Wednesday, 13 March 2013 14:09

"I Don't Think Lee Harvey Oswald Pulled the Trigger": An Interview with Dale Myers

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Dale Myers' early opinions on the assassination as a covert operation, as revealed in this interview with John Kelin from 1982.


Note: This transcript is from an interview with Dale Myers, conducted back in 1982. At that time I was working as a reporter at WEMU-FM in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a public radio station on the campus of Eastern Michigan University. Myers came to the campus to lecture on the assassination of JFK, and I covered it for the station. We spoke a day or two before the lecture, and an edited version of that interview was broadcast on November 18, 1982.

Myers was, as the following makes plain, selling conspiracy.


John Kelin: It's been close to twenty years since the assassination. Why should people still be concerned about this, at this late date?

Dale Myers: Oh, well, because the act of the assassination was simply – that's the thing that opened the window, so to speak. The public got a glimpse of an intelligence covert operation. You know, prior to 1963 we were pretty much in a cocoon, so to speak, as far as how government operates. Since then, of course, we've had Watergate, and all the other atrocities of government.

And so, I guess what people don't realize is that the assassination has a direct bearing on what is happening today. And we've all heard the cliché that history repeats itself. And I guess it's because people never read history. And so I think it's important that we understand what happened simply for historical context – not that anybody is going to be prosecuted, or that anybody is ever going to prove, you know, that this guy did this – or whatever.

John Kelin: What do you hope to accomplish with this lecture?

Dale Myers: Okay. I was prepared for this question! [laughs]

The point is not to prove that this person had his finger on the trigger, or that these people were involved – although certainly we'll cover that area. The point, really, is seeing how certain agencies, or certain government agencies, reacted. This was an extremely tense situation. And there was a tremendous covert operation that was tied directly to the assassination. Not that they were involved, but there's a direct link between a covert operation that was going on at this particular time. And there were a lot of agencies involved. Military intelligence, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency. And how they reacted – and of course the coverup came from that – but how they reacted during this particular situation, with all the pressures they were under, public and otherwise, is important today. If something similar – not to say a shooting or an assassination – but a similar situation, where there's an immense amount of public pressure, a tense situation where, you know, whether it be covert or not – but where there's pressure on the agencies – then we have an inkling, or we have an idea, of how they're going to react.

John Kelin: What do you think about Lee Harvey Oswald? Could he have done it by himself?

Dale Myers: Oh, certainly: anybody could have done it by themselves. First off, I don't think Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger.

John Kelin: The trigger, or a trigger?

Dale Myers: Okay ... a trigger.

John Kelin: I mean – you know, if there were two gunmen, could he have been one of them?

Dale Myers: Exactly. Okay. Well the gun that was fired from the Texas School Book Depository was the gun that fired all the shots that hit any victims. And including the fatal shot. But I don't think he was the finger that was behind that trigger. Although there's no doubt that it was his rifle. And to say that he did not pull the trigger does not mean that he was not involved in some way; he obviously was involved. But as far as saying that he was guilty ... I find that extremely hard to believe. And I think I'll show enough evidence to indicate, or that I think I could circumstantially beyond a reasonable doubt, so to speak, prove to anybody else, that he was not the man behind the trigger.

You know, that's one thing about this that's good for myself as far as – it doesn't get monotonous. In other words, it's not a ritual where every year I get out and I go through the same tired old facts, and re-hash the same things the Warren Commission did back in 1964.

John Kelin: What's new in the investigation?

Dale Myers: I think the primary thing is the National Academy of Sciences, which came out with the report that refutes, and I would say conclusively, along with them, the acoustics, or ballistics, report that the House Select Committee based their decision that there were two gunmen firing at President Kennedy in 1978 – the Report came out early this year.

John Kelin: Mm-hmm.

Dale Myers: And they did their investigation last year. It refutes conclusively, as I say, that there were two gunmen. In other words, the Dallas police tapes that supposedly show that there were four shots fired at the President at such and such a spacing – one from the grassy knoll – is inaccurate. There are no tapes that reveal the shots that we know of.

So, that changes...

John Kelin: Everything! That changes everything!

Dale Myers: Well – yeah, pretty much. That changes your – that changes not only the acoustics, but the trajectories that the House Select Committee did were based on the acoustics. So that throws all that out the window.

John Kelin: Right. They concluded that there was a conspiracy based on those tapes.

Dale Myers: Uh ... yeah. There was – well, see, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence. But yeah, they were looking for some – most of their report was based on hard evidence. So when they had this hard evidence of a tape showing two gunmen, then they were pretty confidant that they could write in their Report that there was more than two men, therefore a conspiracy. That is not to say that there was not a conspiracy simply because there's no tape. It simply means that there's no hard evidence that we thought we had that shows a conspiracy.

So, again, that changes the trajectory, and pretty much we're back at square one, where we were back in 1964. Or at least prior to 78, where there's really just no hard evidence that there was a man firing from the grassy knoll. Again, there's a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence, and I still believe there was someone firing from the grassy knoll. But again, there's no hard evidence.

So it changes a lot of things.

John Kelin: I think, if only for convenience's sake, a lot of people are inclined to accept the Warren Commission's findings, in spite of the '78 report.

Dale Myers: Sure. That stands to reason. Because again, you know, most people have never read anything on this. The average guy doesn't do what I do. And that's not to say that I'm any better than anyone else. It's just to say that I think I have a responsibility, if I'm going to do this, that I need to disseminate the information. And the more I find out, the more important I think it is to just disseminate the information.

You know, some people will sit through this lecture, and they'll still walk away convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was, regardless of what they hear, that he was the gunman. And that's fine. But at least I've done my job. I've said, "Now, okay, here are the facts. You can make up your mind." And pretty much that's how I approach the lecture.

John Kelin: What do you think Oswald was doing at the time the shots were fired?

Dale Myers: Well, I think that he ---

John Kelin: This is just your opinion, I know...

Dale Myers: Exactly. Because there were no witnesses to what he was doing, which obviously makes it extremely suspicious. But just as there are no witnesses that give him an alibi, there are also no witnesses that can put him in the window with the gun in his hand. You know, in 1963, Police Chief Jesse Curry said, "This case is cinched. This is the man who killed the President." Three years later, he told reporters, "We never had any evidence that Oswald was the man in the window." He says, "We don't have any witnesses that can put him in that window with the gun in his hands."

I think the evidence indicates – and there are a lot of eyewitnesses who saw him immediately before the shots – that he was probably on one of the lower floors [of the Texas School Book Depository building] having lunch.

John Kelin: Wasn't he seen on the lower floors just a minute or so after the shots were fired, by a cop and the building foreman?

Dale Myers: Exactly. That's an extremely – well, that really is pretty much the alibi. If you're looking for an alibi that Oswald would have had, that would have been his alibi. And I will go into that in depth in the lecture.

In fact, I've got photographic evidence – because I like to use hard evidence in my lectures as well – I've got photographic evidence that indicates that not only is – well, it's extremely unlikely that Oswald could have been the gunman, based upon that. There are some photographs that were taken that indicate the gunman lingered in the window ... it deals with the boxes in the window.

John Kelin: They were moved?

Dale Myers: Yeah. The boxes were – well there were always indications that the boxes would have to have been re-stacked ... there are photographs that were taken from the outside of the building minutes after the shots, that show a before and after. Immediately after the shots, three seconds after the shots, you see the boxes arranged one way. And there's a picture taken about a minute later which show the boxes in the window re-arranged. So that means the gunman lingered long enough in the window, and there's photographic proof, to re-arrange the boxes. And any time delay raises an extreme question of reasonable doubt of whether or not Oswald would have had time to get down to the second floor lunchroom.

And we're not even talking about a lot of other factors, that we'll go into [in the lecture].

John Kelin: Your area of expertise is J.D. Tippit's murder?

Dale Myers: Exactly.

John Kelin: How does that figure in?

Dale Myers: Well that's the amazing thing. Because, you know, that's one of the most under-researched, the little-talked about – you know, Mark Lane, it was a chapter in his book. Most other writers – Summers, it was a half a page, you know – well, they're trying to encompass the whole assassination, and it's really all they could devote. But really, you could write a book on just the murder of J.D. Tippit. And it's extremely important.

And I think the best person to quote on that would be one of the Warren Commission staffers himself, David Belin, who of course was one of the prime motivators, a prosecutor so to speak, proponent, of the lone gunman theory, and the fact that Oswald was alone in this whole thing.

And he said about the Tippit murder, that "The murder of Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippit is the Rosetta Stone of the assassination of President Kennedy." It's the Rosetta Stone of the case against Lee Harvey Oswald. In other words, if Lee Harvey Oswald killed J.D. Tippit, in other words if we can prove that, then it stands to reason, and extremely logical, and I would follow his logic, that he also killed President Kennedy. Because we show a capacity for violence. And not only violence in his lifetime, but forty-five minutes after President Kennedy is shot. Okay?

But also, let's look at it the other way. If we can prove, or show, that Oswald did not kill J.D. Tippit, then we raise the question of whether or not he murdered President Kennedy. Because we remove the capacity for violence that David Belin used to help the Warren Commission paint the picture of a lone gunman, you know, on Lee Harvey Oswald.

I think I will be able to show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Oswald was not the killer of J.D. Tippit. That Tippit's murder was connected to the assassination of the President. And that the reason Oswald was arrested was because the FBI had advance knowledge of his activities.

Last modified on Saturday, 15 October 2016 17:49
John Kelin

A former public radio announcer and technical writer for Sun Microsystems, John Kelin co-founded Fair Play magazine in 1994, where he presented the work of many Kennedy assassination researchers and writers.  Along with a number of important articles on the case, Kelin is author of Praise from a Future Generation (2007), the untold story of the "first generation critics", based in part on correspondence from the 60s to which he was granted full access by Vincent Salandria.  Read more here.

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