CoverUp thoughts

 

In the context of thoughts on evidence and methodology, one of the subjects that has to emerge is that of the “cover-up”.  If you have read SWHT and my detailed (some might say “plodding”) study of that subject in Chapter 15 I’m not going to belabor any detail here but you know that I come down separating the coverup from the conspiracy.

I do so by trying to separating what I call “suppression” from “cover-up”.  The calls to Dallas from DC ordering that no charges of conspiracy be filed were clearly suppression of an investigation of conspiracy.  Johnson’s refusal to respond to Hoover’s Saturday morning phone call about Oswald being impersonated in Mexico City certainly suggests a desire to suppress probing for conspiracy.   Along with suppression goes what I call “management”, simply the process of moving to the side anything that smacks too strongly of conspiracy – its like the old school movies, only what is actually in front of the camera counts (obviously today what is in front of the camera is only part of the film).  As far as the Warren Committee inquiry went, if something is causing you problems (let’s say its a professional ballistics panel that absolutely states that in no way could CE399 have done what the WC shooting scenario claims it did, you simply have your staff guy write a memo concluding differently and you bury the thing so nobody sees it.)

Now all that does not mean you are literally covering up a conspiracy that you know the details of, it means you are suppressing any real investigation of one even if you suspect it.  And it means you simply control the record, something that is quite doable (especially if the evidence never had to face a legal challenge).

Of course now we know that many people in positions of authority did worry about conspiracy and some did some digging on their on – one of the most interesting to me is the investigation that was covertly ordered at JMWAVE, using the AMOTS (US Cuban intelligence service) to check out possible Cuban exile involvement in the assassination of the President.  We now know it was ordered, we even know some of the details of what was probed – but the report disappeared and station chief Shackley actually lied, stating that the JFK investigation was not assigned to the CIA so he had not done any inquires.  The HSCA chided him for negligence, they didn’t know then that he had lied to them.

But wait – how can I say there was no cover-up, what about Oswald?   Absolutely right, there were cover-ups, and they not only happened in 1964 but they still continue.  Not in the sense that somebody has a full investigative report of the details of the conspiracy stashed away though (I wish).

Both the CIA and FBI and the ONI covered up contacts and monitoring of Lee Oswald.  We know that, we just don’t know the full extent of what they covered up.  And given recent legal efforts by Mr. Jefferson Morley you can be sure they are still quite dedicated about not disclosing things they had on record about Oswald.

The Secret Service covered up known threats against JFK in 1963, in Chicago and elsewhere.  And they were still destroying trip records for that period when instructed not to by the ARRB.  JFK was at risk, they had some idea who from but they failed to protect him, probably innocently but not something you want on the record.

So, my thought is that its best to be careful with words and not paint with a broad brush.  Separate the suppression and management from the actual coverup and you begin to see what actually waht was known from what nobody dared to pursue….why is of course yet another story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking for Back Doors – or Open Windows

In my earliest years of JFK inquiry I was totally focused on events in Dallas, with the evidence from the TSBD, the evidence linking Oswald to the shooting – the boxes, the rifle, the shells, the limo, all that sort of thing – and of course the Plaza witnesses.   I prowled CompuServe, ordered all the back issues of the Assassination Chronicles, the Third and Fourth Decade, subscribed to PROBE. I even spent one Christmas holiday cutting apart the Groden and Trask photo collection books to piece my own sequential photo record of the motorcade. And of course, as mentioned in SWHT, I traveled to Texas and spent extended time with Anna Marie Kuhns Walko’s files and copy machine.

Now if Gerry McKnight had put out “Breach of Trust” earlier, I could have saved myself five or six years at all that but eventually it became clear even to me that the official investigation and the evidence entered into the record could lead you in circles forever. A decade or so later, work from the ARRB would make that even more clear – I mean if you question the autopsy Doctors, using official photos and X-rays, and after hours they still cannot show you the fatal wound that killed the President (and they jokingly say, gosh you – ARRB staff – have a real problem, hope you work it out) you have to wake up a bit.  After all, the autopsy was performed while Oswald was still very much alive, and it was a legal autopsy – yet no wounds are marked on the photos or X-rays. Would the Jury have accepted the Doctors statements in a court of law, would it have appreciated Humes sense of humor, or would a good legal defense not have torn the autopsy to shreds.  And if the autopsy goes, so goes a great deal of the case – plus I suspect a jury would really begin to question a lot of other things more closely.

So, after what seemed like a great while (and was the better part of a decade), I decided that the clean, structured approach of continuing to be involved with the official story and records was simply a matter of “entanglement”, there was plenty of evidence but it had largely been assembled to support the case against Oswald, the case showing him as a lone participant. Staying stuck in the Plaza, the TSBD, at Parkland or Bethesda was not going to bring me any sense of closure.  So, if the doors on the house are locked, what do you do – well you start looking for open windows.  It’s nice to go in the straight forward way, but if you can’t, you can’t.

If the observations and evidence from November 22, 1963 won’t take you to closure (although they most  probably would have with a full and open ended criminal investigation starting that day) what are you going to do?  It seemed like the only hope was to see if you could find a window into the actual conspiracy, someone who had known at least something about it and who talked to somebody. OK, fine, well it turned out a lot of folks had been talking and new ones seemed to appear yearly – people had talked to Garrison, people had talked to the media, people had even (Heaven forbid) talked to authors and shown up in books.  And that started my people files, a huge amount of NARA document searching and the quest to wade through all those names.

Now anyone still reading is asking themselves, why is he boring us with all his wasted time.  The answer is that folks have been asking me why I have two books out and what the difference is in the two.  Cutting to the chase, “Someone Would Have Talked” contains my “bottoms up” effort to find and evaluate credible windows into the conspiracy (if you don’t see one of your favorite names in the book, say Fred Chrisman or James Files,  it doesn’t mean they were not studied – enough said).  It’s a bottoms up study of people, how they connect and what they can tell us about the attack in Dallas.  It was published first as pretty much a huge spiral bound research document and grew into a real book over the years, especially when I got to the point of dealing with both the attack itself and the implications which led to the suppression of a full investigation.

But if SWHT was “bottoms up”, that still left the question of origin, how did the conspiracy start, who initiated it and how did it evolve down to the shooting in Dallas.  After studiously avoiding that question for two or three years, even I had to admit there had been no closure.  So, deciding that I had not gone nearly far enough out on the limb, I decided to start at the top and do a “tops down” study – if the actual tactical people identified in SWHT were involved, how did it happen?  The result is in NEXUS.  And that’s why there are two books and why I’m off into other subjects.

Which is perhaps more than anyone wanted to know, but if you were curious, now you do.

Setting forth the evidence

Well folks, I drafted this the other day and thought it had posted…apparently not,  so I’ll try it again. If you somehow saw the earlier version great,…if not,

In the “No Defense” post, I pointed out the problems associated with the fact that there was never any actual legal challenge to the evidence placed into the Warren Commission record.  No defense attorney was able to raise issues relating to chains of possession, much less to bring in professionals to cross examine the Commission staff or the FBI personnel did tests and provided material and “expert” testimony to the Commission.  Of course the Commissioners themselves realized the extent to which they were at the mercy of the FBI, we have documents recording that fact and other meeting notes which reflect their skepticism that Director Hoover could be trusted to share everything he knew with them, especially as it pertained to Lee Oswald.

But if we look a bit further back in time, we find an even more fundamental issue with the FBI’s investigation.  We find that on Saturday morning, November 23, Director Hoover issued a Bureau wide advisory that “Lee Harvey Oswald has been developed as the principal suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy…in view of developments all offices should resume normal contacts with informants.”  Basically, the open ended investigation of the President’s murder, covering all types of classes of informants and sources, had lasted not quite a full day. From that point on, the Bureau would of course take calls and leads and respond to them – but in most cases unless a lead could quickly be tied to Lee Oswald, it would get fairly short shift.   When we look more broadly at other federal murder cases, we find that is not too atypical, once the Bureau can tie physical evidence to a real person, they focus their resources on making the case against the suspect. That support may go to Justice Department prosecutors or even to State or City officials, but their role becomes one of support for the prosecution.

Now that was Saturday morning – on the next day, Sunday the 24th,  senior FBI officer Alan Belmont wrote a memo to Deputy Director Tolson.  The memo concluded that Oswald was the sole person involved in the murder and that the investigation was essentially complete (in something less than two days – many people might consider that a bit of a rush).  Tolson went on to describe a process in which a report would be prepared which would set forth the items of evidence which would make it clear that Oswald was the man who had killed JFK.

We’ve all seen loads of TV shows where diligent investigators carry on for weeks, months, even years, accumulating evidence – but if you think about it, most of those shows are about private investigators working for the defendant, their lawyers,  families, friends, etc.   And in all those shows, the prosecutor is trying to convict an innocent person (often someone framed by the real bad people).  And the defense attorneys are always going to the Judge saying they need more time and asking for trial postponements. As we know, none of that is applicable to Lee Oswald or the case against him.  But while I’m at it, can anybody post an example of when law enforcement has actually detected that someone had been framed?  I’ve found a few examples but in those cases the “frame” was ferreted out by people supporting the defendant.

Of course, as far as I can tell, neither the Bureau or the Warren Commission ever considered the possibility that there might have been a “frame” relating to Lee Oswald?   But maybe I’ve missed it (or forgotten it; I’ve been doing this way too long).   Help is always welcome.

So, we have an investigation that after 24 hours was focused by the Director of the FBI (and earlier by the new President but that’s another story) strictly on Lee Oswald, a conclusion after less than 48 hours that Oswald and only Oswald was involved and that a report would be prepared presenting the evidence to support that conclusion. The report was drafted in a matter of weeks but the  the conclusion and evidence began being leaked to the press in only a matter of days.  Something that would have upset any trial Judge, if there had been one.

Open investigation closed in 24 hours/focus of investigation directed solely towards Lee Oswald, conclusion reached in 48 hours.  Evidence assembled strictly to support conclusion. Evidence not challenged or professionally tested by experts in a trial environment.

Is it just me or don’t we have some sort of systemic problem with the evidence?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Defense

 

One of the major reasons we fight an ongoing battle over study of the evidence in the Kennedy assassination is the fact that there was never a trial for Lee Oswald.  But sometimes we may underestimate what that really means in terms of the evidential process – and certainly those who disdain any discussion of conspiracy don’t raise the issue.

Our legal system is set up to aggressively test purported evidence and that includes actual crime scene and forensics evidence all the way to witness statements and documents.  A good defense team will scrutinize and challenge issues like chain of possession and will go much further than that, bringing in its own experts to challenge the viability of prosecution evidence and in many cases the legitimency of certain types of evidence as well as the laboratory tests and other processes used to support it.  However there was no trial and no defense in the JFK murder, which allowed the FBI and other sources to enter a body of evidence (cited in the Warren Commission report) with no challenge at all. And it’s taken decades to document how pitiful much of that evidence was and how much of it would be destroyed in a combative legal process today. We even have horrific examples such as the WC staff chosing to disregard the actual reports of expert panels which they had themselves convened – the military wound panel evaluating the wounds and CE399 demonstrates that.

And one of the saddest things is that the Commission was replete with legal professionals – who should have been the first to decry their own methodology. Certainly if they had been acting for the defense they would have, but their actions show that they were almost totally acting as prosecution staff with Lee Oswald as their target.  Anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating that statement simply needs to read Gerald McKnights “Breach of Trust”.

So, the Warren Commission entered a vast amount of evidence into the record – and none of it was challenged at all. Yet we find similar examples of that in major crimes – such as the murder of Robert Kennedy and the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

OK, some of you are about to pull the cord, telling me there were legal trials in both cases and live defendants and defense teams – what am I blathering about.

Take a deeper look at the RFK assassination and you find that Sirhan’s legal team challenged virtually none of the physical evidence and raised no serious issues when a great many existed. They rolled over and raised no objection as the  prosecution placed it all in the record and even attempted to manipulate testimony on the autopsy.  And take a look at the Ray trial, the same thing happened again.  Ray pleaded guilty and the Judge accepted his plea – and then went on to allow the prosecution to go on and on, putting evidence into the legal record with no challenge at all (and I can assure you there are strong challenges to a great deal of it – as the House Select Committee on Assassinations would later confirm in its own studies).

Why does this keep happening?  Well in the case of the Warren Commission that’s a long story which many of us have written about in some detail. At this late date its pretty hard to avoid the indications that Chief Justice Warren was working under a mandate to put a case against Lee Oswald on the record, and only Lee Oswald.   In the Sirhan and Ray trials it is also complex but another factor or two enter the mix in the case of living defendants – especially if there is a lot of apparently solid evidence against them.  First off their legal team is going to consider what can be done to minimize the penalty in case of conviction – in both cases the defense pitched their clients with the need to avoid a murder conviction that would net them a death penalty.  If the defendant buys into a guilty plea its going to considerably alter the sort of defense offered.  And of course the defense is not going to be excited about any evidence that smacks of conspiracy since that could lead you to premeditation and affect the judgement.  In turn the prosecution normally wants a quick slam dunk victory – and wondering off into conspiracy doesn’t really help and might even confuse issues and judge or jury. Ray’s judge privately admitted he doubted Ray had acted on his own but had been afraid that the issue of conspiracy might complicate the trial and perhaps even undermine the conviction.

Oh, and for those who have studied both the Sirhan and Ray defense, yes there were other issues at work but even then the above considerations apply to those trials.

So, should we be surprised to see questionable evidence in all three of these murders – no, for many reasons but one of the major ones being that the established legal process for testing, challenging and vetting it never happened.

P.S.  if you are interested in reading more of my thoughts on the RFK case, wonder on over to the Mary Ferrell Foundation web site, to the RFK area and read my series of essays on “Incomplete Justice”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnson in “Context”

 

It’s clear at this point in time that beginning on the evening of Nov. 22, 1963 and continuing from the following day, LBJ first preempted a full scale conspiracy investigation and then ensured that Lee Oswald was to be the sole individual presented as being involved with the murder of his predecessor. I go into obnoxious detail on that in Chapter 15 of SWHT presenting the case for that view and laying out the evolution of that process – call it what you want, damage control, suppression, cover up. And I spent a good deal of time laying out inconsistencies in Johnson’s personal behavior, especially in the first 24 hours.

Of course the big question is to what extent his rush to control the public perception of the murder was itself novel or consistent with just Johnson “just being Johnson”.

As it turns out we have some further clues to that and I’ve been reading some additional material that gives us insight into Johnson’s responses to crisis during his time as President. The crisis in the Dominican Republic provides one example and later his reaction to reported attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin another. In regard to the coup in the Dominican Republic, Johnson reacted quickly (on incorrect and insufficient information from the CIA) and jumped to his constant position that Communist advances must always be opposed – forcefully.  Prados covers Johnson’s response in his book on the NSC, “Keepers of the Keys.”  In the days following Johnson’s initial orders, and as the US military response escalated, it became embarrassingly clear that both the CIA and Johnson had been wrong in seeing the coup as a Communist controlled event. Even the press began to call him out on his earliest statements. But Johnson bulled his way forward, escalating military action on one front and beginning his own personal effort to cover decision. In fact, just as he had with the JFK investigation, he sent Abe Fortas (his personal lawyer) to the Caribbean  to consult with ousted politicians and produce supportive information for Johnson’s position – Fortas even operated under two different aliases on the trip. And in the end, certainly knowing that he had been wrong, Johnson stood by his stand but remained very sensitive about it, even ordering Jack Valenti to assemble material showing his strong leadership during the crisis.

Certainly all of that begins to sound pretty familiar. And when you dig into studies of the Tonkin Gulf incident, used by Johnson to seriously escalate American military action in Vietnam – you see much the same thing, and a whole bunch more cover up (in which Johnson was heavily assisted by McNamara). Anyone interested in the details and an analysis of the purported attacks on US destroyer patrols (one real and the second, non-existent) should refer to Eugene Windchy’s 1971 book on the Tonkin Gulf incidents and of course Peter Dale Scotts “The War Conspiracy” from the following year.

But perhaps what is more interesting is that by 2012, Johnson’s actions and the extent of the following cover up (of the fact that the US destroyers Maddux and Turner Joy did not come under massive attack on August 6) is now widely excepted, even in some US military history.  My January 2012 issue of Air Force Magazine contains a fine article by John Correll on “The Encounters in the Tonkin Gulf”.  In that article he relates that within hours a message had been sent to the White House that the early reports of attacks were now “doubtful” (for one thing support air craft had seen no evidence at all of attacking torpedo boats) but he notes within those same hours Johnson had reached his own conclusions and “It became clear that he was in no mood for discussion.” He describes Johnson “chomping at the bit” to attack, based on political reasons and how the American response to Johnson’s action was highly enthusiastic.

Correll goes into considerable detail, which I won’t repeat here, of the Pentagon’s own investigation of the incident – they were uneasy with the reports from the beginning. Much of the final solution did not occur until 1996, when released  documents allowed historians to prove that no attack had actually occurred – see Edwin Moise’s Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War.

And it was not until 2005 that certain radio intercepts were released which showed that an NSA field investigation had “deliberately skewed the notion that there had been an attack.” The NSA group very selectively used 15 out of some 122 available intercepts, selecting only those that fit the official story.  And as late as 2003 McNamara himself was forced to admit the attacks had not happened.

Perhaps the worse part of the whole story goes back to Johnson himself, who used the Gulf of Tonkin Congressional resolution to back his immense commitment of the American military to Vietnam. Johnson is quoted as later telling Undersecretary of State George Ball that “Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!”

Of course you don’t find much of this in the history books but it all seems to indicate one thing, you can rely on the fact that as President Johnson would always rush to the conclusions that would profit him, he would brook no objections and apparently he was always able to enforce the pressure needed to make it play for the public, even when he himself knew better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnson and Vietnam

 

I’ve gotten a few notes from readers asking me to spend some blog time on the JFK conspiracy and after this post I promise to devote three or four posts directly to that – but as I noted in my last post, I think its very wise read broadly about Vietnam given how much attention is paid in conspiracy literature to that subject – often bringing LBJ into the same discussion.

From that perspective, I’d like to recommend a couple of other books for background, if you really want to dig deeper into the evolution of the US involvement there and particularly who was “zooming” who at various stages.  John Prodos biography of William Colby gives an in-depth treatment of the CIA’s involvement there – since Colby was there in both the earliest days and at later at the height of American involvement. It also provides some very solid background on the inception and evolution of the Phoenix program, something often written about but often not studied in detail. The name of the book is “William Colby and the CIA / The Secret Wars of a Controversial Spymaster.”

But even more interesting to me, and perhaps more significant in studying the transition from JFK to Johnson is a book which I think had been largely ignored in conspiracy discussions – “Dereliction of Duty / Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.”  The book is by H.R. McMaster and its focus is on the Joint Chiefs and McNamara – and the relationship between each party and Johnson in his decisions.

As I mentioned in my last post, JFK was not a fan of massive retaliation and because that he brought in Taylor as an adviser and moved him into a very influential position in regard to military affairs (McMaster’s dialog about the relationship between LeMay and Taylor is pretty pithy and highly educational; his similar discussion of McNamara and LeMay is as well).  But while JFK may have had issues with certain of the Chiefs, Johnson had issues with all of them and consistently promised them one thing and did another, taking a only a few short weeks in office before aggressively putting them in their places and as time went on isolating himself from them in favor first of advice from Taylor but increasingly relying on McNamara. Even before his retirement in 1965 LeMay was complaining that Johnson wasn’t really interested in anything the Chiefs had to say, he might listen to Taylor but then the Chiefs themselves had become certain Taylor was not advocating their positions but only his own  (I’m really glad I didn’t know all this when I went off to get my draft physical in 1965; come to think of it it would have made writing and delivering my 1966 speech class series of short speeches on “How we certainly will win in Vietnam a lot more difficult).

McMaster gives a blow by blow of meetings and exchanges between the Chiefs and Johnson. His very first meeting with them was on November 29, 1963 and in that meeting his top priority was cutting defense expenditures (in order to fund the Great Society programs he was going to push).  Within that same time period Johnson had also dismissed three of his four military aides and made sure that a message was passed via the Deputy Defense Secretary – he was to let the admiral and generals know that if they thought they could use aides or any other channels to pressure their Commander in Chief on strategy or decisions , “they just didn’t know their knew Commander in Chief.”   At the same time he was whining that they military had never paid any attention to him as VP and he was going to remember that.

McNamara on the other hand immediately offered Johnson something that made him very comfortable with “trusting” him – he volunteered to underestimate monies to be spent for defense so that the budget projections could be brought in line with increased domestic spending – and to willingly express surprise later when military spending far exceeded forecast (for all of you who thought hiding war expenses was something new – nope;  problem is it seems to sound doable at first and sort of holds together for a couple of years but when you get mired down in a war for several years…)

Overall McMasters cuts McNamara little slack as the following quote suggests – “McNamara’s can-do attitude and talent for manipulating numbers and people would prove indispensable.”  Fans of McNamara, if there are still any, and fans of LBJ should read this book – but they probably won’t be happy with it.

JFK was action oriented but he did listen to a very broad range of opinions and even in his short term he demonstrated he could learn from mistakes – and he could ask the very best of questions.  At the height of debate in the missile crisis, with his brother pushing for air strikes, JFK simply asked the Air Force if they could guarantee taking out all the operational sites in a preemptive attack – they were forced to say no – and we know now that several sites had not even been identified and that local commanders were under a “launch before losing” rule of engagement. Johnson only listened to his closest “loyalists” (as McMasters details)- and in the end that largely became McNamara.

I don’t think JFK would have gone that direction and it would be fascinating to know at what point JFK himself might have started to become cautious about his Secretary of Defense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JFK and covert operations

I think its always good to read as broadly as possible on a subject and to that end I’d like to recommend a book by Richard Shultz – The Secret War Against Hanoi.

Schultz provides considerable insights into JFK’s preference for unconventional warfare in preference to major military engagement, something that began well before the Cuban missile crisis – from the beginning JFK had a problem with the whole concept of “massive retaliation”. Schultz begins with a NSC meeting in January of 1961 (in which Lansdale appeared as a briefer on Vietnam) and Kennedy’s stated desire to conduct guerrilla operations in North Vietnam just as they were doing in the south. Lansdale had remained involved with Vietnam since his preparation of the first covert operations program targeting the North immediately following the Geneva accords separating the territories.

Kennedy was unimpressed with the CIA’s ability to conduct covert paramilitary operations, not only in Vietnam but  elsewhere.  In June of 1961 he issued three National Security Action memos, fundamentally eliminating CIA authority over unconventional warfare operations and moving that authority to the Pentagon.  In Vietnam that led to the development of a plan by the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam.   Some three years after JFK’s initial call for accelerated covert operations in the north, Johnson would sign off on OPLAN 34A, a detailed program of military operations to be conducted in the north. This led to the immediate creation of an organization to control such special operations – MACV/SOG.

Schultz points out that the scale of intended operations was also new to the military and his book goes into great detail on how they tackled the challenge, the operations they ran and their overall record of success in “denied” areas beyond South Vietnam.

So, as early as the  fall of 1961 the controlling  responsibility for major covert paramilitary operations had been taken from the CIA -  in regard to both Vietnam and in regards to Cuba.  The Cuba activities were assigned to a broader team with Vietnam guru Lansdale serving as the focus for Mongoose activities against Cuba and the CIA playing a support role. We see the same limited CIA role occurring again in  1963 with the autonomous group project (Artime operation) which was intended to move attacks against Cuba offshore and make them totally deniable. Again, CIA was placed in only a support role, providing training and various logistics support for Artime under AMWORLD.

But – and not to give away the finish – Schultz tallies up the results in north Vietnam over several years and concludes that in the end the military covert operation against North Vietnam accomplished little more than what the CIA had when having responsibility for the project. A similar lack of concrete impact plagued the Cuban Mongoose effort.

JFK was a fast learner and a pragmatist even if he was action oriented. As ongoing covert operations against Cuba failed, we find him turning to the possibility of talks with Fidel Castro which might have ended in a compromise involving Cuban neutrality in the cold war. If he was open to such talks with Fidel about a potentially neutral Cuba, it’s hard not to imagine him continuing in the massive escalation in Vietnam and engaging in the large scale ground war supported by his successor.

 

 

 

Red Bird and Oswald

 

As most of those who read on this subject are aware, anyone looking for leads pointing towards a conspiracy would have had ample material to work with in the days following November 22, 1963. One fertile area of investigation would have been a few of the more solid indications that Oswald had been impersonated in a fashion which would have demonstrated foreknowledge of of the plans for the attack and even more specifically, incidents  which would have associated him with other individuals. Ralph Yates encounter with a young man carrying a package and being dropped off outside the TSBD is on striking example of the former.  The Gonzalez incident and note from Oswald in Abilene is another.

And one that gets relatively little attention is Ray January’s encounter with a young man and woman who were trying to make arrangements to rent a  small plane at Red Bird airport a few days prior to the assassination. The two had some very interesting questions about the range of the airplane in question since they planned to fly it to Mexico. They didn’t volunteer much information and at the time January was suspicious that they might intend to use the plane for smuggling. As a matter of fact, January who had himself recently visited the Carousel club a few times began to wonder if he might not have attracted the attention of the wrong sorts of clientel by being seen there.

January’s suspicions were also fueled by the fact that the two were accompanied by a third person, a young man, who remained in their car. He did get a look at the man but did not recognize any of the three as anyone he had seen before. However, following the assassination, it occurred to him that the young man did look a lot like the man in custody as the President’s assassin. January did end up talking to the FBI about the matter but his recollection (verified by the FBI report itself) was that the FBI was only interested in his visits to the Carousel club and the possibility that he might himself be linked to Jack Ruby. They kept coming  back to that rather than to the airplane rental incident.

However, all of this could actually have played out quite differently if several of these reports had come together at the same time and place in an investigation which was looking beyond Oswald. A note from “oswald” in Abilene, left with a Cuban exile who moved out of town quickly after the assassination (stopping only to make sure none of his local friends had any photos of him) along with an abortive attempt to charter a small plane for a flight out of Red Bird airport to Mexico (with oswald or someone looking a lot like him hanging back at the airport).  Certainly that sort of thing would have fed any open ended effort to look beyond just Lee Oswald himself.

But of course after the telephone calls of November 22 and November 23, and the memos of the follow day, that simply was not the sort of thing that was being encouraged within either DPD or FBI headquarters.

 

 

 

 

 

Redbird aircraft continued

 

In the first Red Bird post I mentioned that there are actually other incidents which seem to corroborate the Cuban pilot’s remarks to Ray January…..assuming that the pilot and AF Col. were picking up aircraft to be used in the new autonomous group (off shore) Artime project. The include Gene Wheaton’s totally independent story of hearing Chi Chi Quintero (Artime’s second in command) talk about exiles he knew being involved in the Dallas attack and RFK’s call to Harry Williams (who was working on the autonomous group project). There is also at least one exile source close to the Kennedy’s who has talked about having warned RFK about exiles plotting against his brother.

But beyond all that there is a more nebulous, but fascinating lead that comes from remarks made by an extremely experienced and well connected weapons and arms trade specialist, Garrett Underhill.  I go into considerable detail on Underhill and his remarks (and death in 1964) in SWHT so I’m not going to repeat that here – but the point is that as of 1963 there were two manor sets of covert weapons deals that would have been on Underhill’s radar – one being shipments into Laos (although those were still relatively minor) and a new round of major weapons and equipment purchases (including not just weapons and ammo but airplanes, ships etc) being conducted by Artime. If you dig into it you find at least one document describing a single $328,000 purchase through Interarms (operated by Underhill’s long time friend Sam Cummings). Now that’s a lot of money circa 1963 – estimates are that some $6 million went to Artime over three years and that at least $2 million remained unaccounted for – actually one of the major objections to the project was that it had to be so deniable it had virtually no government accountability, unlike operations such as the missions run out of JMWAVE.

Underhill’s immediate take following the JFK assassination was that it might well have been done by certain CIA connected folks that were well prepared to make their own money off weapons and drug deals, who had been doing business in SE Asia and were just coming into new activities relating to Cuba and Central America. Whatever Underhill heard, it scared him badly and it also convinced him that there were CIA associated individuals who were into making their own money, were perfectly willing to protect themselves and who feared that probes by RFK and JFK were going to expose them.

I’m not claiming that Underhill was correct but its pretty interesting that his fears do indeed seem to relate to the same network of individuals linked to the other leads.

On a side note, for those willing to do some deep thinking about it  and who have read SWHT, think about the rumors, gossip and leaks about the Kennedy conspiracy and divide that into those who simply heard something about JFK being at risk, something going to happen to him etc – and those whose remarks suggest they had heard names or even knew people who had actually gone to Dallas.

– jot down a list and think about it…  I’ll go into another type of read in a follow on post.

 

 

 

Red Bird leads

Some of the more significant leads relating to the events of November 22, 1963 come from Red Bird airport, south of Dallas.  I cover them in some detail in Someone Would Have Talked but they don’t get much discussion these days and I suspect a lot of folks are not even aware of them – so I’m going to devote a few posts to the subject.

Perhaps the most critical of them all has to do with the purchase of a C-53 transport (WWII troop carrier version of the legendary DC-3) which was being transferred from ownership by two companies at Red Bird to the Houston Air Center.  It was the last of a series of such airplanes sold during 1963 and one of the Dallas owners, Ray January, was handling the hand off of the aircraft.  January is a key source for several of the incidents involving Red Bird and he actually tried to take some of them to the FBI immediately after the assassination – but after determining that the only thing the FBI was interested in was if he had ever personally known Jack ruby or visited his clubs, January seems to have concluded that he was wasting his time and it would be best to hold his own council on such things.  It would only be due to the work of English author and researcher Matthew Smith, that the following story would become known (after many years of his friendship and contact with January) – and even then January required Smith to keep his true name confidential, and made that contingent upon his wife’s approval after his death.

According to January, the week of the President’s assassination, two men had come to Dallas to do an acceptance check and take possession of the aircraft. The men were not directly connected with Houston Air Center but appeared to be representing the actual new operators of the plane.  One, the pilot, was a Cuban exile, very proficiant with the aircraft and very involved with the checks and acceptance. The other, presenting himself as an American military officer but not in uniform spent little time at the airport and left the work to the Cuban pilot. During the week January  became good friends with the Cuban because of their common love of aircraft and of course they discussed affairs pertaining to the pilots homeland. At one point, the pilot told January it was too bad that President Kennedy was going to have to die when he came to Dallas – but that it would be revenge for his actions in pulling air support at the Bay of Pigs and dooming the exile brigade.  January simply could not belive such a thing and expressed his doubt – the Cuban simply said “You will see”, and as it turned out, flew the aircraft out of Dallas the afternoon of November 22.  January only saw him briefly at that time, a time when the first vague reports about something happening in the motorcade in Dallas were hitting the news – the Cuban said good by and only remarked “It’s all going to happen like I told you.”

Of course this is a pretty dramatic story, but the thing is, as more information became available over the years, its basics have been corroborated  – based on an the registration number of the aircraft, which Smith was only allowed to disclose after January’s death (and with extensive help from an FAA employee who prefers not to be named), we managed to confirm the sale of the aircraft, exactly as described by Ray January. In doing so, folks at the Houston Air Center who know the history of the Center and its activities were also quite helpful – right up to the point where I gave them the aircraft registration number and they realized where I was going. After that – nothing (not a new experience in JFK research).  However, subsequent research makes it pretty clear that Houston Air Center was involved with logistics support for certain CIA operational activities in the secret war against Castro and also suggests that the aircraft in question was being purchased to support the new Artime/AMWORLD effort being moved offshore. An effort which was supposed to be totally deniable and allowed Artime’s group a large degree of autonomy in its anticipated military activities (funded to the extent of an estimated six million dollars over a period of three years beginning in 1963).

It would be very nice to know more detail about the air activities of Artime’s effort (and yes documents show the CIA was assisting him in the lease of similar transport aircraft through third party companies).  We do have the name of one of his favorite pilots and the name of an American military officer connected to the effort but much more work could be done;  it seems a very fruitful area for research – and so far there is really nothing to suggest that January should not be considered a reliable source.