Saturday, 23 October 2021 18:17

Revising the JFK Cover Up: via Malcolm Blunt

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Utilizing new research from Malcolm Blunt, Jim DiEugenio catalogs just how pervasive and extensive the JFK assassination cover-up was across the Warren Commission through the machinations of Allen Dulles and Howard Willens, the mainstream media through the reporting of Hugh Aynesworth, Holland McCombs, and Walter Sheridan, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ attempt to change the location of the JFK head wound and to obscure the connections of Oswald with Guy Banister and Cuban exiles in New Orleans.


As I have stated before, British researcher Malcolm Blunt is perhaps the most valuable continuing source of new information on the JFK case. (Click here for details) I am lucky enough to be a recipient of his work, which he sends me by both snail mail and through email via his friend and colleague Bart Kamp. On his web site, Bart stores much of Malcom’s archival work. (Click here for details)

Some of the recent mailings I have received from Malcolm are thematically linked enough to form a mosaic about the construction of the cover up about the JFK case. As most of us today understand, Lee Harvey Oswald had all the earmarks of being a combination CIA agent provocateur/FBI informant. Through the stellar work of HSCA researcher Betsy Wolf, we have noted that someone in the Agency seems to have rigged Oswald’s file even before his official defection to the USSR. (Click here for details) But further, the whole concept of Oswald’s creation of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans now seems to have served as a kind of Venus flytrap enclosing around the alleged assassin. Paul Bleau explained this in riveting new detail with help from some new Malcolm Blunt documents. If you have not read his two-part milestone article, do so today.

The Warren Commission did next to nothing in excavating the issue of Oswald being an intelligence agent. Allen Dulles had a central role in this. After a rumor surfaced in Dallas about Oswald being an FBI informant, there was an emergency meeting of the Commission. Dulles, since he had been former CIA Director, had a prime role in the discussion. After stating how difficult it would be to prove someone was an informant or undercover agent, Dulles added that, “I would believe Mr. Hoover, some people might not.” And that was the general conclusion of the January 27, 1964 emergency meeting. (Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy, p. 546) The Commission ended up accepting denials of the issue from both the FBI and the CIA. What they did not know was that Dulles was coordinating the replies behind the scenes. (Grose, pp. 547–48; see also Gerald McKnight’s Breach of Trust for the FBI/CIA coordination, p. 93)

There is a possibility it may have been a slightly different story if Earl Warren had been able to appoint his first choice as Chief Counsel. But as we know, Warren Olney was not in the cards for Warren. In many renditions of how Warren was frustrated in his choice of his longtime friend and colleague, commentators credit J. Edgar Hoover, John McCloy, and Gerald Ford for the parry. But this might not be accurate.

In what is now a completely declassified document, Cartha DeLoach wrote up a two-page memorandum on his private conference with Commissioner Gerald Ford. (DeLoach to John Mohr, 12/12/63) The congressman wanted his information to be kept in the strictest confidence. DeLoach said it would be. Ford started by saying he was disturbed by Warren’s conduct of the Commission. He said that at their first meeting, Warren attempted to appoint Olney as Chief Counsel. The congressman then described what happened:

Ford stated that after the mention of Olney’s name by the Chief Justice, at their first meeting, Allen Dulles, former Director of CIA, protested quite violently. Because of Dulles’ protest, the other members told Warren that they would like to know more about Olney prior to giving their consent.

In other words, the initial violent reaction to Olney was not begun, as previously reported, through Hoover and John McCloy, but actually by Dulles. And if one looks over Olney’s past performance, one can get an idea of why Dulles would object to him. (Click here for details) Olney appears to have been a dogged criminal investigator who was not afraid of going after government officials, including several congressmen.

In the DeLoach memo, Ford says this dispute spread itself over the Commission’s first two meetings. At the second session, representative Hale Boggs and Ford joined Dulles in opposing Olney. Warren was now stymied. He relented and settled on Lee Rankin. As Gerald McKnight has noted, “Rankin was a supremely cautious bureaucrat, a consummate insider, not a boat-rocker like Olney.” (McKnight, p. 45) Rankin centralized control of the Commission so there was very little interplay between the staff lawyers and the Commission members. The man who served as the courier between Rankin and the staff was Howard Willens.

II

Willens had been appointed by Nicholas Katzenbach out of the Justice Department. The acting AG picked him, when he thought Olney would be appointed by Warren. According to McKnight, Katzenbach chose Willens as a backstop, because he too did not like the possible appointment of Olney. (ibid, p. 42) It’s easy to understand why. Katzenbach had already written his infamous memo about what he saw as the Commission’s function. (Click here for details) Those functions were to certify Oswald as the assassin, show that he did not have confederates still at large, and demonstrate that he would have been convicted at trial. He also wanted the FBI to lead the inquiry.

Katzenbach’s memo was carried out. And make no mistake, Howard Willens was a major player in carrying his water. Sylvia Meagher once wrote in a letter that the Commission was about to falter in the summer of 1964. By that time, David Belin, Leon Hubert, and Arlen Specter had left. (Philip Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking Act, p. 404) Only David Slawson, Burt Griffin, and Wesley Liebeler were there regularly into the autumn. As Griffin later told the House Select Committee on Assassinations, one of the reasons Hubert may have left is because Willens did such a lousy job in facilitating their requests for information to the CIA. (HSCA Vol. XI, pp. 271, 276, and especially 279–86)

After these departures, Willens decided to bring in reinforcements. To say they were green recruits does not get the import across. Murray Laulicht had not even taken his law school exams when Willens approached him. The night he got his degree, he left for Washington to work for the Warren Commission. (Shenon, p. 404) Further, his field of concentration was in trusts and estates, yet his assignment was to complete the Commission’s biography of Jack Ruby! This is how little Willens thought of the Commission’s aims. Laulicht told Philip Shenon he had no problem with the Commission’s version of Ruby walking down the Main Street ramp to kill Oswald, which today is a concept that is all but indefensible. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 222–230)

But that was not enough for Willens. Unlike Laulicht, Lloyd Weinreb had graduated from law school and clerked for one year on the Supreme Court. Lloyd was surprised when he got to the Commission offices, because there were so many empty desks in front of him, so many had gone. (Shenon, p. 405) What was going to be the 24-year-old’s main assignment? Albert Jenner had given up trying to complete a biography of Oswald. Willens was determined it be done. Even if he had to hire people who were pretty much legal amateurs. Weinreb admitted that when he started going through FBI and CIA files, many pages were missing. This did not bother Willens. And he had to understand that, as opposed to a veteran attorney like Leon Hubert, someone as inexperienced as Weinreb would not raise a ruckus.

Willens also understood how the Commission really worked. When Jeff Morley had parts of Willens’ working Commission diary on his web site, the lawyer was describing a sensitive matter he had to get agreement on from the Commission membership. As Willens stated, once he talked to Warren he then just needed to talk to the other three members. If anyone needed any more proof about how the Commission worked, there it was. Did Willens forget how to count? There were seven members of the Warren Commission. But he understood that the three southern members—Hale Boggs, John Sherman Cooper, and Richard Russell—had more or less been marginalized by the three much more powerful members: Dulles, Ford, and John McCloy. This split in the ranks—neatly covered up by spokesmen like Dulles in the press—would break into the open in the early seventies, when those three southern members would end up denouncing the Warren Report.

Howard Willens was a very effective part of what became the entire Warren Commission facade. In retrospect, it’s hard to think of how Katzenbach could have chosen someone better to carry out the demands of his November 25, 1963, memorandum. As can be seen in the recent Fox web special JFK: The Conspiracy Continues, Howard is still at it.

III

The Warren Commission would have never been accepted by the public unless it was supported by the media. At that time, in 1964, the major media consisted largely of big city newspapers, the major magazines, and the three TV networks. There was one reporter who went beyond the call of just being a New York Times Anthony Lewis type flack for the Warren Report. Today, it is fair to name Hugh Aynseworth as the most active journalistic participant in the entire JFK assassination cover up. In fact, it would be more accurate to label him a participant in journalistic guise.

Aynseworth worked for the Dallas Morning News at the time of the assassination. He later claimed that, on that day, he was in the following places: 1.) Dealey Plaza 2.) the scene of patrolman J. D. Tippit’s murder and 3.) the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested. But that was not enough for Hugh. He also said that he was in the Dallas Police Department basement when Oswald was killed. Sort of like getting four aces in five card poker. It was obvious from all this bravado that Hugh was going to make a career out of the JFK case. (Click here for details)

This started even before the Warren Report was issued. In a column published on July 21, 1964, Hugh’s colleague Holmes Alexander wrote that, since he did not trust Earl Warren, Aynesworth was conducting his own inquiry. In that column, it appears likely that Aynesworth created the myth that Oswald had threatened to kill Richard Nixon. This was something that not even the Commission could buy into. (Warren Report, pp. 187–88) The column ended with a threat. Either the Warren Report would jibe with Aynesworth’s findings or there would be “some explaining to do.”

As this writer has shown, Holland McCombs of Life magazine was the overseer of that publication’s aborted reinvestigation into the JFK case. In February of 1967, he terminated the efforts of Josiah Thompson and Ed Kern. (Thompson, Last Second in Dallas, pp. 26–27). In my review of Thompson’s new book, I presented evidence that those two were retired, while Patsy Swank and Dick Billings stayed on the case. (Click here for details) In this author’s opinion, that was not just happenstance. Thompson and Kern were turning up evidence that the Commission was wrong: Kennedy’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy. The problem for McCombs was simple. A Life stringer, David Chandler, had discovered that New Orleans DA Jim Garrison had reopened the Kennedy case. As noted in that review, McCombs was best of friends with Clay Shaw. Therefore, after cashiering Kern and Thompson, McCombs began to sponsor Chandler and Aynseworth.

As we all know, the eventual article that Life magazine published as a result of what McCombs referred to sneeringly as “a reinvestigation” was a pretty weak bowl of porridge. (Life magazine, 11/25/66 “A Matter of Reasonable Doubt”) None of the very interesting material that Thompson and Kern had dug up was used. The article essentially centered on the testimony of John Connally; that he was hit by a different shot than struck Kennedy.

But as noted in my review, McCombs did not just neuter the work of his better reporters on the JFK case. Due to his friendship with Shaw, he now began to communicate with the defendant’s lawyers and to urge on the work of his pal Hugh Aynesworth. (Letter by McCombs to Duffey McFadden of 5/13/67) Aynesworth wrote one of the first, most extreme and wild attacks on Garrison. This appeared in the May 15, 1967, issue of Newsweek. Something that Hugh never admitted, at least in public, is that he sent an advance rough draft of this article to both the White House and the FBI. (Western Union teletype of May 13, 1967) In that message, he ended with these words: “I intend to make a complete report of my knowledge available to the FBI, as I have done in the past.” In other words, Hugh was admitting he was a continuing informant for J. Edgar Hoover.

Aynesworth essentially placed himself in the middle of Clay Shaw’s defense team for at least two years, and probably longer. In addition to the work he did for the FBI, there was evidence he also was in touch with the CIA. Accompanied by his colleague and fellow FBI informant James Phelan, Hugh drove up to the Clinton/Jackson area. Through the sources he had developed in Jim Garrison’s office—perhaps Tom Bethell and Bill Boxley—he knew how damaging these witnesses would be to Shaw at trial. They placed Shaw with both Dave Ferrie and Oswald. The witness Aynesworth figured as potentially the most incriminating was Sheriff John Manchester, because Manchester had actually approached and talked to Shaw and the defendant had shown him his identification. Aynesworth wanted Manchester to leave the state and stay gone until after the trial. What was in it for the sheriff? The presumed Newsweek reporter said, “You could have a job as a CIA handler in Mexico for $38,000 a year.” Today that would be over three hundred thousand dollars. We can easily assume this was significantly more than what Manchester was making in that rather small town.

The sheriff did not take kindly to an attempt at obstruction of justice and what had all the appearances of being an Agency sponsored bribe. In no uncertain terms, he told Aynesworth the way he felt about the offer: “I advise you to leave the area. Otherwise I’ll cut you a new asshole!” (Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, p. 235) Irvin Dymond, Shaw’s lead defense attorney, was very much appreciative of all the subterfuge Aynesworth was attempting on his client’s behalf. After all, he was saving Dymond a lot of work. In one of the most revealing and insightful statements about the reporter’s real role, Dymond went as far as to say that Aynesworth eliminated troublesome aspects to the point that they did not surface at the trial. (Columbia Journalism Review, Spring 1969, pp. 38–41, italics added) In other words, Aynesworth was so wired into the DA’s office that he would get to potential witnesses and suspects before Garrison could secure them. This reviewer inadvertently stumbled upon this meme many years ago. Julian Buznedo was a friend and colleague of David Ferrie’s. In discovering material about him in Garrison’s files, I phoned him in Denver to talk about his interview with the DA’s representatives. He told me that a week or so prior to that interview two men visited him in suits and ties, as he recalled, they either were from the FBI or Secret Service. (Interview with Buznedo, August of 1995)

This is how plugged in Aynseworth likely was with the feds.

IV

After having dinner with Shaw, on August 2, 1968, Aynseworth wrote a note to the defendant on Newsweek stationary. That note shows just how inserted Aynseworth was into Shaw’s legal team, not just as a tactician working outside, but as a strategist from the inside. He is advising Shaw and his personal attorney Ed Wegmann to bring in another counsel. In that regard, he said he was going to try and talk with none other than Percy Foreman about this possibility. Foreman was a highly publicized and effective defense attorney, who would soon sell James Earl Ray down the river in Memphis over the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Besides Aynseworth, the only other “journalist” who did as much to sabotage Garrison’s inquiry into the JFK case was probably Walter Sheridan. (For a chronicle of Sheridan’s misdeeds, see Destiny Betrayed, second edition, by James DiEugenio, pp. 237–43) Sheridan had worked for the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and rose to a high position in the National Security Agency before joining the Justice Department and working for Robert Kennedy. (ibid, pp. 255–56) He then went to NBC and worked on several documentaries, one of them being the infamous hatchet job on Garrison broadcast in the summer of 1967. As we shall now see, it appears that both Aynseworth and Sheridan combined in attempting to spread some rather ugly mythology in order to smear both the Kennedys and Garrison.

Let me first quote a CIA memo of May 8, 1967, from Richard Lansdale to the Counter-Intelligence staff. Lansdale says that the source for the following information is Sheridan. Sheridan had arranged a trip to Washington for Alvin Beaubouef, who was one of two companions who accompanied David Ferrie on his mysterious trip to Texas on November 22, 1963. The lawyer Sheridan arranged for Alvin, Jack Miller, has told the CIA that Beaubouef, “…would be glad to talk with us or help in any way we want.” But as striking as that statement is, it is not the most interesting part of the memo. Sheridan also conveyed the following:

…it is said that Garrison is going to subpoena an FBI agent and a former FBI agent. The thesis that Garrison is allegedly trying to develop is that Oswald was a CIA agent, was violently anti-Communist, and was recruited by CIA for an operation, approved by President Kennedy, the purpose of which was to assassinate Fidel Castro. The thesis further has it that when Oswald assassinated President Kennedy, it became necessary to show him as a Communist in order to conceal the original plan.

It is further alleged that Garrison has said that he has letters signed by CIA representatives or by Senator Robert Kennedy which authorize certain Americans to work with Cubans for the assassination of Castro.

As has been proven by the declassification of the CIA’s Inspector General report, President Kennedy never knew about such Castro assassination plots, let alone authorized them. (Click here for the IG Report, see pages 132–33) In all the years I have studied the New Orleans inquiry, Garrison never claimed to have such letters. This was a ploy used by the likes of Layton Martens, one of Ferrie’s friends, in order to try and deter Garrison. Sheridan has now altered the evidence record, in order to somehow make Garrison into an enemy of the Kennedys. To show how bad the information was, when the FBI learned of this information, J. Edgar Hoover acknowledged to Attorney General Ramsey Clark that the CIA replied with the rather pointed rejoinder that no such letters ever existed. (FBI memo of 5/17/67)

Did Aynseworth pick up a few tricks in constructing fear and paranoia from his buddy Sheridan? Perhaps. In another FBI memo dated a few months later, December 27, 1967, Aynseworth appears to be playing a similar misleading banjo. On December 22, 1967, one of the owners of the giant industrial firm Brown and Root got a phone call from Aynseworth. The “reporter” told George Brown that he had documents revealing Garrison was going to reveal that Brown was involved with the CIA in covering up the plot to kill Kennedy and they were doing it for President Johnson. This one is, of course, meant to demonstrate the old MSM meme that somehow there was no rhyme or reason to the Garrison inquiry. That it was just a wild mélange of accusations bouncing around between the CIA, President Johnson, and Texas business titans. It’s the technique that Johnny Carson used at the beginning of his interview with Garrison on The Tonight Show. Again, I have never seen any such documents. The only way they could possibly exist is through either the manuscript of Farewell America or the musings of CIA infiltrator Bill Boxley. But this is how determined Aynseworth was to somehow get people in high places to fear and distrust the DA.

It should be noted, to this author’s knowledge, Sheridan and his family never gave up his files to the NBC program The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison. Sheridan passed on in 1995. So he was around for the congressional hearings dealing with the JFK Act, the attempts to pass that act, and the early part of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) being functional. In fact, he requested those files be returned to him from the JFK Library in October of 1993. According to interviews this writer did with Deputy Chief Counsel Tom Samoluk and Chairman of the ARRB John Tunheim, even though they requested these documents, they were unable to garner them. When the Board tried to get them from Sheridan’s family after his death, they sent them back to NBC. One of the last things the Board did, in September of 1998, was to designate to the National Archives that these were considered Kennedy assassination related files. (Letter from General Counsel Ronald Haron, to Amy Krupsky at NARA, 9/24/98)

V

As time has gone on and more files from the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) have been recovered due to declassification, we see just how problematic the work of that committee was. The latest example being Tim Smith’s tour-de-force article about their diddling with the autopsy illustrations. What makes Smith’s essay so powerful is that he actually shows the reader the documents revealing that HSCA attorney Andy Purdy, researcher Mark Flanagan, and pathologist Dr. Michael Baden were all aware of and cooperating with this alteration of Kennedy’s rear skull wound. This shows just how obsessed the HSCA was in raising that wound from low in the skull to four inches higher, into the cowlick area. (Click here for Tim’s article) After all, they had to have a way to account for the 6.5 mm object which now appeared on the x-rays, which no pathologist or FBI agent saw the night of the autopsy.

In those same HSCA volumes, specifically Volume 10, there is a discussion of the issue of Guy Banister, Oswald, and Dave Ferrie at 544 Camp Street. With the declassification of the HSCA files, we can see that, again, there are some real problems with this report. I won’t go into all of them, that would take another long essay in and of itself. But, for example, in their all too brief review of Kerry Thornley, they conclude that Thornley was telling the truth when he said that he never had any contact with his Marine buddy Oswald after Kerry left the service. (See HSCA Vol. 10, p. 125) Apparently, Thornley’s father had died or the committee never got in contact with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office, because Kerry’s dad had told them that Oswald had been in correspondence with Thornley and some of the letters were of recent vintage. (Mellen, p. 276, based on report of 11/26/63) Allen Campbell, who worked out of Guy Banister’s office, told Joan Mellen that Oswald had been in contact with Thornley in the summer of 1963. (Mellen, p. 276; for a detailed expose of just how bad the HSCA was on this subject, click here)

In that HSCA volume, the report also says that the branch of the Cuban Revolutionary Council in New Orleans had left its office at 544 Camp Street in January or February of 1962. But yet, the owner of the building, Sam Newman, was inconsistent on this point. On November 25, 1963, he told the FBI that he rented space to the CRC in March of 1963 and they were there for 4–5 months. Two days later, he changed his story. He now told the New Orleans Police that they had left 15 months previous. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 113)

In a newly discovered letter from Sam Newman, it appears that the HSCA should not have trusted the Cuban exiles in that organization for information on this issue, because Sam Newman wrote a letter to Dr. Tony Varona of the CRC in Miami on March 9, 1962. He says that he is owed money for the rent at that time, but the space is still being used. So, unlike what the HSCA report states, the exiles were not out in January or February. What is even more odd about this letter is that Newman knows Varona’s exact address and he talks to him like this is not the first time he did so. This tends to undermine the whole façade of naivete about the group at his building that Newman tried to convey to both Jim Garrison and the HSCA. (Ibid, DiEugenio, pp. 113–114) So as of now, with this new evidence, it is indefinite as to when the CRC left Sam Newman’s building.

Further, in that same volume, on page 125, it mentions Mancuso’s Coffee Shop. This was on the ground floor of the Newman Building. The report say that Jack Mancuso did see Guy Banister at his place, but not Oswald. Again, the HSCA inquiry was apparently incomplete, for a man named Richard Manuel was in contact with Anne Buttimer of the Review Board in 1995. Manuel later got in contact with the Board’s Jeremy Gunn. He told Gunn that he moved to New Orleans in the mid-sixties and worked in advertising on Lafayette Street near the Newman building. His company owned a print shop and he got to know two men who worked there who were New Orleans natives. These two men, Ray Ohlman and Lloyd Reisch, also knew Banister. They frequented Mancuso’s. And they had seen Banister with Oswald at the coffee shop. (ARRB Notes of Manuel call dated 2/1/96)

VI

Gladys and Arthur Johnson owned the boarding house where Oswald lived at on North Beckley Avenue in Dallas. Oswald lived there after his return to Texas from New Orleans in October and November of 1963. Oswald seemed like a nice, friendly young man and he got along with their grandchildren. One of whom was named Pat Hall, who was eleven at the time. Pat’s brothers were younger than she was and they played catch with Lee. Pat recalled him watching TV with the other boarders.

Stella Fay Puckett was Gladys Johnson’s daughter. She was the owner of Puckett Photography. That place of business was directly across from the Texas Theater. On November 22, 1963, she was at work when she saw a fleet of cruiser cars out her front window. She then noted the officers forcibly pushing a man into a police car. She did not know who this man was, but she did recognize his face, because she had seen him tossing the football with her young sons in the front yard of the Beckley address.

After watching the officers push Oswald into the police car, Stella Fay called her mother up at the family business, Johnson’s Café, but they were not there. She later learned that the news of Kennedy’s assassination had disturbed them so much that they closed the café and went to the Beckley Avenue address. Stella then called the boarding house. When Gladys answered, Stella said to her, “One of your boarders is being arrested for something.” She was quite surprised at her mother’s reply: “Well, that explains why the FBI is here searching his room.” (Sara Peterson and K. W. Zachry, The Lone Star Speaks, pp. 173–75)

This is doubly surprising, because the official story has Oswald registered at the boarding house under the name of O. H. Lee. (Warren Report, p. 737) But also, as Peterson and Zachry point out, the address that Oswald had given to his employer at the Texas School Book Depository was not Beckley Avenue. He had left the address of the Ruth and Michael Paine residence in Oak Cliff and this is where his wife Marina was staying. The hired landlady Earlene Roberts and the Johnson couple did not recognize their boarder as Lee Oswald until they saw his name on TV. (Peterson and Zachry, p. 176)

Let us set the time. Oswald was arrested at approximately 1:50pm. (Warren Report, p. 179) At that time, no one knew who he was until, according to the official story, the officers driving him to the police station secured his wallet. At 2:15, Captain Will Fritz told Sgt. Gerald Hill that they needed to swear out a warrant to search Oswald’s residence on Fifth Street in Irving, which was the Paine residence. In reply, Hill told Fritz that Oswald was already at police headquarters. (Warren Report, pp. 179–80) In other words, the police, as late as 2:15, thought Oswald was living at the Paine home. How did the FBI know where he really was at about 1:55, 20 minutes earlier, right after his arrest?

There is more. After about the first week of March, Earlene Roberts picked up in the middle of the night and left. She never returned. She waited until all the boarders were in bed and then left with destination unknown. She did not leave a phone call, much less a resignation letter. (Peterson and Zachry, pp. 176–77)

What makes this even more interesting is that Roberts’ sister was Bertha Cheek. (Warren Report, p. 363) Cheek was upset Earlene had left with no notice but said she did not know where she went. Cheek also owned a boarding house in Dallas. Jack Ruby had approached her in the fall of 1963 about a business proposition. The Warren Commission brough this issue up, and in its usual manner, disposed of it in short order. (ibid) This is a relationship that Jim Garrison found interesting, because it was a point which could provide a nexus for Ruby knowing Oswald.

Garrison pursued this possibility. In November of 1964, a man named Raymond Acker, who worked for Southwestern Bell, came to the Dallas Police. He was waving a handful of phone company records, which he said constituted proof that Ruby had called Oswald. The DPD confiscated the records and told Raymond to go home and shut up. Acker had a pretty decent job in management at that time. He did shut up. He then got a promotion that moved him out of Dallas. In fact, he became a company Vice President and General Manager. He was number four on their executive listing in 1967. (NODA Memorandum of 9/18/67, Matt Herron to Garrison)

Acker was fearful of losing his job if the story ever came out. With that at one end, and the oh so corrupt Dallas Police at the other, the lead seemed like a dead end, but not quite. Chuck Boyles was a local disc jockey who ran a night talk show at station KLIF. Chuck knew little about the JFK case, but understood it was an attention magnet for his audience. One evening a local phone operator called in. She would not say who she was for fear she would get terminated. In fact, her husband was telling her to hang up as she was talking. She said she was an operator in the Whitehall area, which was where the boarding house phone was located.

She said even though these were local calls she had made records of them. She had to, since Ruby would use the emergency break in technique if someone else was using the Beckley Avenue phone. After her husband got her off the line, she called Boyles back and talked to him privately.

As John Armstrong noted, there is no indication that the FBI ever checked phone company records for emergency calls between the two. (Harvey and Lee, p. 769) As we can see, and as more material gets discovered, from the Commission obstruction by Allen Dulles, to the crucial role of Howard Willens, to the attempts by pseudo journalists to falsely involve the Kennedy brothers in the Castro assassination plots, to more probable evidence of a Banister/Oswald relationship, to the likely knowledge of the FBI about Oswald, the cover up about almost every aspect of the Kennedy case is even worse than anyone thought.

Last modified on Monday, 25 October 2021 05:52
James DiEugenio

One of the most respected researchers and writers on the political assassinations of the 1960s, Jim DiEugenio is the author of two books, Destiny Betrayed (1992/2012) and The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today (2018), co-author of The Assassinations, and co-edited Probe Magazine (1993-2000).   See "About Us" for a fuller bio.

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