SS ' imposters' spotted }y JFK witnesses

By EARL GOLZ '^be DiilUs Morning Ness, 1978

Several men posing as Secret Ser­vice agents were in Dealey Plaza shortly before and after President John P. Kennedy was assassinated, The Dallas News has learned.

Shortly before the shooting, one of •'ie apparent imposters discouraged a soTUier from walking behind a wooden fence atop the grassy knoll from which ti.e House Assassinations Committee recently test-fired a rifle and a pistol.

The soldier — and at least four other people — say they met men who either shov/ed identification as Secret Service agents or said they were.

All but one of the encounters were in the parking lot west of the Texas School Book Depository Building from where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot the president on Nov. 22,1963.

ALL BUT ONE of the counterfeit agents wore business suits. One man was in sportsclothes and "had dirty looking bands or dirty fingernails," according to a Dallas policeman who confronted him.

None of the 28 Secret Service agents protecting President Kennedy were on foot at the scene shortly before or after the shooting, the Warren Commission Report said.

"None (in the presidential motor­cade) stayed at the scene of the shoot­ing, and none entered the Texas School Book Depository Building at or imme­diately after the shooting," the Warren Report stated. "Secret Service proce­dure requires that each agent stay with the person being protected and not be diverted unless it is necessary to accomplish the protective assign­ment."

GORDON L. ARNOLD, the former Dallas soldier, said he was stopped by a man wearing a lighKolored suit as he was walking behind the fence on top of the grassy knoll minutes before the assassination. Arnold, now an investi­gator for the Dallas Department of Con­sumer Affairs, was not called by the

Warren Commission and has not been interviewed by the House Assassina­tions Committee.

Arnold said he was moving toward the railroad bridge over the triple underpass to take movie film of the presidential motorcade when "this guy just walked towards me and said that I shouldn't be up there."

Arnold challenged the man's authority, he said, and the man "showed me a badge and said he was with the Secret Service and that he didn't want anybody up there."

Arnold then retreated to fhe front of the picket fence high up on the grassy knoll just to the west of the pergola on the north side of Elm Street.

AS THE PRESIDENTIAL limousine came down Elm toward the triple underpass. Arnold stood on a mound of fresh dirt and started rolling his film.

He said he "felt" the first shot come from behind him, only inches over his left shoulder, he said.

"I had just gotten out of basic training," Arnold said. "In my mind live ammunition was being fired. It was being fired over my head. And I hit the d in"

Arnold, then 22, said the first two shots came from behind the fence "close enough for me to fall down on my face." He stayed there for the dura­tion of the shooting.

HIS PRONE position, under the shade of a tree, may have locked away his story for IS years as the Warren Commission and later other assassina­tion researchers scanned photographs and movie footage of Dealey Plaza for witnesses to the shooting.

The first two shots that Arnold heard didn't come from the Texas School Book Depository Building because "you wouldn't hear a whiz go over the top of your head like that." he said. "I say a whiz — you don't really hear a whiz of a bullet, you hear just like a shock wave. You feel it . . . You feet something and then a report comes right behind it It's just like ine

August 27,1978

enu ui a muzzle blast." He said he heard two shots "and

then there was a blend. For a single b61t action, he had to have been firing dam good because I dont'think any­body could fire that rapid a bolt action.

"The next thing I knew someone was kicking my butt and telling me to get up," Arnold said. "It was a police-nian And I told him to go jump in the rtver. And then this other guy — a policeman — comes up with a shotgun and he was crying and that thing was waving back and forth. I said you can have everything I've got. Just point it sqmeplaceelse."

ARNOLD TOOK his film~ from the canister and threw it to the policeman. "It wasn't worth three dollars and something to l)e shot. All I wanted them to do was to take that blooming picture (film) and get out of there, just let me go. That shotgun and the guy crying over there was enough to unnerve me for anything."

Two days later. Arnold was on a plane reporting for duty at Fort Wain-wright in Alaska. He hadn't given police in Dealey Plaza his name and never told his story to authorities "because I heard"after that there were a lot of people making claims about pic­tures and stuff and they were dying sort of peculiarly. I just said. well, the devil with it, forget it. Besides, 1 couldn't claim my pictures anyway; how did I know what were mine?"

TWO U7«F0RMED Dallas policemen had been assigned to guard the rail­road bridge. The Warren Report, however, said the two policemen — jiist as fellow officers guarding over­passes along the motorcade route — were not assisted by federal agents.

Police officer James C. White told The News that he and James W. Foster were keeping unauthorized people off the bridge.

"If there was one (Secret Service agent) up there, we didn't know it," White said. "He wasn't on that bridge, I

T H E CONTINUING INQUIRY

know that." However, a railroad signal supervi­

sor, who aided While and Foster in identifying railroad personnel on the bridge, was under the impression that "a plainclothes detective or FBI agent or something like that" was helping the officers guard the bridge.

THE SUPERVISOR. S.M. Holland, told the Warren Commission that about 90 minutes before the motorcade came by Dealey Plaza he met the two police­men and the agent near the bridge.

In 1964. Holland, now dead, was asked by Samuel A. Stern, Warren Com­mission assistant counsel, if he sfoke to the three together.

"Two — there were two city police­men and one man in plainclothes," Hol­land said. "I didn't talk to him (the man not in uniform). I talked to the city policemen."

Stem pressed further and asked if he knew what the third man's "affilia­tion was." Holland said he didn't know, and Stem moved on to another subject.

ABOUT AN HOUR before Holland or the pohcemen were on the bridge, Julius Hardie of Dallas was driving his electrical equipment company truck east on Commerce Street and was about to make a U-tum to the Stemmons entry lane when he noticed three men on the bridge. That was between 9:30 and 10 a.m. the day of the assassination, and people hadn't started gathering in Dealey Plaza to catch a view of the motorcade.

"I looked over on the railroad bridge and I saw three men," Hardie told The News. "And I thought I saw two of them carrying guns, long guns. 1 glanced to my left to check for traffic and then looke^ back, because even in Texas it's unusual to see people carry­ing long guns.

"Now I can't tell you whether it was rifles, shotguns or what. But two of them had long guns."

Two of the men wore dark business suits and the third an overcoat, Hardie said.

Unlike Amold, Hardie called authorities after the assassination and in a week or two was visited by two FBI agents. He told his story but "never heard from them after that," he said.

MINUTES AFTER Arnold's encoun­ter with the phantom federal agent behind the wooden fence on his way to the bridge, Mrs. Jean Hill witnessed the assassination of President Kenne­dy. She was only a few feet from the presidential limousine.

She spotted a man dashing into the parking lot adjacent to the Texas School Book Depository Building before other spectators, still stunned, began to rush up the grassy knoll past Amold.

Mrs. Hill ran after the strange act­ing man and was met in the parking lot

by a "tall and slender" man in a busi­ness suit who "whipped out" identifica­tion purportedly showing he was a Secret Service agent, she toP The News.

"I thought he was trying to get away," she said, "but evidently he wanted me to keep from getting away (and pursuing the fleeing man). He identified himself, supposedly, and I took it that he was. I just figured they (Secret Service) were shooting back."

Mrs. Hill lost sight of the man run­ning through the parking lot about the time he reached the railroad tracks near the point where they ran across the triple underpass.

A RETIRED Dallas policeman, Tom Tilson Jr., recently told The News how he chased a man who slid down the west side of the railroad embankment from Dealey Plaza minutes after the presidential limousine sped by on its way to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Tilson said the man jumped into a dark car at the foot of the embankment near the Elm Street underpass and drove west toward Industrial Boulevard.

Tilson, who was not on duty at the time, drove after the car while his daughter, sitting beside him, wrote down the license number. He lost the speeding car as it turned off Industrial onto the Fori Worth Turnpike, but he reported the incident and the license number that day to the police homicide bureau. He said he never heard whether the matter was investigated.

Although Tilson and Mrs. Hill now know Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby was m The Dallas Morning News building at the time, they insisted the fleeing man they each chased closely resembled Ruby and wore dark, heavy clothing.

MRS. HILL, now remartied, said agents from the Secret Service, FBI and CIA interviewed her during the follow­ing year and all told her the man she met in the parking lot with Secret Ser­vice credentials did not exist under the name she recalled he gave her.

The CIA agents who talked to her on several occasions came from Washing­ton and New York and "had proper identification and they knew enough to scare me," the former Mrs. Hill told The News.

She asserts another man who pur­ported to be a Secret Service agent "just showed up at my door one day" shortly after the assassination. She said he "threatened" her to stop talking about the parking lot encounter. She said she talked atiout the threat during her Warren Commission testimony months later, but it was "deliberately" left out.

ANOTHER ENCOUNTER wi ' a phantom Secret Serv;ct UfCfiM

parking lot was made by Dallas ;•' , patrolman Joe Marshall Smith.

Smith, who is still with the force, said immediately after the assassina­tion he started toward the Texas School Book Depository Building and met a woman who told him, "They are shoot­ing the president from the bushes." The policeman checked the bushes next to the wooden fence atop the grassy knoll and the parking lot behind it.

Smith and a deputy sheriff met a man in sportsclothes in the lot. Smith drew his pistol. "And 1 thought, "This is silly, I don't know who I am looking for,' and I put it (pistol) back," Smith said. "Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent."

The man displayed the "regular identification" of the Secret Service in "a wallet and folder," Smith said.

"I rememtier one thing, he kind of had dirty looking hands or dirty fingernails it looked like," Smith said. "But hell, we all have to work on a car or something like that every now and then. That's what this looked like to me."

ANOTHER POLICEMAN, Sgt. D.V. Harkness, told the Warren Commission he went to the back of the Texas School Book Depository Building shortly after the shooting and "there were some Secret Service agents there. 1 didn't get them identified. They told me they were Secret Service."

Harkness, now a Dallas County adult probation officer, told The News he "assumed they were with the presiden­tial party. I would assume they would be Secret Service men if they would be riding with the president."

He said the men, dressed in suits, "were all armed."

Dallas Secret Service agent-in-charge in 1963. Forrest V. Sorrels, was the only agent to return to the shooting scene within an hour. Sorrels said he entered the rear door of the Texas School Book Depository Building with­out showing any identification.

THE DALLAS Secret Service chief, however, would have searched the depository building too late to be one of the agents HaYkness thought he encountered in back of the structure.

Asked about the phantom agents. Sorrels, now retired, told The News he was "not answering any questions about this thing. I gave all my testi­mony in Washington and I don't put out anything else. As far as I am concerned, that's a closed incident."

All but one of Sorrels' six Dallas agents in 1963 submitted reports of their whereabouts the day of the assas­sination and none said they were on foot in Dealey Plaza immediately before or after the shooting. During that time they were either at the Trade Mart, where a luncheon was to be held for the president, or at Love Field.

T H E C O N T I N U I N G INQUIRY

T H E C O N T I N U I N G INQUIRY J u l y 2 2 , 1977 P u b l i s h e d m o n t h l y , b y PENN JONES PUBLICATIONS, I n c . "Everyone must po-und h i s own a n v i l . "

S u b s c r i p t i o n p r i c e $ 2 4 . 0 0

( $ 1 2 . 0 0 f o r s t u d e n t s )

P u b l i s h e d i n M i d l o t h i a n , T e x a s 7 6 0 6 5

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a t t h e P o s t O f f i c e i n M i d l o t h i a n ,

T e x a s a s of D e c e m b e r , 1 9 7 7 .

P U B L I C A T I O N N U M B E R 3 8 4 1 5 0

E D I T O R : P e n n J o n e s

I k n o w t h a t m y r e t i r e m e n t w i l l m a k e n o

d i f f e r e n c e in i t s c a r d i n a l p r i n c i p l e s , t h a :

i t w i l l a l w a y s f i g h t f o r p r o g r e s s a n d r e ­

f o r m , n e v e r t o l e r a t e i n j u s t i c e o r c o r r u p t ­

i o n . A l w a y s f i g h t d e m a g o g u e s of a l l

p a r t i e s . N e v e r b e l o n g t o a n y p a r t y . A l ­

w a y s o p p o s e p r i v i l e g e d c l a s s e s a n d p u b l i c

p l u n d e r e r s . N e v e r l a c k s y m p a t h y w i t h t h e

p o o r . A l w a y s r e m a i n d e v o t e d t o t h e p u b l i c

w e l f a r e . N e v e r b e s a t i s f i e d w i t h m e r e l y

p r i n t i n g n e w s . A l w a y s b e d r a s t i c a l l y i n d e

p e n d e n t . N e v e r b e a f r a i d t o a t t a c k v / r o n g ,

w h e t h e r b y p r e d a t o r y p l u t o c r a c y o r p r e d a

t o r y p o v e r t y .

A p r i l 1 0 , 1 9 0 7 J o s e p h P u l i t z e r

Elmer Moore, the agent who did not submit a report, said he was in San Francisco and did not return to Dallas to join the investigation until a week later. About the men who showed Secret Service identification in the Dealey Plaza area, Moore said, "You can be pretty sure they were not (Secret Service)."

ANOTHER LAW officer who said he talked to a Secret Service agent in Dea­ley Plaza shortly after the assassination was deputy constable Seymour Weitz-man. Weitzman told the Warren Com­mission he found a portion of Presi­

dent Kennedy's skull on Elm Street and gave it to the agent.

Weitzman first ran to the parking lot behind the grassy knoll and with an alleged Secret Service agent present "noticed numerous footprints that did not make sense because they were going different directions."

At about the same time, railroad supervisor Holland also found many footprints in the mud over a small area in the parking lot where a sta-tionwagon was backed up behind the wooden fence.

It was in the same location where, on the Elm Street side of the fence, Hol­land told the Warren Commission a "puff of smoke came out six or eight fett above the ground" as he heard what he asserted was a fourth shot. Others on the bridge and in the plaza also said they saw smoke.

Holland said apparently "somebody had been standing there for a long period. I guess if you could count them about a hundred foot tracks (were) in that little spot, and also mud up on the bumper of that station wagon."

'^•1•1-1-1•>l•'^•'^t•'^'(•f•'^'^'^'^

Ex-officer suspects he chased ^2nd gun' By EARL GOLZ

An off-duty Dallas policeman says he chased the car of a second man he believes could be involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and hopes telling his story publicly for the first time may "help when they re-enact it Sunday" in Dealey Plaza.

Tom G. Tilson Jr., now 59 and retired, said his expe­rience seconds after Kennedy was shot could be an indication -to the House Assassinations Committee that not all shots came from a 6th-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

From that window, with a bolt-action Italian mili­tary rifle, Lee Harvey Oswald was accused of firing two bullets that struck Kennedy in an open-top limousine below.

THE WARREN COMMISSION said Oswald traveled by taxicab after the shooting from downtown to his boarding house in Oak Cliff. He then armed himself with a pistol, which he used minutes later to shoot police officer J.D. Tippit, the commission concluded.

Tippit was covering Tilson's beat that day while

ill(r D;ill;i9 ifliiruiny Ni'liiis August 20, 1978

Tilson was off work, he said. Three days later, Tilson was a pallbearer at Tippit's funeral.

Tilson, who served 27 years before he retired as a detective five years ago, said it was shortly after 12:30 p.m. Nov. 22,1963, when he and a daughter, Judy, were going to pick up another daughter who had been watching the presidential motorcade at Main and Houston streets.

Tilson's car was turning east onto Commerce Street from Industrial Boulevard when he heard via his police radio that Kennedy had been shot, he said

"AND I SAW all these people running to the scene of the shooting," he said "By that time, 1 had come across under Stemmons, Everybody was jumping out of their cars and pulling up on the medir.n strip.

"But here's one guy coming from the railroad tracks. He came down that grassy slope on the west side of the triple underpass, on the Elm Street side. He had a car parked there, a black car. And he threw somel .aig in the back seat and went around the front

THE rONTTNUING INQUIRY

hurriedly and got m the car and took off. "1 was on Commerce Street right there across from

it, fixing to go under the triple underpass going (east) into town. 1 saw all of this and I said, 'That doesn't make sense, everybody running to the scene and one person running from it.' "

TILSON SAID he sped up Commerce to Houston Street and looped around west on Main Street to pass back under the triple underpass. By that time, the black car had gone west on Commerce to Industrial, where it was waiting to turn left.

The car went south on Industrial, onto the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike and eluded him, Tilson said, but he got the license number.

He said he telephoned the police homicide bureau with the number and a description of the driver and car, "but they never contacted me or did anything about it." He didn't know who took his information and didn't keep the paper on which his daughter wrote the license number.

City police radio logs for that day do not reflect any alert for the vehicle that Tilson says he pursued.

"HOMICIDE WAS THAT WAY," Tilson said "If you didn't have a big white hat on, they didn't even want you in the office.

"Here they were solving this case, here they arrested a suspect (Oswald) in one day and cleared up the murder of a president in one day. Man, that was really a super-duper police department.

"They didn't want to have to look for anybody else, and they didn't even want to know about it, really. They wanted to clear up the case. Who else could do better?"

Tilson said the Warren Commission never con­tacted him.

HE DESCRIBED the man he saw leaving the west side of the triple underpa.ss as wearing dark clothes and with a stocky build — about .S-foot-9 and weighing 185 to 190 pounds,

Tilson's daughter, .Mrs Jiidy Ladner, recalls the chase but is not certain her father's car got clo.'ie enough for her to write down the license number of the speeding car.

••1 know there was a man," Mrs. Ladner said. "Seems like I saw him right before he was getting into the car. 1 think that was about the same time daddy told me to try to get the number down. But by then we were past (the car) and we couldn t get a good view of the number.. , , . , i

"1 was trying to listen to the police ci,!,.s. And 1 remember him saying, 'Try to write. Write this down," or something. And 1 grabbed a pen."

SHE SAID THAT SECONDS before she saw the flee­ing man, the presidential limousine had just sped past his car parked on the grass at the north side of Elm Street near the west end of the underpass. Kennedy had been hit seconds earlier by shots m Dealey Plaza — on the other side of the underpass — and the limousine was turning onto Stemmons Freeway toward Parkland Memorial Hospital,

About an hour later, the Dallas County sheriff's radio asked all deputies to be on the alert fi)r a car whose license number was obtained from an "anony­mous" source.

Minutes later, the car was stopped by police m Fort Worth, which was the direction the Tilsou suspect's car was headed. However, the 195^ Ford stopped in Fort Worth was green and wtate, not black, as described by Tilson.

THE SUSPECT arrested in Fort Worth w is ques­tioned by FBI agents and released that day alter Oswald was apprehended. He said he had driven 100 miles to Dallas from his home in Ranger, Texas, to visit an old army buddy in Mesquite but didn't fmd him home.

Rather than fighting the heavy traffic after arriv­ing in Dallas about 10:30 am , the man from Ranger decided to stay and watch the motorcade, he told authorities.

Although the timing was right, Tilson said he didn't think the :i-year-old Ranger suspect was the man he chased toward Fort Worth. At .S-foot4, the young man was about 5 inches shorter and at 1. 0 pounds, about 60 pounds lighter ihau Tilson's susjject.

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s gunrunniiij to Castro claimed (Ehc Ilnlliia iHorning Jseim August 18, 1978

By EARL GOLZ ' TheDillBB Morning News. 1978

Jack Ruby was running guns and ammunition from Galveston Bay to Fidel Castro's guerrillas in Cuba about 1957, a former poker-playing partner of the Dallas nightclub owner told The News Thursday.

James E. Beaird said he waited until 1966, almost three years after the assas­sination of President John F Kennedy, and "nothing had come out so 1 called them (FBI) just to find out why . . . 1 was curious. However, they didn't see fit to even mention it to me again, so I

never heard of anything they ever opened upon it."

Beaird said the FBI finally "sent a man out in 1^76.1 don't know why they did it then."

The agent interviewed Beaird at his home in Apache Junction. Ariz, in June 1976, a month alter the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to recom­mend a new congressional inquiry into the Kennedy assassination. Senate investigators at the time had just dis­covered FBI files — suppressed since the assassination — showing that top FBI officials knew of CIA plots to kill

Castro by enlisting the aid of Mafia hoodlums.

The FBI agent who interviev/ed Beaird in 1976 didn't mention in his report that Beaird had volunteered information about Ruby's gunrunning to the bureau in 1966. The report stated that since the 1963 assassination, "there had boen so much speculation as to possible foreign connections and he (Beaird) thought it better not to mention his knowledge of Jack Ruby in Kemah (southeast of Houston on Galveston Bay) "

The Warren Commission in 1964

THE CONTINUING INQUIRY.

investigated numerous allegations of gunrunning by Ruby but concluded that no factual information existed.

Beaird told the FBI that he "person­ally saw many boxes of new guns, including automatic rifles and handguns." stored in a 2-story house near the channel at Kemah and loaded on what looked like a 50-foot surplus military boat.

"He stated each time that the boat left with guns and ammunition. Jack Ruby was on the boat," the FBI report said.

Beaird, who was an automobile dealer in Houston from 1955 to 1957, said Ruby "was in it for the money. It wouldn't matter what side, just one that would pay him the mos t . . . I don't even know who the ship belonged to. But he was in command of it. He went out every time it went. It was meeting a connection down there (in Cuba), that's all I ever heard."

Ruby would show up in Kemah, gen­erally on weekends, to play poker and "just killing time until the boat was loaded," Beaird said, and usually was there not more than one or two hours.

"They loaded up at least twice while I was down there," he said. "Pickup

trucks would carry it from the house over to this boat."

By 1959, Castro had taken control of Cuba and Ruby was beginning to switch sides as Castro threatened to force Mafia-backed professional gam­blers out of the casinos in Havana.

One victim of Castro's efforts to oust organized crime from Havana gam­bling houses was Lewis McWillie, who Ruby met in Dallas about 1950 when McWillie operated a Dallas nightclub. McWillie subsequently became a "vio­lent anti-Castroite" and fled from Cuba in 1961, according to the Warren Commission.

Ruby in early 1959 ordered four revolvers st ped by Dallas gun dealer Ray Brantley to McWillie in Havana because McWillie "was a little worried of the new regime coming in, and evi­dently he wanted some protection," Ruby told the Warren Commission.

McWillie's former boss in Havana, reputed Mafia chief Santos Trafficante of Tampa, Fla., was arrested by Castro forces in April 1959 and imprisoned.

The Trafficante arrest happened about a month after Ruby was con­tacted by the FBI in Dallas as a possible informant. He met nine times with an

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

agent during the time he was involved with Mafia intrigue in Cuba, but the FBI maintains he was discrrded in October 1959 because he had no infor­mation of value.

Ruby contacted convicted gun smuggler Robert McKeown in the Kemah area in the spring of 1959 and offered $5,000 for each of three people if McKeown, a friend of Castro's, could help free them from Cuban prisons, FBI reports show. Ruby told .McKeown the money would be coming from someone in Las Vegas, N'ev

McKeown told the FBI that m .May 1959 he met with Ruby, who offered to trade Jeeps for the three prisoners. Ruby also offered McKeown 525,000 for a letter of introduction to Castro for an unnamed third party to show his good faith, McKeown said, but the deal never materialized

In November 1975 McKeown asserted on a CBS-TV documentary about the Kennedy assasination that he also had contact with accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald,

"-kKeown stated that a person he later recognued as Oswald and an uni-dentilied Latin-American had talked to him about buying lugt^-powered auto­matic rifles several weeks/Btfore'tlie assassination

Man's JFK'bombs' reportedly instill fear

(Llif iSiillaa iMorning Xrtoe September 10,1978

By EARL GOLZ CThe Diliis Morning Nt»», 1978

The FBI agent who monitored Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy told The News the Hou.se Assassinations Committee fears he will "drop bombs" if called to testify publicly.

"If they are going to try and con­tain this (assassination probe) like the Church (Senate Intelligence) committee and the Warren Commis­sion, they don't want me up there," James P. Hosty Jr said.

Hosty is an agent with the FBI office in Kansas City. Mo , where he was assigned in 1964

Hosty declined to detail his infor­mation but ruled out anything about the threatening note Oswald. Kennedys accused slayer, delivered to the Dallas FBI office after Hosty talked with Oswald's wife three weeks before the Nov. 22,1963, assas­

sination The note "is not of any concern

any more," Hosty said. "That's pretty well squared away now. I think "

He also denied any new disclo­sures would be connected to recur­ring rumors that Oswald was an FBI informant.

The "bombs • could be dropped during the committees public hear­ings this month. Hosty said, because, "I'm sure , . , they know everything

the whole story," Hosty said, however, committee

investigators last month gave him the impression they were "all done with the investigation and they Were writing the report (due in December) - - that they were not opening any new grounds any more,"

"It looked like they (members of the House Assassinations Commit­tee) were trying to avoid me," Hosty, who IS nearing retirement, said "In

tact, they almost didn't call me, I had to ask why 1 vasn't called (xn testify in private) before they would call me.

"I was called up in November." he said, "and I started telling them what the story was and they appar­ently didn't want to hear it so they sent me home. They said, 'We'll get in tuuch with you ' "

Hnsty .said he didn't hear from the committee again until he called last month and asked whether "you are through with me or not " He finally gave a deposition Aug. 25 but is not scheduled to testify publicly at the Sept. 20 hearing on the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice.

"I have about M hours of testi­mony before the Senate Intelligence Committee which they had access to, and they (members of the^louse Assas,sinations Committee) built on that .30 hours with about 3V2 more (Aug 25)," he said.

THE CONTINUINQ INQUIRY

Committee spokesmen could not he reached for comment, but a com­mittee source scotted at Hosty's claim iie had t,> ..' r : .;(.,e a deposi­tion,

Hosty has been til', ..1 at least three post-a.-,sassinati>i revelations that have put him in the FBI doghouse.

The fir.'vt occurred only hours after the assassination. Jack Revill, then a Dallas police detective, sent a memo to Police Chief Jesse Curry quoting Hosty as telling Revill the FBI knew Oswald was "capable" of killing Kennedy before he allegedly did,

Curry, repeating information he learned from the memo, incurred the wrath of FBI Director J, Edgar Hoover the day alter the assassination when he disclosed the FBI knew, but did not inform Dallas police, that Oswald was working in a building on the presiden­tial motorcade route.

Hoover denied Hosty made the state­ments to Revill but suspended Hosty for 30 days without pay and reassigned him to Kansas City.

Hosty's name, auto license and tele­phone number were in Oswald's per­sonal notebook when he was arrested, but the FBI did not disclose that to the Warren Commission in the first report on the notebook. It was not until Feb. 11, 1964, after the media picked up the story, that Hosty's entry in the note­book was reported to the commission in a "supplemental" FBI report.

The latest FBl-Hosty revelation was revealed in 1975. It was reported that Oswald left a threatening note at the Dallas FBI office about two weeks before the assassinc:>.,j;

The note. Hosty ,s:.;.J, w i/r.ed Oswald '"would take action agai;; t the FBI . . . if I did not stop talking to his wife."

Hosty said J. Gordon Shanklin, spe

cial agent m charge in Dallas, ordered him to destroy the note two days after the assassination and only hours after Oswald was shot fatally by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby.

Shanklin, now retired, has denied knowing about the note.

It only has been revealed within the la.st year that Shanklin was disciplined along with Hosty and 15 other FBI agents and officials for "investigative deficiencies" in not reporting Oswald as a security risk.

Among those disciplined by Hoover in 1963 were William Sullivan, assistant FBI director in charge of domestic intelligence, and Shanklin's predeces­sor, Curtis Linam.

In a Dec. 10, 1963, internal memo that recommended the 17 men be disciplined, Hosty was quoted as saying his Dallas office did not deem it "advis­able" to interview Mrs. Oswald in March 1963 "because they developed information that Oswald was drinking to excess and beat up wife on several occasions."

The memo quoted Hosty as saying his office "allowed a 60-day 'cooling-off period'" and then couldn't locate Oswald until after he moved to New Orleans later that spring.

Hoover scribbled "certainly is asi­nine excuse" to use the cooling-off period as Hosty's reason for not inter­viewing Mrs. Oswald.

J.H. Gale, the FBI inspector who wrote the memo, said Hosty said no interview of Mrs. Oswald was con­ducted when Oswald's return to Dallas was verified Nov. l, 1963, Gale said Hosty wanted to avoid having Mrs, Oswald "gain the impression she was being harassed or hounded because of her immigrant status (Russian) in order that the interview when con­

ducted might be as productive as possible."

Hosty and Mrs Oswald, however, later testified before the Warren Com­mission that Hosty did talk to Mrs. Oswald Nov. 1. This talk led to the threatening note by Oswald about one week later.

Gale wrote, "This entire facet of the investigation (was) mishandled." He said Mrs. Oswald should have been interviewed and the "best time to get information from her would be after she was beaten up by her husband as it is felt she would be far more likely to cooperate when angry at Oswald than otherwise

"This certainly makes sense," Hoo­ver scribbled under Gale's remarks.

The Gale memo was not made public until January when the FBI released about 40.000 pages of previously classi­fied assassination documents,

FBI Assistant Director C D. deLoach, in an addendum to the memo Dec. 10,1963, suggested the disciplinary action against the 17 FBI personnel "be held in abeyance until the findings" of the Warren Commission were made public.

DeLoach recommended holding off because a "leak" to the news media "would be assumed as a direct admis­sion that we are responsible for negli­gence which might have resulted in the assa.ssination of the president"

Although Chief Justice Earl Warren had indicated he planned to issue no subpoenas, deLoach wrote, "There is, however, the possibility that the public will learn of disciplinary action being taken against our personnel and, there­fore, start a bad, unjustifiable reaction."

Hoover wrote "I do not concur" under deLoach's addendum.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Officer allegedly with Ruby at buy

By EARL GOLZ Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby

was with a Dallas police officer when he bought the revolver he used to kill accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who sold him the gun said Tuesday.

But Ray Brantley, who operates a hardware and sporting goods store at 730 Singleton, said he could not remem­ber the name of the officer who accom­panied Ruby to his store to buy the gun

in early 1960, three years before the assassination.

He said it would not be unusual for the officer, who sources believe was a lieutenant, to be in his store because "policemen trade with me."

Meanwhile, Ruby's .38-caliber Colt Cobra was delivered to the House Assassinations Committee Tuesday after the independent executor of Ruby's estate refused to release it directly to the committee under con-

(Ehr Biill.-iB ifflorninui 5CctD9

August 16,1978

gressional subpoena.

REP. JIM MATTOX of Dallas deliv-ered the gun to the committee, meeting ip - vf. jiive session Tuesday.

•-•%: 'i.! months before Ruby bought the 6 :: i;e ordered four other Colt Cobras shipped by Brantley to Havana, Cuba, to a Ruby friend who was an associate of organized crime figures, Ruby told the Warren Commission.

Brantley told The News Tuesday that "offhand" he could not recall sending the four guns in 1959 to former Dallas gambler Lewis McWillie, then

THE CONTINUING INQUIRY•

would get it (the gun) back to me" The executor of Ruby's estate, Dallas

attorney Jules F. Mayer, said he would trust only Mattox, a personal'friend, to loan the gun to the committee with written assurances it would be returned. He said a person has bid as high as 5125,000 for the S49 weapon.

The House panel has heard allega­tions "that the guns were switched in some way," Mattox said, so "that there may have been more than one gun involved.

"THEV JUST HAVE every kind of theory in the world floating past them," Mattox said, "that Dallas police were involved in a conspiracy and if they were involved there was no way they could be trusted to have done the proper ballistics tests You name it and they have heard it."

The committee has indicated the revolver will be given a ballistics test, whether the FBI tested it in 1963.

"1 don't know what they would be gaming by taking the gun up there," Brantley said.

He said the gun "definitely" was new when sold to Ruby in January, 1960.

"That's the reason it was so easy to trace because it had been passed through just the factory that manufac­tured it to us," Brantley said

Ruby also bought another revolver from Brantley to ship to McWillie on May 10,1963, just six months before the assassination, the FBI said.

THE .3M;ALIBER Smith and Wesson was shipped to McWillie in Las Vegas, Nev., where he moved after he was forced to flee Havana in 1961. His last job in Havana was pitboss at the Capri Casino being operated for reputed Flor­ida Mafia chief Santos Trafficante, informed sources said.

Ruby told the Warren Commission McWillie asked for the four Cobras in Havana because "fee v. as a little wor­ried of the new regime (Fidel Castro had taken over in Cuba) coming in, and evidently he wanted some protec­tion. He called me or sent me a letter that I should call Ray Brantley."

manager of the Tropicana Casino in Havana.

Brantley also told the FBI hours after Oswald was shot that he "had had no business dealings with Jack Ruby prior to that time (the 1960 sale of the revolver that killed Oswald)."

Mattox said the shipment of gun. y Ruby to Havana "is a pretty substantial connection to the Cubans. It makes it all look kind of suspicious . . . The other Cubans floating around and Oswald having the Cuban connec­tions."

THE HOUSE committee implied to Mattox their investigators wanted the revolver to check "any possible link between this weapon and any other offense that may have been committed with this weapon."

Mattox said the committee "assured me as expeditiously as possible they

Ruby noted in his Warren Commis­sion testimony that Brantley "denies I ever called. Evidently, he feels, maybe be feels, it would be illegal to send some guns out of the country."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

JFK panel never called 2 witnesses Dallas pair^s testimony would have disputed single-bullet conclusion

By EARL GOLZ

Two key Dallas witnesses whose tes timony would have contradicted the concept that the same bullet struck President John F. Kennedy and former Texas Gov. John Connally never were interviewed by a panel of forensic pathologists that upheld the single-bul­let theory this WMk for the House Assassinations Committee in Washing­ton.

The surgeon who operated on Connaliy's chest after he was wounded in Dallas in 1963 also said Friday he never has "been able to accept the fact that the bullet that went through the president's neck was the one that hit Gov. Connally."

The panel, by an 8-1 vote, concurred with the Warren Commission that Ken­nedy and Connally were not struck by separate bullets. Separate hits would have made it impossible for accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to have done all the shooting with a bolt-action rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building.

NEITHER THE pathologists panel nor committee investigators inter­viewed Charles W Harbison, a state

highway patrolman who told The News in April 1977 that he recalled turning over to an FBI agent more than the three bullet fragments the Warren Commission asserted were removed from Connaliy's wrist wound.

Harbison said he was guarding Connaliy's recovery room in Parkland Memorial Hospital on either Nov. 25 or 26, '963, when someone stepped from the room into the hall and gave him more than three metallic fragments purportedly taken from Connaliy's wounds.

Harbison's story takes on added importance when it is known that Miss Audrey N Bell, then supervisor of the operating room at Parkland, remem­bers she also placed four or five bullet fragments from Connaliy's wounds in an envelope at least three days earlier, on Nov. 22. They were delivered sev­eral hours later to Capt. Will Fritz, chief of Dallas police homicide.

The cjamittee panel concluded a 6.5s;aiiber slug fired from a Mannhch-er-Cprcano rlCe struck Kennedy in the back and exited from the throat with­out hitting a bone, then entered Connaliy's back, shattered a rib, smashed several bones in a wrist and

glanced off a thigh. The bullet, which lost only 2 of 161

grjms, v.as found after it fell from a stretcher at Parkland Hospital after Connally and Kennedy were taken into operating rooms, according to the War­ren Commission.

Neither Miss Bell nor Harbison had told their stories to the Warren Commission, which stated in 1964 it had "very persuasive evidence" a sin­gle bullet passed through Kennedy and Connally and later fell from Connaliy's stretcher.

Miss Bell was interviewed briefly by investigators for the committee in March 1977. This was three months liefore Robert Blakey took over as the committee's chief counsel from the ousted Richard Sprague and gave the investigation a different thrust with the appointment of the pathologists panel.

Miss Bell said the two investigators interviewed her briefly with a tape recorder. No stenographer was present for an official deposition, she said.

She said she hasn't "heard anything" from the committee since the interview and has "been kind of wondering if anything was going to come of it."

T H E CONTINUING INQUIRY

"I don't guess they have talked to anybody," Harbison said Friday, "1 haven't heard a cotton-pickmg word from anybody,"

Committee spokesmen could not be reached Friday for comment.

Harbison said "it's a mystery to me" why his fragments "turned up .so late" and where they went alter he gave them to a man who represented him­self to be an FBI agent in the hospital hallway. He also said he is still mysti­fied at who had possession of the frag­ments for several days before they were placed in his cupped hands.

Miss Bell said she placed her frag­ments in an envelope and gave it to government agents.

Robert Nolan, a state highway patrolman, said he took the envelope to Fritz early on the morning of Nov 23. Nolan, now retired, said Friday no one from the congressional committee has ever talked to him.

OR, MICHAEL BADEN, chief medi cal examiner of New York City and chiurman of the pathologists' panel, toid the committee this week that Or, Roben Shaw, the Dallas surgeon who operated on Connaliy's chest, "still feels he finds the smglebuUet theory untenable."

"But the basis lor it essentially it what was told to him by Gov, Connally and Mrs, Connally at the time he treated the governor in Parkland as to what they 'neard, they observed, they psrceivsd," Batleii Siiid. "He does not make that determination on the basis of medical, surgical or pathological findings. And, in discussing the matter with him, he feels that on the basis of what he saw at surgery, this coiUd be consistent — that this is consistent — and could be due to a single bullet." Shaw said

"I think It is absolutely ludicrous tor them (the panel) to say that it took the governor three seconds to react to a massive wound such as he had,"

The surgeon acknowledged he was "strongly influenced by that (Conual-lys' recollection of hearing the shots and time of impact of the bullets), because they were there "

"It seems rather ludicrous to me for people to reconstruct things and find out that things are not as they were

(said to be) by people who were actu­ally there and when it took place," Shaw said, "That is what bothers me.

"Of course I am influenced by what Gov. and Mrs. Connally said. As far as the single-bullet theory is concerned, they say that isn't the way it happened. And they were sitting in the limousine."

Shaw said it would be possible for a single bullet to pass through Kennedy and cause all the wounds to Connally without losing more than two grains, "but that doesn't mean I believe that's the way it happened."

Single-bullet theorists, Shaw said, "are presuming it took the governor almost three seconds to react, as tar as his body actions were concerned, to the impact of that bullet.

"Have you seen the picture when Oswald was shot? Did it take him three seconds to react to that? No, sir, he reacted immediately, not even a second,"

Zhe Ballas ilHorHJiig '^eine September 9,1978

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Police tape site disputed By EARL GOLZ

Orhc Dillis Morning News, 1978

The Dallas police open microphone thought to have picked up the sounds of four shots when President John F, Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 "was nowhere near Dealey Plaza," says an acoustical expert whose Chicago firm made its own analysis of the tape recording,

Anthony Pellicano said the sound of sirens heard on the tape after Kennedy was shot was "the most devastating" to the findings of the Cambridge, Mass., firm that presented its analysis of the tape Monday to the House Assassina­tions Committee,

The firm of Bolt, Beranek & New­man said the tape revealed four shots may have been fired during the 6-sec-ond period in which the president was assassinated in Dealey Plaza.

PELLICANO WAS an expert witne.ss in connection with the 18-minute gap in President Richard Nixon's White House tape recordings in the Watergate case. He challenged the Cambridge firm's analysis that the gap was inten­tional. His firm, Voice Analysis and Interpretation, al.so has acquired a

(Eiu- D:ilhi3 Jilmuiiiy iV,'rUie. Septembe!" 13,1978

national reputation for analysis of elec­tronic evidence in plane crashes and wiretap cases.

The background noises during the six seconds "just do not dictate that it (open microphone) was in the motorcade," Pellicano said.

Spectators cheering the president along Houston and Elm streets in Dea­ley Plaza could not be heard during the six seconds, he said, but the noise of heavy traffic and police sirens — not present in the plaza at the time — could be heard

USING A COMPUTER, Pellicano said he determined how far away from the open mii;r();uione the motorcade sirens would have been at certain speeds,

"At the rate they were traveling, you can hear that they start off softly when they come intn range ol the microphone, gel louder and then start to get softer again as Ihcy go off in the distance," he said,

"It was nowhere near Dealey Plaza, And the most conclusive evidence was the sound of the sirens. The sirens — if you clock them — came after the time

the president was shot, just about a minute or two after . , . You can hear sirens coming down Stemmons Free­way somewhere (after the presidential limousine left Dealey Plaza and started toward Parkland Memorial Hospital). So, whoever he was, he was somewhere along Stemmons or somewhere in that area in range of hearing those sirens goby."

"There are a lot of noises in there (entire police radio tape available for Nov, 22, 1963) that sound like gunshots," Pellicano said, "A lot of it is flaws m the original Dictabelt which caused the absence of noise which -sounds like gunshots.

"The impulses that the man (Dr, James Barger, chief scientist for the Cambridge firm) was talking about could have been a million and one things, not necessarily gunshots.

"The correlation studies I used is a mathematical correlation; it's not a hearing correlation. And we can find a lot of noises that .sound and correlate like gunshots but are not."

T H E C O N T I N U I N G T N O T T T R Y

PELLICANO said the police Dicta-belt was worn and had many scratches on It which made "all kinds of sounds ''n the tape that sounded like gunshots" at points other than the six seconds when Kennedy was shot to death.

said I'ou can use your imagination," he

The noises the Cambridge firm said were motorcycles also could have been a bus running alongside a police car with the car's window down and its microphone open, Pellicano said.

On the other hand, the open micro­phone didnt have to be a policeman's and could have been held open inten­tionally, he said.

"In other words, let's say the assas­sin wanted to try to jam the communi­cations, but he didn't really know too much about it," Pellicano said. "But he thought if he would get a radio transmitter and get a crystal for the same frequency and held that button open and generate some noise over that thing he would be able to mask a lot of the communications. It all depends on how close he was to the receiver."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I'M SURE there was a conspiracy," said the electronics investigator. "And I would love to say there were four or five shots but I can't say it was based on any of my findings. I can't say there were any more than three shots."

Pellicano said his firm used 5300,000 in sophisticated equipment for three weeks of acoustical analysis of an excellent copy of the tape obtained from a Dallas resident.

He said the House Assassinations Committee "knows of my findings and some.jody is supposed to contact me."

Question about JFK tape arises: ^Who was the motorcycle officer?'

iTlir IliillnB iTIiirnitiq NtfiiB

August 11,1978

EARLGOLZ Six minutes of the file tape record­

ing of a Dallas police motorcycle radio, marred by electronic interference but transmitting when the shots were fired at President John F, Kennedy, app-ir-ently hold the key to a new challenge of Warren Commission findings, sources said Thursday

The tape, which never was tested acoustically by the Warren Commis­sion, reportedly indicates in recent tests that four shots — not three — were fired at Dealey Plaza on Nov, 22, 1963.

Four shots would mean accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, it he did any of the shooting, wasn't the only person pulling a trigger Nov. 22,1963,

Among the many questions stemm­ing from the tape and its most rettnt analysis is the identity of the motorcy­cle policeman who apparently held open his radio microphone from 12:28 to 12:34 p.m. on Nov, 22,196,5. It was dur­ing those six minutes that the six sec­onds of shooting occurred.

The Warren Commission never sought the policeman's identity.

And. on Tliur.sday, The News learned a House Assassinations Com­mittee investigator made an ap))oint-ment in Dallas to obtain a fourth and even more complete transcript from private citizens who have made a study of the assassination.

Their version, painstakingly writ­ten word for word, states that at 12 ,H p.m., as the electronic interference is about to end, a dispatcher's voice is

heard to say, "There is a motorcycle officer up on Stenimcuis with his mike stuck open on Channel 1. Could you send someone up there to tell him to shut It off?"

Ju.st prior to this request on Chan­nel 2, the then-police chief, Jesse Curry, is quoted as shcutinji instruc­tions on the same thannti

The interference on Channel 1 stopped almost immediately accordiiiu to those who have studied the tape recordings, but the identity ol the motorcycle officer was never learned. ANo, the citizens with the most com­plete version of the tapes claim they

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

can hear "electronic beeps" during the si:; minutes, which they say ,sound like the Morse code signal for "victnrv,"

To the ear, the six minutes on the police radio tape sounds like a constant electronic roar. The sound of shots are not discernible.

The Warren Commission, in its investigation, concluded Oswald could have squeezed off only three shots from his holt-action Italian rifle during the six seconds the shooting occurred.

In connection with the House Assas­sinations Committee investigation, Dal­las Police Chief Donald Byrd has agreed to seal off Dealey Plaza for three hours beginning at 530 a.m. Aug. 20 — not Aug 22 as incorrectly reported Thursday — so representatives of the committee can fire weapons to simu­late the possible velocity and vibra­tions of shots as determined by the Cambridge firm

'We are not aware of what they (committee representatives) are going to do that morning," said a spokesman for the Dallas Police Department. "Chief Byrd said that we are fully coop­erating if they need anything."'

Earl were NEWS

EDITORIAL

This issue of TCI should be called the Golz edition since so many of the stories written by him for THE DALLAS MORNING

All the Stories are good and they get little circulation except in the Texas area.

Earl, we are grateful, and we hope you can keep up the good work.

10 T H E CONTINUING INQUIRY

1963 tape reveals threat to JFK By EARL GOLZ

An anti-Castro Cuban vowed about two months before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated that he and others "are going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas" Nov. 22, 1963, according to a tape recording made available by a retired Dallas policelntelligence officer.

The recording, made secretly at a John Birch Society meeting in Farmers Branch, is of the voice of Ernesto Castellanos, who, at the time, said he had lived about 3'/2 years in Dallas and had flown in a plane during the abor­tive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.

Several weeks ago. investigators for the House Assassinations Committee obtained the recording from the retired officer, who never had released it publicly.

CASTELLANOS WOULD have learned of the Kennedy visit to Dallas from newspaper reports only about five days before the Oct. 1, 1963, meet­ing at which he spoke. Sponsors o' ':ie meeting were identified on the record­ing only as two Farmers Branch cou­ples named Stewart and Merrill.

"The United States at this moment, if you keep Kennedy there, we are going to be in a bad way,"' Castellanos said. "Get him out, get him out. The quicker, the sooner, the better. He's doing all kinds of deals . . Mr. Ken­nedy is kissing Mr Khrushchev (Nik-ita Khrushchev, then premier of the Soviet Union). I wouldn't be surprised if he has kissed Castro, too"

Castellanos' name was not listed in the Dallas telephone book or city direc­tory m the early 1960s, including 1963.

THE WARREN Commission, in its extensive investigation of possible Cuban connections with the assasina­tion, never mentioned Castellanos or his other two Cuban-speaking exile companions at the meeting in its 26 vol-

(Tlir iOiilliiB ifliiriiiim ZVrhiB August 14,197S

umes or other documents publicly released

The FBI interviewed dozens of per­sons who knew about meetings of anti-Castro groups in the Dallas area during the months before the assassination, including several reportedly attended by accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

A report by the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, dated one day after the assassination, stated Oswald had been to an Oak Cliff home of a Cuban where "Freedom for Cuba Party" members met lor several months.

The house, later identified as the one at 3126 Harlandale St. and occupied by Jorge Salazar in 1963, was the same house where Antonio Veciana, founder of the Alpha 66 anti-Castro group based in Miami, Fla., met in April 1963, according to a 1964 FBI report released in 1971.

A drawing of an intelligence agent who worked with Veciana in attempts to assassinate Castro and known only as ""Maurice Bishop"" was distributed publicly by the House Assassinations Committee July 30 to try to learn his real identity.

CASTELLANOS WAS a guest speaker at the Farmers Branch meeting, with two other Cuban exiles introduced as Ed Hughes and Francisco Leyba Both indicated they lived m Dallas, Hughes, born in Chicago, said he had lived in Cuba most of his life and had been superintendent of the Havana power and light company for 24 years before Castro took over Leyba said he had been a farmer in a remote Cuban prov­ince He said he had been Imprisoned by Castro forces and escaped

Castellanos said he had been '"trying

to put a Cuban parade in Dallas and the chief of police wont let me And we are going to do it.

"And we are waiting for Kennedy the 22nd of November. We are going to see him, in one way or the other. We are going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas.

"Mr. Good Old Kennedy, I wouldn't even call him President Kennedy. He stinks. I dont want to get mad."

Castellanos was bitter about the last-minute withdrawal ol support by the United States during the Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion. He said he was in one of seven planes that left Miami He said shortly before they flew over the Bay of Pigs "in a beautiful American voice I head. 'Turn back, the whole thing is off-

•"It was all ordered by the CIA."" he said. "I got another word for the CIA but I wouldn"t say it here."

AFTER SPECULATING that some of his listeners at the meeting may have voted for Kennedy in 1960. Castellanos said. ""I bet you it is also true that they are sorry about it. They will be sorry for the rest of their lives "

Stating he was supporting any pre.si-dential ambitions by US Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz , in 1964, Castellanos said Goldwater is "Mr. Nobody at this moment We have to get rid of one (president) first. We have to wait and see what Mr Goldwater is going to do afterward.

"That's the same thing Kennedy said all over the United States before he took the presidency. He said he was going to do this, going to do that Look what he's doing; he's sinking the United States I'm sorry to talk about this. But the way 1 feel about the man, its for your own good"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Oswald's mother claims CIA move By EARL GOLZ

Marina C>swald Porter testified Wednesday before the House Assassina­tions Committee that her first husband, accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, suspected Russian intelligence agents of opening his mail "on one or two occasions"" before it reached him in Russia in 1961.

Oswald"s mother, however, has told The News that at least one of her letters to her son was surreptitiously opened by the CIA before it went on to Russia.

Marguerite Oswald of Fort Worth learned in 1976 after inquiring under the Freedom of Information Act that her letter dated July 8, 1961, to her son in Minsk, Russia, was intercepted and

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS September 14, 1978

opened by the CIA

THE CIA OFFICIALLY has said it never had contact with Oswald while he was in Russia from 1959 to 1962 nor during the 18 months from the time he

22 A 3Ilti; ^ a l l a a ii'^^^rntll^ ^ ' r lna Sunday, September 17,1978 • • * *

Kennedy witness 'owed' FBI « / that year, they maintained a loose association

By EARL GOLZ An FBI witness whose false story knocked down

strong evidence of an assassination conspiracy only days before the Warren Report went to press has told The News he was indebted to the FBI at the time,

Anti-Castro gunrunner Loran Eugene Hall said he still thinks FBI agent James Hosty Jr. may have .helped him get his release from jail without further repercussions one day after Dallas police arrested him for possession of dangerous drugs. The arrest was Oct. 17, 1963, a little more than a month before Presi­dent John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Hall, then living in the Los Angeles area, said he believes Hosty was the FBI agent who told him after a lengthy interview in a Dallas jail, "We've got nothing on you and, as far as we're concerned, you're free to go.' "

Hosty, who monitored Lee Harvey Oswald's activi­ties In Dallas before the assassination, denies he ever met Hall or "dealt with him" in any way.

Dallas oilman Lester Logue; who was helping Hall in his anti-Castro efforts at the time, asserts he alone was responsible for Hall's release from jail the day after his arrest. ,' But radio newsman Art Kevin of Seattle, Wash., a longtime friend of Hall, said a "highly placed federal source was responsible for his getting out" of jail in Dallas.

HOSTY, NOW with the FBI office in Kansas City, Mo., recently said the House Assassinations Commit­tee is "afraid" he will drop some "bombs" if called to testify publicly during the committee hearings in Washington.

He refused to be more specific, but the Hall jail incident could not be one of the bombs, he said, because Hosty "didn't work Cuban matters (in 1963), and 1 don't know how he would have my name."

Hall was one of the casualties when Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba. Then 29, he was working in the Hotel Capri casino in Havana when Castro ejected American mobsters from Cuban gambling operations in 1959. He found himself incarcerated in the same prison cell with reputed Florida Mafia don Santo Traf­ficante Jr., who owned the Capri casino.

Trafficante's freedom reportedly was a project that involved the efforts of Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby for several months of 1959. After Hall and Trafficante were released from the Havana prison

through plots during the early 1960s to remove Castro from power.

Hall was called before the House Assassinations Committee m public session June 7,1977, but invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked whether he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the day of the assassination. He testified in private session later last year after he was given immunity from prosecution.

HDSTY, ONE month after the assassination, was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Sylvia Odio, a Cuban emigre active in the anti-CaStro movement in Dallas,

Mrs, Odio's story, which subsequently became one of the Warren Commission's most troublesome unanswered questions about a possible assassination conspiracy, seemingly was discredited by Hall on Sept. 16,1964. His statement was taken by the FBI eight days before the Warren Report was published Sept. 24, 1964,.

Mrs. Odio told Hosty and another FBI agent nine months earlier that Oswald, along with two Latin men, showed up at her Dallas apartment in late Sep­tember 1963 soliciting funds to oust Castro. She said one of the two Latin men, who introduced Oswald as "Leon Oswald," quoted him as saying, "I'll bet you Cubans could kill Kennedy for what he did to you at-the Bay of Pigs," according to Hosty's report.

Mrs. Odio's story remained unchallenged as late as August 1964,

J, Lee Rankin, the Warren Commission's chief counsel, finally wrote FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on Aug. 28 asking the FBI to "determine who it was that Mrs. Odio saw in or about late September" 1963.

The FBI suddenly located Hall, who allegedly said he was one of the trio calling on Mrs. Odio two months before the assassination. He identified his companions as William Howard Seymour of Phoenix, Ariz., and Lawrence Howard of East Los Angeles, Calif,

The FBI said that Seymour, who slightly resem­bled Oswald, probably was the "Leon Oswald" at Mrs. Odio's apartment.

Two days later, however, Seymour and Howard denied to the FBI they had visited Mrs. Odio in Sep­tember 1963. And, two days after their denial. Hall renounced his story to the FBI.

When the FBI showed Mrs. Odio photographs of Hall, Seymour and Howard, she failed to identify any

of them.

WITH ONLY four days until the Warren Report went to press, the FBI was where it started on the Odio story. But the Warren Commission went with the FBI's first statement taken from Hall — which, allegedly, was false.

The commission said, "While the FBI had not yet completed its investigation into this matter at the time the report went to press, the commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was not at Mrs. Odio's apartment in September 1963."

Hosty said he still thinks Hall "probably was there " at Mrs. Odio's apartment. Hosty said Mrs. Odio "struck me as being a typical tropical, kind of flighty.

I don't think she knew who she was talking about; you know, all gringos look alike."

He said "hard physical evidence" indicated Oswald was on his way by bus from New Orleans to Mexico City at the time Mrs. Odio supposedly saw him in Dallas.

Hosty's denial that he knew of Hall before the assassination is challenged by the Dallas policeman who arrested Hall three weeks after the Odio inci­dent.

SGT. KENNETH Heard recalled Hall "insisted" Heard contact Hosty when he stopped Hall's car on North Central Expressway near Mockingbird Lane. Heard said he refused to notify the FBI, and took Hall and his companion — the same William Seymour of Hall's Odio statement — to jail after finding some unauthorized prescription drugs in the glove compartment.

Hall denied he asked for any FBI agent. He con­tended the FBI, plus the CIA and Army intelligence, sent representatives to interview him about his anti-Castro activities when they learned he was incar­cerated. The FBI revealed it had pre-assassinatlon knowledge of Hall's arrest in a report responding to the Warren Commission's request to find the visitors to Mrs. Odio's apartment.

Wallace Heitman, Dallas FBI agent in charge of Cuban affairs at the time, recently said, "I know the story of Hall; that he was here and he was arrested. And I don't know how I found out."

Heitman, now a Dallas lawyer, said he has "no recollection of interviewing" Hall in jail. "I am not

M n O 2! H 2; C

•z c to

T H E CONTINUING INQUIRY

going to say categorically I didn't, but I don't believe I did."

Hall's attorney, Bryson Mills, said Hall "doesn't recognize that name (Heitman) at all. Hosty is the name that he says he thinks was the FBI agent's name. Or, at least, the name that was given to him.

"He says he probably could identify him (the FBI agent) by a picture better than he could by recalling

his name," Mills said. "But he thinks that (Hosty) was the name given to him. And, he says, prior to the time the FBI agent talked to him, he never asked for him, never heard of him, never met him. The guy just came down to talk to him.

"And Loran advises that he does remember for sure that when the FBI agent talked to him, he told Loran, 'We've got nothing on you and, as far as we're concerned, you're free to go.' So in that regard, Loran says, the FBI agent may have had something to do with his release."

INVESTIGATORS for the House Assassinations Committee have questioned Hall, Hosty and Heard, but not about Hosty's alleged involvement with Hall. Hosty and Mrs. Odio, however, are expected to be called to testify publicly by the committee within the next two weeks.

"The very fact that they didn't question me about It (in private session Aug. 25) must mean that they don't have any faith in it," Hosty said.

"I just kind of question these people who come for­ward after IS years, trying to get into the act," Hosty said "T certainly would have thought, with all of the furor I was having with the police department back in 1963, he (Heard) would have brought that out — they wouldn't have sat on that. Because they were trying to nail me to the cross back in 1963."

(Hours after the assassination, Dallas police detective Jack Revill sent a memo to then-Police Chief Jesse Curry quoting Hosty as telling Revill the FBI knew O-swald was "capable" of killing Kennedy before he did. Curry publicly repeated Hosty's remarks, say­ing the FBI knew — but didn't inform Dallas police — that Oswald was working in a building on the presi­dential motorcade route. In the controversy that

ensued, FBI Director Hoover denied Hosty made the comments but later suspended him without pay 30 days and transferred him to the Kansas City FBI office.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

It has been suggested that a conference of critics and researchers be held at some central point most convenient to those inter­ested in attending. It is imperative that this be considered during October so we might have a response to the HSCA side show.

Please advise us of your ideas and suggestions as quickly as possible.

THE EDITOR

Sept. 8, 1978

Dear Dr. Wecht,

I shall never forget your valiant efforts yesterday. Heroes are indeed rare today, and I dare say this century has not produced -and will not come up with - another Cyril Wecht.

If I am ever again confronted with "standing up for the truth" in the face of insurmount­able odds, I hope I have a Cyril Wecht on my team.

Sincerely, Mary Ferrell

WITHERSPOON 8, ASSOCIATES/Advertising-Public Relations/321 South Henderson/ Post Office Box 2137/Fort Worth, Texas 76101 /Telephone 817 335-1373

Mr. G» Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel Select Committee on Assassinations U. S. House of Representatives 3331 House Office Building, Annex 2 Washington, D. C. 205l5

September 16, 1978

Dear Professor Blakey;

Thank you for having r.e appear in Thursday's hearings to present what I believe are sor.e iirr portant questions regarding Warren Commission Exhibits 133A, 133B, and 139. I hope your cornittee's studies can ansvjer these questions in a conclusive manner.

I wish to bring to your attention the folio-wing comments regarding ray appearance in Washington:

1. I highly praise Staff Counsel Robert Genzman for his professional skill and manner, objectix'-ity, fairness, friendliness, and dedication to his job. His skill

THE CONTINUING INQUIRY

5' I regret that my testimony was cut short because of time problems with the noon recess. I did not ^ t to finish one statement I was in the middle of regarding the method of fabricating the photographs. Counsel interrupted me just as I was about to discuss the Imperial Reflex camera and its relationship to the distinctive markings of the film plane aperture. I was going to state that one of two things could have occurred; perhaps that camera was used to photograph the empty backyard, with the Oswald figure being superimposed later; or perhaps that camera was used to photocopy the composite art. Another less likely possibility is that a mask of the film plane aperture was used when printing the photocopy composites. Since neither the Warren Commission nor HSCOA have ever proved this camera belonged to Oswald, the whole question of match of picttires to camera is really irrelevant, isn't it? The camera, turned up long after the assassination at the house of Robert Oswald, and since it didn't belong to him, he assumed it might belong to Lee. But there is no proof of this. Indeed, there are indications that the camera belonged to Dallas policeman Harry Olsen, according to some researchers, and that the backyard photos were fabricated by the CIA working through Olsen and Frank Sturgis to implicate Oswald as the patsy in a CIA plot to have "communist" Oswald assassinate "fascist" General W-nlker. \-lhen the V?alker plot failed, the materials were "saved" and later used in the JFK murder, with Os 'wald again the patsy. Mary Ferrell can give you the name of a newsman tv-ho said he saw several copies of the backyard photos in the Dallas police station on Friday night, November 22. Yet the police swore they did not find the photos in the Paine garage until Saturday afternoon. If you cannot prove the Imperial Reflex camera belonged to Oswald, legally any proof you come up with is worthless.

6. I was disappointed by the lack of exhibits allowed me. I was told that because of "lack of time" and "expense factors" I would be limited to the committee preparing for me one exhibit on the backyard photos and one exhibit on the rifles, in addition to any which I might use which had previously been admitted into evidence. Yet the "experts" you employed to "shoot my amateur theories down" were allowed dozens of large photos to explain their "theories". This seems to be hardly an im.partial look at the questions involved. Fortunately I had brought with me much of my own original art, which Mr. Genzman kindly allowed m.e to use as exhibits, small though they were. At my own expense, I contributed these exhibits to your investigation without compensation, and but for this, the committee's stinginess would have kept these important exhibits out of the hearing records. Also, Mr, Genzman explained to tE that because of "lack of time", none of my exhibits would be incltided in the press packet of glossy 8x10 photos furnished to the press; thus, the press received only photos of the "experts' analysis" and did not get any pictures demonstrating my exhibits, though you have had much of it in your hands for a year or more.

7, VJhen I returned home I was told that Nina Totenburg on PBS made something like the following statement: "We learned during the noon recess from staff sources that the reason for the belligerent questioning of Mr. White was that he had insisted on being allowed to testify, and in fact had used pressure on the committee because he is a constituent of Jim Wright, House Majority Leader." I ask you to talk to Ms. Totenburg and straighten her out on this and ask her to correct this on a subsequent broadcast. As you well know, I was a photo consultant to the committee in 1977 • Every relationship I have ever had with the committee has been at the committee staff's request. I have never insisted on anything. In'fact, I was quite reluctant to take time from my busy schedule to come to Vlashington to testify, but when Mr. Genzman phoned me a couple of Saturdays ago and asked me to come, I considered it a patriotic duty. In fact, you subpoenaed me, so I had no choice, did I? I think you should also determine which staff person gave her

THE CONTINUING INQUIRY

certainly made my task of testifying easy. He is a credit to the committee staff and to the legal profession, and I predict a bright future for him. I likewise commend Patricia Orr for the same qualities I mentioned regarding Mr. Genzman.

2. Staff Counsel Michael Goldsmith severely daisaged the credibility of the committee's impartiality by his intemperate "cross-examination" methods of attacking my credibility by trying to make me appear an incompetent buffoon. Indeed, it was Mr. Goldsmith instead of me who appeared to the press and the listening public to be the fool because of his antagonistic behavior. Apparently you called this to his attention during the noon recess, and I appreciate the "apology" with which he opened the afternoon session. But I'm still puzzled by his attack, especially when I heard him being questioned about it by the press, and the only response he would give is that 'nis manner of questioning was just "Blakey's method" of dealing with a viitness.

3. If possible, I would appreciate the written record being corrected in a minor detail of the biographical sketch you read about me. Somehow my degree from Texas Christian University got changed to say I was a history major. In fact, my major was journalism, with a minor in history. I don't know how your staff made this mistake, but I hope it can be corrected for the sake of acctiracy.

U. I have stated to your staff on numerous occasions that I am just a private citizen with limited resources. I have no investigative staff or large budget. I have no pcrwer of subpoena. I have no access to computer analysis, photogrammetry, or other sophisticated forensic techniques. I have numerous times stated to your staff that the committee ought to undertake such studies sing first generation materials) because they tiere beyond the resources of a private citizen. I have frequently emphasized to your staff that I was there to raise questions, not to provide answers. In light of this, Mr. Goldsmith's attack on my credibility seems immensely inappropriate.

this erroneous information. As for Mr. Wright, I shook hands with him once at a luncheon about 20 years ago, and I am slightly acquainted with his chief press aide, but I assure you I have never applied any pressure to yotir staff through Congressman Wright.

3. I have brought to the attention of your staff new work I have been doing for the last year, but have been told that it is too late to be considered for the public hearings. It has to do with identification photos of Oswald, and I consider it much more important than the 5-year old work I did on the backyard photos and the rifles. I was told that work on this area had already been completed by expert forensic anthropologists, and that it is doubtful that my "theories" would be covered. I am enclosing copies of some of this material for your perusal, and I request that exhibits be prepared of some of them and used on the day your anthropologists testify, for if they fail to confront some of the issues I raise, then their conclusions may be invalid. I do not tidish to come to Washington again to testify (but will if necessary), but would rather provide you materials for exhibits along with a deposition or notarized statement of my allegations. In your manner of presenting "critic's" claims and then trying to destroy then with expert testimony, this should fit right in viith the mo^us operandi. I am also releasing this material to certain members of the press so that if these allegations are not addressed, the media may then ask why not.

Again, thank you for having me there to testify, and for listening to the above comments. If I can assist you in any other ways, please let me know.

In the words of General McArthur, "Duty, Honor, Country." And I would add, "Truth, above all."

Sincerely,

^J^ej^^^^^jTve Jack White

T H E C O N T I N U I N G INOTTTRV 11

returned to thi.s country and allegedly as- iLSSinated Pre.sidenl John F. Ken­nedy on Nov. 22,19h3.

Oswald's form-r Rii.s.sian wife testi­fied Wednesday she had some vague notion after she married him m April 19S1 that he might have been an Ameri­can spy but she never found any evi­dence of it.

She said she thought it more likely that Oswald, like most foreigners liv­ing in the Soviet Union at the time, was under surveillance by KGB intelli­gence agents who probably opened his mail and hid li.-itening devices in Oswald's Minsk apartment.

Oswald's mother said she is con­vinced her son was in the employment of the CIA when he left for Russia in September 1959 and probably contin­ued to work for the agency when he returned in June 1962.

THE CIA MAINTAINS it did not debrief Oswald when he returned to

this country and purportedly showed litUe interest in him after that.

However, the CIA apparently never told the Warren Commission it inter­cepted one of Mrs. Oswald's letters to her son while he was in Russia.

James Angleton, chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff in 1961, was in charge of the agency's New York mail intercept project for mail moving from this country to Russia.

Angleton. who is scheduled to tes­tify before the House Assassinations Committee, once said the New York project "was probably the most import­ant (of Soviet intelligence activities) that counterintelligence ever had."

OSWALD'S MOTHER is more suspi­cious of what the CIA didn't say about possibly intercepting other letters to her son than what it admitted in 1976 about one letter. She said she wrote "many" letters to her son in Russia after the first one was intercepted.

read by the CIA, then resealed and sent on to Oswald.

Mrs. Oswald said the intercepted let­ter was "the first contact I had with Lee" after about 18 months in Russia. The letter described her "reaction to Lee's marrying a Russian girl (Marina)," and was a "nice, motherly letter about his marriage," she said.

The CIA may not have opened any of the other subsequent letters she sent her son after July 8, 1961, because "maybe they were satisfied I was going to accept liCe's wife," she said.

On the exact same date of the inter­cepted letter Oswald flew from Minsk to Moscow to visit the American Embassy.

His wife joined him the next day and they began filling out the neces­sary papers for what resulted in a sur­prisingly smooth return to the United States for a defector and his Russian wife.

•k-k***-k*-k-k-k-k-k***-k

Couple Talks About Bad Days in CIA

The ex-CIA man poured his eighth cup of coffee and lit his 11th cigaret. He stared out the open window into the quiet blackness of a Concord Sunday night. The other ex-CIA person sat at the dining table and looked frail and nervous. She was his wife.

They were talking about what life is like for a CIA couple. It wasn't long before they got into the bad parts. He made a face as if all the dirty little secrets were a stinking rose opening in front of his nose.

He had been a CIA finance officer for nine years, she a secre­tary to spies. They served together In Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Between them they saw enough to make them want out. They were told not to talk, but they knew that, someday, they would. They held their tongues for over ten years. They were afraid, Now, the silence of a thousand sleepless nights is over.

Sunday, in their modest Con­cord home, they took the unsettling journey back through the looking glass into the never-never world of the CIA.

§an iFranristo (Cl)ronklr

Sept, 12, 1978

By tt' arren Ilinchle

7f was common

knowledge, • . that Oswald worked for the agency'

Jim Wilcott

The place they described was a topsy-turvy land where old-fash­

ioned values are destroyed in the name of saving them, a perverse

12 T H E CONTINUING INQUIRY

place of spxual blackmail, betray­ing friends, unleashing psycho­paths and hobnobbing with mob­sters, of pseudonymns and crypto-nyms, drunkards and ripoff artists, dirty money and dirty tricks and run-amok assassins; a place where error and folly were held sacred in the almighty name of secrecy. One assa.ssin among those run amok was Lee Harvey Oswald who, according to the former CIA money man, was in the pay of the CIA.

"It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency," he said.

"That's true," his wife said. "Right after the President was killed, people in the Tokyo station were talking openly about Oswald having gone to Russia for the CIA. Everj'one was wondering how the agency was going to be able to keep the lid on Oswald. But I guess they did," she said.

The former CIA finance officer is Jim Wilcott. His wife's name is Elsie. They were recruited by the CIA as a husband and wife team back in the late 1950s, shortly after they were married. "We were a two-for-one deal," he says. There is weary bitterness in his voice.

"We didn't even know what CIA was all about when we went to work for them," he said. They found out soon enough. During her polygraph test for security clear­ance, the CIA interrogator asked Elsie, who had grown up on a farm, if she had ever had sex with the animals. She was flabbergasted. "Why, 1 didn't even know any such thing was possible," she said. A friend of theirs who went through security clearance had on<e worked in a mortuary. The CIA strapped him into a lie detector and asked him if he had ever had intercourse with a corpse.

"I began to gi t the Impression that there were a lot of weirdos in that organization," Jim Wilcott ^aid.

That impression blossomed in Tokyo. There was. for instance, the mattir of the Bulgarian ambassa­dor's bed. One Saturday morning when Wilcott was holding down security duty in the Tokyo station, several CIA case officers came over to his desk to offer him a gin and tonic and let him in on the morn­ing's fun. They had bugged the bed of the Bulgarian ambassador to Japan and amid the state secrets unfolded between the sheets the CIA had taped a particulary torrid exchange of connubial privileges between the ambassador and his wife.

The tapes were being tran­scribed by a young American girl who was no Scarlett O'Hara. so she was manifestly humiliated by the sexual exuberances she was trans­lating from the Bulgarian bedroom vernacular The CIA men thought this great sport and had broken out drinks all around while they kept playing the .steamy portions over and over as the young translator turned redder than wine. When Wilrott dared to wonder what this had to do with national security the ca.se officers looked at him like he was some stick-in the-niud account­ant.

Wilcott's fiduciary duties in the Tokyo station — he was there from 19fi0 to 1»>4 — included handing out upward of $4 million a month in unmarked bills of various currencies for the station's dirty tricks.

Wilcott said the CIA had a phobia about fresh currency — the physically dirtier its money the better, on the theory that used money was less traceable. If some­one made the mistake of bringing new bills from the bank, Wilcott and his aides would scatter the cash on the floor and take off their shoes and jump up and down on it like button-down collared grape crush­ers.

The money Wilcott handed out was dirty in more ways than one. Wilcott said he learned from other CIA agents that some of his cash ended up in the hands of members of the Japanese version of the Mafia, who performed unmentiona­ble services for the Tokyo station, and to psychopathic personalities the CIA plotted to release from Vietnamese mental hospit ^ and outfit as Viet Cong to pillage South Vietnamese villages, thereby turn­ing the sympathies of our allies against the insane V.C.

Wilcott's terminal disillusion­ment with the CIA began when he was drafted into a "black opera­tion" to entrap a friend into becom­ing a double agent. His friend, Peter Dadier, worked in the Yugo­slavia embassy in a financial post.

They met while taking Japane.se lessons and would go out for a drink together after class. CIA regulations require that an employ-emust report any such contacts with any foreign nationals and, when Wilcott did, the agency decid­ed that he should "sot up" his friend.

The operation took nine months and a considerable amount of CIA cash, which station higher-ups kept urging Wilcott to lavish

onthe Yugoslav. "The idea was to 'get him on the hook' — get him used to the high life," Wilcott said. At one point it was decided that Wilcott should "get him involved with women." The master plotter for this was Elsie Wilcott's boss, a spy named Dennis, who was head of the Tokyo station's Soviet Russia Satellite Division, where Elsie was a secretary. At one point Dennis called Mrs. Wilcott into his office and told her that her husband might end up in a compromising situation with another woman but that he would only be doing the deed tor the good of her country. This did not serve to stir the fires of her patriotism.

"The CIA was always terrible to women — particularly the wives of agents," Elsie Wilcott said. "The agency was both snobbish and sexist."

Eventually Wilcott was told that he was being "phased out" and a person called a "recruitment agent" was being "cut in" to bribe or blackmail the Yugoslav into spying on his own country. Wilcott was told never to see his friend again. He doesnt know what hap­pened then — he doesn't even know if he did a good enough job corrupting his friend American-style to make him turn traitor. Once, when he asked about Peter Dadier, Wilcott was told that he had "no need to know "

"CIA people drink like fish," Wilcott was saying, over his 15th coffee. The Tokyo station kept booze in supply the way most offices keep paper clips. It was generally used — along with the dirty if untraceable cash Wilcott handed out — to coax Japanese journalists, labor leaders, intellec­tuals and other opinion molders to see things the CIA way. "The station controlled every aspect of Japanese society," Wilcott said. This CL-\ bounty of liquor was readily available to the agents, at prices amounting to nothing. A CIA employe could pick up a bottle of White Horse scotch selling for $12 in Tokyo for 75 cents at the office. Double martinis at military clubs frequented by the CIA were a nickel. "At those prices you almost couldn't afford not to drink," he said.

It was during these after-hours drinking sessions with other CIA men that Wilcott became aware of the nature of many secret CIA operations normally hidden by cryptonyms. "The need to know principle often went to hell at a bar," he said. One of the CIA operations he learned about in­volved Lee Harvey Oswald.

T H E C O N T I N U I N G I N O U I R Y 13

The day Kennedy was shot there was rejoicing in the Tokyo CIA station, Wilcott recalls. Most of the agents were not, like himself, "Kennedy liberals," but rather de­spised the Camelot president for nut sending the military in to res( ue the CIA bunglers at" the Bay of Pigs. The station was abuzz about Oswald and, when Wilcott ex­pressed disbelief at the talk that Oswald was a CIA employee, a case officer told him: "Well, Jim, so and so, right over there, drew an advance from you for Oswald un­der a crypto."

In the months to come, he was to hear constant references to the station's earlier work on "the Os­wald project." Wilcott said Oswald had been trained for his trip to Russia at Atsugi Naval Air Station, a plush supersetrt. t cover base for the Tokyo CIA stations "special operations." Wilcott says he no longer recalls the names of the CIA agents involved. He also didn't take notes back then, he says. He wasn't planning on exposing the CI.A. The details he remembers have the ring of the authentic.

The House assassinations com­mittee thought sufficient of Wil­cott's knowledge of Oswald's Cl.\ connections to bring him to Wash­ington for two (lays of closed door testimony earlier this \ear. Wilcott volunteered then to take a "voice stress" test before he testified to prove how on the square he was. He passed.

The Cuban government invited Elsie and Jim Wilcott to Havana last month to testify before a "CI.A tribunal'" the Cubans had organized as the high point of a world youth festival. The former CIA couple went. It was the first time either of them had been to a socialist coun­try.

The Cubans were understand­ably curious about the couples experiences in the CIA's Miami station, which carried on a full-scale secret war against Cuba throughout the '60s. The CTA story the Wilcotts told the Cubans was much the same as the story about Tokyo — bribes, blackmail, dirty cash for gangs of well-fed sabo­teurs, assassination plots against Castro and that old CIA standby, the Mafia.

The Wilcotts are not your classic whistlehlowers. They are among that select handful of former (.'l.\ enipkiyees who have spoken on the record about compa­ny business, but they have not hustknl a forum or written a book. They wailed a decade to tell the House investigators what they knew about Oswald. They are not eager to be on television and Elsie Wilcott declined to have her pic­ture taken. They prefer the ano­nymity of Concord, where they have lived for several years

Jim \'i"ilcott said he had lost several accounting jobs "under very strange circumstances" sime

he left the CIA in the late '60s. The agency is not beyond retribution, he says. He is .still, frankly, nervous. The Wilcotts are the first former CIA couple to go public. They decided to tell what they know, it for no nobler reason, to sleep better nights.

Wilcott is going to do some work "developing information ' with Philip .\gee, the former CIA agent turned author and anti-CIA crusader. But Wilcott says he will not take a dime for anything he writes concerning the Cl.\.

"I don't want people to think I'm doinc this for the money," said the man who used to write checks for the CIA.

One day in Miami, Wilcott was having lunch with some other CIA finance officers when they were astonished to see the deputy chief of the Miami station dining with Santo Trafficante Jr., the not un­known Miami mobster. As account­ants will, the talk turned to dollars and cents. The Mafia had once charged the CIA S200 for a broken leg, a CI.A money man said.

One of the junior CI.X account­ants took out his Bic and figured something on the tablecloth. That was cheaper, he said, than the government could get it done.

Well, it always pays to shop around.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE TANGLED WEB: An Inquiry Into the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy

By S. Duncan Harp (Copyright 1978)

this case or to any of the parties involved which will prevent him from acting impartially without prejudice to the substantial rights of any of the said parties will now retire from the Jury Room.33

Continued from the last issue

Actions by authorities at the grand jury

proceedings appeared to bear out this latter

view. The State's opening statement read in

part:

On June the 5th, 1968, at approxi­

mately 12:20 a.m., the suspect, Sir-

han Bishara Slrhan, shot Senator

Robert F. Kennedy and five other in­

dividuals, Paul Schrade, Irwin Stroll,

William Weisel, Elizabeth Evans, and

Ira Goldstein...

Any member of the Grand Jury who has a state of mind in reference to

So, the suspect was pronounced guilty even before his trial commenced in a courtroom under the jurisdiction of the very same authorities who would later be responsible for his trial and the police investigation of the crime. Like the statements of Mayor Yorty, it would be hard to find something more prejudicial to the rights of a criminal defendant than the statement above.

One is inclined to wonder, then, what the purpose was of the police investigation

WHO WAS JACK RUBY By Seth Kantor is an excel­lent book.

14 T H E CONTINUING INQUIRY

into Robert Kennedy's murder that followed— this investigation which Robert Houghton called possibly the most extensive investigation ever conducted by any local law enforcement agency,"34 — was it to seek the facts so that a proper conclusion could be arrived at, or to "substantiate" and rationalize a conclusion that had been predetermined? The investigation itself would go on for several weeks after the conclusion of Sirhan's trial.

The trial began on January 7, 1969 and ended in April of that year, some fifteen weeks later. Its cost to the state was officially estimated at $929,285.00, making it the cost­liest trial in Los Angeles history. Ninety witnesses were called, and the resultant trial transcript was 107 volumes long.

Defense and prosecution made a bargain before the trial began that Sirhan would plead guilty to a charge of murder in the first de­gree in return for a sentence of only life imprisonment. These plans would have pre­vented a trial from even taking place, but they were upset by Judge Herbert V. Walker, who refused to allow it. He said he didn't want another "Dallas" — he wanted all ques­tions in this assassination to be resolved at a trial. Despite the trial, however, another Dallas is precisely what he got.

The prosecution tried to depict Sirhan as a fanatic Arab nationalist who had premeditatedl^ killed Kennedy because of his support for Israel'

As was expected, the defense did not dis­agree with the contention made by prosecutor David Fitts in his opening presentation that Sirhan had "acted alone and not in concern with anyone else."35 Throughout the trial the de­fense team, composed of lawyers Grant Cooper (the team head), Russell Parsons and Emile Her­man, "admitted" Sirhan's guilt. Said Parsons to the jury right before they began their deliberations, "I know he took a life. We admitted that."36 Instead, the defense por­trayed Sirhan as "a manic 'Jekyll-Hyde' in­capable of premeditating anything."37

The basis of their strategy at first was to try to get Sirhan acquitted on psychologi­cal grounds, since they did not question the assumption that Sirhan had acted alone. As large amounts of incriminating evidence mount­ed up during the course of the trial, however, the defense decided that such a strategy would not be successful. They started working in­stead then for a finding of murder in the sec­ond degree, by reason of diminished mental capa­city.

The backbone of the defense case was the testimony of psychiatrist Bernard Diamond. Dia­mond had spent over twenty hours with Sirhan and had hypnotized him six times. In Diamond's view, Sirhan was snapped into a hypnotic state by the bright lights and mirrors placed through­out the Ambassador; this "transformed him from a harmless bystander into an automaton wired to kill."38 Supporting this viewpoint was the fact that, even under hypnosis, Diamond was unable to get Sirhan to recall why he was in the pan­try or what he meant to do there, although he was able to get him to relive the actual shoot­ing. But even Diamond himself readily admitted the fantastic nature of his theory.*

Clinical psychologist and defense witness Martin Schorr gave Sirhan a number of psycholo­gical tests. His conclusion — Sirhan was a paranoid psychotic, and a borderline schizo­phrenic, an individual with a split personal­ity who freaked out under pressure. In Schorr's view, Sirhan killed Kennedy in just such a state of "dissociation."39

If we believe the story Sirhan told at his trial, it was mere coincidence that he ended up at the Ambassador Hotel at all. Sirhan testi­fied that after he had left a gun club where he had been target shooting on the afternoon and evening of the 4th, he picked up a copy of the LOS ANGELES TIMES and saw an ad for a march to celebrate the first anniversary of Israel's victory in the 1967 six-day war. He went down, he said, to "see what those sons of bitches were up to,"' 0 but discovered to his chagrin that the demonstration was scheduled for the following night. He saw a party at the cam­paign headquarters of Senator Thomas Kuchel, he said, but left because It was too dull for him — following two men to what they described as a better party two blocks away. The "par­ty" was Kennedy's victory celebration.

There were many such stories, and many of them highly interesting. Unfortunately, all too often the defense and the media, not questioning that Sirhan had acted alone, paid attention to the broader outlines of the inter­esting theories and anecdotes and Ingnored the hard facts in the case, facts which might have proved Sirhan innocent of murder. Such an attitude comes from having a closed mind.

* Evidence not discussed in this paper sug­gests that this theory may not have been so really "fantastic" after all. The reader is re­ferred to Robert Blair Kaiser's book "RFK MUST DIE!" A HISTORY OF THE ROBERT KENNEDY ASSASSI­NATION AND ITS AFTERMATH (New York: E P Dutton and Co.. Inc., 1970).

T H E C O N T I N U I N G INOTTTBV 15

Although it would be an injustice to sin­gle out chief defense lawyer Grant Cooper alone, one wonders where hig attention was during the witness testimony. "We don't quarrel that it was held within one inch,"41 he said at the time of the murder weopon's distance from the fatal wound. As I will show in Part II, only a person ignorant of the evidence could have honestly made such a statement and still dis­allow the existence of a second gunman.

Cooper was involved in another case at the time the defense was preparing for the tri­al, so he left this essential work to others. Perhaps this accounts for the ineptness of the defense.

And perhaps the defense team should not be judged too harshly for not using normal pro­cedure and critically examining the evidence. After all, it appeared that Sirhan himself be­lieved in his own guilt. At one point in the trial he said under oath that he had "no doubt" that he was responsible for the killing of Sena­tor Kennedy and the wounding of the five oth­ers. '*2 At another time, he shocked those pre­sent by jumping to his feet and shouting, "I killed Robert Kennedy willfully, premeditatively [sic], with 20 years of malice aforethought."^3 While this statement did not exactly coincide with others he made (which were in themselves contradictory to each other) as to when he de­scribed to kill Kennedy, one can imagine the havoc this wreaked with his lawyers' line of defense! It is to Judge Walker's credit that he responded to Sirhan's outburst with the re­mark, "Well, the evidence has to be proved here in court.'" "i

Sirhan's notebooks, with their statements, apparently in Sirhan's own hand, that "Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated," helped the prosecution prove their case of premeditated murder.45 Once the defense decided upon a psy­chological stategy which ruled out the possibil­ity of premeditation. It is logical to assume that they were not particularly disposed towards a line of defense which even hinted at the pos­sibility of conspiracy. After all, their main concern was with getting their client "off the hook," and the term"conspiracy" normally implies premeditated and conscious plotting by two or more individuals. Including conscious action by all principals Involved.

The final verdict was a certainty long before the trial ended. In Dan Rather's words on one CBS broadcast, "The investigation of [RFK's] death was billed by local authorities as one of the most thorough ever. The con­clusion: that Sirhan Sirhan, angered at Robert Kennedy's support of Israel, planned

and executed the murder alone."46 Rather went on to say that, "When Sirhan was con­victed, he was convicted on the evidence."47 As I will show in Parts II and III, however, there is good reason to question the veracity of this latter statement.

DeWayne Wolfer, a criminologist in the crime laboratory of the LAPD's scientific in­vestigation, was put in charge of the LSPD's handling and testing of the physical evidence. At the trial, Wolfer testified that it was Sirhan's gun "and no other gun"48 that fired the bullets in the pantry. Virtually no one questioned Wolfer's statement at the time, but since then a lot of questions have been raised about how Wolfer was able to arrive at this conclusion, and about the procedures he used in doing so. It is rather difficult to retrace the steps Wolfer took on the way towards any of his conclusions, as it appears that, aside from a brief daily "work log," he kept no records of any of his examinations.

As I will show throughout the remainder of this paper, had Sirhan's defense team chosen to critically examine the evidence before them, Sirhan might never have been convicted of Robert Kennedy's murder. As chief defense counsel remarked some years later, "if we had known then what we know now we would have defended him differently."49

The defense team adivsed Sirhan to enter a plea of guilty in order to save him from the death penalty. The young Arab was found guilty of first degree murder on April 17, 1969 and sentenced to death on April 23. This sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment. Sirhan will be eligible for parole in 1986.

AUTOPSY AND AFTERMATH

Kennedy's autopsy began at 3:00 in the morning on June 6th, less than two hours after his death. Assisting Los Angeles Coro­ner Thomas Noguchi in the operation were two pathologists on his staff and three military consultants just arrived from the armed For­ces Institute of Pathology in Washington. The entire operation took six hours and the final report was over 60 pages in length.

There was a very good reason for all this effort. Noguchi did not want any "lingering doubts" as a result of an ill-performed autopsy, as there had been in the case of Robert Kennedy's brother. When it became clear in the early hours following the shooting tiiat Robert Kennedy would not

16 T H E CONTINUING INQUIR"

recover from his wounds, Noguchi went so far as to comsult Allegheny County (Pitts­burgh) Coroner Cyril Wecht, a respected forensic scientist and noted Warren Com­mission critic, to ensure that history would not be repeated any further than it already had been.

As stated on the cover sheet on the autop­sy report, the cause of Senator Kennedy's death was determined to be a "GUNSHOT WOUND OF THE RIGHT MASTOID, PENETRATING BRAIN." Had the bullet which caused this wound missed the sena­tor, in all likelihood he would have fully re­covered; none of the other bullets came any­where near to being of a fatal nature.

This fatal bullet passed through the mas­toid bone behind Kennedy's right ear and enter­ed the skull at an upward angle of 15° and a leftward one of 30. It shattered on Impact and scattered fragments throughout the brain in two directions. The autopsy report labelled this wound "gunshot wound number 1."

The entrance wound Is described in the re­port as being "about 3/16 inch (0.5cm) in dia-meter"50 — which Is also about the same width as a .22 caliber bullet. The wound itself was thus rather small. It hardly bled at all until probed manually by Dr. Abo to relieve pressure on the brain.

A total of four bullets hit Robert Kennedy's person. Aside from the fatal head shot, there was one which went completely through his body, one which came to rest in his neck, and one which transversed the right shoulder pad of his jacket, leaving Kennedy unharmed. All four shots were fired from a very closed range and all followed a trajectory of back-to-front at an upward angle.

cervical vertebra in his neck.

The fourth bullet, which passed through the right jacket shoulder pad (but not deeply enough to puncture the lining), never touched Kennedy's body. The police say it followed the same back-to-front trajectory as the other three (an op­posing direction would naturally Indicate a second gunman), and ended up in the head of Paul Schrade. Unfortunately, it is now impos­sible to independently ascertain the validity of the LAPD's claims regarding this fourth bul­let, for while testing RFK's coat to determine the direction of the bullets which passed through it, DeWayne Wolfer performed a "Walker's H-Acid test." This test is normally used as a last re­sort only, since it generally destroys the evi­dence examined in the course of the testing (as it did in this case). This makes it rather hard to perform subsequent tests on the material in question. Since other, less drastic, tests were possible in this Instance, one must wonder why this particular process was used.

In addition, somewhere In between the time Kennedy was shot and the time his jacket appeared in court Its left sleeve was removed. No police records have been made available which account for this disappearance, and DeWayne Wolfer himself "doesn't know" how this could have happened. He testified in 1971 that the sleeve had still been there when he examined the jacket, but records of his examination, which might substantiate his claim, are nowhere to be found.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

FOOTNOTES

Of the two non-fatal wounds, "gunshot 33. wound number 2," the one which passed entirely through his body (generally known as the "through 34. and-through" shot) entered to the rear of Ken­nedy's right armpit. It travelled upward and 35. to the left at angles of 59 and 33-35 degrees respectively, and exited the bcdy through the chest. 36.

The second non-fatal wound, "gunshot wound number 3," was caused by the "neck bullet," This bullet was recovered by Dr. Noguchi from 37. Kennedy's body In very good condition, and has been the one Kennedy bullet used for ballistics tests for these reasons. It had entered the 38. body at an upward angle of 67 degrees and a left­ward one of 30, at a point one-and-a-half inches below the through-and-through bullet's entrance. 39. It came to rest to the side of Kennedy's sixth

Joling, p. 26.

Houghton with Taylor, p. 302.

"The Defiant Defendant, " Newsweek, Feb­ruary 24, 1969.

Ralph Blumenfeld, "The Death of RFK. New Questions; Part I: Seven Years Later," New York Post, May 19, 1975, p. 29.

"The Assassins: Who Did It — and Why? Newsweek, March 24, 1969, p. 28.

"Sirhan's Trance," Newsweek, April 7, 1969, p. 37.

"Sirhan" Tradedy of the Absurd," Newsweek, March 17, 1969, p. 37.

THE CONTINUING INOTTmv 17

40. "Sirhan Takes the Stand," Newsweek, March 17, 1969, p. 37.

41. Transcript, Sirhan Trial, p. 4147.

42. Dave Smith, "Sirhan Takes Witness Stand, Admits He Killed Kennedy," Los Angeles Times, March, 5, 1969, p. 1.

43. "A Deadly Iteration, " Time, March 7, 1969, p. 22.

44.

45.

46.

Ibid., p. 23.

Kaiser, Appendix "C": Reproduction of Sirhan's Notebook, p. 550.

CBS Reports Inquiry: "The American Assass­ins, Part IV; Sirhan Sirhan and Robert F.

47.

Kennedy; Arthur Bremer and George C. Wal­lace," broadcast January 5, 1976, tran­script, p. 2.

Ibid.

48. Ralph Blumenfeld, New York Post, May 19, 1975, p. 29.

49. Klaus Liedtke and Frank P. Heigl, "Rob­ert Kennedy's Assassin Is Still Freel" Saga, Vol. 51, No. 3 (December, 1975) p. 60. (Reprinted from Stern, November 9, 1975).

50. "Report of the Medicolegal Investigation of Senator Robert F. Kennedy" (The Autop­sy Report), Department of Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner, County of Los Angeles, California, June, 1968.

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THE UMBRELLA MAN - UP DATE

Pictured here are three clandestine photographs of L. Stephen Witt taken by The Dallas Morning News. An informant has identified Witt as The Umbrella Man in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy.

Witt admitted nothing to the Texas investigators, but he has been called to Washington and will be recalled to Washington for testimony. He is scheduled to take his umbrella with him according to information given to TCI.

A Wilma Bond photograph is also printed here for comparison purposes.

',¥ t,.».

; * •

IWSP*'

T H E CONTINUING INQUIRY

THE UMBRELLA MAN photos courtesy THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

Justice Reformed, or Liberty llireatened? Robert Levinskas

The highly controversial Criminal Justice Reform Act of 1977 is expected to be ready for a Senate vote sometime next month. The mammolh 382-page document — the most comprehensive codification of federal criminal law in U.S. history — contains provisions so broadly drawn that they might easily endanger civil liberties, according to many legal authorities. The bill's chief sponsor is, interestingly enough. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Senate Bill No. 1437 was drawn up as a compromise between liberal and con­servative senators after its predecessor, the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 1975 (S-1), met with vehemem opposition from civil libertarian, labor, press and political groups. Although S-1437 is not as overtly threatening as S-1 was considered lo be, it promises to be the subject of heated Senatorial debate.

Supporters of the new bill maintain that it brings definition, order and clarity to what is now a confusing mass of federal

The Soho Weekly News January 26, 1978

laws, many of which overlay in areas where one broad law would be sufficient. Bui it is precisely the broadness of the language in the bill that is alarming.

Kennedy has been on a visit to China and not available for comment, but Ken Fmeberg, his administrative assistant and one of the principal drafters, says the bill is in "pretty good shape." He admits that "a bill of that size and magnitude can never be perfect" bulsavs that "even as it stands, it's a hell of a lot better than cur­rent law."

The pros and cons were aired in a radio debate on WBAl-FM two weeks ago between Roger Pauley, deputy chief legislative' and special projects section' Criminal Division, Etepartment of Justice-

T H E C O N T I N U I N G I N Q U I R Y 19

Leonard Orlin, professor of law at the University of Connebticut; Thomas I. Emerson, professor of law at Yale University; and [)aniel Crystal," a New York civil liberties attorney.

Pauley, strongly in favor of S-1437, maintained that it "tries to correct struc­tural deficiencies in our laws as well as to make as many substantive reforms regard­ing particular offenses as possible. Such revision is needed to give law enforcement officers and courts a modem and efficient framework in which to try to do something about the problem of crime.' '

Crystal, opposed to the bill, charac­terized it as a "prosecutorial dream" aris­ing from a "power grab for added jurisdic­tion," which would grant a much greater amount of jurisdiction than present law does. He^said it was a "blueprint for a future police state" that would allow federal agencies to interfere with state responsibilities and that Congress should "take a few more years" to study and amend it.

The four experts agreed on the value of provisions concerning consumer fraud and fraud in general; provisions against sex discrimination and proposals for a violent crimes compensation scheme. There was no argument with a provision reducing the penalty for possession of minor amounts of marijuana to a $100 fine with automatic record-expungement after a certain period of time. They were satisfied with an in­novative provision that eliminates the seven year statute of limitations in the case of a government official who is still in office and who has participated in con­spiratorial governmental abuse that has been fraudulently concealed, as well as with provisions against white-collar crimes that present laws have trouble de­aling with.

There was considerable dissatisfaction with provisions regarding obscenity and use immunity, and with provisions that functionally assume that there is an Of­ficial Secrets Act, even though the OSA formulated in S-l —• which classified

material that the government does not want to disclose as "official secrets" — has been deleted from S-1437. Potentially repressive provisions dealing specifically with failure to obey a public-safety order given by any law enforcement officer dur­ing any demonstration or assembly that is said to jeopardize govemmf-nt property, obstruct a government function by physical interference, or attempt to hire criminal agents were unsatisfactory as well.

S-1437 calls for a sentencing com­mission to be appointed to set up sentenc­ing guidelines to advise federal judges, who generally receive no training in sen­tencing procedure. But Orlin pointed out that there were no guarantees as to how well such a commission would do its job. He was apprehensive that what are now maximum sentences would become func­tionally mandatory and unjustly harsh guidelines.

Emerson shared Orlin's concern and added that under S-1437 a judge could eliminate the possibility of parole altogether; that a prisoner's time off for good behavior would be cut from the pre­sent ten days per month to a mere three days per month; and that after having served his full sentence a convict would face the possibility of probation for an ad­ditional five years.

The bill is extremely complex. Its language is extremely ponderous.

Orlin claims he is concerned. "The House, the Senate and the public at large somehow have to come to grips with all of the very complicated and fundamentally important issues presented in this ominous package."

Emerson says the Senate has "gotten off on the wrong foot" and that S-1437 should be scrapped altogether. He says that House of Representatives Bill No. 2311 is a considerably more viable alternative, believing that it, and not S-1437, has been "drafted by persons will­ing to conform with the principles of American democracy.'' •

Some of the controversial provisions contained in S-1437: •A provision that would make it a crime for a newsperson to refuse to dis­close a confidential source to police if the source is a criminal suspect or to destroy notes or other material that might lead to such a source. •A provision that would make it a crime for a newsperson to possess an original government document or photocopy dr publish it without gov­ernmental authorization. •A provision allowing the testimony of a witness to be indirectly used against him in court, even though the witness was compelled to testify because he was guaranteed that his testimony would not be directly used against him in court (use immunity). •Provisions dealing with criminal con­spiracy and criminal solicitation that are so broadly drawn as to significantly challenge First Amendment free speech guarantees.

•An anti-sabotage provision that could be used against the trade-unionists participating in a demonstration in which incidental damage to or obstruc­tion of government property occurs. •A provision under which anyone dis­obeying a government employee's or­der to disperse a gathering or stop picketing or leafleting would be guilty of a new crime: failing to obey a public-safety order. •A provision under which union mem­bers striking for higher wages or benefits in a strike marked by violence or the fear of violence could be held guilty of "obtaining the property of another'' by extortion,

S U B S C R I P T I O N B L A N K

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EDITORIAL

We know our readers are shocked and dis­appointed with the attitude and direction of the House Select Committee on Assassin­ations. Tyrants are not noted for their kind­ness or fairness. Conditions in the country will get worse.

Although the Greeks lost the battle, brave men will remember for another thou­sand years the words of the Greek soldier facing certain death from an overwhelming enemy just before the battle at Thermopylae. When information came that "the enemy is so numerour, their arrows will darken the sky." The Greek soldier replied: "Fine, I like to fight in the shade."

The arrogance and ignorance of the Com­mittee members is shocking. A Committee member did not know the route that the Warren Commission said Oswald took from the TSBD to the Tippit killing site. And he is going to vote on the findings of the Committee!

Unfairest treatment of all came after the appearance of Fort Worth advertising maa. Jack

White. After the "patty cake" treatment of Marina Oswald, the harsh cross examination of White was shocking. Then after the lunch break, the Committee attorney indicated that White was granted an appearance only because White was a constitutent of House Majority Leader Jim Wright of Fort Worth.

This reminds to to bring up some of the bloody political history of Texas.

When Jim Wright was running for his first state office as State Representative of Parker County, Texas, he was facing a tough opponent in the run-off election. Shortly before the election, a man appeared at the home of Wright,s opponent, asked his name, then pump­ed several shots into the candidate who died within hours. We are not in any way blaming Jim Wright as he was one of the first to go to the hospital and give blood to the victim.

The matter is simply a part of our bloody political history which precedes 1963 and should not be forgotten.

T H E Penn P . O

CONTINUING J o n e s . Box

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INOUIRY , E d i t o r 1140 T e x a s 760^5