Article 6468 of alt.conspiracy Subject JFKsummary of Garrison's evidence (LONG) Date 27 De
Article 6468 of alt.conspiracy:
From: jamesruts.amdahl.com (Jim Richard)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.conspiracy
Subject: JFK:summary of Garrison's evidence (LONG)
Message-ID: bbF702J13clP00amdahl.uts.amdahl.com
Date: 27 Dec 91 19:29:59
GMT Distribution: usa
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale
CA Lines: 730
After seeing "JFK" last weekend and then reading Garrison's book
I had a very clear sense of what Garrison thought happened in
Dallas. However, the support for those claims and the sources for
the information on Shaw, Ferrie and Banister were pretty fuzzy.
So I wrote down the claims that Garrison had made and then went
through his book a second time, writing down all the things that
supported his various charges. The result is this summary.
Almost all the information that follows came from:
Jim Garrison, *On the Trail of the Assassins*, New York: Warner
Books, Inc, 1988.
1. More than one gunman shot at Kennedy.
a. Zapruder film showed that shots took place over 5.6 seconds,
only enough time for a single assassin to get off three shots.
One shot is known to have missed the limousine and hit bystander
Tague in the jaw. The third shot was the final fatal head shot.
That leaves one bullet to account for all other wounds received
by Kennedy and Connally. There was a back wound and throat wound
on Kennedy. Connally had a back wound, pierced lung, a fractured
wrist and a grazed leg. According to the Warren Commission one
bullet did this. It entered Kennedy's body travelling downward
at 17 degrees and then travelled upward, departing through his
neck. The bullet then entered Connally at the rear of his right
armpit heading leftward. It travelled downward at 27 degrees,
hitting Connally's fifth rib and exiting his chest. The bullet
continued downward and passed through Connally's left wrist,
shattering his radius bone, and finally lodged in his left leg.
The bullet was found in a corridor of the Parkland Hospital with
only slight damage to the base of the bullet. More fragments
were recovered from Connally's wrist then were missing from this
bullet.
The Zapruder film shows Connally's cheeks puff out over a second
after Kennedy clutches his throat. The puffing out was caused by
Connally's lung collapsing and the air it contained being forced
out.
Connally did not testify that he and Kennedy were hit
simultaneously; he said Kennedy was hit first.
b. Many witnesses said they heard shots from the grassy knoll
just in front and to the right of the presidential limousine.
These include Tague who was cut in the face by a bullet or
asphalt, and Abraham Zapruder, who was filming the motorcade.
Some witnesses said they saw smoke rising from the trees located
at the top of the knoll.
Behind the knoll was a railroad yard. The knoll and the yard
were separated by a five foot high picket fence. The switchman
for the railroad yard, Lee Bowers, was in a glassed-in tower 14
feet off the ground. Earlier in the day he had seen a man
driving around the railroad car apparently speaking into a
microphone. A few minutes before the shooting, Mr. Bowers saw
two unfamiliar men standing behind the picket fence. After the
shooting he watched fifty to a hundred policemen converge on the
railroad yard within five minutes. Bowers stopped some departing
trains and these were searched.
A Sergeant Harkess reports that some tramps and hoboes were
pulled off the train but no guns were found. The transients were
arrested and brought to the station and questioned. However,
there is no record of their arrest or even there names. Analysis
of news photos taken after the shooting traces the flight of
three men from the grassy knoll to the box-cars. The photos show
that the hoboes were clean-shaven and had fresh haircuts. The
soles of their shoes are not worn and their clothes are shabby
but clean. The photos also show that the police officers leading
the tramps away are holding there rifles very casually, not at
port arms. The trousers of one of officers did not fit him. A
radio receiver earclip is visible in one officer's ear. Garrison
says he knew of no local police force that possessed these
earclips in 1963.
c. Dr. Robert McClelland signed the admission note at Parkland
Hopital which said that Kennedy's death was caused by a gunshot
wound of the left temple. A wound in the left temple would not
be consistent with the shooter being behind Kennedy.
d. Several witnesses saw two or three people in the sixth floor
of the Texas Book Depository shortly before the shooting. Oswald
supposedly shot from the easternmost end of the sixth floor.
Arnold Rowland, a student, saw an elderly black man at the
easternmost end fifteen minutes before the shooting. At the
westernmost end he saw a man with a rifle in his hands standing
just back from the window. Carolyn Walther saw a man with a
white shirt and light hair in the easternmost window. He was
holding a rifle with a very short barrel. Standing next to him
was a man in a brown suit. A 16-year old, Amos Euins, saw a man
with a white bald spot doing the shooting. John Powell, an
inmate in the county jail directly across from the depository,
saw two men with a rifle, one of whom had a very dark
complexion. Richard Carr, a steel worker at a building under
construction about 500 feet away, saw a heavy-set man with horned
rim glasses at the window next to the "assassin's lair". After
the shooting, Carr ran down the building he was working on and
saw four men running out of the Book Depository. One of these men
walked away. The other three, one of whom was the same man he
had seen on the sixth floor, walked a block and jumped into a
Nash Rambler station wagon. The driver was Spanish or Cuban and
had a very dark- complexion. Roger Craig, a Dallas deputy
sheriff, saw the Dallas police unsuccessfully questioning a
Spanish speaking Latino on Elm Street minutes after the
shooting. Craig recognized this same man pull up to the
Depository in a Nash Rambler some minutes later. A man Craig
identified as Oswald jumped into the wagon which then tore off.
Craig says that he went to the police headquarters and told
Captain Will Fritz about the Nash Rambler. Oswald commented that
the car belonged to Mrs. Ruth Paine, the woman who Oswald's wife
was staying with. Another deputy later confirmed that Mrs. Paine
owned a Nash Rambler but the homicide unit did not follow up on
this. Fritz later denied that Craig had even been to police
headquarters that day but a news photo surfaced six years later
showing that Craig was in fact there.
e. Shortly before the motorcade arrived, a Latin man had an
epileptic seizure. He was taken to Parkland Hospital where he
walked off, refusing to be treated or to identify himself. This
seizure caused police officer Joe Smith to leave his post at the
corner of the Depository and would have allowed gunmen on the
grassy knoll to move into position. It also made unavailable the
ambulance that was on standby in case of injury to the
President.
f. Julia Ann Mercer, wife of a former congressman, was caught in
a traffic jam near the grassy knoll sometime before the arrival
of the motorcade. She saw a man get out of a pickup truck
carrying a poorly concealed rifle and climb up the grassy knoll.
The next day she identified the driver of the pickup as Jack
Ruby. This was the day before Ruby shot Oswald. The FBI altered
her statement so that it did not mention the positive
identification. The sheriff's office filed a notarized affidavit
that said Mercer was not able to identify the driver. Mercer
said that she had never been brought before a notary and that her
signature on the affidavit had been forged.
f. In 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations
concluded that Kennedy "was probably assassinated as a result of
a conspiracy." This was based largely on acoustical evidence
which indicated that shooting occurred both from behind Kennedy
and from the grassy knoll in front of him. The committee called
on the Justice Department to reopen the investigation. In
September 1988, the Justice Department announced that it had
found no persuasive evidence of a conspiracy.
---
2. Oswald didn't shoot Kennedy.
a. The day he was arrested, Oswald was tested for nitrates on
his cheeks to see if he had fired a rifle in the last 24 hours.
The test was negative. The results were withheld for 10 months.
Oswald's hands did react positively to the test.
b. Oswald was seen in luncheon room on second floor 90 seconds
after the shooting. He was drinking a coke. In 90 seconds he
would have to had hidden the rifle under a pile of boxes, run
down four flights of stairs and purchased a coke.
c. No fingerprints of Oswald were found on the rifle when it was
examined in FBI labs in Washington, D.C. The rifle was returned
to Dallas police who later announced that a palm print of
Oswald's had been found on the rifle.
d. Three empty cartridges from a Mannlicher-Carcano were found
near the easternmost window on the sixth floor. They were
arranged close together and nearly in parallel even though a
cartridge is flung violently away when the rifle is fired.
e. Officer Seymour Weitzman, part of the Dallas search team that
discovered the rifle on the sixth floor of the Depository,
identified it as a highly accurate, German-made 7.65 Mauser.
Weitzman operated a sporting goods store and was quite familiar
with weapons. Roger Craig, who was also part of the search team,
recalled the word Mauser inscribed on the metal of the rifle and
Deputy Boone also described it as a Mauser. A film taken of the
rifle being removed from the depository shows a rifle without a
sight mounted on it. Both the Carcano and the Mauser have
sights.
f. The sight on the Mannlicher-Carcano was not aligned.
g. Oswald's fellow Marines testified that he was a very poor
shooter.
---
3. U.S. government involved in cover-up of conspiracy.
a. A fourth bullet was apparently found during Kennedy's
autopsy. The chief pathologist, Commander James Humes, told the
Warren Commission that he had not found any bullets during the
autopsy. However, an FBI memo from November 22, 1963, released
under the Freedom of Information Act, acknowledged the receipt of
a missile removed by Commander Humes on that date.
b. Despite being told by Texas officials that Texas law required
that a civilian autopsy be performed on Kennedy in Dallas, the
secret service had the body flown to Bethesda Naval Hospital,
where three military pathologists examined it.
c. The military pathologists did not probe Kennedy's neck wound
to trace the path of the bullet and to possibly recover the
bullet, even though civilian doctors at Parkland Hospital had
diagnosed the wound as an entrance wound.
d. Fifteen to twenty photographs and X-rays of Kennedy's body
were delivered to secret service agent Roy Kellerman but the
Warren commission never examined them.
e. One of the military pathologists, Dr. Finck, testified that
the operation was coordinated under the direction of an Army
general and that "when you are a lieutenant colonel in the Army
you just follow orders, and at the end of the autopsy we were
specifically told - as I recall it, it was by Admiral Kinney, the
surgeon of the Navy - this is subject to verification - we were
specifically told not to discuss the case."
f. The front page of the Dallas Morning News for November 22
showed a map of the planned parade route. This route shown did
not go by the Texas Book Depository because this change was made
that morning. A copy of the front page that was introduced as a
Warren Commission exhibit had a large square of solid gray on the
five-sixths of the page that showed the motorcade route. (The
Warren Commission did hear testimony on the motivation for the
route change. It was to avoid a difficult, 100 degree turn
beyond the railroad overpass to depart on Stemmons Freeway.)
g. Two frames of the Zapruder film were reversed so that it
appeared that Kennedy's head moved forward instead of backward
after the fatal shot. When the Warren Commission asked the FBI
what had happened to the film, J. Edgar Hoover replied that an
inadvertent printing error had occurred.
h. In 1972, Dr. Cyril Wecht, a pathologist, obtained a court
order allowing him to examine Kennedy's brain, which had been
preserved in formalin. The examination could have revealed the
direction from which Kennedy had been hit. Unfortunately, it was
found that Kennedy's brain had disappeared.
i. Beverly Oliver filmed the motorcade facing the grassy knoll.
The FBI took her film and never returned it. They claimed to
have lost it.
j. FBI had altered Julia Ann Mercer's testimony, removing her
positive identification of Jack Ruby as the driver of a pickup
trick carrying a gunman.
k. Arnold Rowland, the man who saw an elderly black man on the
sixth floor was told by the FBI agents who interviewed him that
this wasn't relevant to the case and to just forget it now.
l. The mayor of Dallas at the time of the assassination, Earle
Cabell, was the brother of a former deputy director of the CIA,
Charles Cabell. Charles Cabell had been in charge of the Bay of
Pigs invasion and was afterwards fired by Kennedy.
m. The secret service cleaned and washed out the presidential
limousine on the day of the assassination.
n. Secret service sent Connally's suit to be cleaned and
pressed.
o. Congressmen Goodell originally proposed an investigative
commission of seven senators and seven congressmen to look into
the assassination. President Johnson shortly announced formation
of Warren Commission with two Senators and two congressmen. The
commission members had a strong pro-military background. These
include Allen Dulles, the former CIA director, Gerald Ford, a
strong supporter of the CIA, and Richard Russell, the chairmen of
the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
p. Ruth Paine got Oswald his job in the Texas Book Depository.
Paine's father and her brother-in-law had worked for the Agency
for International Development which may have been a CIA cover.
q. The CIA claimed that Oswald had visited Cuban and Soviet
Embassies in October 1963 even though photos and tape recordings
didn't match Oswald.
---
4. Banister was involved in assassination conspiracy.
Guy Banister was a former Chicago FBI agent and former New
Orleans police deputy working as a private detective in New
Orleans. Banister had strong anti-communist views. A young
attorney that Garrison played chess with reported that while in
college he had been hired by Banister to infiltrate radical
campus groups. There was a Banister-Oswald connection. When
Oswald was arrested on August 9, 1963, he was handing out Marxist
pro-Cuba literature. The address stamped on the pamphlets was
the same office building as Banister worked in. Banister's
secretary, Delphine Roberts, also reported that Banister had
closed door meetings with Oswald and that Banister arranged for
Oswald to have a third floor office.
Jack Martin was a private detective who worked out of Banister's
office. He spoke to Garrison off the record and reported that
during the Summer of 1963 he saw many Cubans come and go from
Banister's office. Dave Ferrie practically lived at the office
and Lee Harvey Oswald also spent time there. Martin's job was to
handle the small amount of private detective work that came in to
the office.
The August 1st and 2nd editions of the New Orleans Times-Picayune
reported that the FBI had seized a cache of bombs from a house on
the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The house was occupied by
Jose Juarez, a Cuban refugee. The FBI reported that the bombs
were seized in connection with an investigation of an effort to
"carry out a military operation against a country with which the
United States is at peace." According to Martin, the raid also
included a training camp where nine Cuban and two American
trainees were arrested. This was corroborated by an FBI report.
Martin described Banister's activities as part of a supply line
that ran from Dallas to Miami. The supplies were meant to be used
against Cuba.
Banister died about nine months after the assassination. His
widow told Garrison that she had come across some pro-Cuba
leaflets while emptying his office. Federal government agents
had taken away his locked filing cabinets an hour or two after
his death.
---
5. Banister worked for CIA.
a. Banister was a former FBI agent.
b. Banister's office in New Orleans was located amidst the
intelligence agencies located there.
c. Garrison feels the anti-Castro activity including the Lake
Pontchartrain training camp were CIA sponsored.
---
6. Ferrie was involved in assassination conspiracy.
Ferrie was an associate of Guy Banister's who frequently visited
his office. Garrison learned that Ferrie had driven from New
Orleans to Houston shortly after the assassination. The source
was someone who knew Jack Martin. In Houston, Ferrie was seen at
an ice rink, making and receiving numerous telephone calls. When
asked why he had driven to Houston during a violent thunderstorm
just to go to an ice rink, Ferrie was evasive. Ferrie was also
found to have driven to Galveston, Texas. Galveston is where Jack
Ruby called on Saturday night, the day before he shot Oswald.
Ferrie's apartment was searched the weekend of the assassination
and an assortment of Army rifles and other equipment were found.
A large map of Cuba was on the wall.
Ferrie also had a mob connection. When reputed mob boss Marcello
was deported by Robert Kennedy and dumped in Guatamala, it was
Ferrie who flew Marcello back to the U.S.
Additional evidence is listed under evidence for claim that Clay
Shaw was involved in assassination conspiracy.
---
7. Ferrie worked for CIA.
Gordon Novel was pursued to learn his role in a raid on a
Schlumberger Corporation explosives bunker in southern Louisiana.
He announced that he had participated in the raid and had been
working as a CIA operative. He identified David Ferrie as
another CIA employee and participant in the raid. Novel said
that the bunker was "a CIA staging point for munitions destined
to be used as part of the abortive Bay of Pigs attack on Casto's
Cuba." The arms were brought back in a laundry truck and divided
equally between Ferrie's apartment and Banister's office.
Garrison states twice that Ferrie worked at the Lake
Pontchartrain training camp as an instructor (pages 141 and 204)
but he gives no source for this information. Garrison considers
the training camp to be a CIA operation.
---
8. Shaw was involved in assassination conspiracy.
Clay Shaw was head of the International Trade Commission and a
prominent civic leader. On the day after the assassination, a
Clay Bertrand asked his lawyer Dean Andrews to fly to Dallas and
represent Oswald according to Andrews testimony to the Warren
Commission. But, when interviewed by Garrison, Andrews denied
having ever seen Clay Bertrand or knowing who he really was.
Andrews, in his first FBI interview, had described Bertrand as
6'2". Later, Andrews told the Warren Commission that Bertrand was
5'8". He had also told the FBI that Bertrand had previously asked
him to help with the citizenship problems that Oswald's wife,
Marina, was having. The FBI final reported stated that the phone
call from Bertrand had been a figment of Andrews' imagination.
Garrison's investigators covered the bars in New Orleans' French
Quarter asking about Clay Bertrand. Bartenders and many others
said it was common knowledge that Clay Shaw went by the name Clay
Bertrand. A young man and friend of Shaw's named William Morris
did so on the record. Others followed. A hostess at the V.I.P.
room for Eastern Airlines said that a Clay Bertrand had signed
the guest register. Her description of him matched Shaw's. Later
on, when Garrison had Shaw arrested, Shaw was asked by the
booking officer, Aloysius Habighorst, if he had any aliases.
Shaw replied Clay Bertrand.
In September 1963, Oswald was seen in the small town of Clinton,
in deep south Louisiana, accompanied by two men whose
descriptions matched Clay Shaw and David Ferrie. A barber, Edwin
McGehee, reported that he gave Oswald a haircut and that Oswald
had mentioned he was applying for a job at a hospital in nearby
Jackson. McGehee suggested that he register to vote in the parish
to improve his chances of getting the job. A major drive was
underway to register black voters. Oswald was seen by several
people who recalled that he was the only white standing in a long
line of blacks registering to vote. A number of witnesses
reported that the two men matching Shaw's and Ferrie's
descriptions waited in a black limousine whose license plate
showed it was registered to the International Trade Mart.
Garrison found several other people who stated that Shaw knew
David Ferrie. Jules Rico Kimble said that Ferrie flew him and
Shaw to Canada to pick up a heavy-set Cuban who was balding in
front. David Logan says that Ferrie introduced him to Shaw and
that Shaw invited him to dinner at his house where Logan and Shaw
were seated at opposite ends of a long dining table. Another
friend of Ferrie's, Raymond Broshears, had dined with Ferrie and
Shaw together. Broshears said that Ferrie would discuss the
Kennedy assassination only when he was drunk and that then he
would emphasize that his role was marginal. Broshears said that
Ferrie's role was to drive to Houston where he was to pick up two
members of the assassination team and fly them to a more distant
location. Edward Whalen, a professional criminal, told Garrison
that Ferrie and Shaw had offered him $25,000 to kill Garrison.
Whalen said that they had been tipped off by Dean Andrews about
Garrison's investigation. Whalen refused the offer because he
did not want to kill a district attorney.
Perry Russo, a 25-year old Equitable insurance agent from
Baton-Rouge, testified that Ferrie and Shaw had discussed
Kennedy's assassination in September 1963. Russo dropped in at a
party at Ferrie's where Shaw, some Cubans and someone who was
called Leon Oswald were gathered. Russo could not firmly
identify Leon Oswald as Lee Harvey Oswald. They first discussed
plans to assassinate Castro and the difficulties involved. When
the Cubans left the conversation switched to getting Kennedy and
how this could be blamed on Castro and lead to an invasion of
Cuba. Ferrie emphasized that triangulation of fire, using three
shooters from different directions, would be the best method to
kill Kennedy. Shaw said that they would all need alibis and that
he would be on the west coast. The talk of alibis made it clear
to Russo that the Kennedy assassination was not a hypothetical
discussion but a plot that was going to be carried out.
A narcotics offender, Vernon Bundy, said he had seen Shaw and
Oswald together. Bundy had gone to the seawall at Lake
Pontchartrain to get a fix. While he was there, Shaw and Oswald
held a 15 minute conversation within twenty feet of him. During
the conversation, Shaw handed Oswald some money.
Richard Case Nagell told Garrison that he had worked for an
unnamed government agency. Nagell was assigned to infiltrate a
group that included Oswald. By September 1963 it had become clear
that a large operation directed toward assassinating Kennedy was
underway. Nagell feared he was being drawn into a trap so he had
himself arrested and jailed to prevent any charges being levelled
against him. Nagell named Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Clay
Shaw as the other men involved with Oswald.
Charles Spiesel, an accountant from New York, said he met Ferrie
and Shaw on a trip to New Orleans and heard them discuss the
possible assassination of Kennedy. Spiesel was thoroughly
discredited under cross examination. He testified that the New
York city police had hypnotized and tortured him. He could tell
when an attempt was being made to hypnotize "when someone tries
to get your attention - catch your eye. That's a clue right
off." He said that he been hypnotized in order to plant thoughts
in his head that were untrue. Spiesel also admitted that he
fingerprinted his daughter whenever she left for school at L.S.U.
at again when she returned to make sure she was the same person.
---
9. Shaw worked for CIA.
Shaw was on the board of directors of the Centro Mondiale
Commerciale. Some articles in the Italian newspaper, Paesa Sera,
identified the directors as being so strongly anti-communist they
wished to swallow up all those who wanted decent East-West
relations. The paper also indicated that the Center may have
been the creature of the CIA.
A CIA staff employee named Marchetti said that during Shaw's
trial, he heard CIA officials asking about the status of the
trial and whether the CIA was doing enough to help. Marchetti
was told that Shaw had been a contact of the CIA.
The former CIA director Helms testified that Shaw had been "one
of the part-time contacts of the Domestic Contact Division, the
people that contacted businessmen, professors, and so forth, and
who traveled in and out of the country."
---
10. Oswald did not murder officer Tippit.
a. Tippit was murdered between 1:06 and 1:10 PM. Oswald was seen
at a bus stop at 1:04 a mile to the south of the murder.
b. The closest of the witnesses to Tippit's murder, Domingo
Benavides, wouldn't identify Oswald as the murderer.
c. Warren Reynolds saw a gunmen fleeing from the shooting. At
first, he told the FBI he would hesitate to name Oswald as the
gunmen. Reynolds was subsequently shot in the head in a car
basement and, after recovering, he testified that the gunman was
Oswald.
d. Helen Markham testified that the gunman was Oswald but she
also said that she did had never seen any of the men in the
police line-up, which included Oswald. Markham also claimed to
have tried to talk to Tippitt for twenty minutes after the
shooting but all the other witnesses said he died immediately.
e. There were other witnesses who testified to the Warren
Commission but Garrison dismisses them as "inconsequential."
f. There were a few witnesses not interviewed by the Warren
Commission who gave different versions of the shooting. Acquilla
Clemons saw two men at Tippit's police car. The gunman was short
and heavy. Frank Wright reported that the gunman fled the scene
in a gray car parked next to the police car. FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover ordered FBI agents not to question Clemons and
Wright, as revealed in an FBI memo.
g. Minutes after the shooting, a report describing the suspect
said he was armed with an automatic pistol. The first report
from the scene said that the shell at the scene indicated an
automatic pistol. Oswald was found with a revolver, not an
automatic. Revolvers and automatics are easily distinguished, as
are their shells.
h. Four different bullets were removed from Tippit. Three were
Winchester Westerns and the fourth was from Remington-Peters. It
would be unusual for a single gun to contain two types of bullets
since bullets are not sold in mixed lots. The FBI labs could not
confirm that the four bullets had been fired by Oswald's
revolver.
i. The cartridges entered as evidence were confirmed to have
been fired by Oswald's revolver but these cartridges did not have
the initials etched on them by either the officer at the scene or
the officer who received them at police headquarters (the officer
at the scene believed he had marked the cartridges but could not
swear to it).
---
11. Someone impersonated Oswald to make him appear a Communist.
a. When Oswald moved to New Orleans in April 1963 he took a job
at Reilly Coffee Company. Reilly was strongly anti-Castro and the
job may have been arranged because of this. However, there were
dozens of job application found with Oswald's signature on them.
All of these listed Oswald's height as 5'9". However, Oswald was
probably 5'11". An impersonator could have applied for the jobs,
forging the signatures but listing his actual height to avoid
arousing suspicion.
b. On January 20, 1961, while Oswald was in Russia, two men
representing Friends of Democratic Cuba inquired about buying 10
Ford pickup trucks. One was a Cuban the other a man called
"Oswald". One of the incorporators of FODC was Guy Banister.
c. The CIA claims that Oswald was in Mexico City in October 1963
trying to defect to Cuba or the USSR. They released a murky photo
supposedly of Oswald, although the man was portly, greying and
older. A Cuban Embassy worker, Silvia Duran, was arrested and
released by the CIA only after she identified Oswald as a visitor
to the Cuban Embassy. In 1978 she described Oswald as blond and
5'3". The Cuban Consul, Eusebio Azcue, had three confrontations
with the man claiming to be Oswald. Azcue stated that photographs
of Oswald did not show the same man as he met. The Warren
Commission tried to get tapes of Oswald's calls from the Soviet
Agency but the CIA said they had none. However, FBI agents at
Oswald's post-arrest interrogation heard them and thought them to
be of somebody else.
d. Someone claiming to be Lee Oswald went to a Lincoln-Mercury
dealership in early November 1963. He drove like a wild man and,
when told the amount needed for a down payment, commented that
maybe he would have to go back to Russia to buy a car. The
salesmen said that this man had a different hairline than Oswald
and was shorter.
---
12. Oswald worked in counter-intelligence.
a. Eight marines associated with Oswald at the El Toro Marine
Base testified to the Warren Commission that Oswald had no
Marxist inclinations. Only Kerry Thornley disagreed. (Garrison
implicates Thornley as the possible impersonator of Oswald).
b. About six months before defecting to the Soviet Union, Oswald
was given a Russian language examination.
c. When travelling to the Soviet Union, Oswald arrived in
England on October 9, 1959. According to the Warren Commission
Report he left for Helsinki the same day but his passport shows
he did not leave until the 10th. Oswald checked into a hotel in
Helsinki on October 10th. However, there was no direct commercial
flight from London to Helsinki on October 10th.
d. A CIA finance officer, James Wilcott, testified to the HSCA
that Oswald had been recruited by the CIA for a double agent
assignment in the Soviet Union. Wilcott said that he had handled
funding for the project Oswald was on. This testimony was denied
by other agents.
e. Oswald was given a repatriation loan when he returned to the
U.S. This was only given to those who had unquestionable loyalty
to the U.S.
f. After returning to U.S., Oswald was given a security
clearance to work at company that apparently worked on military
maps for U-2 missions over Cuba. This was in October 1962.
g. Accepted by conservative White Russian community who one
would expect to reject a Soviet defector and Marxist
sympathizer.
h. The Life cover photo that showed Oswald holding a rifle in
one hand, a Marxist newspaper in his right and a pistol on his
right hip is claimed by some to be a fake. There are a few
different photos of Oswald taken at different distances. His
face is always the same and the size of the head doesn't change
but that of his body does.
i. Associated with Banister who was a former FBI agent.
j. Oswald hired people from local employment office to hand out
pamphlets for Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Spoke with FBI agent
John Quigley when arrested.
k. Wagoner Carr, the attorney general of Texas, testified to the
Warren Commission that Oswald had been an FBI informant during
the year before the assassination, receiving $200 a month. Carr
had acquired this evidence from Allan Sweatt, the chief of the
criminal division of the Dallas Sherriff's office.
---
13. Dallas police department involved in conspiracy.
a. No notes were taken of 12 hour interrogation of Oswald
following his arrest and no attorney was present. This would
have made any statements he made inadmissible in court.
b. The police department possible concealed or altered evidence
such as the 7.65 Mauser identified at the sixth floor of the
Depository, and the ballistic evidence in Tippit's murder.
c. The police department did not follow up on Deputy Sherriff
Craig's report of a Nash Rambler station wagon leave from the
Depository carrying Oswald.
d. Insufficient protection was offered to protect Oswald.
e. Julia Ann Mercer's affidavit was fabricated.
---
14. U.S. government involved in conspiracy.
a. Five days before the assassination the New Orleans FBI
received a telex warning that an attempt would be made on
Kennedy's life in Dallas. The warning was not passed on to the
Secret Service. The telex disappeared from the New Orleans file
shortly after the assassination.
b. FBI agent James Hosty notified Dallas police that he had
information that showed Oswald was capable of committing the
assassination at 2:50 PM on the day of the assassination. This
was before the FBI had mentioned that Oswald was a suspect. The
tenant of a former FBI agent who knew Hosty had heard that Oswald
was an FBI informant and that Hosty was Oswald's contact.
c. On the day of the assassination, the secret service had
removed the plastic bubble used to cover the presidential
limousine on the day of the assassination. (The Warren
Commission had been told that the bubble was not bulletproof and
the skies had cleared).
d. The secret service failed to secure the roofs of the
buildings in Dealy Plaza or to make sure that windows would be
closed.
e. The local army unit that would normally have been involved in
the security duties for Kennedy's visit to Dallas were told that
they would not be needed. [Mentioned in Stone's movie but not
Garrison's book. Stone sticks pretty closely to Garrison's book
but he assigns a much larger role to the CIA than Garrison does.
Garrison believes that the plan to assassinate the president was
carried out by rogue elements within the CIA or its contract
agents. These encompassed Shaw, Ferrie, Banister and the Cuban
guerillas. Stone, though, indicates that these rogue elements
were actually directed by higher ups in the CIA. Stone's evidence
for this comes from the interview with X.]
f. Extensive biographical information on Oswald was published in
New Zealand newspapers immediately after the assassination
[mentioned in Stone's movie but not Garrison's book].
---
A few of the pieces of evidence listed above are dubious as
stated. How could a witness describe a man in the Texas Book
Depository as being heavy-set and wearing horned-rim glasses
(1.d) from 500 feet away? There were many witnesses to the
Tippit murder but Garrison dismisses most of them as
"inconsequential" without any attempt to refute their testimony
(10.e).
Garrison also has ignored some important pieces of evidence
against a conspiracy. He does not mention the experiments of
U.C. Berkeley physicist, Luis Alvaraz, in which taped melons were
shot at and some were observed to move towards the rifle. He
does not mention that twenty pathologists were shown the autopsy
photographs of Kennedy and nineteen said that Kennedy had been
hit from behind (but it has also been claimed that the autopsy
evidence was tampered with). Garrison also fails to mention that
the acoustical evidence for a second gunman that the HSCA had
based its conspiracy charge on was refuted by a subsequent study
performed by the National Academy of Sciences in 1982.
There are a few instances where Garrison presents seemingly
strong evidence for a claim but then buries additional facts that
mitigate the evidence in a notes section in the back of the
book. The notes section contains the facts that Oswald's hands
reacted positively to the nitrate test, that the Warren
Commission heard testimony about the motorcade route change and
that the plastic bubble that had been removed from the limousine
was not bulletproof.
The above shortcomings do not destroy the claim that there were
more than one gunmen. There are just too many other pieces of
evidence.
The attempts to implicate the CIA are more dubious. There is are
too few witnesses and no corroborating evidence to indict
Banister, Ferrie and Shaw. Only four witnesses were found who
accused Shaw and Ferrie of plotting the assassination: these were
Broshears, Russo, Nagell and the paranoid Spiesel. Their
involvement in the CIA is also poorly supported. Only Gordon
Novel is recorded as saying Ferrie was a CIA employee. Shaw's
only known involvement with the CIA was that he debriefed
businessmen who were returning from overseas.
-- All views expressed are mine, not my employers.
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank