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David Wagenvoord, President and general manager of WWOM-TV and radio.
Thayer Waldo, Reporter, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram at the time of the assassination.
1969 Martin, New York Times reporter.
1969 Jerry Cohen of LA Times,
Jim Kirkwood, AP
Don McKee of AP/AX,
Breck Wall, Dallas entertainer who, with Joe Peterson, made rush trip to Houston and Galveston 11/23/63 at same time David Ferrie did, and received phone calls from Jack Ruby. For detailed outline of events, see WIN magazine 2/1/69. Also see Oswald in New Orleans, by Harold Weisberg.
Harry Weatherford, Deputy sheriff, Dallas. Roger Craig says he was an expert rifle shot and was stationed on roof of Records Building by Decker. Complained to Craig of cold and wind. Craig says rifle would be a 30.06 because "that's what he hunts with." LA Free Press, 3/1/68
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11/22/63 At 65, Jesse Curry, radio request that there be no incidents. BBC tape, The Day the President Died,
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11/22/63 9:10 p.m. KLIF reporters record the words of Oswald in the corridor at the police station:
"I was questioned by a judge. However I protested at that time that I was not allowed legal counsel ... [noise] ... during that short and sweet hearing. I read don't knew what the situation is. Nobody has told me anything except I'm accused of murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that. I do request someone to come forward to give me legal assistance."
"Did you kill the President?"
"No. I've not been charged with that: In fact nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question."From notes taken 4/64, from The Fateful Hours, a Capitol Custom record [RB-2278] by KLIF, Dallas, issued earlier during the year.
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11/22/63 11:26 p.m. Peace Justice David Johnson read the charge [against Oswald for murdering President Kennedy]. From notes taken 4/64, from The Fateful Hours, a Capitol Custom record [RB-2278] by KLIF, Dallas, issued earlier during the year.
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11/22/63 Dallas - Police Chief Jesse Curry said tonight charges of murdering President Kennedy have been filed against Lee Harvey Oswald. ... Officer said he was the man who hid on the fifth floor of a textbook warehouse and snapped off three quick shots that killed the President and wounded Governor John B. Connolly of Texas. AP bulletin, 11:50 p.m. CST
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11/22/63 Dallas - The police chief ... emphasized that the entire investigation had been a joint one by the Dallas police department, the FBI and the Secret Service. AP, 11:57 p.m. CST
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11/23/63 Dallas - Police claim that a search of Oswald's room turned up Communist literature. But landlord [A. C.] Johnson said:
"We had never seen those books. He must have kept them hidden somewhere." AP, 1:18 p.m. CST
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11/23/63 Dallas - "This man killed the President," homicide Captain Will Fritz said positively today. He meant Lee Harvey Oswald ...
Officers continued questioning a second man described as a known subversive and friend of Oswald […]
But Fritz said "We are convinced beyond any doubt that Oswald is our man."
He added: "Without going into the evidence, I can tell you this - this case is a cinch. This man killed the President." He brushed aside all other questions. AP, 2:33 p.m. CST, Peggy Simpson
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11/23/63 Message to Dallas from Portland: Oregonian asks if it possible for you to do a story on Oswald's activities in chronological order so far as known all day yesterday. Asked by M.E. Edward Miller. AP, 7:18 p.m. PST
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11/23/63 To Portland from Dallas: Re Oswald chronology: some details unclear so do not have in hand. Asking police if can give. AP, 9:40 p.m. CST
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11/23/63 Ditto: Further re Oswald time table: Homicide Captain Will Fritz says a complete timetable has been prepared, but will not be released since it contains portions of evidence against Oswald. Assume you noted, all stories have been unable to pin down exactly all the movements of suspect. AP, 11:23 p.m. CST
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November 23, 1963, AP - The Gettysburg Times, Lee Harvey Oswald, Cool Defiant and Arrogant, Onetime Commy Admirer, Is Charged With Murder of President, by Raymond Holbrook and Peggy Simpson,
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11/24/63 Dallas, [11/23] - Moments after the fatal shot was fired at President Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. yesterday, Chief Curry said, he radioed instructions that the Texas School Book Depository Building be surrounded and searched. … Chief Curry said he could tell from the sound of the three shots that they had come from the book company building …
… The first officer to reach the six-story building, Lieutenant Curry said, found Oswald among other persons in a lunchroom. New York Times, by Donald Jansen, p. 6, Col. 7
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11/24/63 Dallas, [11/23] - Chief Curry said his department had had no record about Oswald up to yesterday, but that the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a long "subversive" record on him, and, the chief understood, had interviewed Oswald. New York Times, Gladwin Hill
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11/24/63 Curry's statement of evidence.
Wade's statement of evidence. AP, Peggy Simpson
11/24/63 Dallas - Kennedy investigation story filed on early Sunday morning protective service [AP2dn]
More evidence [against Oswald] was revealed by police last night.
Curry said photographs found in the home of Oswald's Russian-born wife link him with the rifle used in the daylight assassination.
The pictures, taken before the shooting, were found in the wife's home in suburban Irving, TX.
The FBI has a letter, in Oswald's handwriting, ordering the rifle from a Chicago mail order house, Curry said. An Alias and a Dallas post office box number was used, the police chief said.
... Homicide Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas police department said of Oswald: "this man killed the President."
Curry said last night "We had this case in good shape this morning and it is even stronger tonight."
District Attorney Henry Wade said yesterday he is confident of getting the death penalty for Oswald, adding that he will be tried first - probably in mid-January - in the death of the President.
Both Curry and Fritz said that they had evidence which they were not revealing at this time and probably would not make it public until the trial.
They also said there are no other suspects in the case nor were there warrants out for anyone else.
When asked if they had made a detailed time-table of Oswald's activities prior to and after both slayings, Fritz said that it had been made, but that it would not be made public because it would reveal evidence which is not being released at this time. AP, 3:10 a.m. CST
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11/24/63 ... Detective B. H. Combest, standing nearby when Oswald was shot, said one of Ruby's employees "called me earlier and told me Ruby felt a 'sense of shame for Dallas.'"
Combest said he spotted Ruby an instant before the shooting - he was well known to many officers on the force.
"I knew what he was going to do," Combest added. "I shouted at him, 'Jack, you son of a bitch. I tried to reach over to him but I couldn't get him. He rushed right up to Oswald and put the gun flat against him, and I saw a flash of fire." AP, 1:15 p.m. CST, 2nd and 3rd lead, Oswald shooting.
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11/24/63 Dallas - ... Police Chief Curry had arranged a public transfer of Oswald from one jail to another in response to pleas of newsmen covering the case. He said after the slaying:
"If I hadn't promised you people I would not take Oswald until this morning, we would have taken him during the night. I told you. I wouldn't back down on my pledge." AP, 1:45 p.m., 2nd and 4th lead, Oswald shooting___________________________________________________________________________________
11/24-25/63 'I want it known by everyone that I do not blame the Dallas Police Department for what happened Sunday morning. Chief Curry and his men did not neglect their duty. I honestly believe my brother had gotten hold of a press pass which got him into the police headquarters. This criticism of the Police Department is uncalled for and they must not be held in blame. My brother was grieving so, and I feel it got the best of him. I know; he was with me a great deal Friday and Saturday. He had been very upset about the death of the President. When he came face to face with Oswald, he must have felt this man had done him some personal harm, and I believe my brother become insane suddenly, otherwise this never could have been done. Please, please, don't blame the Police Department! Exclusive statement obtained by KLIF News from Ruby's sister, Mrs. Eva Grant. No date given, but from context probably 11/24 or 11/25/63. [on tape, side II at 599'] KLIF, Dallas, The Fateful Hours, A Capitol Custom record RB-2278, issued early 1964. Notes taken 4/64.
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11/24/63 New York messaged telegraph editors: We have been pressing police authorities in Dallas to make public all their evidence against Oswald. We are advised that it has been turned over to District Attorney Henry Wade who says he will not make it public. We and Dallas newspapers are pressing him to do so on the grounds that it is now in the public interest to tell the fully story about Oswald. The AP, AP, 6:24 p.m. EST.
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11/24/63 Dallas - District Attorney Henry Wade said today that he will not divulge any more of the evidence officers have against Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was accused of killing President Kennedy and was himself slain today. Police referred all such inquiries for release of evidence to Wade.
Asked if he would make the complete evidence public, Wade said:
"No. We had plenty of evidence to convict Oswald. Fingerprints and everything. But I've told the police, and the police have cooperated very well, that the Oswald case is moot now and we have to get on with the Ruby case." AP, 6:07 p.m. CST.___________________________________________________________________________________
11/24/63 Dallas, [11/23] - Mr. Wade quoted [Marina] as saying that Oswald had a rifle, similar in appearance to that used in the assassination, in their garage in suburban Irving on Thursday night. She was said to have added that it was not there after Oswald went to work yesterday morning … New York Times, by Gladwin Hill
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11/24/63 Dallas, [11/23] - … Moments after the fatal shot was fired at President Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. yesterday, Chief Curry said, he radioed instructions that the Texas School Book Depository Building be surrounded and searched. Oswald, who worked in the building, has been charged with the assassination of the President.
The chief was riding in a car 40 feet ahead of the limousine carrying Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy ...
… Chief Curry said he could tell from the sound of the three shots that they had come from the book company building, near downtown Dallas. New York Times, Donald Janson
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11/24/63 Dallas, [11/23] - Oswald's only utterance directed to outsiders today was an exclamation, as he was led handcuffed through a police headquarters corridor:
"I want to talk to Mr. [The name sounded like Abt or Apt] in New York." …
[Wade] said the defendant had been advised repeatedly of his rights to counsel, and that he understood that relatives who have come to police headquarters were trying to raise money for a lawyer.
If they were unsuccessful, he added, counsel would be appointed by the county. New York Times, Gladwin Hill
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11/24/63 Dallas, [11/23] - Police officials said today they had amassed evidence enough to convict Lee Harvey Oswald of the assassination of President Kennedy.
"We're convinced beyond any doubt that he killed the President," said Captain Will Fritz, chief of the Dallas Police Homicide Bureau after questioning Oswald and others.
"I think the case is cinched," he said.
While the 24-year-old warehouse worker continued to deny the killing under heavy questioning, the Dallas County District Attorney, Henry Wade, said this afternoon: "I think we have enough evidence to convict him now - but we anticipate a lot more evidence in the next few days." New York Times, Gladwin Hill
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11/24/63 Dallas, [12/23] - The arrest [at the Texas Theater] came about 90 minutes after the assassination.
At police headquarters, Oswald, was questioned for five hours, then arraigned in the murder of Patrolman Tippit at 7:15.
The interrogation, directed by Captain Will Fritz ... continued until midnight. At 1:30 a.m. today Oswald was arraigned on charges of murdering the President. He denied both charges. The questioning of Oswald was resumed this morning. New York Times, Donald Janson
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11/25/63 Dallas [11/24] - ... After some 30 hours of intermittent interrogations and confrontations with scores of witnesses, Oswald was ordered transferred to the custody of the Dallas County sheriff.
… The transfer involved a trip of about a mile from the uptown municipal building, where the Police Department and jail are. The route went down Main Street to the county jail, overlooking the spot where President Kennedy was killed ...
… The original plan had been for the sheriff to assume custody of Oswald at the city jail and handle the transfer. Late last night, for unspecified reasons, it was decided that the city police would move the prisoner. . New York Times, by Gladwin Hill
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11/25/63 New York - Reporter: "Did he ... ever say anything about it, admit anything at all?"
Wade: "He never did admit any of the killing. I didn't - you ask me this - I didn't do any of the interrogation."
Reporter: "You have not listed it then as part of the evidence?"
Wade: "No, it's not listed." AP, 3:45 a.m. CST, Police Report of press conference "late yesterday" by Henry Wade
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11/25/63 Dallas, [11/24] - Dallas policemen obtained a statement from Oswald's Russian-born wife, Marina, that he had a rifle in the garage of her living quarters on the night before the assassination. The young woman also said the rifle was not there on the next day. Authorities said the wife's testimony would not have been possible in Texas courts, however. New York Times, by Fred Powledge
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11/25/63 [Feature on Dallas police officers]
...When President Kennedy was shot to death, they had the alleged killer behind bars within two hours.
Wade says Fritz' homicide bureau had enough evidence to "prove beyond a shadow of a doubt " that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President … He said most of the evidence was uncovered within a few hours, and called it 'amazing.'…
... "These are no hick cops," said Wade. "They are dedicated professionals and they work like it." … AP, Dallas, Clayton Hickerson.
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11/25/63 Dallas - An armored car was obtained to move Oswald from the police station to county jail because of an anonymous threat on his life, Captain Glenn King said today. The anonymous message - "Oswald will never get to the county jail alive" - was relayed by the FBI in Washington, DC to Dallas law officers early yesterday morning. … The FBI did not say if the call they received was from a man or a woman. AP
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12/1/63 … At 2:15 a.m. Sunday [11/24] the FBI received an anonymous phone call. A voice said Oswald would be shot Sunday morning. The FBI relayed the information to Dallas police. Long Beach Independent-Press Telegram. Three Days in Dallas, by Bill Hunter
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11/25/63 Dallas - The first reaction of Dallas police to Oswald's murder was to mark the assassination case closed, and concentrate on trying to convict Ruby.
But Federal officials felt otherwise. President Johnson ordered a full Government probe of Oswald's slaying, and the FBI proposed further investigation into the Presidential assassination with hope of eventually giving the American people the full story. Later, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade listed what he said was a complete summary of the evidence against Oswald. AP, 12:23 a.m. CST [News CB9 AP), p. 1], by Arthur Everett
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11/25/63 Dallas, [11/24]- Capt. Will Fritz, homicide specialist for the Dallas Police Department, said after Oswald's death today that, in his estimation, "the case is closed."
Chief of Police Jesse Curry said he felt certain now that Oswald was the President's murderer. New York Times, by Fred Powledge
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11/25/63 Dallas - Prior to Oswald's death, authorities said there was certain strong evidence not going to be released. Wade declined to divulge this evidence even after the alleged assassin died. News CB, p. 6, AP
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11/25/63 Dallas - In a printed statement [Curry] said:
"When the investigation in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald is completed, in so far as the-Dallas Police Department is concerned, we intend to make the entire file public unless Federal authorities specifically request that some part he withheld and turned over to them.
"Unless we are specifically instructed otherwise from Washington, we believe it can and should become public information. At this time, we cannot designate when the release will be made." AP, 12:03 p.m. CST___________________________________________________________________________________
11/25/63 Dallas - [Ruby] had an arrest record in Dallas for carrying concealed weapons. He was acquitted of aggravated assault just recently after a fight with a heckler in another night spot.
… His background had given him an extensive acquaintance among Dallas policemen and there seemed no apparent reason why his presence amidst newsmen and officials should be restricted. AP, 12:23 a.m. CST, by Arthur Everett,
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11/25/63 Dallas - The man who shot the accused assassin of President Kennedy was constantly seeking and apparently enjoying the company of policemen.
He had a press pass on his windshield. San Francisco Chronicle
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11/25/63 Dallas, [11/24] - [shooting of Oswald]:
The group with the chief walked through a short corridor past the basement booking office and out the door onto the guarded ramp. Uniformed policemen checked the reporters' credentials. But they passed familiar faces, such as those of policemen and collaborating Secret Service and FBI agents.
Ruby's face was familiar to many policemen who had encountered him at his two night clubs and in his frequent visits to the municipal building. New York Times, by Gladwin Hill
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11/25/63 Dallas, [11/24] - from story on shooting of Oswald:
… The hospital's emergency department had been on the alert for possible injuries arising out of the projected transfer. New York Times, by Gladwin Hill, p. 4
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12/25[?]/63 "I want it known by everyone that I do not blame the Dallas Police Department for what happened Sunday morning. Chief Curry and his men did not neglect their duty. I honestly believe my brother had gotten hold of a press pass which got him into the police headquarters. This criticism of the Police Department is uncalled for and they must not be held in blame. My brother was grieving so, and I feel it got the best of him. I know; he was with me a great deal Friday and Saturday. He had been very upset about the death of the President. When he came face to face with Oswald, he must have felt this man had done him some personal harm, and I believe my brother become insane suddenly, otherwise this never could have been done. Please, please don't blame the Police Department!" Exclusive statement obtained by KLIF News from Ruby's sister, Mrs. Eva Grant. On tape, side II, 599 feet. KLIF tape, The Fateful Hours
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11/25/63 Dallas - Dallas City Manager Elgin Crull expressed confidence today in Police Chief Jesse Curry.
Curry told reporters in answer to questions that he has no intention of resigning. "I have done the best I can," he said.
Crull told newsmen that if Curry were to resign the resignation would not be accepted. ... AP
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11/26/63 … The police had even warned hospital officials to stand by against the possibility of an attempt on Oswald's life. New York Times, Editorial
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11/26/63 [No dateline] - The-wildly disparate assessments of what makes Jack Ruby tick were among many clashing views expressed by relatives, friends and enemies from San Francisco to Chicago and on to Dallas.
Practically every person who ever knew [him] was offering an assessment yesterday. The one exception was the Dallas police force.
Apparently, he had been something of a hanger-on and devotee of crime detection. He had crashed a news conference in Dallas Saturday night [11/23?], telling District Attorney Henry Wade, "I know all the policemen and all the newsmen."
A former band leader at his Carousel strippery, Robert Shorman, said in Long Beach that the joint was a hangout for policemen, who seldom had to pay for their drinks.San Francisco Examiner, AP and UPI, p. 12
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11/26/63 Washington - Wade ... revealed what he said were the facts gathered by Dallas police. These were:
… That on the morning of the assassination Oswald carried to work an oblong package and when stopped by a policeman, he said it contained window shades, whereas, police later said, it held the fateful rifle.
… That witnesses saw him on the sixth floor of the book warehouse with the oblong package. San Francisco Chronicle., "our correspondent"
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11/26/63 [New York] Round up of foreign reaction.
… In Bulgaria, the Communist Party newspaper Rabotnichesko Delo said "the indisputable evidence police claim to be in possession of as to Oswald's guilt - which by the way is far from being indisputable - was made known only now when Oswald is no longer able to defend himself. AP, 7:15 a.m. EST
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11/26/63 Dallas - Police Chief Jesse Curry announced today all evidence his department had in the assassination case against Lee Harvey Oswald will be turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Curry made the announcement after a long conference with his subordinates.
He said the evidence originally was to have been given to District Attorney Henry Wade, but that Wade had told him to give it to the FBI. AP, 4:22 p.m. CST
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11/26/63 Dallas - Three large packages of evidence in the assassination case against Lee Harvey Oswald was turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation today by Dallas police.
The packages consisted of one large blue suitcase and two large paper boxes. The boxes were each about a foot thick and one was 2 feet by 3 feet while the other was about 2 feet by 2 feet. AP, 5:42 p.m. CST
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11/27/63 Dallas, [11/26] - Parkland Hospital officials, noting a New York Times editorial, said that the police had not warned them to stand by against the possibility of an attempt on Oswald's life. The alert was arranged by the hospital's administrative staff, a hospital official said. New York Times, John Herbers, p. 4
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12/1/64 Sunday afternoon, police and federal officers investigated reports that Ruby and Oswald had been acquainted. Ruby denied the reports and claimed he had seen Oswald for the first time on a televised press conference ...
… As reports persisted that Oswald was seen in Ruby's Vegas Club, Dallas police tried to squelch the reports with statements that in their opinion Oswald was the assassin, that he was without confederates and that he and Ruby were not acquainted. Long Beach Independent- Press Telegram, Three Days in Dallas, Bill Bunter
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12/1/63 Dallas, [12/1] - Police remained silent today about their own extensive investigation into how strip tease club owner Jack Ruby reached and killed the man accused of assassinating John F. Kennedy.
… The city police investigation by top brass officers extended beyond the police who were in the city hall basement ... when Ruby shot Oswald with a .38 caliber revolver.
Both uniformed police and plainclothes men said they had been summoned to the closed-door inquiry.
The silence by the department contrasted with the freedom with which local officers talked earlier about evidence surrounding the killing of the President. AP, 12:59 p.m. CST, by Robert E. Ford
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12/6/63 New York - The American Civil Liberties Union charged yesterday that the police and prosecuting officials of Dallas committed gross violations of civil liberties in their handling of Lee H. Oswald, the accuse assassin of President Kennedy.
It (The ACLU statement) recalled that Greg Olds president of the Dallas Civil Liberties Union and three volunteer lawyers went to the city jail late in the evening of 11/22, the day the President was assassinated. They were told by police officials, including Captain Will Fritz., head of the homicide bureau, and by Justice of the Peace David Johnston before whom Oswald was first arraigned, that Oswald had been advised of his right to counsel but that he had declined to request counsel.
… The Dallas police would not say whether Oswald had been given access to a-telephone, nor would they comment on the duration and intensity of the questioning. New York Times, by Homer Bigart
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12/6/63 Oswald first came to the FBI's attention when he tried to defect to Russia in 10/59. On 8/10 this year the FBI interviewed him again, in New Orleans, after he had been arrested for passing out pro-Castro leaflets. On 9/26, Oswald went to Mexico and stayed for one week trying to get a visa either to Cuba or to the Soviet Union, and likely, U.S. agents were again interested in what he was up to.
But the fact seems to be that whoever was keeping an eye on Oswald before he returned to Dallas quit when he got there. The FBI did not advise the Dallas police that he was in town - if they themselves knew his whereabouts. Dallas police insist, "We never heard of him until after the shooting." … Life, End to Nagging Rumors, by Paul Mandel
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12/9/63 These are the 12 points which convinced authorities that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy: …… 4. … Police also obtained a photograph of him holding a rifle which appeared to be the same one used in the slaying of the President. This picture also showed him wearing a pistol similar to that used in the slaying of Policeman J. D. Tippit. Oswald was reported by Police Chief Jesse Curry to be obviously shaken when confronted with this photograph during interrogation. ... U.S. News & World Report, The Case Against Oswald, p. 68
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12/14/63 Lee Oswald slipped out of the building, his absence noticed only after police took a roll call of all building employees. The police then broadcast an alarm: "Unknown white male, 30, slender build, 5'6', 160 pounds, thought to be carrying a 30-06 or 30-30 rifle." Saturday Evening Post, p. 26
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12/19/63 The New York Times [11/23] reported: "About 90 persons were employed in the Texas School Book Depository and most of them were out watching the President's motorcade when the shots were fired."
… Is it likely that each of the almost 90 employees, most of whom were outside of the building, engulfed in the panic and confusion attendant upon the assassination, could easily and quickly return to his place of employment through the police line, while still on his lunch hour, so that "every other employee was located but this defendant [Wade, AP, 11/25/63, 345 ACS] ... "and the description of the one missing employee radioed at once? Lane brief, National Guardian
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12/19/63 On the day of [Oswald's] arrest police removed all of his belongings from his room, telling the landlady that Oswald "would not return". [No attribution.] Lane brief, National Guardian
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12/23/63 How did Ruby get into the Dallas jail basement to kill Oswald? Volume [of the FBI Report] tells in exhaustive detail how he slipped past a guard at the west entrance - but doesn't name the guard. Newsweek, Report From The FBI, p. 20
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12/27/63 ... It [ACLU] charges that "Oswald was tried and convicted many times over in the newspapers, on the radio and over television by the public statements of the Dallas law enforcement officials." In the circumstances, it contends that it would have been impossible had Oswald lived, to find a jury of "twelve, citizens who had not formed a firm and fixed opinion that he was guilty."
Even had he been found guilty on the evidence, the higher courts might well have been compelled to reverse his conviction on the ground that he could not have had a fair trial. ...
... In addition, the ACLU raises a series of questions about the possible violation of Oswald's constitutional rights by the police. "How much time elapsed before he was advised of his right to counsel? How much time elapsed before he was permitted access to a telephone to call his family and an attorney? What methods of interrogation were used? Was he advised of his right to remain silent?"
On the evening of Friday, 11/22, two attorneys and the president of the Dallas branch of the ACLU went to police headquarters to demand that Oswald's rights be observed. Both the police and the magistrate before whom he had been arraigned assured them that he had declined to request counsel. They were denied access to Oswald himself, as they had not been retained by him or his family. On the following day, the president of the Dallas Bar Association was permitted to see Oswald. He informed the media that Oswald had asked for John Abt, a New York attorney, but had refused at that time either to accept the Dallas Bar Association’s offer of counsel, or to retain the ACLU lawyers on the scene. … The New America, ACLU Says Oswald's Rights Denied, by Gordon Haskell [ACLU staff].
See Oswald, 12/6/63 - New York Times, Homer Bigart
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Winter 63/64 Newsphoto Editor Dave Taylor had assigned [James W. Altgens] to shoot from a railroad trestle overlooking approaches to the triple underpass where Elm, Main and Commerce streets converge and feed west out of downtown Dallas. But police ran him away from the trestle; saying only railroad employees could work there. AP World, p. 3
1/64 [How Ruby got into the police station]
... It was 11:16 a.m.
He walked down Main and paused before the entrance to the underground garage. A single policeman stood watch. A squad car rolled up the ramp and stopped. A policeman on watch bent over to talk to the man in the car. Unnoticed, Jack Ruby, free lance avenger, walked past them and down the ramp into the basement of the building. AP, The Torch Is Passed. [no attribution]
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1/64 p. 19-22 … The blackest aspect of the whole fantastic Oswald case is the behavior of the Dallas police force. … [lists police actions in detail]......Liberation [Paris] wrote that "there is no doubt that President Kennedy fell into a trap. He was the victim of a plot. And in this plot it is evident that the Dallas police, protectors of gangsters like Ruby, played a role you can only describe as questionable. They created a defendant, then allowed one of their stool pigeons to kill him." The Minority of One, byEric Norden, p 16-23
1/64 Text of ACLU statement from its national office on the civil liberties aspect of the Oswald case. ACLU News.
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1/2/64 ... Captain Fritz announced on television Friday afternoon that a piece of half-eaten chicken, a paper bag with chicken bones, an empty Coca-Cola bottle, and a cigarette pack had been found by the window from which the shots were fired. …
On Wednesday, 11/27, I spoke about the chicken bones to James Bowie, first assistant Dallas District Attorney. He said he was surprised that the question should interest me and dismissed it with a wave of the hand: Oh, that chicken: It was old. Oswald didn't eat it. The bones weren't fresh. Someone had it the day before …"
Have you found the person who went to eat a chicken the day before the President was killed near the window from which the shots were fired?"
"I don't know.
I don't believe so."
"Did the police look for him ?"
"I think so. ..." The Reporter, Oswald in Dallas: Few Loose Ends, by Leo Sauvage, pp. 24-26
[See Fingerprints, 11/23/63]
1/2/64 … Police Chief Jesse E. Curry remarked in a television interview that he had been able to tell by the sound of the firing where the shots had come from, and he added that he had "right away" given orders over his car radio that the building be "surrounded and searched." … Chief Curry, even on Saturday, still saw nothing upsetting in the fact that Oswald had not been arrested when he walked out the front door of the very building that was so efficiently surrounded and searched by the police. Chief Curry seemed to think that the fact that Oswald had been identified as an employee was sufficient explanation.
… When Oswald left the building soon afterwards, nobody even asked him his name. What were the dozens of policemen doing? … For if Oswald was able to leave the building it is clear that others could have left it too. In short the unbelievable carelessness of the Dallas police has left open a possibility that the assassin was some unidentified person who was also in the building at the moment of the shooting and who left undetected. The Reporter, Oswald in Dallas: Few Loose Ends, Leo Sauvage
1/2/64 … Chief Curry ... in one of his numerous interviews, said on Saturday that Lee Oswald was in the lunchroom - "among others." But those "others" were never mentioned again. And on Saturday night, when the chief of the Dallas homicide squad, Captain Will Fritz, indicated that the crime was solved as far as he was concerned - "It's a cinch" - he mentioned the fact that Oswald was in the building to support his belief. But Oswald was not alone in the building. The Reporter, Oswald in Dallas: Few Loose Ends, Leo Sauvage
1/2/64 [The map]
… surely it was unusual that the police, having found a map of Dallas among the suspect's possessions on Friday, should have waited till the next day before unfolding the map and examining it carefully. Nevertheless, that seems to be what the police must have done, since chief Curry spoke to the reporters on Saturday afternoon about the "startling evidence" he held in reserve, he told them that it had been discovered just that morning. Where, then, was the map between Friday afternoon, when Mrs. Roberts saw the police remove it from Oswald' s room, and the dramatic moment on Saturday when the police discovered that the map was marked with crosses and a line showing the trajectory of the bullets that killed the President?
But even if Oswald had lived, I do not see how he could have been convicted, or the conviction upheld on appeal, after an investigation like the one I watched being performed by the Dallas police.
[Article painstakingly traces timing elements in the map incident]. The Reporter, Oswald in Dallas: Few Loose Ends, by Leo Sauvage
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1/3/64 In his press conference of 11/24 Wade completely repudiated his statement about the bullet from the pistol [in the theater] - absolute denial of physical evidence which he had introduced himself. ["We have the snapped bullet." "He didn't snap the gun."] Lane interview
1/3/64 Interview with Houston Post reporter Alonso H. Hudkins, III. On 12/17, Mr. Hudkins advised that he had just returned from a weekend in Dallas, during which time he talked to Allen Sweatt, Chief Criminal Division, Sheriff's Office, Dallas; Chief Sweatt mentioned that it was his opinion that [Oswald] was being paid $200 a month by the FBI as an informant in connection with their subversive investigations. He furnished the alleged informant number assigned to Oswald by the FBI as "S172." Secret Service Report, Inquest, Epstein, Bantam Edition, [9/21/66], p. 174
1/16/64 The article [by Lon Hudkins, Houston Post, 1/1] stated that Oswald had been in contact with Joseph Hosty, FBI agent in Dallas. "He had Hosty's home phone, office phone and car license number," Hudkins quoted Dallas assistant district attorney Bill Alexander as saying.
Hudkins said the failure of the FBI to inform local police of Oswald's whereabouts the day Kennedy was assassinated has "led to speculation by police and the sheriff's deputies in Dallas that Oswald might have been an informant because, as one put it, you just wouldn't think to check out one of your own stoolies.'" National Guardian, Jack A. Smith
1-2/64 ... In the meantime, the attitude of a good many Europeans was best expressed by the Paris Weekly, France-Observateur, which printed a photo of the chief of the Dallas Homicide Squad [whom it mistook for the Chief of Police], under the heading, "Suspect Numero Un." … The Correspondent, Europe After Kennedy, by Norman Birnbaum, p. 49
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2/22/64 A panel at Columbia University agreed yesterday that the handling of the Oswald case pointed up a conflict between the public's right to know and an accused person's right to a fair trial.
Participating in the forum, moderated by Professor Marvin Frankel of the [Columbia] Law School, were Osmund K. Frankel, general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, Louis M. Loeb, general counsel to the New York Times, and Stuart Updike, general counsel to the Daily News.
The three panelists agreed that an excessive amount of evidence had been disclosed to the press by the Dallas District Attorney and police department. These disclosures, Mr. Frankel said, "have led many people to question whether Oswald, had he lived, could have had a fair trial anywhere." New York Times
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3/64 [A bitter, sarcastic listing of the contradiction in the evidence against Oswald. For Heller's conclusions on the double-think involved, see Oswald, 3/64.] The Realist, Co-Existing, How We Know Oswald Killed Kennedy, by Saul Heller, p. 21
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3/64 [Former FBI agent, currently suing FBI for reinstatement, blames FBI for not passing information on Oswald along to Secret Service and Dallas police.]
Oswald's name was not in the Dallas police's "nut box." Saga, The FBI Could Have Saved President Kennedy's Life, by William W. Turner, p. 9 et seq.
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3/64 If we believe that a man must be considered innocent until he is proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, we can already assert that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent. For to the unbiased, critical mind, the case against him is a tissue of improbabilities, contradictions; and outright falsifications.
… the case was proclaimed "cinched" by Chief Will Fritz of the Homicide Bureau as early as 12/23, one day after the assassination. The following day, only two hours after Jack Ruby had disposed of Oswald in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, the case against him was declared "closed" by Police Chief Jesse Curry and by District Attorney Henry Wade who boasted that he had "sent men to the electric chair with less evidence." Commentary, Leo Sauvage
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3/64 I am a reporter and not a detective. Thus far, however, it is only the reporters, those "amateur investigators into the Kennedy assassination" whom Max Lerner in a recent column sarcastically advised to take "a much needed rest," who have shown up what Mr. Lerner himself described as "the tissue of guesswork, ignorance and contradictions in which the law enforcement officials were caught." In the face of so systematically prejudiced an investigation as has so far been made into the President's assassination, how else will the truth ever be arrived at if "amateurs" fail to ask the questions that the professionals have obfuscated or left unanswered? Commentary, Leo Sauvage
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3/64 Bob Considine of the Hearst Press ... was told that Oswald had been questioned inside the building almost before the smoke from the assassin's gun had disappeared." As for me, I have the direct testimony of one of the two witnesses, Mr. Roy Truly. When I asked him whether it had taken a long time for him and the motorcycle policeman to reach the lunchroom, he answered ... "Oh, no! It was as soon as the last shot was fired when I saw the officer come running. As a matter of fact, it was so soon afterwards that I don't believe he was riding in the motorcade. He must have been off his motorcycle, standing nearby. Anyhow, it was right away after the shots. ... " Commentary, Leo Sauvage
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3/64 The story [about Dial Ryder mounting a telescopic sight on a rifle for a customer named Oswald] made headlines, but soon someone remembered that the Italian rifle Oswald had received from a Chicago mail-order firm was supposed to have had a telescopic sight already mounted on it, and the Dallas officials who had given the big news to the reporters told them a few hours later to forget about it - it was just a mistake. Commentary, Leo Sauvage
3/64 On 12/8/63, the New York Journal American published a "step by stealthy step" account of the assassination ... by Gene Roberts originally published in the Detroit Free Press … Somewhere in the middle of that story, the following lines appeared:
"… Five depository employees had worked in the storage room until noon, covering its floor with plywood. One of them, Bonnie Ray Williams, walked near the window at the 10 o'clock smoking break, downed a bottle of pop, chewed on a piece of chicken. …"
… if Gene Roberts's story represents - as it seems to do - the present position of the Dallas authorities, one wonders how Bonnie Ray Williams convinced Assistant District Attorney Bowie that ... he was chewing chicken bones which, according to what Mr. Bowie himself told me, were already a day old. Commentary, Leo Sauvage
3/64 Take, for example, the most important of all the exhibits in this case: the rifle. This precious piece of evidence was held up to the television cameras by a bare-handed Dallas detective ... before it was sent to Washington to be scientifically examined in the laboratories of the FBI. And then, in Saturday morning's newspapers, there was a photograph showing how this same piece of evidence - which was to be checked in Washington for marks, spots, prints, and traces - was carried outside, without any protective wrapping over it, by another Dallas detective who held it by its strap while the butt rubbed against his trousers. Commentary, Leo Sauvage
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3/5/64 Dallas - [add] ... At one point, Wade resumed direct examination of McMillon and asked him:
Q. Did the defendant, Jack Ruby, tell you how he got into the basement of the jail?
A. I was present when Mr. Ruby stated how he got into the basement. He stated a lieutenant was pulling out of the basement in a squad car and he just walked by an officer there between the wall and the car. He said someone called to him but he just ducked his head and kept going … AP. 529pcs
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3/5/64 Dallas - … During questioning of [police officer] L.C. Graves [walking alongside Oswald when Ruby shot him], Belli asked him at one point about Ruby's being in police headquarters at the time Oswald was shot.
"There was no connection between the Dallas police force and Ruby in his coming there that morning, was there?"
"I don't know," Graves replied.
"I don't believe it," Belli declared, "and I want it out of this case now."
"Personally," Graves said, "there was no connection between me and Jack Ruby in his getting into that basement."
… [Dallas policeman Thomas] McMillan related fragments of conversation while Ruby was being taken in the elevator to the fifth floor of City Hall. He quoted a police Capt. King as saying to Ruby:
"Of all the low life things that ever happened, this takes the cake. Why did you do it?"
He said Ruby's reply was:
"Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to do it. You guys couldn't." AP, 12:06 p.m. CST
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3/7/64 [Mark] Lane has revealed to the Guardian the fourth in the series of 20 documents obtained from Wade's files, ... the affidavit of the policeman who found the weapon allegedly used to assassinate Kennedy. The officer testified that he was standing at the intersection of Main and Houston Streets when the shots were fired at the Presidential motorcade. "I ran northwest in the direction of the shots," he said, "but then someone shouted, 'Go to the Old Texas Building.'" National Guardian
[Seymour Weitzman? CE 2003, Hearings XXIV, p. 228]
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3/7/64 Dallas, [3/6] - Jack L. Ruby said he first thought of killing Lee H. Oswald the night of 11/22 ... a police sergeant testified today.
… "Going back to Friday [11/22], tell us what Ruby said about," Mr. Wade asked.
"He said he first noticed the sarcastic sneer on Oswald's face [when he saw Oswald at the press conference]. That's when he first thought he would kill him."
"And then?"
"He said he wanted the world to know Jews do have guts." New York Times, by Homer Bigart
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3/10/64 Dallas - The state blocked Mrs. Marguerite Oswald from attending today the trial of Jack Ruby, who killed her son. Prosecutors said they feared an outburst from her which would force a new trial.
Prosecutors kept her out of the courtroom as a spectator by subpoenaing her as a witness. She can enter the court now only to testify …
Assistant District Attorney A. D. Jim Bowie said the state feared an outburst from Mrs. Oswald in front on the jury would constitute a reversible error, thereby forcing the court to re-start the trial from the beginning, including selection of jurors.
Before the surprise subpoena, Mrs. Oswald told newsmen, "I have thought this over thoroughly and I have now decided to attend the trial. I think this will satisfy me as a mother. This really should be Lee's trial, and my presence there may give me just some little new clue. … AP
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3/10/64 Dallas - -Mrs. Marguerite Oswald visited today the Texas School Book Depository building. ... she did not go to the sixth floor, she said. ... She said she would not comment on results of her investigation, adding: "If I solve this case, then I will tell you boys."
A source inside the depository said Mrs. Oswald asked whether her son was working the day Kennedy was killed and about the clothes he wore. … The building was locked after she entered and no one else was permitted entry.
... Mrs. Oswald tried to enter the Ruby trial courtroom today but was thwarted when prosecutors subpoenaed her as a witness, meaning she must remain outside the courtroom unless called to testify. AP
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3/11/64 Dallas, [3/10] - The prosecution subpoenaed Lee H. Oswald's mother today in order to keep her out of the courtroom where Jack L. Ruby is on trial for killing her son.
Judge Joe B. Brown sent word to Mrs. Marguerite Oswald asking her to stay away from the court.
But Mrs. Oswald, who returned to Dallas from New York last night, notified Sheriff Bill Decker this morning that she intended to appear at the court as a spectator.
Shortly before 9 a.m. Mrs. Oswald arrived in a taxicab. As she waited at the courtroom door, a sheriff's deputy served her with a subpoena and escorted her to the witness room. …
Before the jury entered the courtroom, she was led before Judge Brown and sworn as a witness.
Mrs. Oswald did not look at Ruby during her brief moment in the courtroom and he did not seem to recognize her. New York Times, by Jack Langguth
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3/14/64 Dallas - Mrs. Marguerite Oswald said today she wished the jury had sentenced Jack Ruby to life imprisonment rather than death in the electric chair.
"I want him alive," she said of the man who killed her son. "I want him alive because I believe Jack Ruby was a paid killer who deprived my son of his trial. I am confident I can prove there are things to be brought out." …
"I also want Jack Ruby alive to help in his own way. I believe Lee was a pawn in the assassination of President Kennedy. The death of Ruby would make my theory very hard to prove. I believe Jack Ruby was paid to kill Lee, because Lee did not kill officer Tippit."
Mrs. Oswald said she is convinced officer Tippit was killed in order to implicate her son in the assassination. Then, she said, Ruby was hired to kill Lee before he could be brought to trial. AP, James Mangan.
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3/15/64 Dallas – [The day after the verdict] .. His [Ruby's] lawyers meanwhile expressed fears for his life.
Chief defense counsel Melvin Belli said:
"Ruby is worried, and so am I, that they may slip someone into his cell - another prisoner - with a shiv [knife] in order to prevent our appeal. Then they would make it appear as a suicide and this vicious city would have him off their hands." AP, 1243pcs
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3/16/64 Dallas, [3/15] - Police Sgt. P. T. Dean, who was responsible for security in the basement while Oswald was being transferred to the County Jail, said Ruby told him later that "he had come in an entrance on the north side of Main Street as a car drove out."
Someone had shouted to Ruby but he kept his head down and kept walking, Sergeant Dean said. He quoted Ruby as telling him that he knew he could always pretend to be a reporter.
Sergeant Dean said he had been asked by his superior to report on the break in security. But he did not testify on why there was no guard at the jail entrance at the moment Ruby walked into the basement. New York Times, by Jack Langguth
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3/17/64 Dallas - District Attorney Henry Wade told yesterday how prosecutors made "the big decision" of the Jack Ruby murder trial.
The decision: they would not call witnesses who swore they saw Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald together before a sniper assassinated President Kennedy here.
Testimony from these witnesses would have made world-wide headlines. And, if jurors had believed the testimony, it would have provided a motive for the slaying of Oswald.
... Wade said FBI agents and other investigators provided him with a list of witnesses who insisted they had seen Ruby and Oswald together at various times.
The district attorney said he decided not to call these witnesses because he had doubts about the accuracy of their statements.
"I knew that three of them had failed lie detector tests," Wade said. AP, 6:11 p.m. CST
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3/19/64 On the day of the President's visit, every person who had publicly spoken out in favor of school integration was followed. Mark Lane, talk at Sun Reporter
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3/24/64 New York – [Mrs. Oswald visited UN headquarters, said she was returning to Washington for fifth time to talk to Soviet officials about Lee's activities in Russia].
Mrs. Oswald ... hoped Ruby would live both because she is against capital punishment and because he is needed, to give evidence.
"I think Ruby came into the picture on 11/23 as a paid killer to shut Lee up," she said.
"I work from the contention that my son was framed, and so I want to know who framed my son."
Asked why anyone would want to frame her son, she replied: "I know my son was a government agent." AP
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4/4/64 Dallas - An investigator for the Commission studying the assassination of President Kennedy was removed this week from the Dallas phase of the probe, the Dallas Times-Herald said today.
The withdrawal of the unnamed investigator was attributed to a dispute between him and a Dallas police officer who was a key witness in the Jack Ruby murder trial.
The officer, also unnamed, claimed in protests to District Attorney Henry Wade and other officials that the Warren Commission man had called him a "liar," among other things.
... Wade, prosecutor in Ruby's murder trial, mentioned the incident in a letter to J. Lee Rankin, general counsel for the Commission in Washington. AP, 11:29 p.m. CST
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4/4/64 Dallas - … Dallas police chief Jesse Curry and Homicide Captain Will Fritz said they would like to make public proof they have that Oswald was the assassin. But they said their hands have been tied by the Commission.
They said they had received "authoritative" orders from the Commission for secrecy surrounding evidence in the case.
[District Attorney] Wade himself has been denied access to evidence gathered by Dallas officers.
"I deplore the misinformation and insinuations that are being published," Wade said. "I would like to brief the case and put it out for the public to see, but so far I do not have the evidence the police have." AP, 11:29 p.m. CST
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4/9/64 Dallas - Three posthumous awards to be given 4/23 to the late Patrolman J. D. Tippit, and two to Patrolman M. N. McDonald, who wrested Oswald in the Texas Theater. AP, 216pes
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4/24/64 Dallas –[Patrolman Tippit given three posthumous awards at 18th annual police awards program at Memorial Auditorium sponsored by the Citizens Traffic Commission. Patrolman M. N. MacDonald also honored. Sheriff Bill Decker and Chief Jesse Curry presented with "confidence award."]
... Mayor Erik Jonsson said, "I have absolute trust in the integrity of the police department and absolute faith in its judgment."
Curry replied, for the police force, saying "it means a great deal to us to know that the citizens of Dallas still feel they have a good police department despite the hectic conditions the last of November." AP, A129dn 807acs
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4/24/64 Dallas - A Dallas police lieutenant said today an FBI agent told him the FBI knew Lee Harvey Oswald "was capable of assassinating the President."
Lt. Jack Revill told the Associated Press that FBI agent James [Joe] Hosty made the remark as Oswald was being brought in to police headquarters following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the murder of Dallas Policeman J. D. Tippit on 11/22.
Revill said another officer was with him and heard the remark. [V. J. "Jackie" Bryan, a. member of Revill's criminal intelligence squad.]
… FBI director J. Edgar Hoover told the Dallas Times-Herald:
"That is absolutely false. The agent made no such statement and the FBI did not have such knowledge." AP, 1:26 p.m. CST
See 6/2/64
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4/24/64 Dallas - Riot in county jail which Sheriff Bill Decker attributed to overcrowding.
"Jack’s rest was not disturbed," said sheriff in explaining that the riot took place on a different floor. AP, 120acs
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4/25/64 Dallas - Police Chief Jesse Curry says Dallas police officers will take lie detector tests if any testimony they gave the Warren Commission is doubted.
Curry's statement came yesterday after Dallas police Lt. Jack Revill confirmed he reported to his superiors 11/22 that an FBI agent said of Lee Harvey Oswald: "We knew he was capable of assassinating the President."
… FBI director J. Edgar Hoover said in Washington "the agent made no such statement and the FBI died not have such knowledge." … AP, 1:39 a.m. CST
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4/26/64 Paris -… The first picture originally appeared here last February on the cover of the biggest magazine in Paris, Paris Match, which bought it from Life Magazine. It shows Oswald holding a rifle with a telescopic sight. "The end of the mystery of Kennedy's death," Paris Match boldly proclaimed.
Earlier this month other French papers and magazines published an apparently identical picture of Oswald holding a rifle, but this time the telescopic sight was missing. This picture had been bought from Newsweek. The original source of both pictures was said to have been the Dallas police. San Francisco Chronicle. [Chicago Daily News]
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4/29/64 Dallas - … The hearing-today was confined to the original defense motion for a new trial. A second motion filed late yesterday was not admitted for consideration.
Tonahill and Phil Burleson called three witnesses they said would "prove with concrete evidence" that ... police officer P. T. Dean gave false testimony at the ... trial.
As Brown declined to hear the witnesses, Tonahill rose to his feet, extended his arms, and said:
"For God's sake, do your duty, Judge, and hear this testimony."
The state said such testimony was not set out in the motion for a new trial, and thus was not material to the hearing.
… Tonahill tried to call Ray Hall, an FBI agent, and officer Dean himself to the stand, but was not allowed to. He said Hall would impeach Dean's testimony. AP, 5:17 p.m. CST
[See Police, 3/7.]
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5/9/64 Mark Lane, in a statement to the Guardian 5/4 ... said he has learned that a second rifle, not the one attributed to Oswald, was found on the roof of the Texas Schoolbook Depository building the day the President was murdered.
[Lane describes a meeting between Thayer Waldo, reporter for Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, and Mike Howard, Secret Service agent.] ... At one point during their meeting, Waldo asked Mike Howard whether there was any truth to the story that another rifle was found on the roof of the school book building, a story that had previously been denied. Mike Howard replied: "Yes, we found a rifle on the roof, but it was dropped by a Dallas police officer earlier in the day and he forgot to pick it up." National Guardian
5/9/64 Guardian account of story in the 5/17/64, issue of the National Enquirer [which the Guardian carefully labels "a weekly with sensationalist leanings"], to the effect that Ruby and Oswald were said to be suspects when General Walker was shot at; Justice Department wrote to Chief Jesse Curry asking that they not be arrested, for 'reasons of state', making the request on behalf of the CIA. 'Because the CIA was deeply involved with Ruby - and probably Oswald, too. CIA agents had been using Ruby to recruit men in the Dallas area to serve as commandos against Castro's government in Cuba. And they didn't dare let Ruby be arrested and chance such information getting out. There were also indications that Oswald himself might have been working ... as a double agent for both the Communists and the CIA.' [Quotations from National Enquirer.] National Guardian
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5/16/64 Dallas – [50 murders in Dallas since 1/1. and President John McKee of the Dallas Crime Commission forecasts a record total by year's end.]
If murders continue at the current rate, he told directors of the Commission, the figure will reach 150 for all of 1964.
The number of murder victims for the first four months of this year is 13 greater than the 37 recorded for the same period in 1963. …
McKee reported major crimes in Dallas have increased 17 per cent this year, compared to a 6 per cent rate of increase nationally. AP A42dn
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5/20/64 Dallas, 5/19 - … Mr. [Justice of the Peace David L.] Johnston said in an interview [today] that he overheard an assistant district attorney and a policeman discussing whether a conspiracy-to-murder charge should be filed [against Oswald]. But the Justice of the Peace said there was no evidence of a conspiracy. Only a murder charge was filed.
[Mr. Johnston] said he understood that a Washington official telephoned District Attorney Henry Wade asking that the murder charge not include a conspiracy charge.
However, Mr. Wade said today, "I received calls from all over the country" about a possible conspiracy, "but none from officials." New York Times [AP]
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6/2/64 Dallas - … Wade told reporters he saw the memo in which [Lt. Jack] Revill said an FBI agent told him the federal agency knew Lee Harvey Oswald was capable of shooting the President. AP, 1:54 a.m. CST
See 4/24/64
6/5/64 Dallas - The Dallas Times-Herald quoted an auto salesman today as saying he believes one of the three bullets fired at President Kennedy 11/22 hit a curb about 10 feet in front of the salesman and grazed his face.
"What bothers me is why nobody has taken an interest in my story before," said the 27-year-old Dallas man who asked that his name not be used.
… He said he told his story [11/22] to a detective and was interviewed by FBI agents in mid-December. AP, 8:03 p.m. CST
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6/8/64 Interview with special security agent Atsuyuki Sassa in Tokyo.
Role of Tippit. Sassa turned again to Buchanan's writings:
"Buchanan holds that Policeman Tippit [J. D. Tippit, killed by Oswald about an hour after the President's assassination] was in on a right-wing plot to kill Kennedy. But let's look at the facts:
"There are over a thousand men on the Dallas police force. More than half were assigned to guard the President. Buchanan says Tippit was driving alone, something unusual.
"Of course it was unusual not to have two men in a police cruiser. But the reason is that half of the force was on guard duty."
Sassa also said this about police work at the time of the assassination:
"The FBI and Dallas police were concentrating their surveillance on some 20 potentially dangerous ultra-rightists in the Dallas area. They were not paying much attention to leftists. Recent assaults, such as that upon Adlai Stevenson, had been made by rightist elements. We've made the same mistake in Japan. I served as a bodyguard for Russia's Anastas Mikoyan, for example. We watched the rightists, not leftists.
"I met a number of Dallas policemen who were fast frequently in Ruby's place [Jack Ruby shot Oswald to death two days after the President's assassination], and regularly accepted free drinks. No good policeman leaves without paying for his own drinks no matter what the deal is with the management. But I could find no indication of any police connivance in exposing Oswald to possible assassination. In any security operation there's yudan [negligence]. It's always obvious later. We are guilty of this in Japan too. In retrospect, we've done some foolish things." U.S. News & World Report, pp. 38-9.
6/15/64 Correcting translation error, Sassa says he never met any Dallas police who frequented the night club operated by Jack Ruby ... U.S. News & World Report
6/15/64 Tokyo - A Japanese security agent's story of the Kennedy assassination created quite a stir here.
The story, based on agent Atsuyuki Sassa's survey of American security methods, first appeared in the U.S. News & World Report issue of 6/8. It has since been confirmed in all essential details, although it develops that the Japanese officer had no official connection with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's study of the assassination. Sassa did work with various security agencies in the U.S.
Correcting a translation error: Sassa says he never met any Dallas police who frequented the nightclub operated by Jack Ruby, convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald. U.S. News & World Report, p. 16
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6/29/64 Washington - The Warren commission decided today to request the FBI to investigate the newspaper publication of the diary of Lee Harvey Oswald ...
The decision was announced by J. Lee Rankin ... who said the ... commission is seriously concerned by disclosure of the evidence. He told reporters the Commission has been advised that "the document was secured by the Dallas police and then turned over to the FBI along with many other documents."
The commission has been advised also, he went on, that "the Dallas police were furnished copies of all the documents they turned over to the FBI." When asked whether the Commission is concerned about leaks from the commission itself, he replied:
"We think we know that it was not the FBI or the Commission." AP, 11:11 p.m. EDT
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6/30/64 Washington - … Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry said in Chicago that his department did not release the Oswald diary. "To my knowledge," said Curry, "we do not have a copy of it. I certainly have not seen it."
Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade said his office's only copy is locked in his office. AP, 6:11 a.m. CST
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7/6/64 New York, [7/3] - … [Mark] Lane charged [today] that the Dallas authorities "have switched rifles in order that a rifle allegedly mailed to Oswald's post office box in March appeared to be the murder weapon." Lane, who testified before the Warren Commission on 7/2, was permitted to examine the weapon which allegedly was used by Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy.
During January, Lane revealed that he had in his possession a Photostat copy of an affidavit on file in the Dallas District Attorney's office. The affidavit, signed by a Dallas police officer who found a rifle on the sixth floor of the Book Depository building less than one hour after the assassination, contained the sworn statement by the officer that the weapon was a German Mauser, Caliber 7.65. The following day the Dallas District Attorney stated that the murder weapon was an Italian Carbine, Caliber 6.5 and it was the weapon which was discovered on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building and erroneously identified by the officer.
Those defending the official view argued that the officer, after examining the weapon, mistakenly concluded that it was a German Mauser, Caliber 7.65, because it bore no identifying markings. Mr. Lane, in his July appearance before the Warren Commission, while examining the rifle read into the record those markings which appeared on the rifle and which were indelibly engraved thereon in large letters. The markings were: "Made Italy" and CAL 6.5."
"There can be but one explanation, charged Lane," and that is that the local law enforcement authorities have switched rifles in order to 'prove' Oswald's guilt." News release, Citizens' Committee of Inquiry, New York
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7/16/64 Dallas - FBI agents combed an area near the triple underpass yesterday [where] a bullet may have nicked the curb 11/22 ...
… A motorist told officers minutes after the assassination that he was stung by a small object while watching the Kennedy motorcade.
Deputies [11/22] found a fresh chip in concrete curbing near the spot where he said he stood, which they said could have been made by a stray bullet or fragment of a bullet. AP, 10:10 a.m. CST
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8/19/64 [Ruby speaking of going to the police station on the evening of 11/22:]
… I am in the hallway there - there is a narrow hallway, and I don't recall if Captain Fritz or Chief Curry brings the prisoner out, and I am standing about two or three feet away from him ...
See version of same interview by Carl Freund, Dallas Morning News, 6/27: And he said he had never seen Oswald before he lunged forward and shot the assassination suspect while millions watched on television. San Francisco Examiner [New York Journal American], Partial text of Warren Interview of Ruby; by Dorothy Kilgallen
See Police, New York Times, Homer Bigart, quoting Patrick T. Dean: "[Ruby] said he first noticed the sarcastic sneer on Oswald's face [when he saw Oswald at the press conference 11/22]."
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8/25/64 Dallas - Defense lawyers have added document to the official records of the Jack Ruby murder trial to back their claim a key prosecution witness gave false testimony.
The documents were affidavits signed by Dallas and Ft. Worth television newsmen and lawyers. They supported defense claims that Police Sgt. Patrick Dean did not tell the truth about his conversation with Ruby after the shooting of ... Oswald … AP 158 acs
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9/64 The Dallas list of subversives comprised 23 names, of which Oswald's was the first. All of them were followed that day, except Oswald. Why did the authorities follow many persons as potential assassins and fail to observe Oswald's entry into the Book Depository building while allegedly carrying a rifle over three feet long? The Minority of One, 16 Questions on the Assassination, by Bertrand Russell, p. 6
9/64 Oswald's description was broadcast by the Dallas police only 12 minutes after the President was shot, ... at 12:43 p.m. The Minority of One, 16 Questions on the Assassination, Bertrand Russell, p. 8
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9/64 … The route of the Kennedy procession was changed [to go in front of the depository] only at the last minute by the Secret Service upon the advice of the local police and the FBI. The Realist, by Paul Krassner [attributing to Mark Lane speaking at Cafe Au Go Go, NY, "this month".]
9/64 [An account of a visit with Mrs. Oswald to the apartment of Mrs. Helen Markham, of alleged police threats to the Markham family, of her son's defiance of those threats and of his eventual arrest on charges or burglary and parole violation and Mrs. Oswald's seven-hour battle to secure him a lawyer] The Realist, The Unsinkable Marguerite Oswald, by Harold Feldman, p. 12
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- 9/27/64 Story raises several questions, pointing to possible collusion between police and Ruby, enabling him to enter basement of police department building 11/25/63. New York Journal-American, by Dorothy Kilgallen
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9/28/64 Dallas - heads of law enforcement agencies in Dallas either had no comment or were not available for comment today regarding the Warren Commission Report. San Francisco Examiner, AP
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9/28/64 Two unnamed Dallas officials tried to prevent JFK's body being removed until after autopsy, Warren Report says. Washington Evening Star
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10/9/64 Dallas - Police Chief Jesse Curry said an FBI agent had asked him to deny that the FBI had failed to warn police about Lee Harvey Oswald. Named Gordon Shanklin as the agent, in a letter to Warren Commission made public yesterday. New York Times [UPI]
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10/16/64 Dallas- Shanklin made public a letter to Curry denying he ever asked Curry to cover up for the FBI, and asked Curry to deny it. In subsequent letter, Curry quoted as denying it. New York Times [UPI]
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10/24/64 [Report of debate between Melvin Belli and Mark Lane, Manhattan Center, New York, 10/19/64.]
Lane ... made the following points, among others:
"The Secret Service, FBI and Dallas police questioned Oswald for 12 of the 48 hours he was in police custody, yet the Report says no transcript or recording is available of statements Oswald undoubtedly made during this time. … The FBI takes notes. According to the Dallas Morning News soon after the assassination, a Dallas police stenographer was in the room when Oswald was questioned. We are not allowed to see what Oswald said because it is not consistent with his guilt." National Guardian, by Jack A. Smith
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10/31/64 In another aspect of the case, Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry said in a letter to the Commission made public 10/6 that an FBI agent had asked him to deny that the federal agency failed to warn the police about Oswald before the assassination. Curry said agent Gordon Shanklin, agent in charge of the Dallas FBI office, made the request by telephone 11/22, soon after Curry told newsmen that the FBI had not informed his department about Oswald. National Guardian
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11/64 ... For example, one might inquire how it was possible for the Dallas police to dispatch the description of Lee Harvey Oswald, including his name, at 12:45 p.m. When Oswald was arrested, the Dallas authorities agreed he was being sought solely for the murder of officer Tippit. A puzzling questions arises: why was Oswald sought then - ostensibly for the murder of officer Tippit - while officer Tippit was still alive? The Commission concedes that Oswald's description was dispatched at 12:45 p.m. and that officer Tippit was killed at 1:15 or 1:16 p.m. ... The Commission concludes that they do not know how Oswald's description was dispatched. ... The Minority of One, The Warren Report: A First Glance, by Mark Lane, p. 6
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11/25/64 Police questioning of Oswald, AP, 841pcs
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12/7/64 Des Moines, IA - Newton T. Fisher, deputy chief of police at Dallas, TX, said today he wanted to eliminate the turn in President Kennedy's motorcade where the President was assassinated.
"This is hindsight," he told an interviewer, "but I had the same idea prior to the thing that happened in Dallas. ... "
… As to the motorcade, Fisher said, "I would have had it go straight ahead on Main St. to Industrial Ave. and on to the Trade Mart [where Kennedy was to speak].
"You want to eliminate any turns in the route you can, because in turns the motorcade is more vulnerable and spends more time at a given spot.
… "The straighter route would have put him 150 to 200 feet farther away from the window" where the assassin stood.
Fisher said Dallas police did not have a firm commitment until two days before" as to handling of the Kennedy visit.
"We had prepared two or three possible routes so as not to be wholly unprepared," he said.Was Main St. one of the alternate routes, and published by mistake in Dallas Morning News, 11/22? [Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?, by Joachim Joesten]
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3/65 pp. 20-21, comprehensive examination of the question of who did or did not order the search of the Texas School Book Depository; conflicting testimony and evidence, no other building searched, etc. The Minority of One, Fifty-one Witnesses The Grassy Knoll, by Harold Feldman, p. 16
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4/65 An exploration of evidence in the Warren Report and supplements pointing toward Ruby's connections with Dallas police and officials, big time gambling, narcotics, anti-Castro Cubans, and rackets. The Minority of One, Who is Jack Ruby?, by Mark Lane, p. 8
Note important correction on p. 11 from May issue.
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4/18/64 Dallas - Patrolman A. C. Clark suspended after quick-drew his .38 pistol and it discharged, wounding Patrolman Billy Joe Clark [no relation]. Incident called horseplay. AP
See AP, 642aps, 4/23/64
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5/65 On presence of newsmen at police department:
What is less generally recognized is that this is strong evidence that there was no police association with any suspected conspiracy, because newsmen are not usually invited to be present on such an occasion. If there had been any conspiracy they would have been carefully excluded. New York University Law Review, by Arthur L. Goodhart,. p. 410
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5/17/65 Dallas - The most elaborate security precautions in memory were put into effect in Dallas today for the visit of Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
... Marguerite Oswald placed under surveillance. AP
See also Portland Oregonian, AP, 5/19/65
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6/6/65 Not since the assassination of President Kennedy has the FBI admitted a Dallas policeman to train at its national academy. ... Dallas Morning News, by James Ewell,
6/8/65 New York Times [AP]
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2/17/66 Dallas – Chief Jesse Curry resigns, citing high blood pressure. Once said "the worst thing that ever happened to us was Jack Ruby." AP
See under 2/18/66, San Francisco Examiner, News CB, and Dallas Times-Herald.
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2/17/66 Dallas - Chief Jesse Curry resigns because "the continued pressures and tensions of the office have caused my blood pressure to be affected."
Succeeded by assistant chief Charles Batchelor.
See under 2/15 San Francisco Examiner, News CB, and Dallas Times-Herald.
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2/21/66 Row between City Councilman Joe Moody and City Manager Elgin Crull. Moody charges Crull appointed assistant chief Charles Batchelor to succeed Jesse Curry, who resigned as chief without informing council. Crull replies charter gives him sole responsibility for naming police chief and police dept. so driven by "tremendous dissension in the upper echelons" that he wanted to avoid any delay after Curry announced his resignation. 2/17. Dallas Times-Herald
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6/25/66 Austin, TX, [6/24] - Reasons why Jack Ruby should have a new trial were given today before the three-man Texas Court of Criminal Appeals by his lawyers. Ruby is appealing the death penalty ...
... A major argument concerned testimony by Sgt. Patrick T. Dean of the Dallas police as to what Mr. Ruby had said on the question of motive.
[For arguments on this question, see Ruby, 6/24 and 6/25/66.] New York Times
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7/12/66 Dallas -- Police intelligence section chief Lt. Jack Revill transferred to police personnel division. [no explanation, but detailed account of how Revill had testified Hosty had told him Oswald had shot JFK and that FBI had known about him, which J. Edgar Hoover denied.] AP 818pcs
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7/14/66 FBI role reported in police shakeup; 2 transfers follow right over report,
Lt. Jack Revill and Detective V. J. Brian, police intelligence officers were transferred following conversations between FBI officials and officials of the city government and police departments. Dallas Morning News
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7/14/66 Lt. Jack Revill, head-of the intelligence section, and Det. V. J. Brian transferred after disclosing confidential FBI report on Mafia members to other police [Los Angeles]. Two FBI agents reportedly suspended 30 days also. Two other unnamed police officers also transferred.
Speculation that the FBI had wanted Revill removed since shortly after JFK assassination. Dallas Morning News, by James Ewell and John Geddie,
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7/15/66 Dallas Times-Herald says Revill transferred after he forwarded an FBI report on Joe Valachi to LA police. Two FBI agents transferred out of Dallas as a result. Example of how routine police work and FBI can get into conflict. AP 344pcs
See 7/12 reference for background on Revill.
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8/19/66 Richard Stark and Paul-Michel Mielche said they were harassed and threatened in Dallas while working on documentary film Rush to Judgment. Police warned them "it might be dangerous" if they didn't get out of town. They said their impression was that the police "were more concerned about our footage on the death of Tippit … than in the Kennedy shooting." San Francisco Chronicle
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10/10/66 p. 58 - Q. Were you at all disappointed or handicapped by the fact that the Dallas police did not keep a record of their interrogation of Oswald?
A. Well, there again, I believe that the more comprehensive the evidence is, the better it would have been. But I do not believe that the absence was a major obstacle or hindrance. U.S. News & World Report, Interview of Arlen Specter,
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12/9/66 Dallas -First reports on care of Ruby prior to his final illness. AP A87 et seq.
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1/2/67 Dallas - Officials refuse reporters inspection of Ruby's jail medical records. Officials say only medication records kept.
Ruby transferred to hospital one day before a private physician called by Ruby's brother and sister was scheduled to see him. Hospitalized only after Decker expressed grave concern about his condition after visiting him in his cell.
Dr. Pickard had not seen Ruby since 1964 until 12/9.
Dr. Callahan: "I thought he might have pneumonia. We thought it was a cold. As we found out to our dismay, it was more than that. Its kind of discouraging, but that's the way the ball bounces. Said Decker was concerned because he had Ruby's relatives on his neck. San Francisco Chronicle, Times-Post Service
12/9/66-1/3/67 Final illness of Jack Ruby.
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1/3/67 Paris - Melvin Belli contends Dallas authorities were negligent in caring for Ruby.
"I can't understand that no one could see that this man, kept under close watch after a suicide attempt, was dying." … AP, A98 720pes
Detroit - Sol Dann calls for investigation to determine whether the sheriffs office protected the health of Ruby. "Instead of dying in the electric chair he died in a hospital. It should be determined whether that was the result of neglect. I have strong feelings in that regard that it was not properly protected." AP B54 801pcs
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1/4/67 Chicago -- Ruby relatives charge neglect.
"Jack Ruby was throwing up in jail for four months and they neglected him for that time," said brother Earl. San Francisco Examiner
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1/15-21/67 Includes some medical opinions about the possibilities of implanting cancer. Ramparts, Jack Ruby and His Jail Doctors, by David Welch,
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4/10/64 Dallas - Blow-by-blow account of the Tippit shooting sequence which depicts both FBI chief Gordon Shanklin and police Capt. Will Fritz as baffled about why Tippit didn't draw his gun. Says these top investigators fed up with many mysteries claimed by outsiders that they know are not mysteries at all. But this is their own inside mystery. They find no answer to what happened at 1:15 that Friday, 11/22. San Francisco Examiner, by Henry J. Taylor
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6/15/67 "[Ferrie] died within twenty-four hours after this writer got a tip that two Dallas policemen had gone to New Orleans to interview [him]." Midlothian Mirror, by Penn Jones, Jr.
[David Ferrie died 2/22/67.]
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1/24/68 Thompson said that figure in Willis Slide 8, taken by some to be Ruby, is Dallas police inspector [unnamed] Josiah Thompson, interviewed by Owen Spann, KGO, Tape No. 66, at 520 feet [Sony 104]
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4/4/68 What happened to records of eight arrests made by the Dallas police after the assassination? Who were these people and why were they freed?
William Turner, speaking in Mill Valley, CA, 3/26 Corte Madera [CA] Courier
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5/27/68 Barnaby Conrad, bankrolled by Millionaire Gordon McLendon, is putting together a 30-minute TV film on the Kennedy assassination, using the flopped-still technique that worked so well in Death of Manolete. Among Barnaby's finds in Dallas: The only known photo of Oswald being arrested in the Texas Theater ..." Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle
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6/5/69 "From the Dallas News of 4/27/69 we learned that Dallas Police Lieutenant George Butler was being touted for a United States Marshal job under the Nixon administration.
"Testimony of witness Thayer Waldo [Hearing XV, pp. 585-596] indicated that [Butler] knew in advance that [Ruby] was going to kill [Oswald]. Butler was never called as a witness, so we don't know if Waldo was correct. Of course that is the way not to find out. Have a suspect named, but don't call him for questioning." Midlothian Mirror
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11/22/69 JFK Assassination File, Jesse E. Curry, Published by Mustang Advertising, Inc., P.O. Box 1654, Dallas, TX, 75221, 3438 McFarlin #102, Dallas, Texas, 75205
All rights reserved to Jesse E. Curry and American Poster and Printing Company, Inc., 1600 S. Akard, Dallas, TX, 75215 [Date of advertisement], New York Times
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5/2/70 New York - A computer expert [Richard Sprague] who analyzed 300 photographs and 25,000 frames of movies says President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving more than 50 people, including some Dallas policemen and members of the CIA. … [UPI]
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Who really did kill Kennedy?
David Talbot, founder of Salon.com ... believes that new evidence, including his own research encompassing more than 150 interviews, further undermines the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report. [His new book] Brothers ... stresses the extent to which the Kennedy administration faced political pressure from the extreme right, including elements of the CIA leadership, the national security apparatus [and] anti-Castro Cubans. JFK incurred the wrath of his enemies and incubated a desire for revenge in many of them. The author will convince many ... that the likelihood of a conspiracy to assassinate JFK (and maybe RFK) is significant. Talbot's highly readable, at times gripping book makes the case for releasing the classified documents pertaining to the JFK assassination. Declassified JFK files reveal that in 1963, [CIA agent George] Joannides was the agent in charge of one of the most powerful Cuban anti-Castro organizations in Miami, the Revolutionary Students Directorate, or DRE. A few months before JFK's assassination, the DRE had significant contact with Lee Harvey Oswald. In the course of four intensive investigations of the JFK assassination, however, the CIA failed to divulge information about this connection, or even that Joannides was the CIA officer assigned to manage the DRE, and refused to release important parts of Joannides' personnel file. In September, on grounds of national security, the CIA successfully thwarted a request for such information. Until it is released, many ... will reasonably speculate that crucial information about the JFK assassination is being concealed.
Note: For more reliable information on the Kennedy assassination and more, click here. The History Channel has also made an excellent documentary showing beyond doubt that there was more than one gunman. To order this highly revealing documentary, click here.
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August 121, 2005, The New York Review of Books, Letter, Blocked, Norman Mailer, Jefferson Morley, Scott Armstrong, G. Robert Blakey, and Gerald Posner, et al.
To the Editors:
It is disappointing to learn that the Central Intelligence Agency filed motions in federal court in May 2005 to block disclosure of records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy forty-one years ago.
In response to the journalist Jefferson Morley's lawsuit brought under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA is seeking to prevent release of records about a deceased CIA operations officer named George E. Joannides.
Joannides's story is clearly of substantial historical interest. CIA records show that the New Orleans chapter of a Cuban exile group that Joannides guided and monitored in Miami had a series of encounters with the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald three months before Kennedy was murdered. Fifteen years later, Joannides also served as the agency’s liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He did not disclose his role in the events of 1963 to Congress. The public record of the assassination and its confused investigatory aftermath will not be complete without his story.
The spirit of the law is clear. The JFK Records Act of 1992, approved unanimously by Congress, mandated that all assassination-related records be reviewed and disclosed "immediately."
When Morley filed his lawsuit in December 2003, thirteen published JFK authors supported his request for the records in an open letter to The New York Review of Books. LINK.
Eighteen months later, the CIA is still stonewalling. The agency now acknowledges that it possesses an undisclosed number of documents related to Joannides's actions and responsibilities in 1963 which it will not release in any form. Thus records related to Kennedy’s assassination are still being hidden for reasons of "national security."
As published authors of divergent views on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we say the agency's position is spurious and untenable. Its continuing non-compliance with the JFK Records Act does no service to the public. It defies the will of Congress. It obscures the public record on a subject of enduring national interest. It encourages conspiracy mongering. And it undermines public confidence in the intelligence community at a time when collective security requires the opposite.
We insist the CIA observe the spirit of the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act by immediately releasing all relevant records on the activities of George Joannides and any records at all that include his name or relate in any way to the assassination story—as prescribed by the JFK Records Act. The law and common sense require it.
G. Robert Blakey, former general counsel, House Select Committee on Assassinations
Jefferson Morley, journalist
Scott Armstrong, founder National Security Archive
Vincent Bugliosi, author and former prosecutor
Elias Demetracopoulos, retired journalist
Stephen Dorril, University of Huddersfield
Don DeLillo, author of Libra
Paul Hoch, JFK researcher
David Kaiser, Naval War College
Michael Kurtz, Southeastern Louisiana University, author of Crime of the Century
George Lardner, Jr., journalist
Jim Lesar, Assassination Archives and Research Center
Norman Mailer, author of Oswald’s Tale
John McAdams, moderator, alt.assassination.jfk
John Newman, author of Oswald and the CIA
Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed
Oliver Stone, director JFK
Anthony Summers, author of Not in Your Lifetime
Robbyn Swan, author
David Talbot, founding editor, Salon.com
Cyril Wecht, coroner, Allegheny County, PA
Richard Whalen, author of Founding Father
Gordon Winslow, former archivist of Dade County, Florida.
David Wrone, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, author The Zapruder Film
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Kennedy Assassination Revelations
Note: This intriguing 90-minute video produced by controversial conservative talk-show host Alex Jones is filled with fascinating facts and details. We normally don't recommend controversial sources, but this video, available for free viewing, repeatedly gives solid sources for their information with plenty of original video and photos of original documents related to the JFK assassination. Though rather hard-hitting and accusatory in tone, the revealing footage includes excellent clips from Oliver Stone's movie JFK, which opened many people's eyes to the possibility that there is much more to the Kennedy assassination than most people know. Many thanks to Google for making this video available on their website. And to order a highly professional, amazingly revealing DVD produced by the History Channel which leaves no doubt that the official story of President Kennedy's assassination is riddled with holes,click here.
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What JFK Conspiracy Bashers Get Wrong, by Jefferson Morley
As the 44th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy approaches, you may get caught up in an eruption of the perennial and sometimes tedious conspiracy debate. You want to keep an open mind and make sure you don't fall for any JFK assassination myths. You can, for example, say with confidence that a lot of the crazy JFK conspiracy scenarios have been debunked over the years. No, neither the KGB, the Masons, the Mossad, nor the Red Chinese were behind the gunfire that killed the liberal statesman. No, Abraham Zapruder's famous home movie assassination was not secretly altered to hide evidence of a conspiracy. And, no, the legendary three tramps photographed that day did not whack Jack. They were just a trio of homeless guys in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But no sooner were these fables dispatched by scrupulous JFK researchers, than public discourse on the JFK story was engulfed by a new set of assertions imbued with an anti-conspiratorial animus that is also unhinged from the historical record. These too need the truth squad treatment.
Myth #1 JFK conspiratorial suspicions, like the idea of a gunshot from the so-called grassy knoll, were ginned up after the fact by demagogues like Oliver Stone.
In fact, a significant minority of eyewitnesses at the scene of the crime thought at least one of the gunshots that hit Kennedy came from the knoll, which was actually a grassy embankment bordering a parking lot overlooking the route of JFK's motorcade through downtown Dallas. A survey of eyewitness statements, compiled by conspiracy skeptic John McAdams of Marquette University, found that 42 of 103 bystanders said that the gunfire came from the knoll or from two different directions. To be sure, a larger number said that shots came from a high window of the Texas School Book Depository. And yes, the parking lot on the knoll was searched within minutes and no gunman or ballistic debris was found. And, yes, ear witness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
The fact remains that more than 30 people in the vicinity of Kennedy's limousine--including Dallas sheriff Bill Decker, Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman and a presidential aide David Powers--independently said that they thought a gunshot came from the knoll. Within a week of the crime, pollsters found 62 percent of respondents nationwide said they thought two or more people were responsible. In Dallas, the figure was 66 percent.
Myth #2: JFK conspiracy theories are mostly held by anti-American leftists and credulous liberals.
Try telling that to Bruce Willis. "They still haven't caught the guy that killed [President] Kennedy," the leading Republican in Hollywood told Vanity Fair last spring. Willis was merely voicing a view that has long circulated on the American right. In September 1964, Warren Commission member Senator Richard Russell, a paleo-conservative from Georgia, rejected the so-called single bullet theory and attempted to put a dissent into the commission's final report (only to be slapped down by liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren.) By the late 1960's, conservative figures ranging from former congresswoman Clare Booth Luce to columnist William F. Buckley to Nixon White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman dissented publicly or privately from the Warren report. Mary Ferrell, one of the best-informed JFK researchers, was so adamantly opposed to legal abortion that she told friends that she never voted for a Democrat after 1980. Today, the best JFK assassination Web site, MaryFerrell.org, is named after her.
Myth #3: No reputable historian believes in a JFK conspiracy
Wrong. I know of four tenured academic historians who have written directly on the JFK assassination in the past five years. Three of them (Gerald McKnight of Hood College, David Wrone of the University of Wisconsin-Steven Points, Michael Kurtz of Southeast Louisiana University) came to conspiratorial conclusions, while one (Robert Dallek of UCLA) vouched for the lone gunman theory. A forthcoming book by Naval War College historian David Kaiser on Kennedy's Cuba policy and the assassination, to be published by Harvard University Press next year, is likely to demolish this myth once and for all. (Full disclosure: Kaiser is a friend and the book will cite my JFK reporting.)
Myth #4: Serious people of power in Washington overwhelmingly believe there was no conspiracy.
Hardly. The slain president's own brother Bobby Kennedy was, in the words of journalist David Talbot, "America's first conspiracy theorist." He and First Lady Jackie Kennedy quickly concluded that JFK was the victim of a major domestic plot. Lyndon Johnson suspected that the assassination resulted from the struggle for power in Cuba. Richard Nixon hounded the CIA for files on "the whole Bay of Pigs thing," which his aides understood to mean Kennedy's assassination. George H.W. Bush, upon becoming CIA director in 1976 immediately asked for the JFK assassination file, not exactly the action of someone who thought he knew the whole story. Bill Clinton and Al Gore both said publicly in 1992 that they believed there had been a conspiracy. (Once in office, Clinton recanted.) George W. Bush, to be sure, is a firm believer in the lone nut theory. But, when it comes to providing credible explanations of U.S. intelligence failures that culminated in national catastrophe, Bush's track record is not reassuring.
Myth #5. Scientists unequivocally support the lone gunman theory.
The latest peer-reviewed articles indicate otherwise. One piece of scientific analysis, "bullet lead analysis," that was long used to buttress the so-called "single bullet" theory has been decisively debunked, as a recent front page series in the Washington Post shows. A study of the JFK ballistics evidence, published in the Journal of Forensic Science in 2006, concluded that its findings "considerably weaken support for the single-bullet theory." A pair of articles on the medical evidence, published in Neurosurgery in 2004, offered a split decision. One supported the official story; the other provided strong evidence based on sworn testimony from multiple eyewitnesses that the photographic record of JFK's autopsy has been tampered with. The-called acoustic evidence--a Dallas Police Department radio recording that some scientists say contains evidence of a shot from the grassy knoll has been called into question but not refuted by other scientists. The issue remains unresolved. My own review of the crime scene evidence, published this month on Playboy.com, concludes that the scientific case for Oswald's sole guilt has been weakened in recent years.
Myth #6: There is nothing significant to be found in the new JFK files identified since Oliver Stone's JFK
Depends on how closely you care to look. The long suppressed CIA records made public since the 1990s certainly do not confirm Stone's depiction of the assassination as a virtual coup d'etat by the CIA and the Pentagon but they do raise new questions about the Dallas tragedy. They demonstrate that a handful of top CIA officials had much greater knowledge of Oswald's travels and political activities in the weeks before Kennedy was killed than they ever let on. At least one of these operatives-- an undercover officer named George Joannides--remained quiet about what he knew of Oswald's Cuban contacts to perhaps a criminal extent.
As I reported in the Huffington Post, CIA attorneys appeared in federal court on last month seeking to block release of dozens of secret records on Joannides's actions in 1963. At the time Joannides served in Miami as the chief of psychological warfare operations aimed at overthrowing Fidel Castro. The CIA argues that release of any portion of more than 30 documents about Joannides--some of them 45 years old-- would harm U.S. national security and foreign policy in 2007. Don't take my word that these records are significant. Just ask the CIA's lawyers.
When you strip away all the tall tales of JFK's assassination, the unsatisfying and infuriating truth is that we still don't have the full story. And that's no myth.
Jefferson Morley, former staff writer at washingtonpost.com, is author of the forthcoming book Our Man in Mexico, a biography of CIA spy Winston Scott. He is the editorial director of newjournalist.org, a national network of online state news sites. His most recent report on new developments in the Kennedy assassination story will be published this month in Playboy.com
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November 25, 1963, Kentucky New Era -AP, page 1, Nation Says Sad Farewell To JFK,
November 25, 1963, Kentucky New Era -AP, page 1, Probers 'Sure' Oswald Guilty; Case Said Airtight, by Peggy Simpson, AP Staff Writer,
November 25, 1963, Kentucky New Era -AP, page 1, Millions See Slaying; Reaction Varied To Oswald Death, by Robert R. Holton,
November 25, 1963, Kentucky New Era -AP, page 1, Closer To People; Kennedy's Assassination Goes Deeper, [Comparison with William McKinley]
November 25, 1963, Kentucky New Era -AP, page 1, Back To Bubble Top; Will Step Up Protection?
November 25, 1963, AP - Richmond County Journal, page 1, Reveal Evidence Against Oswald; Many Convicted On Less, by Peggy Simpson, AP Staff Writer,
November 25, 1963, AP - Richmond County Journal, page 1, Buried Today Among Others Who Gave Lives, by Harry Kelly, AP Staff Writer,
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December 8, 1963, AP - The Nevada Herald, How The Biggest Story of The Century Was Covered,
Associated Press General Manager Wes Gallagher,
Bob Johnson, chief of the Dallas AP bureau,
AP Reporter Jack Bell, in the motorcade four cars back,
Staffer Dick McMurray
Times-Herald Executive Editor Felix McKnight,
Staff Ronnie Thompson,
Staffer W. "Ike" Altgens, a Wirephoto operator-photographer, (His two action shots were the top photo achievements of the day, exclusive to AP, and [seen] Saturday morning around the world. The only spot action pictures available on the assassination for some 24 hours)
In Washington, AP News Editor Marvin Arrowsmith, AP man Lewis Gulick at the State Department. Staffers Art Edson, Frances Lewine and Raymond J. Crowley were sent to Andrews Air Force Base to board a plane that was to take Robert Kennedy to Dallas. The plane never left. AP man Doug Cornell drove in from his day off.
From New York, Art Everett to Dallas; Hugh Mulligan, Saul Pett and Jules Loh to Washington, with Loh later going to Dallas. Richard K. O'Malley flew from Paris to report on De Gaulle.
Additional Dallas reinforcements came from Austin, Los Angeles, San Antonio,. Fort Worth, Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City Bureau Chief Wilbur Martin left for Dallas within 15 minutes.
Then came the incredible Sunday morning. In the Dallas office Johnson and Martin, were just returning from coffee when the phone rang. It was Peggy Simpson, on duty at police headquarters, and once again the bells rang on the AP teletype printers:
"Flash -- Dallas --Oswald shot."
"Flash -- Dallas -- Oswald dead."
Again the story poured out, and AP raced to the wire those two dramatic pictures, which appeared in The Nevada Daily Mail on Monday, Nov. 25, from Jack Beers of the Dallas Morning News and Bob Jackson of the Dallas Times Herald -- pictures of Oswald about to be shot, Oswald being shot.
AP Photographer Henry Griffin in one of the great pictures of Jacqueline and Carolyn Kennedy kneeling at the President's casket.
AP Writer Douglas Cornell. In the first 12 hours after the President was shot the Associated Press moved stories, totaling more than 63,000 words directly relating to the tragedy. In the first four days AP Wirephoto delivered 248 action and associated pictures from staff and member resources.
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March 19, 1964, Sumter Daily Item, page 1, Ruby Fires Belli, by Peggy Simpson,
A Dallas jury convicted Ruby Saturday of slaying Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President Kennedy, and sentenced him to ...
Mar 25, 1964, Gettysburg Times, New Defense Is Planned By Ruby Lawyer, by Peggy Simpson,
DALLAS, Tex. ... convicted March 14 of slaying Lee Harvey Oswald, President John Kennedy's accused assassin, and sentenced to death ...
October 6, 1964, Boston Globe, Far Cry From Life at the Girlie Joints, by Peggy Simpson,
Jack Ruby of today is a pallid reminder of the flashy ... amidst policemen and reporters to shoot down Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin.
December 12, 1966, The Telegraph, Specialists Begin Examining Cancer-stricken Jack Ruby, by Peggy Simpson,
DALLAS, Tex. - Medical specialists start examining Jack Ruby for retrial on a charge of murder in the slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald. ...
December 12, 1966, Gettysburg Times, Seek Source Of Cancer Spreading Through Body Of Ruby, Oswald, by Peggy Simpson,
December 12, 1966, Free Lance-Star, Ruby's Case Is Not Hopeless, by Peggy Simpson,
Ruby, is the nonsmoking, onetime Dallas night operator who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, later identified by the Warren Commission as ...
February 4, 1967, Warsaw Times-Union,, page 3, Autopsy Reveals Ruby's Tumors Not Present At Time Of Oswald Shooting, by Peggy Simpson,
February 4, 1967, Evening News, Ruby Brain Tumors Cancer Outgrowth, by Peggy Simpson,
I which led to his death Jan. ... South Vietnam today for a sec - brain tumors — the largest Oswald two days after Oswald . three-fourths of ...
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November 25, 1972, Free Lance-Star, Too Busy For Tears, AP former Dallas bureau chief recalls reporting the day John F. Kennedy was killed, by Bob Johnson,
Assistant Bureau Chief Jim Mangan,
Frank Cormier and Jack Bell would be the Washington AP newsmen traveling with the President and Henry Burroughs would be the photographer. State Editor Bob Ford, Forth Worth Correspondent Mike Cochran, Dallas photographer Ferd Kaufman and Mangan covered Kennedy at his Fort Worth stop. Mangan drove back to Dallas and joined Bob Ford and Patricia Curran at the Trade Mart. Raymond Holbrook met the Presidential party at Love Field.
I had assigned Peggy Simpson to the downtown parade route and had instructed her to follow the motorcade on foot as best she could so that she could break away in case of heckling. I also knew that either Bell or Cormier would be in the pool car with a mobile telephone.
As soon as the motorcade left downtown Dallas, Peggy was supposed to go to Love Field and catch a plane for Austin. I had plenty of staffers in the Austin bureau, but the reception there that night was closed to everybody except invited guests. Peggy had gotten a state legislator to invite her as his date. This meant the AP probably would have the only reporter there, with the possibility of turning up an exclusive color story. We felt very clever about this.
We also, of course, had photographers at Love Field, along the motorcade route, and at the Trade Mart. One of these was Ike Altgens, a Wirephoto operator who often doubled as a photographer. Newsphoto Editor Dave Taylor told Altgens his post was the railroad trestle of the Triple Underpass, through which the motorcade would leave downtown and head north on Stemmons Freeway to the Trade Mart. The idea was that Altgens could get a scenic shot of the motorcade approaching the underpass with the downtown skyline forming a backdrop.
I brought Night Editor Ron Thompson to sit in as state editor for Ford. I joined Thompson on the desk, making a fourth.
As I drove to the office, though, I worried more than anything else about Peggy Simpson and her legman assignment on the motorcade route: I was afraid the drizzle would spoil her hairdo for the reception that night in Austin.
Austin photographer Ted Powers.
Peggy started back to the office, thinking she would get to contribute only a minor sentence about the friendly crowd. She heard a girl ask a policeman: "Why did he have to go by so fast?" And the policeman laughed. He said: "Well, you know, Honey, everybody in Dallas wants to shoot him; they've got to get him out of town fast." In the midst of the happy laughing crowd, the intended irony seemed mildly amusing.
Ike Altgens tried to take his station on the railroad trestle. A cop ran him off because he wasn't a railroad employee. Ike went to look for a spot on the street near the Triple Underpass...
Felix McKnight, the Times-Herald executive editor. Wire filer Dick McMurray. Ron Thompson.
The telephone rang. It was Altgens.
"Bob, the President has been shot!"
"Ike, how do you know?"
"I saw it. There was blood on his head. Jackie jumped up and grabbed him and cried, 'Oh no!' The motorcade raced onto the freeway.
"Ike, you saw that?"
"Yes, I was shooting pictures then and I saw it."
Teletype operator Julia Saunders timed it off on the AAA wire at 12:39 p.m. (CST). This was the first word in publishable form that President Kennedy had been shot.
Altgens had run five blocks from the scene to our Newsphoto office in the Dallas Morning News building. He had tossed his camera to another operator and called me on the hotline linking our two offices.
While we got the story moving, Altgens' film was processed and three historic pictures were transmitted: President Kennedy waving to the people just before the turn into Elm Street; the President's head dropping forward, with Mrs. Kennedy's white-gloved hand reaching to aid him, and a Secret Service Agent leaping onto the rear of the Presidential car to come to Mrs. Kennedy's aid. These were the only professional pictures made at the scene.
Harold Ratliff, the bureau sports editor.
New York had called. I talked to General Manager Wes Gallager and General News Editor Sam Blackman. Wilbur Martin, Oklahoma City bureau chief. Pat Curran and Ford at Parkland Hospital, along with Val Immof of the Times-Herald.
Why was Bell beaten to the phone in the pool car?
In the front seat of the car were a police driver, Acting Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff and Merriman Smith of UPI. In the back seat were Bob Clark of ABC, Bob Baskin of the Dallas Morning News, and Bell.
New York Traffic Bureau Chief Bernie Farrell and Dallas Traffic Bureau Chief Eddie Edwards.
There were many other rumors that flourished after the assassination, mainly the one that there was more than one gunman. From our investigations at the time, we concluded that many of these rumors were started by foreign reporters unable to believe that an assassination could result from anything other than a political plot in the European tradition.
Peggy Simpson had checked in at police headquarters and started compiling a list of the known evidence against Oswald. She called and said that Oswald was to be transferred to the county jail at 10:30 a.m. Another newsman was waiting at the county jail, and we had photographers at both places.
[...]
Martin and I ran back into our bureau. The phone rang and Wilbur grabbed it. It was Peggy. I could hear her yell; :"They shot him!"
Peggy had been standing with about 150 other reporters in the basement corridor down which Oswald would be led. As he came into view and was about to turn a corner, Peggy heard a shot and saw Oswald double over. She heard him gasp. Pandemonium broke out. Peggy quickly found a telephone in a small office adjoining the corridor. And now she was reporting to Martin.
Jerry Pillard of the Austin staff was at the hospital. We sent San Antonio Correspondent Chuck Green to join him.
Punch Operator Joe Accardi walked over to Wilbur and me and said: "I know Jack Ruby---I've known him for years."
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