdiction over covert opera-tions became an increasingly salient question throughthis series of reports. Clearly this issue put the intelli-

term to evidence his special need for the Board’sassistance.” (Memorandum for the File: October 1-2,1964: Italics added). Could it be that we are faced withtwo Presidents whose very different foreign policieseventuated in a very different relationship to theintelligence agencies around foreign intelligence?Under President Kennedy, the deliberations of thisBoard served a vitally necessary role. What exactlythis role was is suggested in this series of meetings.2. The second highlight of this series of reports is intheir ambivalent, yet increasing, focus uponunderstanding and evaluating the covert actionprograms being carried out during this period of theCold War, especially by the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA). (Cf. PFIAB No 206-10001-10017: undatedreport as a starting point). An important turning pointin the Board’s audit and evaluation of these programsseems to have been reached sometime in early 1963from this author’s reading of extant sessions. Thesereports constitute an important source for helping toopen up this issue.3. Another highlight of the Reports is an immensevolume of material relating to both intelligencereconnaissance as well as covert sabotage operationsrelating to Cuba. (See especially the FIABMemorandum for Jan 11, 1963, and the GeneralChronology for the Meeting of January 25-26, 1963,among others).4. A fourth highlight is the mixed sequence of reportsthe Board received from various sources, especially CIAConcerning the situation in Vietnam. Among these arereports by Richard Helms and John McCone to theBoard in 1964 concerning how seriously the politicalsituation had deteriorated in Vietnam by late 1964.5. Another point of interest is the summary of the seriesof recommendations made by the Board to PresidentKennedy from May 1961 to November 1963 assummarized in the meeting of January 30, 1964.Unfortunately, the report does not indicate which ofthe recommendations Kennedy approved and whichones he deferred or rejected.

These are some highlights of this series of reports.However, there are other issues raised in them whichmay be of interest to researchers or historians includ-

Unfortunately, the report does not in-dicate which of the recommendationsKennedy approved and which ones hedeferred or rejected.


gence agencies into some conflict with the Presidentand his Executive Branch; yet how serious this con-flict may have been remains to be resolved.

The issuance of these reports suggests a glaringdefect in the historical record around the Kennedy Ad-ministration, one pointed out by John Newman and oth-ers in their writings. Not enough attention has beengiven to the kinds of disagreement between PresidentKennedy and various members of his Administrationas well as others outside of it over important issues offoreign policy, which occurred during his administra-

tion; nor have the degrees of conflict over these issuesbeen evaluated carefully enough. The patchwork ofthese reports does not adequately assist in clarifyingthese issues and the extent of conflict around them, butthey do provide some important indications of it. Fur-ther clarification requires as full a release of the docu-mentation of all these meetings as possible. Such re-lease is mandatory if historians, researchers, and con-cerned citizens are to be entitled to do their work offurthering an accurate understanding of this importantmoment of United States and world history.

Memorandomfor Files:M e e t i n gD e c e m ber27-28, 1962,just after theC u b a nM i s s i l eCrisis.


MYSTERIES OF THE 112INTELLIGENCE CORP GROUP

presented by Larry Hancock

One of the ongoing areas of mystery and speculation in regard to events in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963has been the activities of the 112th Army Intelligence unit. The documents available to us now appear to resolvemany of these mysteries, all except the most fundamental one – the actual role of the 112th in Dallas.

This paper and its related document collection address the following “mysteries”:

1. Organization, mission and personnel of the 112th Intelligence Corps Group (INTC)

2. Organization, mission and personnel of the 316th Intelligence Corps Detachment

3. Activities of 112th Group II (Dallas) personnel on November 22, 1963

4. Performance of “Protective Service” duties by the 112th INTC

5. The role of Specialist James Powell and the history of his TSBD photograph

6. Possible identification of 112th personnel as “mystery” Secret Service agents

7. The role of Warrant Office Edward Coyle; attendance at the Armory robbery meeting on November 22, 1963

8. Errors in the sworn testimony and statements of Col. Jones, 112th INTC G2 officer

9. Errors or “contradictory” intelligence in 112th and 4th Army intelligence reports

10. “Stand-Down” of the 316th Detachment on November 22, 1963

he specified and was serving as intelligence officer(G2), not operations officer (G3). It is also now clearthat we lack any statements from 112th Group Com-mander, the actual 112th Operations Officer and eitherthe Dallas Unit commander or his Deputy Commander-– indeed all of the officers in direct line of commandfor any unit field activities in Dallas during the Presi-dential visit.

However, we do have intelligence “spot” reportstransmitted from the 112th personnel in Dallas to theirheadquarters in San Antonio and relayed to other gov-ernment organizations. They give us a picture of thetype of information that the 112th was collecting inDallas, its sources within the DPD and they allow us tojudge the quality and effect of this information. What

Why there should be any mystery in regard to therole of the 112th is itself perplexing since we have ac-cess to extended, sworn interviews with its OperationsOfficer, first with the Church Committee and then theHSCA. In addition, we now have an extensive inves-tigation by the ARRB and further interviews with ad-ditional group personnel.

Unfortunately, as we will see, the statements bythese individuals are totally at odds with each otherand with the statements and reports of Secret ServiceDallas trip lead agent Lawson as well as with memo-randa from the Department of Defense and 112th unithistory. In fact, we now know that the purported Op-erations Officer giving sworn statements to the Churchand House Select Committees never held the position


we see in the Dallas reports and the information re-layed by Col. Jones, the unit’s G2 Intelligence of-ficer, shows the unit to have been involved in intel-ligence collection -– not in protective service asmaintained by the same Col. Jones in his statementsto the Church and House Select Committees.

The organization and mission of the 112th INTCand 316th as military units is far from mysteriousand has been further documented in great detail bythe work of the ARRB.1, 2, 3, 4, 7

The United States Army was and is organized intoa serious of Regional Army Commands. Each of thesecommands being staffed with integrated resources in-cluding intelligence/counter intelligence organizations.The command assigned to the Southern region of theUS in 1963 was the Fourth Army and its intelligenceunit -– the 112th Military Intelligence (INTC) CorpsGroup was headquartered, along with Fourth Army it-self, in San Antonio, Texas at Fort Sam Houston.

The 112th was structured into seven operatingregions encompassing five states -– Texas, Louisiana,Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. The regionalunits maintained physical offices and limited staffs inmajor metropolitan centers. Region II staff were lo-cated at 902 Rio Grande, in the Rio Grande Building,Dallas. The Region II unit in Dallas was commanded,in the Fall of 1963, by Lt. Col. Roy Pate and his DeputyCommander was Lt. Col. Edgar Boyd.

The unit history also lists a Col. Willard W. Mizeas overall 112th INTC Group Commander -– with hisG3 Operations Officer as Lt. Col. Stanley Greer andhis S2 Intelligence Officer as Lt. Col. Robert Jones.

The Operations/S3 for the 112th had been Col.Reich, however, in December of 1962 the 316 INTCdetachment had been transferred from Fort Jackson,South Carolina to Fort Sam Houston and attached tothe 112 th. Actually no people or equipment movedwith the transfer and 316 members were still desig-nated as 316th -– the Region I (San Antonio) 112th com-mander was initially designated acting 316th detachmentcommander. The 316th would eventually emerge as atruly separate unit in 1964, once staffing slots wereback filled, but during 1963 it appears that personnelassigned to the 316th assumed tasks within Region Iand their activities are actually reported under RegionI in the 112th unit history. Whether or not the 316th

performed any unique activities or whether it operatedoutside of San Antonio is unclear. Col. Reich beingmoved to become 316 Detachment Commander in Julyof 1963 and his S3 Operations officer position wasfilled by Lt. Col. Stanley Greer.

The ARRB determined from unit records that Col.Jones was never assigned to the position of S3/Opera-tions and served as S2/Intelligence Officer in 1963 andlater was reassigned to 112th Group Executive Officerin 1964. This is of considerable importance as theGroup Intelligence officer only reviews reports, col-lects intelligence and prepares reports for Headquar-ters; the S2 has no role in field operations or tacticalassignments of unit personnel.

The primary function of the 112th was intelligencecollection and, as noted, the intelligence officer inNovember 1963 was Lt. Col. Robert E. Jones. Unitactivities normally included background investigations,domestic intelligence against suspect subversive or po-tentially disruptive organizations and counter intelli-gence against suspected enemy agents, fellow travel-ers or potential intelligence leaks. Most of the work ofthe 112th involved either standard security backgroundchecks, security inspections of 4th Army units, how-ever it also engaged in limited monitoring and main-taining files on individuals and groups seen as domes-tic intelligence targets.

The 112th, as all the Regional Military IntelligenceGroups, provided information to the FBI as well as toPolice Departments and indeed worked at establishingclose connections to major police departments in orderto use their internal resources (including their SpecialServices Groups -– actually police counter intelligence,often known as “Red Squads”). It would not be un-common to find a MIG performing surveillance on thesame individuals or groups as a police department orthe ATF (Alcohol. Tobacco and Firearms) and to alsofind them sharing information among themselves andwith the FBI. Indeed in Dallas on November 22, mem-bers of all 3 groups were meeting in regard to an ongo-ing inquiry into armory thefts and gun running to Cu-ban exiles.8 SA Hosty of the FBI and MI SA Coyle ofthe 112th independently corroborate this meeting on themorning of November 22. Coyle’s interview with theARRB provides background on that investigation andthe inter-agency miscues which led him to call the meet-

“Spot reports give us a picture of thetype of information the 112th wascollection in Dallas, its DPDsources...and shows the unit to havebeen involved in intelligence collec-tion -- not protective services.”


ing.9, 18

Unfortunately, the statements of both Coyle andHosty are in direct conflict with that of Col. Jones. Jonesstated in his HSCA testimony that “Captain” Ed Coylewas on duty on November 22 performing Secret Ser-vice liaison for the Presidential trip – while Agent Hostystates in his autobiography that Ed Coyle spent themorning of November 22 in a multi-agency meeting.This is only one of many instances where the state-ments of Col. Jones is counter to that of all the person-nel stationed in Dallas -– in addition he misstatesCoyle’s actual rank (which was Specialist 5 th, with alater promotion to Warrant Officer).

An example of the unit’s intelligence work canbe seen in a report from Region I in San Antonio datedNovember 1, 1963; this report is on the “Cuban Of-ficer Training Program” and examines in detail effortsbeing made by Manolo Artime to recruit veterans ofthe Bay of Pigs who were then in special officer train-ing courses. Cubans were being aggressively recruitedto join a revolutionary training camp in Nicaragua.These individuals were being told that the US had aban-doned them but that Artime was going to be receivingsupport from both France and Germany.10

In their counter-intelligence role, agents of the112/316th had been very much involved in observingand collecting information on Lee Oswald’s FPCC ac-tivities in New Orleans. Indeed its agents collectedhandbills from his first leafleting beside the carrierWASP and their files contained the name Hidel fromthose handbills as well as the name Oswald. Col. Jonesmaintained, and it seems quite reasonable, that the Os-wald file at the 112th was opened based on Oswald’sNew Orleans activities.7, 11

We know a good deal about the organization,mission and roles of the 112th. However we have twocompletely different versions as to what a dozen of itspersonnel were or were not doing in Dallas on Novem-ber 22 and we have a major conflict over one of thekey photographs taken of the TSBD by 112th SpecialAgent James Powell.

The contradiction arises entirely from the testi-mony of Col. Jones, given under oath. Jones was ini-tially interviewed by the Church Committee whoseemed largely concerned with whether his personnelcould have been any of the mystery men seen in Dea-ley Plaza -– and whether their credentials or self iden-tification could have been as Secret Service Agents. Itis unclear why the Church and HSCA committees se-lected Col. Jones given that he was not the Dallas Com-mander nor in the direct 112th chain of command at all.

However his statements on 112th activities in his HSCAtestimony are very clear and very concrete. 11

As to his duties, Jones states:

“Upon my assignment to the 112th, I was ap-pointed the Operations Officer for the entiregroup...I was directly responsible for all coun-terintelligence operations, background inves-tigations, domestic intelligence and any spe-cials operations in this area.”

The most basic question about November 22, 1963was whether or not the 112th deployed personnel inDallas to perform Protective Services in support of theSecret Service.

Col. Jones himself gave a firm “Yes” to thatquestion:

“We provided a small force – I do not recallhow many but I would estimate between 8and 12 -– during the Presidential trip to SanAntonio Texas and then the following day,on his visit to Dallas. The Regions also pro-vided additional people to assist.”

This clearly suggests that local Dallas personnelwere augmented by additional 112th staff and that theirmission was protective service

Jones goes to some length to state that his peoplewere “under the control and supervision of the SecretService” and were to “supplement the manpower ofthe Secret Service.”

Col. Jones further states that Ed Coyle and “Cap-tain” James Powell were among the local Dallas per-sonnel assigned to these duties:

“James Powell was one of those liaisonpersonnel…he was a Captain and also worecivilian clothes and was assigned to Region2 of the 112th MIG. He was on duty the dayof the assassination.”

Col. Jones goes on to state that he was never in-formed that Captain Powell had taken a photograph ofthe Texas School Book Depository Building and that acopy of the photograph was never submitted to the 112th;he describes Captain Powell as being “negligent” inhis actions in regard to the photograph.Note: Powell’s records and ARRB interview show him


to have been a Specialist, probably a Sergeant (E5)at this time and not an officer; his file also containsa report prepared for his Region II commander inwhich he mentions taking a photograph of the TSBDwith his private camera -– this memo does not statethat he was not on duty at the time but does describehim going to his office after the incident. His FBIreport of January 3, 1964, states that he turned thephotograph in question over to Lt. Col. E. E. Boyd ofRegion II, Army Intelligence in Dallas and alsomentions that he observed a Negro male in one of thewindows at the time of taking the photograph. In hisARRB interview Powell states that none of his groupwere involved with the Presidential trip in any way andthat none of them participated in Protective Service.He makes it clear that he was not on duty but had takenleave to observe the motorcade and hopefully takepictures of the President’s visit.12, 13, 14, 15

Col. Jones also gives an elaborate description ofhow his group functioned in conjunction with the Se-cret Service when called on for such assignments. In-terestingly enough, although VIP Protection is discussedin the Standard Operating Procedures for the 316th

(which happens to be in the ARRB records) the typeof protection it addresses is much more comprehen-sive and seems to be written for situations where theArmy has primary responsibility for security -– suchas the visit of a VIP to a base or Army operations area.Col. Jones does indeed seem to be comfortable withSecret Service liaison duties beyond that of his unit’snormal duties.7

But more importantly, because of the assassina-tion, we have access to the detailed preparations bythe Secret Service for Dallas, including Dallas SecretService lead man SA Lawson’s trip summary and post-assassination report. In addition the DPD generatedextensive reporting of their preparations including listsof all planning meetings and the agencies and person-nel represented.16

SA Lawson himself was especially detailed in list-ing all meetings and attendees down to the Fire De-partment, Trade Center employees and Airport person-nel. All groups involved in security arrangements in-cluding back up personnel from the Sheriffs Depart-ment and Texas Department of Public Safety are de-scribed. Nowhere in any of Lawson’s reports or in theDallas Police reports is any mention made of contactwith or support by members of the 112th or 316th, orany military personnel at all.

Additionally, the Department of Defense advised

the HSCA that no record of any request or action forprotective support exists in regard to the Dallas visit ofthe President.5

When all the current evidence is considered, itseems that the fundamental mystery of the 112th is notwhether or not they were deployed for protective ser-vice in Dallas but rather why Col. Jones was selectedto explain their role to two Congressional committeesand why he appears to have consistently lied under oath.Interestingly enough, his first testimony to the ChurchCommittee was largely devoted to presenting infor-mation which convinced the committee that 112th per-sonnel could very well have been mistaken for the“mystery” agents with credentials reported in DealeyPlaza. We now know this to have not have been thecase for 112th personnel in general and SA Powell spe-cifically.17

One point of speculation might be that the mys-tery of these men with credentials may have been apart of an ongoing assassination cover up, otherwisewe are left with an Army Col. who is either am inveter-ate liar or totally incompetent and unreliable (theconclusion apparently reached by the ARRB -– basedon their internal memos).

We do know a good deal about the intelligencecollection activities of the 112th on November 22, pri-marily based on a series of “Spot” reports as well asmemos from Col. Powell to other agencies and FBImemos relating his reports. These reports also give usa good idea of at least some of the 112th’s routine Dal-las Police contacts.18

One report identifies information as originatingwith Captain Dowdy – in actuality this is George M.Doughty who was in charge of the Identification Bu-reau within the DPD Services division. For referenceit is important to note that Captain Doughty was theofficer in charge of the Identification group located onthe fourth floor of the DPD offices. This group waspart of the Services division which included the CrimeScene Unit, the Photo section, Fingerprint section andrecords section. Given the background and counterin-telligence tasks of the 112th is certainly makes sensefor them to have a connections the ID group. With Cap-tain Doughty as a source, it would appear that they

“ ...Why Col. Jones was selected to ex-plain their role to two Congressionalcommittees and lied under oath.”


should have been getting solid and reliable intelligenceabout the identity and possessions of individuals takeninto custody on November 22.

This brings us to the other unresolved mystery ofthe 112th, nothing more or less than the fact that themajority of the information given to them and reportedby them to various agencies was either incorrect, inac-curate or actively suppressed -– since it did not becomea part of the official investigation or record. To appre-ciate this we have to take a look at it item by item.

Apparently the first formal intelligence passed toCol. Jones was the identity of the suspected assassin.According to Jones he was given only the name “Hidel”with no mention of “Oswald” and no reference to mul-tiple ID’s or the use of an alias. Indeed Col. Jones is onrecord as being able to provide the DPD with the infor-mation that Hidel was very likely Lee Oswald, basedon the cross index listings in the Oswald file and theearlier information from New Orleans. Obviously thisis in significant contrast to portions of the official recordincluding statements by a variety of arresting officersthat both names, multiple identifications documents andthe use of an alias were known from the very begin-ning and even transmitted by radio from the patrol carcarrying Oswald (said statements however are not con-firmed by the radio transmission log).

By Friday evening, a lengthy report was providedto the 112th by the DPD detailing the circumstances ofan incident in Dealey Plaza early that week. This inci-dent involved men who were observed by civilians andofficers in the area of the “grassy knoll” fence, appar-ently “sighting in” a rifle. One of the men was de-scribed as clearly fitting the description of the subject(Oswald) and the car associated with the incident wasstated to fit the description which the subject (Oswald)had been seen driving. This would later cause someconfusion since no DPD report of this incident or anyof this information is in evidence and the facts of thisreport present a major contradiction to the official his-torical record.

By late in the evening, the situation had escalatedto the point where Fourth Army Intelligence developeda urgent cable which contained the information thatOswald had been proven to be a “card carrying Com-munist” and that he had “defected to Cuba in 1959.”This urgent advisory cable was sent to the US StrikeCommand at McDill AFB in Florida. Strike Commandwas, at the time, the combined services quick reactionmilitary force which had command and control overoperational Army groups (McDill was also heavilyfocused on Cuban intelligence gathering). Col. Jones

was questioned about this cable by the HSCA and de-nied having had any knowledge of it at the time or ofthe 112th having provided any of the information refer-enced in the cable. He stated that such informationwas in contrast to that in his file on Oswald/Hidel.

According to this report, the 112th had obtainedthese pieces of information from officer Stringfellowof the DPD Criminal Intelligence section. Stringfellowreported to Lt. Jack Revill’s command and this unit wascharged with investigating crimes of an organized na-ture, subversive activities, racial matters and labor rack-eteering. The CI unit, along with the Vice Squad andNarcotics squad reported to Captain W. P. Gannaway(a reserve Army Intelligence officer). Certainly itmakes good sense that the 112th would be in communi-cations with Revill’s unit, however, it surely did notseem to be getting accurate information in terms of theofficial story. And if we believe Jones, Fourth Armygathered the information for its STRIKE command re-port from the Dallas Police organization though someother channel than its own intelligence organization.Note: Lt. Revill also initiated a major controversy byrelating FBI agent Hosty’s remarks that the FBI wasaware of Oswald and the fact that he was capable ofviolent actions.

In the end then, while the organization and mis-sion of the 112th is no mystery, there are two very largeopen questions which relate to the unit. The first be-ing why their commander would aggressively presentwhat surely appears to be a false story of the 112th per-forming Protective Service in Dallas and having de-ployed a considerable number of personnel to do so.

The second open question has to do with the in-formation being passed to the 112th. Was it simplyincorrect or does it reflect reality? Reality before acover-up? In regard to the information from the Iden-tification Section and Captain Doughty, we really haveto wonder whether or not the first available identity forthe man taken into custody at the Texas Theatre wasA. Hidel and whether that was the only identificationprovided to the DPD in the initial billfold turned intothe ID section.

In regard to the information from Lt. Revill’s DPDintelligence unit, I would suggest that the questionwould be why apparent untruths were given to the 112th

-– unless we can find some record that anyone in Dal-las or even the media thought Oswald to be a Cubandefector? Or that the DPD has failed to share with us aCPUSA card with Oswald’s name on it (or would thatbe Hidel?). Of course, Oswald he did show a CPUSA


card to Sylvia Duran in Mexico City and Hoover wastalking about multiple trips by Oswald to Cuba thatafternoon…perhaps the 112th had the real story on Nov.22 and it never made it into the official record?

One final area of speculation pertaining to the 112th

is that of the widely circulated “Stand Down” of mili-tary protection in Dallas. This story originated in acontact between a former member of the 316th and Col.Fletcher Prouty.20

The ARRB devoted considerable attention to Col.Prouty’s information and interviewed Col. Prouty indepth as well as the former 316th commander, Col.Rudolph Reich. In his ARRB interview, FletcherProuty makes it clear that an unnamed individual calledhim (the call was unsolicited and Prouty did not per-sonally know the individual) and described that the unithad at first been ordered to deploy in Dallas and thencalled back at the last moment -– creating a major pro-test by the 316th detachment commander and his deputy.Col. Prouty did not provide a name for the caller to theARRB although he states the caller represented him-self as an officer of the 316th. However, in one of Col.Prouty’s earlier papers he does name the caller and heis listed on the 316th staff roster as a PFC, Private FirstClass. 21

The ARRB interviewed Col. Prouty at length andwas also able to locate and interview the 316th com-mander, Col. Reich. Col. Reich directly denied thestand-down story and elaborated on the fact that hisunit never did protective service, had no special train-ing and that he had personally written a letter to theArmy requesting advice as to possible legal responsesto the story of the stand down. It is unclear what if anyadvice he was given but he did provide a copy of theletter to the ARRB.22

CONCLUSION and SUMMARYReferences and Sources obtained through the

work, files and gracious support of Malcolm Blunt,Debra Conway and Anna Marie Kuhns-Walko ) withadvice and counseling on military history files of the112th from Larry Haapanen.Note: The majority of the documents containingstatements by individual members of the 112th and 316th,the organizational and personnel documents pertainingto the 112th and the various 112th “Spot” reports andother related reports as well as a variety of internalARRB memos and investigation assessments arecontained in the booklet and CD-Rom “Mysteries ofthe 112th” published by and available though JFKLancer. All documents were provided though the

courtesy of Malcolm Blunt, Debra Conway and AnnaMarie Kuhns-Walko. The ARRB background memo on Army Intelligencein Dallas, the Personnel Roster of the 112th INTC, thepersonnel list for the Region II group in Dallas, a varietyof related Fact Sheets and a copy of the 316 th

Intelligence Corps Detachment’s Standing OperatingProcedures are provided in a reference booklet andCDROM available through JFK Lancer Resource MailOrder. Interviews with group personnel and otherrelated documents are also included.

(1) ARRB Memorandum, Wray to Gunn; Subject: ArmyIntelligence in Dallas(2) Department of the Army Unit Lineage and Honors, 112th

Military Intelligence Brigade(3) 112th INTC Group Personnel Roster as of 31 January 1963– Headquarters and Region II/Dallas(4) Fact Sheet on 112th Intelligence Corps(5) Fact Sheet on Protective Services - DOD memo to Com-mittee(6) Fact Sheet on Destruction of Oswald IRR Dossier – DODmemo to Committee(7) 316th Intelligence Corps Detachment; Tactical StandardOperating Procedures(8) Hosty, Assignment Oswald; Hosty identifies the 112th

member as Edward Coyle(9) Coyle, interview with ARRB, Tim Wray and staff, July29, 1996(10) Memo to Joseph Califano, General Counsel from Of-fice of Secretary of the Army, December 11, 1963; CalifanoBox 6, Folder 10 “Cuban Officer Training Program” memo-randa(11) Jones Executive Session testimony to HSCA; April 20,1978 / RIF 180-10116- 10200(12) Powell FBI Report; January 3, 1964(13) Powell Memorandum for the Record, November 22,1963(14) Powell Select Committee on Assassinations interview,Basteri/Maxwell, January 1, 1978(15) ARRB Powell Interview transcript, Wray; April 12,1996(16) Report of the United States Secret Service on the As-sassination of President Kennedy; statements by agentsLawson and Sorrels; JFK Assassination File, Dallas PoliceChief Jesse Currey; DOD statement described on page 184of HSCA report.Note: Chief Currey makes special note that at LoveField, SA Lawson met him immediately before themotorcade and introduced Jack Puterbaugh of theWhite House staff as well as Army Col. Whitmeyer (nostatements are available for Whitmeyer and he was notinterviewed by the WC). Both individuals were clearlyin the pilot car for the motorcade but SA Lawson makes


no mention of his assigning them to the vehicle in spiteof very detailed remarks about his activities at LoveField (SA Lawson was a former Army Reserveintelligence officer – personal correspondence, VincePalamara). However, further research suggests thatthis minor mystery is due to the fact that Col. Whitmeyerwas present due to his personal friendship with ChiefLumpkin, that he had ridden down in the pilot car fromDPD headquarters and that he was later given an

“official” role in the lead car by the DPD in order toexplain his presence – after the fact. (Personalcorrespondence with Dallas researcher Michael Parks).(17) “The Secret Service Agent on the Knoll,” DebraConway, Kennedy Assassination Chronicles Vol. 6, Issue 4,also online athttp://www.jfklancer.com/knollagent/(18) Spot Report 2200 hours Nov 22 from Lt. Green (Dal-las) to Major Dippo (San Antonio); Nov 26 memo to SAC

Edward Coyle ARRB Interview July 29, 1996. The Army Intelligence Agent that met with FBI’s Hosty themorning of November 2, 1963

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


document showing Col. Jones’ report to Captain “Dowdy” of the DPD (sic) on the silhouette target sighting.

FBI San Antonio from ASAC Brooking based on call fromLt. Col. Jones; Nov 27 memo from San Antonio FBI to DallasSAC and Director based on call from Lt. Col. Jones; FourthArmy cable to U.S. Strike Command, McDill Florida basedon intelligence from 112th obtained from Stringfellow ofDPD Intelligence unit. (See Scott, Deep Politics p 275 foranalysis; Strike Command.(19) Report of Investigation (Military Police), Fort Hood,

Donald Whittier, January 9, 1964.(20) “The Guns of Dallas,” Fletcher L. Prouty; also Proutyin Gallery Magazine.(21) Transcript of ARRB interview with L. Fletcher Proutyand various internal ARRB memoranda and summary re-ports.(22) Transcript of ARRB interview with Col. Rudolph M.Reich (Ret).


More Mexico MysteriesAdapted from a talk given at the

November In Dallas 2001 conference

Rex Bradford

Overview

The truth of what happened in Mexico City sev-eral weeks prior to the assassination of PresidentKennedy remains elusive. New revelations “from thefiles” deepen the mystery rather than clarify it in manycases. Once-secret HSCA depositions and documentsin the HSCA’s “Segregated Collection,” particularly theso-called Russ Holmes Work File, contain an abundanceof fascinating and disturbing details. This essay willnot try to paint the larger picture or present someoverarching new thesis. Rather, it is an interim vehiclefor discussing some important new findings and rev-elations; adding bricks to the edifice whose ultimateform remains obscure.

Introduction – Mexico City: TheRosetta Stone

It is difficult to overstate the importance of whatis usually called the “Oswald in Mexico City” affair.Certainly the topic was an important one to the CIA—probably a third of the 40,000 pages in the Russ HolmesWork File collection of CIA documents are devoted toit. The Mexico City story is important because it showsthat there was a sophisticated operation which servedto set up Oswald prior to the assassination, somethingbeyond the wherewithal of Mob figures or anti-CastroCubans acting alone. It is also important because itfinally provides an explanation for why men like EarlWarren, who certainly weren’t part of any conspiracyand normally wouldn’t engage in such a stark cover-up, were put in the position where they did so. MexicoCity is indeed the Rosetta Stone of the JFK assassina-tion.

The most easily understood aspect of the MexicoCity affair remains the tapes of an Oswald, who appar-ently was not Oswald, calling the Soviet Embassy inlate September and early October of 1963. John

Newman spoke in some detail about these at the 1999November in Dallas conference, and discussed someof the evidence which shows that the FBI did indeedlisten to these tapes in the early morning of November23, 1963. They determined that it wasn’t Oswald’svoice on the tapes, an inconvenient fact that began tobe covered up that evening, even before Oswald waskilled by Jack Ruby.

The Non-Oswald Tape

The conversation in which FBI Director Hooverinformed the new President, Lyndon Johnson, aboutthis, has itself been erased, as I discovered a few monthsafter Newman’s talk.1 In this conversation, a transcriptof which survives, Hoover told LBJ:

We have up here the tape and the photographof the man who was at the Soviet Embassy,using Oswald’s name. That picture and thetape do not correspond to this man’s voice,nor to his appearance. In other words, it ap-pears that there is a second person who wasat the Soviet Embassy down there.2

This phone call, now reduced to 14 minutes ofhiss, was followed up that same day by a five-page FBIReport sent to both the White House and the SecretService. This report repeated the message in no uncer-tain terms:

The Central Intelligence Agency advised thaton October 1, 1963, an extremely sensitivesource had reported that an individual identi-fied himself as Lee Oswald, who contactedthe Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquir-ing as to any messages. Special Agents ofthis Bureau, who have conversed with Os-


wald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photo-graphs of the individual referred to above andhave listened to a recording of his voice.These Special Agents are of the opinion thatthe above-referred-to individual was not LeeHarvey Oswald.3

Now I’m not going to go through the rest of thematerials which corroborate this account, and show thatthe subsequent denials from both the CIA and FBI arewithout merit. Suffice to say that Jeremy Gunn of theAssassination Records Review Board (ARRB) got itstraight from the horse’s mouth, from two Warren Com-mission staffers who listened to the tapes in April of1964. Although it’s disturbing and symptomatic of thedelicacy of this matter that the ARRB didn’t see fit toget this acknowledgement in sworn testimony. Instead,we get the account in a bit of a roundabout fashion, inthe form of a question asked of CIA Mexico City ex-employee Anne Goodpasture:

Gunn. I have spoken with two Warren Com-mission staff members who went to MexicoCity and who both told me that they heardthe tape after the assassination obviously. Doyou have any knowledge of information re-garding tapes that may have been played tothose Warren Commission staff members?Goodpasture. No. It may have been a tapethat Win Scott had squirreled away in hissafe.4

Ultra-Sensitive Sources

The fact that the CIA was taping the Soviet Em-bassy in Mexico City was of course an ultra-secret se-cret, a perfect place to hang a plot into and be sure thatthere would never be a full public airing. The WarrenCommission got a lot of vague runaround regardinghow the CIA knew what it was telling them during theearly months of 1964, until finally in April three staff-ers were sent by the Commission to Mexico City to tryand get some harder information. But even the sev-enty-page internal report of this trip, written by DavidSlawson in April 1964 but not released until 1996, neverdirectly says that the tapes were been listened to, in-stead referring to transcripts:

Mr. Scott’s narrative of course took a ratherlong time to complete, and we interrupted himat many points with specific questions. Dur-ing the course of the narrative we were shownthe actual transcripts, plus the translations,of all the telephone intercepts involved, andwe were also shown the reels of photographsfor all the days in question that had been takensecretly outside the Cuban and Soviet Em-bassy entrances.5

Documents like this will be used by some to con-tinue to assert that the tapes never really existed at thetime of the assassination. I think what’s really goingon here is that Slawson and Coleman got “the treat-ment” from the CIA. The ultra-sensitivity of the tapeswas impressed upon them in the most forceful terms.This conclusion is not just conjecture.

For instance, William Coleman, David Slawson’spartner, told the HSCA just how sensitive he believedthe telephone tapping operation to be. In a recordedinterview of August 2, 1978, he discussed just howmuch this had been impressed upon him, and even saidhe thought it was a “great disservice to the UnitedStates” that some of these secret operations were be-coming public in the 1970s. He also told the HSCAthat if this information had not been public knowledgealready, “I would be fudging like hell with you fellows.”He apparently went on to do just that, when Ed Lopezasked him directly about the question of the Oswaldtapes surviving the assassination:

Lopez. Did the agency ever…..explain whyit did not have an actual tape recording ofOswald’s voice?Coleman (soft): “I haven’t the faintest ideawhether they did or did not. I mean, I don’tknow, I’m pretty sure this question was prob-ably asked of them and they probably gaveus…if they had—I don’t know whether theyhad or they didn’t have, I mean, I really don’tknow but I do know that there was…but I’mpretty sure that if we asked them “where isit?”….. (trails off)6

Coleman went on to explain why even detailedinternal Warren Commission memos might not containthe most sensitive information in them. He also ex-


plained that this material was so secret that not evenmembers of the Warren Commission could be let in onit:

Coleman. By that time…..we weresophisticated with the CIA, and there-fore we wrote memoranda…..we triedto use the jargon of the CIA, becausewe felt it was important not to evenindicate to everybody on the Commis-sion some of these sources,because…..Dave Slawson had a spe-cial clearance with the CIA and therewere some people that didn’t.7

In fact, as late as May 5, 1964, nearly a monthafter their Mexico City trip, these Warren Commissionstaffers had apparently kept every single Commissionerin the dark about sources and methods. Besides thethree staffers (Slawson, Coleman, and Willens), appar-ently only Commission Counsel J. Lee Rankin had beentold. A Memo For the Record written by CIA’s Tho-mas Hall of a May 5, 1964 meeting with Slawson notesthat:

According to Mr. Slawson, only Messrs.Rankin, Willens, Coleman (?) and he pres-ently know of the telephone taps in MexicoCity. Slawson, Willens and Coleman werebriefed on the taps during their visit to MexicoCity.

……….According to Mr. Slawson, no member of theCommission now knows of the telephone tapsin Mexico City (he did not mention Mr.Dulles).Mr. [ ******** ] carefully briefed Mr.Slawson (probably rebriefed him) on the im-portance of these telephone taps to U.S. se-curity and the grave damage that would bedone to U.S. – Mexican relations if knowl-edge of their existence became public.Mr. Slawson quite clearly was a bit unhappythat certain information could not be used,since the taps were the only source. Oswald’svery bad Russian was the example he used. Iasked what opinion Mrs. Oswald had of herhusband’s Russian. She thought that he spokeit very well.8

It’s unclear whether any Commission memberswere ever told of the telephone taps.

40 Million Americans

Now, those who have seen the transcripts of the“Oswald” calls know they’re pretty innocuous if a bitconfused, and are plausibly interpreted to be aboutOswald’s visa request. The September 28 call has adisturbing comment that “I went to the Cuban Embassyto ask them for my address because they have it,” whichwould be the cause of much concern at the CIA post-assassination, as it appeared to imply an Oswald rela-tionship with the Cuban Embassy. The October 1 callhad something even nastier in it, a reference by “Os-wald” to a previous meeting with a man whose namethe Soviet guard on the phone supplies: Kostikov.9

Who’s Kostikov? Warren Commission Document347, one of those withheld until the 1990s, is a CIAreport on Oswald’s Mexico City trip, written on Janu-ary 31, 1964. It contains the following:

Kostikov is believed to work for DepartmentThirteen of the First Chief Directorate of theKGB. It is the Department responsible forexecutive action, including sabotage and as-sassination. These functions of the KGB areknown within the Service itself as “Wet Af-fairs” (mokryye dela). The Thirteenth De-partment headquarters, according to very re-liable information, conducts interviews or, asappropriate, file reviews on every foreignmilitary defector to the USSR to study and todetermine the possibility of utilizing the de-fector in his country of origin.10 [emphasisadded]

This information is apparently what promptedLyndon Johnson to tell Senator Richard Russell:

…..we’ve got to be taking this out of the arenawhere they’re testifying that Khrushchev and

“Who’s Kostikov?...[He’s] believed towork for Department 13 of the KGB --the department responsible for assas-sination.”


Castro did this and did that, and kicking usinto a war that can kill 40 million Americansin an hour.11

Johnson, of course, had learned almost immedi-ately that it wasn’t really Oswald on the phone, and sothis Department Thirteen connection was a phony one.But he presumably didn’t tell that to Chief Justice EarlWarren when he arm-wrestled Warren onto hisPresident’s Commission, with “what Hoover told meabout a little incident in Mexico City.”12

The Third Tape

Now again, the phone calls themselves are notreally very sinister, though some dire implications couldand were drawn from them in some quarters. But theassumption here is that the record is complete and un-altered. However, we have many reasons to suspectthat this is not the case. In particular there are indica-tions, as John Newman wrote about in Oswald and theCIA, that there was another phone call which is not inthe current record.13 Newman made use of the LopezReport’s discussion of the testimony of David Phillipsand that of Anna Tarasoff, half of the husband-wife CIAtranscription team. But as we’ll see, even the LopezReport is incomplete in regard to the relevant testimonyhere.

David Phillips 1976 Allegation

First, David Phillips’ allegation. On November26, 1976, the day before he was to testify before theHouse Select Committee on Assassinations, CIA Chiefof Cuban Operations David Phillips dropped a bomb-shell into the media. The AP reported, in a story head-lined “Oswald Offered Soviets Data for Trip,” thatPhillips remembered another phone call, one not in therecord.14 In that call, Phillips recalled, Oswald offeredthe Soviets information that “might be useful to them.”Ronald Kessler of the Washington Post wrote a lengthierstory the same day (of which the Russ Holmes WorkFile contains many copies, an indication of the interestelicited at CIA) entitled “Hill Panel Probing OswaldCall.”15 Kessler reported that Oswald was trying towrangle a free trip to the Soviet Union in exchange forinformation.

Now, as recorded in these articles Phillips’ storywas still not of a “Hey, I’m going to kill the President

like you told me” phone call. Nonetheless, it’s moresinister than the calls we have transcripts for, and mightvery well include statements that would imply a work-ing relationship between Oswald and the Soviets. Andif this story is true, it indicates that the record on MexicoCity has been fudged a bit, which is disturbing also.

The HSCA testimony of David Phillips is nowpublic, held among the so-called Security Classifiedtestimony in 9 boxes at the National Archives. Phillipswas questioned by Richard Sprague, the HSCA’s headat that point and for a few months more, until strangecircumstances led to his ouster and replacement byRobert Blakey. In his deposition, David Phillips startedout answering directly and then slowly started to dancesideways under questioning, trying to maintain his al-legation without being pinned down too hard on spe-cifics:

Mr. Sprague. The United Press has a spe-cific quotation of a statement which they sayyou made to a United Press International re-porter named Daniel F. Gillmore, quoting inpart as follows: “I have the recollection hazyafter fourteen years that Oswald intimatedthat he had information that might be usefulto the Soviets and Cuba, and that he hoped tobe provided with free transportation to Rus-sia via Cuba.”Did you make that statement to Mr. Daniel F.Gillmore of United Press International?Mr. Phillips. I did, sir.Mr. Sprague. Is that statement accurate?Mr. Phillips. I think it is, sir, yes, it is.Mr. Sprague. There is, in the WashingtonPost of yesterday’s date, a story by RonaldKessler in which he quotes you in part stat-ing that you recall from a transcript Oswaldtelling the Soviet embassy, “I have informa-tion you would be interested in, and I knowyou can pay my way” into Russia, but that isnot part of the quote.Is that what you said in part to Mr. Kessler?Mr. Phillips. I feel I cannot answer that yesor no without explaining that I met with Mr.Kessler on two occasions, once for a longlunch, once in a coffee shop, and he calledme two or three times on the phone.In these discussions with Mr. Kessler, I did—he raised the subject of whether or not Os-wald was offering information, was beingpaid, wanted to be paid to go to the Soviet


Union, and wanted to know whether or not Icould confirm that. I did confirm in thesense—Mr. Sprague. My question is, I have read aspecific quotation, Mr. Phillips. You are un-der oath at this time.Mr. Phillips. I understand.Mr. Sprague. And I will reread the quota-tion, because I do want to know, did you makethis statement in part. I understand that therewere other parts to the conversation, but didyou make this statement to Mr. Kessler—I’mnot talking about you, I am talking about whatOswald allegedly said: “I have informationyou would be interested in, and I know youcan pay my way.”Mr. Phillips. I think I may have said that orsomething near to it, but what I intended toconvey was that Mr. Kessler was saying, well,is that the idea, and I said yes, that was theidea that we gathered.16

By 11 pages later in the interview transcript,though, Phillips had backed pretty far off the originalstory, and was talking about a conversation which wasmainly about a visa:

Mr. Sprague. I do not want you to give ananswer based upon what anyone else says. Ido not want you to give an answer trying tosquare your answer with what you believe ison somebody else’s transcript or anythingelse. I want this to be your own answer asbest you can recall, of what was the purportof that first intercept.Mr. Phillips. Okay. All right. Obviouslyafter so long I can’t remember it word forword, but I remember that the thrust of theconversation was Oswald saying to the So-viet he talked to in the Soviet Embassy, “Whathave you heard about my visa, what news doyou have?” “What have you heard about myvisa, what news do you have,” something likethat. I also recall that Oswald was saying“What’s wrong, why don’t you do this?” AndI recall something in that conversation that Ican only call an intimation that he said “Well,you really should talk to me,” or somethinglike that. Now, it seems that I recall that, andthat is all that I recall with absolute clarity.17

The Tarasoffs and the Lopez Report

Now, if this story were solely told by DavidPhillips, researchers might very well write it off as someform of disinformation. But, as the Lopez Report re-lates, the story received corroboration. Anna Tarasoff,wife of Boris Tarasoff and part of the team which tran-scribed the Oswald calls, remembered such a conver-sation. The Lopez Report relates that on April 12, 1978,Anna Tarasoff was shown the extant transcripts of con-versations, but that:

In addition to these transcripts, Ms. Tarasofftestified that she remembered one more con-versation that involved Lee Oswald.18

In her own words:

According to my recollection, I myself, havemade a transcript, an English transcript, ofLee Oswald talking to the Russian Consu-late or whoever he was at that time, askingfor financial aid.

Now, that particular transcript does not ap-pear here and whatever happened to it, I donot know, but it was a lengthy transcript andI personally did that transcript. It was alengthy conversation between him and some-one at the Russian Embassy.19

Ms. Tarasoff remembered specifically another callwith content similar to that described by Phillips. Fur-thermore, she remembered that the conversation waslengthy, unlike the short transcripts which exist now,and in English, not broken Russian or Spanish.

But the Lopez Report also notes:

Mr. Tarasoff did not confirm his wife’s rec-ollection of another conversation includingOswald. He said that he did not rememberany other calls involving Lee Oswald or anydetails of Oswald’s conversations that werenot reflected in the transcripts.20

And that’s an accurate account of the Tarasoff’sApril 1978 testimony, which is now public, part of nineboxes of Security Classified testimony.


The Tarasoffs’ Earlier Testimony

But completely ignored in the Lopez Report isearlier testimony of both Mr. and Mrs. Tarasoff, testi-mony given nearly a year-and-a-half earlier. In fact,Richard Sprague’s team had barely finished interview-ing David Phillips when they flew down to GuadalajaroMexico to interview the Tarasoff couple, on Novem-ber 30, 1976. And in this interview, Boris Tarasoffdidn’t have the memory lapse he was to exhibit later,during the Blakey era.

The summary of this earlier interview, includedalong with the transcript in the file, contains the fol-lowing:

The Tarasoffs claim to remember translatingand transcribing at least two conversationsinvolving Oswald. They remember that thefirst one was fairly short and routine. Os-wald did not identify himself in this first con-versation. The second one was much longerand Oswald did identify himself in this con-versation. The Tarasoffs remember Oswalddiscussing his financial situation in this call.They deny making any editorial or marginalcomments in the transcription of this call.The Tarasoffs remember nothing unusualabout the first call or the circumstances sur-rounding its delivery or transcription. Thesecond call was delivered to them and theywere asked to transcribe the Oswald call asquickly as possible. Their contact expresseda strong interest in the identity of the callerand the substance of the call. The Tarasoffstranslated and transcribed the call and re-turned the transcript on the same day, usingan emergency contact as opposed to waitinguntil the next morning and using their stan-dard contact.21

In this interview, both Tarasoffs clearly remem-bered an English conversation, which Anna transcribedas she typically handled English calls whereas her hus-band typically did the Russian ones. This may be re-sponsible for her memory being better regarding thecontent of the call. But that there was such a call, inEnglish, lengthy, and with a great deal of excitementsurrounding it, both Tarasoffs were explicit, as this ex-cerpt reveals:

Mr. Brooten. There was a second long con-

versation. Between the first conversation andthe second conversation, were you asked toattempt to determine the identity of this per-son?Mr. Tarasoff. Oh yes.Mr. Brooten. All right, would you describethat.Mr. Tarasoff. Well, to the best of my knowl-edge, we either got the note or was it passedverbally, I think we got a note, no?Mrs. Tarasoff. Well, if I’m not mistaken,the party that brought the reels, there was anotation made to listen to number so-and-soon tape so-and-so dated whatever date it was,because each reel had a date and a numberand according to the numbers, then therewere, the transcripts of each conversationwithin that had a number, so you ran the tapeuntil you came to a certain number and thenyou listened.Mr. Brooten. Now, did they want you to ordid they give you any instructions about at-tempting to determine who the caller was inthat case?Mr. Tarasoff. Yes, they certainly did. Theywanted to know the name of the person. Thenif we learned the name to get in touch withthem immediately and turn in the transcript,to make the transcript, turn it in forget aboutSpanish, Russian or whatever was on thereel—Mrs. Tarasoff. In other words, this was toppriority if we got the name, to work on it.Mr. Tarasoff. It was very important to them.Mr. Brooten. All right sir. Now did youreceive a second tape with this same indi-vidual speaking to anyone at the Soviet Em-bassy?Mr. Tarasoff. Well that’s, you mean the thirdconversation?Mr. Brooten. All right, no but there was asecond one.Mr. Tarasoff. The long one, yes.22

In this lengthy interview, the following pointswere made quite clearly:

• Both Tarasoffs remembered . BothTarasoffs remembered another call.• Lengthy. It was a lengthy call.• English. It was in English, and Mrs.


Tarasoff transcribed it.• Financial Discussion. Oswald discussedhis financial situation.• Keen Interest. The CIA was very keenon this call, both the identity of the caller andthe substance.

An Incomplete Record

There are many other clues that something ismissing from the CIA’s story about what happenedin Mexico City in late September and early October of1963, and that the record we have today has been ef-faced. Another of the Security Classified depositionsis that of Ray Rocca, who was Chief of the Research &Analysis division of Counter Intelligence at CIA. Roccawas shown the October cable traffic which reported onthe Oswald calls. He exhibited a fair amount of confu-sion, referring repeatedly to cables which had been sentearlier than the “first” cable of October 8. Rocca fi-nally threw up his hands and said of the “first” cable:“Well, it seems to me too late, that communication be-gan earlier from Mexico City.”23

Win Scott, the CIA Mexico City station chief, wasanother whose account does not square with “therecord” as it exists in CIA documents. In a manuscriptentitled Foul Foe, Scott complained about the WarrenCommission’s account of the Oswald visits. Writingabout the lack of a photograph of Oswald, for instance,he wrote: “persons watching these embassies photo-graphed Oswald as he entered and left each one, andclocked the time he spent on each visit.”24 The HSCAuncovered this manuscript, whose contents were dis-puted by the CIA, but HSCA investigators were lesssure that Scott was in error. Writing to DCI StansfieldTurner on October 13, 1978, HSCA Chairman LouisStokes wrote a letter which began “I am writing youwith regard to a matter of grave concern to the HouseSelect Committee on Assassinations,” and went on todescribe problems with the CIA’s story regarding photosurveillance. Regarding the Scott manuscript, Stokeswrote “Scott’s comments are a source of deep concernto this Committee, for they suggest your Agency’s pos-sible withholding of photographic materials highly rel-evant to this investigation.”25

The Tarasoffs’ 1976 testimony is clear and be-lievable, despite the memory lapse exhibited by BorisTarasoff more than a year later. This “missing call”might have occurred on Monday, September 30, a daysuspiciously lacking in activity in the official record.26

No one’s memory of such a call includes any ultra-sin-ister discussion such as a plot to kill Kennedy. Butwhat is remembered of the call gives it a more sinisterimport than those now in the record. Besides Oswald’soffer of information and assertions that “I know youcan pay my way,” the lengthy call might have containedindications that the Russian’s knew Oswald and haddealt with him before. This would probably only bethe case if the call was a complete fabrication, withneither Oswald nor the real Soviet Embassy officialson the other end, but there are many indications thatthe September 28 “Saturday” call is such a fabrication(among other things, both supposed parties to the calldeny that such a call could have taken place on thatday, when the embassies were closed).27

Perhaps it is this “third call” which promptedLyndon Johnson to bandy about the figure of “40 mil-lion Americans involved” in a nuclear exchange, andprompted a cover-up of more than just visa talk.

Telephone Taps and Human Infor-mants

The new documents reveal more about how thetelephone tapping operation worked, and what othersources of information the CIA had at its disposal inMexico City.

Mr. Hoover’s Informant

A reasonable working assumption has been thatthe tapes were flown up on the night of the 22nd on thesame Naval Attache plane that carried the “MysteryMan” photographs. I think that’s still the most likelyscenario, even though there’s not a single released docu-ment that says so. But there’s another possibility.

“On the lack of a photograph of Oswald,Scott wrote, ‘persons watching theseembassies photographed Oswald as heentered and left each one, and clockedthe time spent on each visit.’”


On November 26, just after the dust had settled and theCIA and FBI had agreed that there were no tapes afterall, only transcripts, CIA Director McCone and FBIDirector J. Edgar Hoover had a little phoneconversation. Here is an excerpt, taken from a transcriptpreserved in CIA files:28

Hoover. But there is no question that he [Os-wald] is the right man. There are a lot ofaspects that we have dug up, for instance, withregards to the matter in Mexico City. We havenow found that the photograph that was takenwas not that of Oswald. We do find fromour informant down there that Oswald didcall at the Embassy that day and the infor-mant has given us the conversation that hehad….. [emphasis added]

Is Hoover being chummy here, referring to a CIAteltap operation as “our informant?” Or does he meansomething else here?

The HSCA put this transcript in front of RayRocca, Chief of Research & Analysis in the CIA’sCounter Intelligence division. Rocca was a key playerin 1963 and had been hired back during the RockefellerCommission’s tenure to pull together materials onMexico City. When shown this transcript, Rocca im-mediately recognized the “informant” as LIENVOY,the cryptonym for the taping operation. Here is an ex-cerpt from his deposition:

Mr. Goldsmith. I would like to show you atranscript of a telephone conversation be-tween Mr. McCone and Mr. Hoover dated 26November, 1963. It is CIA document num-ber 2134.Does that appear to the [sic] a transcript of atelephone conversation?Mr. Rocca. Yes, it does.Mr. Goldsmith. Would you read the middleparagraph, which makes reference to an FBIinformant.(pause)Mr. Rocca. That’s LIENVOY. That’s theirmaterial [************************************************].Mr. Goldsmith. So, how would—Mr. Rocca. I would interpret it that way. Ihave never read this piece of paper that I re-call. That would be my reaction.Mr. Goldsmith. For the record, let’s get this

clear.The Director of the FBI, Mr. Hoover, is mak-ing reference to an informant that the FBI hadin Mexico City, and he is indicating that theinformant has informed the Bureau as to thecontents of Oswald’s conversations in MexicoCity.From your answer, I take it that you assumethat Mr. Hoover is referring to the LIENVOYoperation.Mr. Rocca. And he is subtly letting Mr.McCone know that Mr. McCone’s resourcesdown there were not unique, that they, too,had access to [ ****************** ].Mr. Goldsmith.[*********************************************************************** ].Mr. Rocca.[**************************************************************], yes.Mr. Goldsmith.[**********************************************************************].Mr. Rocca. Yes.29

The following day, CIA HQ sent a cable down tothe Mexico City station, alerting them to Hoover’s rev-elation. DIR 85245 of November 27 suggests thatSylvia Duran’s statements be used instead of theLIENVOY take, to avoid compromising the operation,and then goes on to discuss the problem of where theFBI is getting its information. In the following cablestandard CIA-speak applies, so “KUBARK” refers tothe CIA and “ODENVY” is the FBI.

2. PLS NOTE THAT DIRECTOR ODENVYIS GETTING FROM ODENVY MEXIMUCH INFO WHICH OBVIOUSLYORIGINATES WITH THE LIENVOY OP-ERATION. ODENVY HERE APPAR-ENTLY DOES NOT REALIZE THAT THISINFO WAS PRODUCED BY A KUBARKOPERATION, AND INDEED, ODENVYMAY BE GETTING THIS LIENVOY INFOTHRU ITS OWN CLANDESTINESOURCES [ **************** ] OREVEN IN THE [ ************ ]. PLS TRYTO CLARIFY WITH ODENVY REPTHERE THE EXACT MANNER INWHICH HE HAS OBTAINED SUCH INFOAND THE FORM IN WHICH HE HAS


SENT IT TO ODENVY HQ. WE MUSTAVOID THE INADVERTENT COMPRO-MISE OF LIENVOY.

It’s apparent that, one way or another, FBI Direc-tor Hoover had his own access to the telephone tapmaterial, and even CIA did not appear to have knownhow. Does this mean the FBI had its own tapping op-eration? Probably not. While it remains unclearwhether the FBI had access to raw tapes, or transcripts,or simply information, the most plausible explanationis that Hoover had people “in on” the CIA teltap opera-tion, LIENVOY.

Naming it a “CIA” operation may be what is con-fusing things here, because it’s likely that LIENVOYwas not fully a CIA operation at all. There remain manyredactions in these transcripts and documents in thisarea, but what is being kept secret does not seem to beso much the methods as the sources, specifically justwho it was that ran LIENVOY.

One redaction in Richard Helms’ HSCA testimonyholds the key, and its contents can be guessed fairlyeasily:

Mr. Helms. I do not know whether it hasbeen made, the Committee has been made ofthe fact that the reason for the sensitivity ofthese telephone taps and the surveillance wasnot only because it was sensitive from theAgency’s standpoint, but the telephone tapswere running in conjunction with the [**************** ] and therefore, if thishad become public knowledge, it would havecaused very bad feelings between Mexico andthe United States, and that was the reason.30

Substitute “Mexican DFS” for the redacted text,and things fall into place nicely. The Mexican securityservice no doubt managed the physical placement oftelephone taps within their own country, and probablysupplied the people who manned the listening post aswell. Hoover, with his extensive contacts in LatinAmerica, no doubt had his own backchannel into whatwas ostensibly a CIA operation but which was not re-ally fully their show.

It’s interesting to speculate as to exactly when theFBI got access to the “Oswald” tapes or transcripts,whether right away on November 22, or a few dayslater before the November 26 phone call, or even priorto the assassination.

As an aside, the Rocca HSCA deposition has an-other very interesting moment, prior to the discussionof the Hoover-McCone call. Michael Goldsmith, theHSCA interviewer, was trying to find out why the CIA’sCounter Intelligence staff, the CI/SIG group in particu-lar, was the one that opened the 201 file on Oswald ayear after he defected to the Soviet Union. Goldsmithwas curious, because CI/SIG was concerned primarilywith penetrations of the DD/P, the operations groupinside the CIA.

Mr. Goldsmith. …..My question is morenarrowly focused in why would CI/SIG inparticular have been opening the file.Mr. Rocca. Because of their concern, basi-cally, with the problem of Americans and theywere the recipient of the materials, probablyfrom the Office of Security, if not the actualcopy of that material, certainly the chit chat.Bruce Solie was – B-R-U-C-E S-O-L-I-E –constantly in touch with Mr. O’Neill and withMrs. Edgerter, I am sure.Mr. Goldsmith. But from the face of it, itdoes not appear that Oswald posed any sortof a counter intelligence threat in terms ofthe penetration of DDP personnel.Mr. Rocca. Of the U.S. security interest. Ata very high level, though, he did, involvingother departments and agencies of the gov-ernment.Mr. Goldsmith. I understand, and I am notsuggesting that a file should not have beenopened by the CI staff. I am just trying todetermine why CI/SIG in particular, whichwas concerned about DDP penetrations,would have been opening the file.

………….Mr. Goldsmith. How would the function ofCI/SIG in that case be different from in theOffice of Security, in general?Mr. Rocca. It would be with respect to whereand what had happened to DDP materialswith respect to a defection in any of theseplaces.Mr. Goldsmith. Again, though, Oswald hadnothing to do with DDP at this time, at leastapparently.Mr. Rocca. I’m not saying that. You said it.[ emphasis added ]31


Human Informants: Two, to be Exact,One Male, One Female

Telephone taps and photo surveillance were onlytwo of the tools employed in the spy-vs-spy gameplayed in Mexico City. Many of these operations aretouched upon in a three-volume history of the MexicoCity CIA station, sanitized excerpts of which wereshown to three HSCA investigators. 32 While stillheavily redacted, this lengthy set of excerpts describesa variety of operations conducted against the CubanEmbassy (and other embassies). Microphones wereplanted in various offices. Wastebasket trash was re-covered and analyzed. Passenger manifests from flightsto and from Cuba were passed along. A photo-surveil-lance van followed “targets” around the city. Whilethe first microphone transmitter was installed in theCuban Embassy in February 1961, so many redactionsare present that it is impossible to be certain that theplanted microphones were in operation during the timeof the Oswald visit in the fall of 1963.33

But another operation ensured that more listen-ing ears than microphones would be present in the Cu-ban Embassy. Have a look at this cable, sent from theMexico City CIA station to headquarters on November28, 1963.

[**********] REPORTED 27 NOV AFTERSYLVIA DURAN FIRST ARREST WASPUBLIC KNOWLEDGE THAT THEREGREAT DEAL DISCUSSION OF THIS INEMBASSY. SHE BACK IN OFFICE 25NOV AND SEEMED QUITE PLEASEDWITH HER PERFORMANCE. HER AC-COUNT INTERROGATION CONTAINEDLITTLE NEW EXCEPT POLICE HADTHREATENED HER WITH EXTRADI-TION TO U.S. TO FACE OSWALD. SHEHAD NO FEAR OF CONFRONTATION.[********] DESCRIBES HER AS VERYINTELLIGENT AND QUICK-WITTED.OF ASSASSINATION ITSELF [*********]SAID THERE ALMOST NO DISCUSSIONIN EMBASSY. STAFF MEETING 23 NOVVERY SHORT AND SOMBER WITH GEN-ERAL IMPRESSION BEING ONE OFSHOCK AND DISBELIEF. HEARD NOEXPRESSIONS OF PLEASURE.[***********] SEEN NIGHT 27 NOV HADNOTHING TO ADD TO ABOVE. INDEEDHER VERSION MUCH LESS DETAILED.

NEITHER [ ****** ] NOR [ ******** ]HAD ANY PERSONAL KNOWLEDGEOSWALD PRESENCE CUBAN EMBASSYAT ANY TIME.34

The report above clearly comes from human in-formants inside the Cuban Embassy. This cable andothers35 show that there were two informants, one maleand one female, who worked there. Their identitiesare not revealed, at least in these cables of the daysfollowing the assassination, where their identities areredacted.36

What did these human informants know of theevents of September/October 1963? The last line ofthe above cable says that they had no personal knowl-edge of Oswald’s presence, and this claim was reiter-ated in a cable sent the following day from CIA HQ tothe White House, FBI, and State Department:

NONE OF THESE SOURCES HAD ANYPERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF ANY VIS-ITS THAT LEE OSWALD MAY HAVEMADE TO THE CUBAN EMBASSY INMEXICO CITY OR OF ANY BUSINESSHE MAY HAVE TRANSACTED.37

The key phrase here may be “personal” knowl-edge, as opposed to what these informants learned fromother employees. HSCA investigators Ed Lopez andHarold Leap found and interviewed these two infor-mants, without permission from the CIA. Accordingto another HSCA investigator, Gaeton Fonzi, the infor-mants told Lopez and Leap that “the consensus amongthe employees within the Cuban Consulate after theKennedy assassination was that it wasn’t Oswald whohad been there.”38 The informants also said that theyhad reported this fact to the Agency.

Luisa Calderon’s Foreknowledge

The “Oswald” tapes weren’t the only taped con-versations of concern to the CIA and the assassinationinvestigators. A November 26 call between CubanAmbassador to Mexico Hernandez Armas and CubanPresident Dorticos was a cause of some concern.Hernandez told Dorticos that the DFS had asked SylviaDuran about intimate relations with Oswald, andDorticos for his part repeatedly asked whether she hadbeen asked about monetary payments to Oswald.39

Another taped call, one which caused the HSCA much


consternation, involved Cuban Embassy employeeLuisa Calderon. Volume XI of the HSCA’s Report,careful to avoid disclosing sources and methods, laidout the issue:

A reliable source reported that on 22 Novem-ber 1963, several hours after the assassina-tion of President John F. Kennedy, LuisaCalderon Carralero, a Cuban employee of theCuban Embassy in Mexico City, and believedto be a member of the Cuban DirectorateGeneral of Intelligence (DGI), discussednews of the assassination with an acquain-tance. Initially, when asked if she had heardthe latest news, Calderon replied, in what ap-peared to be a joking manner, “Yes, of course,I knew almost before Kennedy.”40

The “reliable source” is again a telephone tap,which captured a conversation at 5:30 PM local time,several hours after the assassination. A loose “tran-script” of the conversation starts this way:

HF asks LUISA if she has heard the latestnews and LUISA, in a joking tone says, “Yes,of course, I knew almost before Kennedy.”HF smiles and comments that it is very bad;….

There are a few oddities here. How one ascer-tains that a person is “smiling” in a telephone conver-sation is one. Also, this conversation was accompa-nied by a handwritten note which includes: “22 NovLienvoy Luisa Calderon and man outside.” “Man out-side” is typical CIA-speak for a man on an outside tele-phone line (and LIENVOY is the teltap operation). Butthe “transcript” notes that the other person is HF, pre-sumably Hispanic Female. The handwritten note alsosays that “cc original and transcript sent to Galbondvia Kingman. Nothing to Buro yet,” interestingly keep-ing the FBI in the dark for the moment.41

In any case, the HSCA became greatly concernedabout the possibility that Luisa Calderon had exhibitedforeknowledge of the assassination with her jokingstatement “Yes, of course, I knew almost beforeKennedy.” If a “conspiracy buff” took some similarstatement on the part of an American official and bal-looned it into a conspiracy mountain, they would ofcourse be subjected to deserved ridicule. But thedouble-standard applied to Cubans, particularly onethought to be in the employ of the Cuban intelligence

service, made this case different. In his interview withWilliam Coleman, Ed Lopez devoted 15 minutes to thetopic of Luisa Calderon, even though Coleman couldn’teven remember who such a person was. The HSCAwrote several pages in Volume XI about their concerns,and the page devoted to her in the Final Report wasmore space than they devoted to many more importantmatters.

An obvious question here is whether LuisaCalderon made any statements between the time of theassassination and this 5:30 PM call, statements whichmight clarify whether she really had any foreknowl-edge or was merely joking. For instance, is there adocument with transcripts of all taped calls for Novem-ber 22, and does Luisa appear in other, earlier calls?

There is no evidence that I’ve found to indicatethat the HSCA asked this question, or received such atranscript log. But one does exist. RIF #104-10404-10426 contains 49 pages of Spanish transcripts andEnglish translations for November 22, 1963. Andindeed there is not just one but two prior calls involvingLuisa Calderon, one at 1:30 PM and one at 2:00 PM.

Here is the beginning of the English translationof the first call:

1330 hours. Unidentified woman callsLUISA (in Cuban Embassy). Caller asksLUISA if she knows the news aboutKENNEDY’S death.LUISA: is surprised….says it is a lie andasks who?CALLER: in an attempt in Texas.LUISA: further surprise and again asks ifnews is official and when did it occur.CALLER: yes, it happened at 1300 hours.LUISA: laughs and says how great.42

……….

The second call came a half-hour later. If LuisaCalderon exhibits foreknowledge in this call, it is re-lated to Oswald’s death and not Kennedy’s:

about 1400 hours. YOYA calls to CubanEmbassy and asks LUISA if she heard thenews and she says yes.YOYA: what do you think of it?LUISA: Well I don’t know. I still don’t knowwhat opinion to have about it.YOYA: What bruts. A good shot. Direct.Listen. Now they are going to say that it wasfrom here. That it was some Cuban.


LUISA: That is possible. Then if they don’tsay it; they will die.43

……….

It is very hard to believe that the HSCA wouldhave written what it did about Luisa Calderon if HSCAstaffers had seen these transcripts, which seem to ex-onerate Calderon of what was always a pretty weakcharge. Was this just a case of bureaucratic snafu, withthese earlier transcripts getting lost in the shuffle andoverlooked? That too is hard to believe. The CIA Of-fice of Legislative Counsel took the trouble to writeRobert Blakey a ten-page letter in 1979, much of it takenup with bickering over the HSCA’s writeup on theCalderon affair.44 Now that the damage was done, andthe HSCA led on a wild goose chase into Cuban-con-spiracy-land, the CIA was concerned that the HSCAwould blow its sources and methods in their writeup.So the letter goes into great detail bickering over theexact wording of the Spanish words which were trans-lated into “I knew almost before Kennedy,” never paus-ing to mention “Oh, by the way, here are some earliertranscripts that will put the whole business to rest.” It’sof course possible to argue that people at the Office ofLegislative Counsel were unaware of the earlier calls,but the idea that the CIA would not know how to lookfor “the day’s take” of transcripts for November 22 isludicrous. This episode is very damning of the Agency,adding fuel to the thesis that the Agency was more thanhappy in the 1970s to do what it had done with WarrenCommission 15 years earlier, which is to push Com-munist conspiracy theories vigorously and divert theinvestigations from more fruitful avenues of research.

A final point about the Calderon affair has to dowith the importance of original research using the docu-ments, and being careful of writers with an agenda. Iam referring to Gus Russo’s Live by the Sword, a bookwhich generally asserts that Oswald killed Kennedy byhimself but a lot of secret sources and interviews con-ducted by Russo in the 1990s suggest that Oswald mayhave been dealing with Cuban agents and possiblyegged on by them, and then bad Bobby Kennedy hadto order a coverup because he and Jack had been goingafter Castro due to an ego-driven personal vendetta.

Russo discusses Luisa Calderon, and even in-cludes some new information from the new documents.Russo repeats the famous “I knew almost beforeKennedy” quote, but then adds this:

CIA transcripts of the conversation supportthe source. But they reveal even more detail.

The conversation is punctuated by so muchlaughter, and such joyous disbelief, that thetwo parties appear giddy. Calderon, throughher laughter, said that she couldn’t believethe news of Kennedy’s death, and continu-ally remarked on how great it was. Whenthe caller said that Kennedy was “shot threetimes in the face,” Calderon exclaimed “Per-fect!”45

Russo exaggerates the amount of “laughter” and“joyous disbelief” in the conversation, unless he hasbeen somehow privy to an actual recording and not thetranscript in the record that the rest of us can read. Butfar more interesting is how he conflates multiple con-versations into one. Calderon did indeed reply “Per-fect” when told Kennedy was shot three times in theface. But she did this during the recently-released 1:30PM call, the one in which Calderon repeatedly expressessurprise at the news of the assassination, not the 5:30PM “foreknowledge” call. Russo has conveniently leftout the exonerating aspects of this earlier call, and usedonly the portion that makes Calderon look bad. Read-ers beware.

The Enigma of Pedro GutierrezValencia

If the Luisa Calderon story has been cleared up atall, there’s another story that’s about to get more com-plicated. This one has to do with a man named PedroGutierrez Valencia. Mr. Gutierrez was one of the peoplewho saw Oswald take money in or near the CubanEmbassy. His story was quite a bit different from thatof Gilberto Alvarado Ugarte, the Nicaraguan under-cover agent whose story appears in the Warren Reportunder the moniker “D,” but Gutierrez’ story was alsoof great concern to the Commission. Alvarado wasultimately discredited by a lie-detector test and retractedhis story. But Gutierrez’ story was never really dis-credited. In the Coleman-Slawson “foreign conspiracyreport” that came to light in the 1990s, Gutierrez wasof more concern than Alvarado.46

The gist of the Gutierrez story, as told to the FBIand the Warren Commission is as follows. Gutierrezwrote a letter on December 2, 1963, to PresidentJohnson, which caused him to then be interviewedmultiple times by FBI agents during early 1964. In theletter and interviews, he stated that in the course of hisduties as a credit examiner he was in the Cuban Em-


bassy in Mexico City on September 30 or October1, 1963. While leaving the Embassy, he bumpedinto a Cuban who was accompanied by an Ameri-can—the two were having a heated exchange inwhich he heard the words “Castro,” “Cuba,” and“Kennedy.” The Cuban was counting out moneywhich he passed to the American, and the two thengot into a car and drove away. After the assassina-tion of President Kennedy, Gutierrez viewed picturesof Lee Harvey Oswald and realized that the Ameri-can accompanying the Cuban had been Oswald.47

Gutierrez was interviewed four times by the FBIin early 1964; reports of these interviews are located inCommission Exhibit 2121 in WH24. Gutierrez’ neigh-bors reported that he was a serious and trustworthy in-dividual, and his story was taken seriously. Ultimately,it was ignored based on the fact that he didn’t recog-nized a photo of Oswald when shown one by the FBI,and that he had only gotten a glimpse of Oswald, whowas with the Cuban Gutierrez had bumped into. Butthese were light grounds on which to dismiss a detailedstory by a seemingly credible person.

Gutierrez and the HSCA Interview

When the HSCA went to Mexico in 1978,Gutierrez was among those interviewed. The LopezReport notes that he was interviewed on June 5, 1978,after an earlier conversation.48 But of what Gutierrezhad to say, the Lopez Report has only this footnote:

1192/ Pedro Gutierrez Valencia claimed thathe bumped into Lee Harvey Oswald at theConsulate on September 27, 1963. Valenciawas at the Consulate doing a credit check onone of the Cuban employees.

There are two curious aspects of this footnote,apart from its brevity. One is the date of the allegedencounter, which is September 27 here, the day Os-wald arrived in Mexico City. The other is the claimthat Gutierrez bumped into Lee Harvey Oswald, notthe Cuban accompanying him.

Are these minor inaccuracies, or typos, or changesin the story? As it turns out, they are the tip of a verystrange iceberg.

I have not yet run across any transcript of theGutierrez interview, but there is an audiotape on theshelves of the National Archives. It is not a tape of the

interview itself, though it displays the correct date (June5, 1978). Instead, it is a tape of a person apparentlyreading, or re-enacting, the interview, using Englishinstead of the Spanish language that the original inter-view must have used. Given the dramatic tone of voiceemployed at various points in the tape, it appears to bean English-language reading conducted by someonelistening to the original interview with headphones orperhaps even in person, as there appear to be faint voicesin the background. The tape itself does not have anyrevealing information as to the method by which it wascreated.49

Same Gutierrez, Different Story

In the tape, “Gutierrez” told the HSCA that heindeed wrote a letter to President Johnson, and thenwent on to dispute just about every aspect of the storytold in that letter and subsequent interviews.50 Afterbeginning to agree with the story as retold by Ed Lopez,the interviewer, Gutierrez began to express confusionand bewilderment at some of the statements attributedto him. For one thing, in the taped interview he claimedto have bumped into Oswald, but remembered nothingabout a Cuban, finally saying:

Gutierrez: I just don’t remember him [Os-wald] being accompanied by another person.

After more confusion by Gutierrez as to the con-tents of the letter, Lopez then read from the FBI re-ports, including facts about Oswald taking money fromthe Cuban and putting it in his left pocket, followingboth men to their car and watching them get in, and soon. Since Gutierrez said he remembered nothing abouta Cuban, he also didn’t remember these aspects of hisstory either.

At one point, Lopez tried to enlist Gutierrez’ helpin figuring out how the FBI attributed statements to

“”While leaving the Embassy, Gutierrezbumped into a Cuban accompanied byan American...he heard the words‘Castro,’ ‘Cuba,’ and ‘Kennedy.’ Afterthe assassination he realized that Os-wald had been the American.”


him which he now was denying:

Lopez: I’m sorry if I appear to be pressingyou, Mr. Valencia…….and also……ensurethat the statements that the FBI credits youwith were in fact accuratestatements………you do not speak any En-glish. I’m wondering now, is it possible thatthey had a translator present when they inter-viewed you?Gutierrez: No, they did not have a transla-tor. They spoke broken Spanish and I spokebroken English.

The interview kept returning to the Cuban or Cu-ban-American who was allegedly counting out moneyand with whom Gutierrez is supposed to have bumped.Gutierrez repeatedly expressed bewilderment:

Lopez: Mr. Valencia, let us now go over thedescription of the Cuban-American………First of all, you describedhim of course as Cuban-American, is thatcorrect?Gutierrez: That is an enigma to me. I donot remember him being accompanied by aCuban-American.

In this segment, the translator’s voice displaysgreat incredulity and bewilderment when deliveringGutierrez’ words:

Lopez: In Exhibit number 2121, they statedthat you described the other man as white,male, Cuban, 33 to 35 years old.Gutierrez: I do not ever remember describ-ing him as such. I don’t remember anythingabout this Cuban-American. I mean, it couldbe that I said it and that I’m senile now and Idon’t remember, but I do not ever remembermentioning anything about a Cuban. [em-phasis in voice on tape]

Gutierrez also disputed less important facts, suchas who the credit check was for and its ultimate dispo-sition. But the interview kept coming back to whetherGutierrez had bumped into a lone Oswald or into aCuban who was counting out money for Oswald. Idon’t know how a Cuban who didn’t exist could handmoney to Oswald, but Ed Lopez kept at it:

Lopez: …..it states that you reported thatthe Cuban-American handed some moneyover to the American. Is that true, Mr.Valencia……Do you remember declaring it?Gutierrez: I do not ever remember that oc-curring; I do not remember ever stating thatwhatsoever. Never.

What to make of this? These possibilities presentthemselves:

1. Gutierrez’ story was fabricated by the FBIin Mexico, and Gutierrez was telling thetruth in 1978 . The letter, which had athumbprint matched to Gutierrez, would be akey piece of evidence in evaluating thispossibility. Even apart from the letter, though,the idea is a little far-out. Hoover’s FBI waspushing the lone-nut thesis, not Cubanconspiracies, although the FBI in Mexico mighthave marched to a different drummer. But thiswould have had to have been a fairly largeconspiracy to sell such a story, which couldeasily have fallen apart if Gutierrez reallywasn’t a part of it.

2. It’s all just a snafu; the story got mixed upand exaggerated innocently, maybe due tolanguage problems. Hard to believe, givenfour detailed interviews with the FBI. Again,the letter would be important here.

3. Gutierrez was telling the truth in 1963 and1964, but retracted his story in 1978,probably under pressure to do so. This seemsat least as likely as the alternatives. Without atape recording of the actual Gutierrez interview,though, it’s impossible to even begin toevaluate his demeanor with an eye towardgauging his truthfulness in 1978.

Gutierrez is an enigma. His original story of theCuban counting out money to Oswald seems all tooconvenient, a tall tale or a truthful story of a stagedincident. With the 1978 retraction of most of the storyand Gutierrez’ seeming shock at being told his ownstory, things have only gotten weirder.

Publishing the Mystery Man Photo-graph

The last Mexico City story in this essay concernsthe photographs taken of an unidentified person who


has often been called the “Mystery Man.” New re-leases contain some items of interest. The man’s iden-tity remains unestablished, though CIA files contain afair amount of conjecture that he is Yuriy Moskalev, aSoviet scientist whose photograph shows a passing re-semblance to the unidentified Mexico City man.51

The Commission’s Desire

But of greater interest than this unlikely identificationis the cable traffic surrounding the WarrenCommission’s decision to publish a photograph of theMystery Man in its Exhibit volumes (the photo waspublished in WH16 as Commission Exhibit 237, titled“Photograph of unidentified man.”).

For reasons explained but still not entirely clear,FBI agent Bardwell Odum showed one or more of thesephotos to Oswald’s mother Marguerite on the eveningof November 23, 1963. The man in the photos has asuperficial resemblance to Jack Ruby, and Margueritesubsequently asserted before the Warren Commission

that she had been shown a photo of Ruby before Rubykilled her son.

The Warren Commission understandably wantedto rebut Marguerite’s assertion. In order to do so, theCommission intended to publish one of the “MysteryMan” photos, proving that it wasn’t Jack Ruby. OnJuly 20, 1964, Warren Commission staffer WesleyLiebeler met with Arthur Dooley at CIA. Liebeler hadalready received affidavits from FBI’s James Malleyand Bardwell Odum regarding the photograph, butLiebeler also wanted an affidavit from the CIA regard-ing the date the photo was taken, and indicated that theCommission would publish the photo.52

Richard Helms supplied an affidavit to ChiefCounsel Rankin 3 days later, along with a request thatthe Warren Commission not publish the photograph,giving as reasons that “…it would jeopardize a mostconfidential and productive operation” and “It couldbe embarrassing to the individual involved who as faras this Agency is aware, had no connection with LeeHarvey Oswald or the assassination of PresidentKennedy.”53

The CIA’s concern for this individual’s privacy istouching, but the Commission did not back down. Twomonths later, on September 22, Arthur Dooley andLouis Pucket of CIA visited the Commission, wherethey met with staffers Goldberg and Liebeler, who in-sisted that the photo must be published, but deferredthe final decision as to cropping and other matters toChief Counsel Rankin.54

CIA Headquarters promptly alerted the MexicoCity Station the next day regarding publication of thephoto. The possibility that publication would “blow”the photo-surveillance operation was on Headquarter’smind, and the cable noted:

“OUSLER BEING CALLED TO WASH TOGIVE INFORMED OPINION OF POS-SIBLE DAMAGE TO LILYRIC OR LIM-ITED” [the photo surveillance operations].55

In a follow-up memo the next day, Headquartersinvited the station’s comment on possible exposure ofthe photo surveillance operations, but added “IT IS NOTPOSSIBLE HAVE PHOTOS EXCLUDED FROM RE-PORT.”56

September 25, A Busy Day

The Mexico City Station was not happy. Reply-


ing on September 25, the Station responded that “STA-TION UNCLEAR AS TO PURPOSE SERVED BYPUBLICATION PHOTO OF PERSON NOT EVENINVOLVED IN THIS CASE.” After complaining thatMarguerite Oswald could simply be ignored in thismatter, the cable went on to add a very curious para-graph: “IF AS MEXI PREFERS TO BELIEVE OFODENVY SHE SHOWN SPREAD OF CROPPEDPHOTOS ALL OF WHICH TO APPEAR, NO OBJEC-TION HERE TO PUBLICATION OF REF PHOTO.IF THIS INCORRECT AND THIS SOLE PHOTOSHOWN HER AND TO BE PUBLISHED AGAINSTMEXI WISHES, REQUEST EXACT ACCOUNT OFWHAT ODENVY TOLD HER.”57

This cable is strange in several regards. For onething, the testimony of Marguerite Oswald is explicitthat she was shown a single photograph by FBI AgentBardwell Odum, “in the cup of his hand.” And anaffidavit signed by Odum on July 10, 1964, refers tohis cropping and display of a single photo. So whydoes the Mexico City station “prefer to believe” thatshe was shown a spread of cropped photos. And if thisis really true, was it a spread consisting of all of theMystery Man photos flown up from Mexico City (sev-eral were indeed supplied), or was it a spread of otherphotos which included a single Mystery Man photo?If the latter, why would they all have been cropped?

Probably the strangest aspect of the cable is thatthe Mexico City station did not object to an entire spreadof photos being published; the objection was if publi-cation was to be of a single photo. This makes no senseif the real objection had to do with blowing the photo-surveillance operation (i.e., showing backgroundswhich would reveal camera placements to the Cubansand Soviets, etc). The more photographs published,the more likely someone would identify the source.What is going on here? The cable ends with the plea:“STATION WOULD APPRECIATE EFFORT TODELETE PHOTO FROM PUBLICATION.”

Headquarters replied the same day, confirmingthat the FBI had indeed shown Marguerite Oswald anentire spread of photos, “BUT SUBJECT PHOTOONLY ONE WHICH ATTRACTED ATTENTION.”58

And again on the same day, Mexico City Station re-sponded, announcing its plans to evacuate the photo-surveillance stations in anticipation of publication ofthe offending photograph. But the detailed plans forsuch evacuation were preceded by the most curiousstatements in all of these cables, reproduced below:

WC TESTIMONY OF MARGUERITEOSWALDBook I page 152-153

Mrs. Oswald: .... Now, Mr. Hart Odum, the sameFBI agent, that insisted upon my daughter-in-lawgoing with him from the Adolphus Hotel, knockedon the door at the Executive Inn. I had had myrobe and slippers on, and I pushed the curtainaside when he knocked. He said, “This is Mr.Odum.”

So, I opened the door. This is very impor-tant. I would like to not talk about it. I would liketo show you what I did. This is so important.

I opened the door just a little, because I hadthe robe off and I didn’t want anybody to come in.The door is just ajar. I am going to take my shoesoff gentlemen, because I have this worked out. Thisis my height. He said, “Mrs. Oswald, we wouldlike to see Marina.”

I said, “Mr. Odum, I stated yesterday youare not going to see Marina. We are awful tired.”

“Well, we just want to ask her one question.”“Mr. Odum, I am not calling my daughter.

As a matter of fact, she is taking a bath.”She wasn’t.He said, “Mrs. Oswald, I would like to ask

you a question.”I said, “Yes, sir.” The door is ajar. This is

my height. I wear bifocals, which enlarges things.And in his hand — his hand is bigger than mine— in the cup of his hand, like this, is a picture.And the two corners are torn off the picture. Thisis a very glossy black and white picture of a man’sface and shoulder.

Now, Mr. Odum wasn’t too tall. I need some-body else. Mr. Odum’s hand with the picture —what I am trying to say — he is facing this way —showing me. So my eyes are looking straight atthe picture. And I have nothing else to see but thishand and the picture, because the door is afar.And there is nothing on the picture but a face andshoulders. There is no background or anything.So I can identify this picture amongst millions ofpictures, I am so sure of it. It was a glossy blackand white picture. So I said, “No, sir, believe me.I have never seen this picture in my life.”

With that, he went off.There was another man with him.


From the Warren Commission’s 26 volumes of Evidence, book 11, page 468

AFFIDAVIT OF BARDWELL D. ODUM

The following affidavit was executed by Bardwell D. Odum on July 10, 1964.PRESIDENT’S COMMISSIONON THE ASSASSINATION OF AFFIDAVITPRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

STATE OF TEXAS, County of Dallas, ss :

I, Bardwell D. Odum, having first been duly sworn, depose as follows:I am presently a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S.

Department of Justice, and have been employed in such a capacity since June 15, 1942.On November 23, 1963, while acting officially in my capacity as a Special Agent

of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I obtained a photograph of an unknownindividual, furnished to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by the Central Intelli-gence Agency, and proceeded to the Executive Inn, a motel, at Dallas, Texas, whereMarina Oswald was staying.

In view of the source of this picture, and, in order to remove all backgrounddata which might possibly have disclosed the location where the picture was taken, Itrimmed off the background. The straight cuts made were more quickly done than acomplete trimming of the silhouette and I considered them as effective for thedesired purpose.

I desired to show this photograph to Marina Oswald in an attempt to identifythe individual portrayed in the photograph and to determine if he was an associate ofLee Harvey Oswald.

It was raining and almost dark. I went to the door of Marina Oswald’s room andknocked, identifying myself. Marguerite Oswald opened the door slightly and, uponbeing informed that I wished to speak to Marina Oswald, told me that Marina Oswald wascompletely exhausted and could not be interviewed. Marguerite Oswald did not admit meto the motel room. I told her I desired to show a photograph to Marina Oswald, andMarguerite Oswald again said that Marina was completely exhausted and could not beinterviewed due to that fact. I then showed Marguerite Oswald the photograph inquestion. She looked at it briefly and stated that she had never seen this indi-vidual. I then departed the Executive Inn. The conversation with Marguerite Oswaldand the exhibition of the photograph took place while I was standing outside the doorto the room and Marguerite Oswald was standing inside with the door slightly ajar.

Attached hereto are two photographic copies of the front and back of aphotograph.* I have examined these copies and they are exact copies of the photographof the unknown individual which I showed to Mrs. Marguerite Oswald on November 23,1963.

Signed this 10th day of July 1964. (S) Bardwell D. Odum,

BARDWELL D. ODUM.

1. REFS OBVIOUSLY CROSSED. IN STA-TION VIEW DANGERS PARA 3,LARGELY RECOGNIZED IN REF A,STILL APPLY.

2. ONLY REMAINING HOPE WOULDAPPEAR BE TO GET ASCHAM PREVAILON COMMISSION NOT ONLY RETOUCHBACKGROUND IN PHOTOS BUT ALSORETOUCH FACE TO DEGREE OBVI-OUSLY NOT IDENTIFIABLE WITH


RUBY BUT ALSO NOT WITH ACTUALSUBJECT OF PHOTO.59

This cable is remarkable. The “dangers para3” refer to the earlier Mexi cable’s assertion that“CANNOT PREDICT SECURITY EFFECT OFPUBLICATION WITHOUT ANSWER PARA 2,”where paragraph 2 is the strange assertion previouslyshown, i.e., that the Mexi station was fine with pub-lication of an entire spread of photos, but not of thesingle Mystery Man shot.

What is yet more remarkable here is the MexicoCity Station’s request to retouch not only the back-ground but also the face of the unidentified man.The Warren Commission had agreed to strip out ev-ery stitch of background at CIA’s request—now theCIA, or at least the Mexico City Station, abruptlyurged a photo alteration to avoid revealing (towhom?) the identity of the supposedly unknownMystery Man. It strains credulity that such a re-quest was made by people who did not know theidentity of the man in the photograph. There is atleast one albeit cryptic indication in the record thatthey did.

After arrangements were made on November22 to send the photos to Dallas, Mexico City CIAStation Chief Win Scott wrote a letter to J. C. King,Chief of the Western Hemisphere division of CIA.The letter begins:

Dear J.C.:

Reference is made to our conversation ofNovember 22 in which I requested permis-sion to give the Legal Attaché copies ofphotographs of a certain person who isknown to you.60

ASCHAM

And who is ASCHAM, who might prevail uponthe Commission to perform this retouching of theface in the photo? The requesting cable does notreveal the identity of this obviously important per-son. But another document in released DDP (DeputyDirector for Plans) files is a seven-page writeup of ameeting between ASCHAM and an unidentifiedhigh-level Mexican official, brokered by CURTIS(CIA Station Chief Win Scott). The memo of thismeeting, which took place on January 14, 1961, uses

pseudonyms throughout, but there are enough clues toprovide a reasonable guess as to ASCHAM’s identity.ASCHAM was a high-level U.S. official. ASCHAMhad a brother who was also a high-ranking U.S. offi-cial and who was “very sick” in 1958. In the memo ofthe meeting, ASCHAM seems closely allied with boththe CIA and with U.S. business interests. ASCHAM isalmost certainly Allen Dulles, whose brother John Fos-ter was Secretary of State under Eisenhower until hisdeath by cancer in May 1959.61

Whether Dulles was contacted or not, the WarrenCommission did go on to publish the Mystery Manphotograph, and CIA photo-surveillance operationswere momentarily disrupted. The face in the photo wasnot retouched. Why did it need to be? Who was thisman? Who in CIA knew who he was? Was his photoreally sent to Dallas as a mistaken picture of Oswald,or was he thought to be an accomplice, or was some-thing else entirely at work here?

Conclusion

Mexico City remains an enigma wrapped in amystery inside a riddle, or however it goes. The 1976Tarasoff interview is one of the keys to a deeper mys-tery not revealed for the most part in “the record,” whichincreasingly smacks of coverup. But a coverup of what?Not a Cuban or Soviet conspiracy, in my view, but ratherof a false Communist conspiracy, one which had moreseemingly legitimate evidence supporting it than therenow appears to be. And one which was somehowwrapped in a “legitimate” CIA operation, perhaps astaged provocation involving Oswald or “Oswald” atthe Cuban Embassy, that was hijacked into an assassi-nation plot. In such a scenario, the CIA’s ability tountangle itself from the Kennedy assassination per semay have been an impossible task, necessitating anAgency coverup. Problematic for the CIA also is thatsome Agency insiders may very well have been in onthe assassination plot.

Anne Goodpasture, author of the 133-pageMexico City Chronology62 and right-hand aide to CIAMexico City Station Chief Win Scott, knew more aboutthe real goings on during the “Oswald” visit than most.What does it mean, then, that she put the following inthe lengthy Mexico City Station History, which wasapparently written in 1969 and 1970?

In 1963 the routine reporting of an operational


lead by LIENVOY developed into a long in-vestigation. A man with a US accent, speak-ing broken Russian, telephoned both the So-viet and Cuban Embassies on 26 Septemberand 6 October 1963. He identified himselfas Lee Oswald and Harvey Oswald.63

If the record is to be fully believed, then the para-graph shown above is replete with errors. Both datesare wrong, and no call to the Cuban Embassy was made.And the caller never referred to himself as “HarveyOswald,” a name that keeps showing up in the recordlike an unwanted relative.64

Not surprising then, when in 1978 Anne

Goodpasture interrupted her HSCA interviewers beforethey had barely asked a question, to let them know thatshe might say things that conflicted with the record:

Miss Goodpasture: I am just concerned thatsome of my testimony may be in conflict withrecords.Mr. Goldsmith: I understand.Miss Goodpasture : Through faultymemory.65

Faulty memories, perhaps. Faulty records, morethan likely. Faulty history, for certain.

Sources and Notes:1 See the article The Fourteen Minute Gap, available online athttp://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/FourteenMinuteGap/FourteenMinuteGap.htm.2 The phone call transcript is available from the LBJ Library and athttp://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/html/LBJ-Nov-1963_0029a.htm.3 FBI Report of November 23, 1963. Available in Church Committee records, RIF #157-10014-10168.4 Anne Goodpasture ARRB testimony of December 15, 1995, pg. 27.See http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/cia_testimony/Goodpasture/html/Goodpasture_0148a.htm.5 David Slawson Warren Commission report entitled “Trip to Mexico City”, April 22, 1964, 104-10011-10097, athttp://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcmemos/Trip_To_Mexico_City/html/104-10011-10097_0001a.htm.6 Taped HSCA interview of William Coleman, August 2, 1978. Audio available athttp:// www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/unpub_testimony/audio/HSCA_Coleman.htm.7 Ibid.8 MFR of Thomas Hall of meeting with David Slawson, May 5, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10404-10115.9 Transcripts of both conversations are in MEXI 7025, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10413-10159.10 Warren Commission Document 347, p. 10.11 Phone call between Lyndon Johnson and Richard Russell, November 29, 1963, 8:55 PM. Available from the LBJ Library and athttp://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/audio/LBJ-Russell_11-29-63_2nd.htm.12 Ibid.13 Oswald and the CIA, John Newman, 1995, Carroll & Graf, pp. 369-377.14 Oswald Offered Soviets Data for Trip, AP story of November 27, 1976. In Russ Holmes Work File among set of newspaper clippingsat 104-10400-10010.15 Hill Panel Probing Oswald Call, Washington Post story of November 27, 1976, by Ronald Kessler. Also in 104-10400-10010.16 HSCA testimony of David Phillips, November 28, 1976, pp. 39-40. This and other CIA Security Classified deposition transcripts(Tarasoffs, Rocca, Helms, and others) are all available online athttp:// www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/secclass/contents.htm.17 Ibid, p. 51.18 Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City (aka Lopez Report), p. 82.19 Ibid, p. 83.20 Ibid, p. 86.21 HSCA Tarasoff testimony, November 30, 1976, summary material.22 Ibid, pp. 22-23.23 HSCA testimony of Ray Rocca, July 17, 1978, p. 84.24 Quoted in Deep Politics II, Peter Dale Scott, p. 9.25 Letter from HSCA Chairman Louis Stokes to DCI Stansfield Turner, October 13, 1978, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10406-10425.26 Though it should be noted that the earliest post-assassination records, including the November 23 FBI memo to the White House and

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http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/cia_testimony/Goodpasture/html/Goodpasture_0148a.htm

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http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/unpub_testimony/audio/HSCA_Coleman.htm

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/audio/LBJ-Russell_11-29-63_2nd.htm

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


Secret Service, refer to an October 1 call.27 See Deep Politics II, Peter Dale Scott, p. 15.28 There are many indications that FBI Director Hoover and more than one CIA Director taped their own phone calls, though such tapeshave not been released and may well be destroyed.29 HSCA testimony of Ray Rocca, July 17, 1978, pp. 277-278. There are 53 redactions in this transcript, which was last reviewed in1997.30 HSCA testimony of Richard Helms, pp. 51-52.31 Rocca HSCA testimony, pp. 217-218.32 Mexico City Station History Excerpts, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10414-10124. The three HSCA investigators who wereallowed to look at even the sanitized excerpts were Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey, Deputy Counsel Gary Cornwell, and MichaelGoldsmith, who conducted most of the Mexico City-related depositions.33 Ibid. Operations against the Cuban Embassy are covered in pages 226 through 298.34 MEXI 7115 of Nov 28, 1963. In Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10404-10159.35 See also MEXI 7615 of Jan 2, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10404-10130.36 John Newman has identified one of the informants as Luis Alberu. See Oswald and the CIA, chapter 18. According to Newman,Alberu is also the informant to whom, in 1967, Sylvia Duran admitted a sexual relationship with Oswald.37 DIR 85670 of Nov 29, 1963. In Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10404-10144.38 Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993, p. 294.39 The conversation, sinister as it could appear to some, had its comic aspects as well. The phone connection was terrible, and most ofthe conversation is spent with the two parties trying desperately to make themselves understood. The vigorous promotion of the idea thata conspiracy to kill the U.S. President had been conducted by parties who couldn’t even make a phone call to each other has its amusingside. Perhaps the connection was so bad because of too many taps on the line. An excerpted transcript was sent from Mexico City to CIAHQ on November 26, 1963, document is MEXI 7068, in the Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10404-10175. A complete version, whichincludes the comical inability of the parties to communicate, was sent to the Warren Commission on May 22, see RIF #1964 104-10009-10183 in the 1996 ARRB releases.40 HSCA Report, Appendix XI, p. 494.41 Handwritten note and transcript in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10162.42 104-10400-10162, p. 22.43 104-10400-10162, p. 23.44 Letter of February 15, 1979, from OLC to Robert Blakey, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10157.45 Gus Russo, Live by the Sword, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 226.46 HSCA document #180-10096-10364. Pages 98 through 102 discuss the Gutierrez allegation. This report is available online athttp://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcmemos/Oswald_Foreign_Activities/contents.htm.47 The story is told in slightly greater detail in the Oswald Foreign Activities report cited previously. The yet more detailed FBI reportsare in CE 2121.48 Lopez Report, p. 271.49 The tape is HSCA record number 180-10131-10396, also labeled tape Z-25. It is available online athttp://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/unpub_testimony/audio/HSCA_Gutierrez.htm.50 I have not been able to locate a copy of the letter itself.51 Documents theorizing that Moskalev is the mystery man include 104-10413-10055 and 104-10413-10077, among others.52 Memorandum of Arthur Dooley of July 20, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10293.53 Memo from Helms to Rankin, July 23, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10292.54 Dooley memorandum of September 25, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10279.55 DIR 51937 of September 23, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10291.56 DIR 52398 of September 24, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10290.57 MEXI 1011 of September 25, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10286.58 DIR 52774 of September 25, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10287.59 MEXI 1018 of September 25, 1964, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10288.60 Letter from Win Scott to J.C. King of November 22, 1963, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10400-10302.61 Memo of meeting between ASCHAM, CURTIS, and WITHHELD, in DDP files at 104-10310-10001.62 Several copies exist, one is RIF #104-10086-10001, available online athttp://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/80T01357A/104-10086-10001/html/104-10086-10001_0001a.htm.63 Mexico City Station History Excerpts, in Russ Holmes Work File at 104-10414-10124, p. 43-44.64 See Appendix II: The Documentary Life of Harvey Lee Oswald, in Peter Dale Scott’s Deep Politics II.65 HSCA testimony of Anne Goodpasture, November 20, 1978, p. 6.

Editor’s Note: The deposition of Anne Goodpasture is available through both JFK Lancer Online Resourceshttp://www.flash.net/~jfklancr/Transcripts_Depos.html and History-Matters.comRead the transcript of John Newman’s November In Dallas presentation on “Mexico City and the “Oswald” Tape” athttp://www.jfklancer.com/backes/newman_1.html

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcmemos/Oswald_Foreign_Activities/contents.htm

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/unpub_testimony/audio/HSCA_Gutierrez.htm

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/80T01357A/104-10086-10001/html/104-10086-10001_0001a.htm

http://www.flash.net/~jfklancr/Transcripts_Depos.html

http://www.jfklancer.com/backes/newman_1.html


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Trauma Room One:The JFK Medical Coverup

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The doctors who tried to savePresident John F. Kennedy atParkland Hospital in November of1963 agreed--either out of respector fear--not to publish what theyhad seen, heard, and felt. Then in1990, one of the Dallas surgeonswho worked on JFK in TraumaRoom One, Dr. Charles Crenshaw,decided after much deliberation

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“The wounds to Kennedy’s head and throat that I examined were caused by bullets that struck him from thefront, not the back, as the public has been led to believe,” says Crenshaw. When the first edition of this book waspublished in 1992, under the title JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, Crenshaw revealed what he never had to opportu-nity to tell the Warren Commission. In the aftermath, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)called Crenshaw’s book “a fabrication.” But JAMA’s claim did not hold up in court and Crenshaw subsequentlyprevailed in a defamation suit against JAMA. In the process, a number of new medical disclosures and discov-eries have emerged on the startling medical cover-up of the JFK assassination.

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Charles Crenshaw: Trauma Room One Excerpt: Forward by Oliver Stonehttp://www.paraview.com/crenshaw/crenshaw_excerpt.htm

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D 135. approx. 35 pages $4.00* Chronology Re: The formulation of US foreign

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D119. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF DOCUMENTS ON VIETNAM, 220 pages.The long sought after records of the 8th Sec Def Conference of May 6, 1963 held in Hawaii. These documentsshow JFK had ordered McNamara to pull out of Viet Nam and McNamara was complying with that order. Thisconsists of a detailed record of the "discussions and decisions reached" at the conference and the documentsinclude budgets, projections, schedules, etc.$25

D123. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF South Vietnam, US Military Assistance Personnel planning forSouth Vietnam central files apprx. 675 pages $70.00

D118. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF DOCUMENTS ON US-CUBAN WAR PLANS ANDCOVERT OPS, 2310 pages.The National Archives released pages of previously classified files from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These documents(formally called Records Group 218 and records Group 335) have also been called the Califano Collection, andinclude materials originally classified "Top Secret/Sensitive" and in sections labeled "JCS Central Files," LemnitzerPapers," "Taylor Papers;""Wheeler Papers;" and "Califano Papers."

The documents deal with contingency plans to topple the Castro regime (and to invade Cuba) in the period 1961- 64. Included are documents pre-Bay of Pigs (i.e., the JCS approval of the original invasion plan), then post Bayof Pigs material as to what went wrong; then plans to oust Castro in 1962; and finally plans to oust him in 1963and 1964, under the guise of a U.S.-inspired coup. The news stories released in mid November -which focusedprimarily on some rather hare-brained "James Bond" type schemes really do not capture the full extent of whatis in this collection.

D 127 A-E DEPOSITIONS AND MEDICAL EXHIBITS.Complete set $150.00 or individually priced:

* D 127A Boswell Deposition pages 223 $18.00* D 127B Groden Deposition pages 167 $15.00* D 127C Humes Deposition pages 242 $18.00* D 127D Master Set of Medical Exhibits index. includes 24 pages of exhibits 1907 pages $100.00* D 127E Set of Manuscript Depositions Includes: Jerrol F. Custer, Dr. Pierre A. Finck, Frances X. O'Neill,

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VOL. 7, ISSUE 4 WINTER 2001 DEDICATED TO THE … John F Kennedy... · context of the JFK...

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