When did it start?

It’s been a bit longer than I expected before getting back here to post again. The good news is that I have now completed my draft of the book I’ve been working on for some two years – an exploration of the practices and pitfalls of American covert convert warfare over some 70 years to the present. Still lots to do on it but the bulk of the research and writing is done, some 18 chapters and well over 400 pages I’m estimating.  But just as I finished that I came down with a couple of types of winter illnesses and that’s kept me away for a bit too.

Anyway, I promised that with this being the 50th anniversary year, I’d offer a few more posts on the murder of President Kennedy. One question that I’m often asked, is when do I feel the conspiracy actually started – which leads to an conditional answer because we know that there really were multiple efforts in play which involved targeting JFK. One that Stu and I write about in The Awful Grace of God is the recruiting and training of very covert rifle teams with the goal of carrying out attacks on high government and financial leaders. That conspiracy is quite well documented and involved rifle teams training in both California and Florida, it leaked to the FBI and actually a leak about a National States Rights party threat to the President came out of San Antonio during the Texas trip.

So, when I answer the question (and the answer seems not to satisfy most who ask it) I try to isolate the Dallas plot and attack from other things being planned by different groups.  And that leads me to Lee Oswald and the fact that Oswald had been manipulated for some sort of incident related to JFK on the East Coast, which was supposed to happen in September.  The first report we had of that was from Richard Case Nagell, who offered it based on what he said was his personal observation of people recruiting Oswald while he was in New Orleans. Interesting on the face of it but even more so when we come up with two completely independent sources of corroboration.  The first, is the report from a young lady whose mother was helping Marina pack to move out of New Orleans back to Dallas.  The young woman reported that while her mother was with Marina, Oswald was chatting her up (pretty consistent for Lee) and talking about going back to Washington D.C.  He was pretty vague about the trip but when pressed he blurted out that he had to go back there to get a gun…which she thought pretty strange.  This incident and the researcher who interviewed the young woman are covered in SWHT.

But beyond that, we have something far more solid.  We have a series of letters that Oswald wrote to the SWP and CPUSA about moving back to the East Coast, volunteering his services and even asking if he should “go underground”.  Pretty incriminating stuff actually, not highlighted by the WC due to its rather explosive nature I suppose. Or perhaps because the WC also had to deal with Oswald’s manuscript written earlier – which expresses his total disgust with the CPUSA.  Comparing the letters with the manuscript might have raised some dangerous questions about his real motives.

So….the first part of my answer to the question of when “it” started is – August in New Orleans, but with Washington D.C. as the venue and Oswald as the patsy.  Which suggests that the plot for Dallas started once the D.C. action aborted and it became extremely likely that Lee would be in Dallas for the birth of his new baby daughter, during the same period  in which the President would be traveling to Texas.