Reclaiming History (372 page)

^*
Unless, as some theorists believe, the impersonator was also the actual killer of Kennedy, in which case the conspirators would have had an even more implausible task to meet: find someone who not only looked almost exactly like Oswald but also was willing to kill the president for them.

^*
Before he recanted his story, the thoroughly discredited Deslatte had come up with an unnumbered (making its validity impossible to check) price quote sheet dated January 20, 1961, with the name “Oswald” written on it by him in the upper right corner. Each Ford truck, if sold, would sell for $2,088.32. Interestingly, Friends of Democratic Cuba Inc. was an anti-Castro group incorporated in New Orleans on January 6, 1961, whose board of directors included the right-wing Guy Banister (see later text for discussion on Banister) and whose vice president was one Gerard F. Tujague, the owner of a New Orleans shipping company whom Oswald worked for as a messenger boy between November 10, 1955, and January 14, 1956, when he was sixteen. Tujague knew and remembered Oswald (10 HSCA 134, note 64; CE 2227, 25 H 128), so if the group, for whatever reason, wanted its purchaser of the trucks to use a fictitious name, Oswald is a name that was not unfamiliar to at least one member of the group.

^*
The Austin Selective Service files listed fifteen Oswalds in the state of Texas.

†The only possible exception doesn’t quite rise to the dignity of an Oswald sighting. Mrs. Lovell T. Penn, who lived with her husband on a farm near Dallas, Texas, told the FBI on December 2, 1963, that on October 6, 1963, she saw three men in her cow pasture. One had a rifle and was firing it. When she threatened to call the police, they left. Although she took down the license plate number on their car, she threw it away. She made no reference to Lee Harvey Oswald being one of the three men. Two days later the FBI interviewed her again and this time she said the man with the rifle “might have been Oswald.” (CE 2944, 26 H 406; CE 2449, 25 H 588) Penn located one spent shell, a Mannlicher-Carcano cartridge case, that the man with the rifle had fired, but after tests the FBI concluded it could not have been fired from Oswald’s Carcano because of “differences in firing pin and breech face marks” (CD 205, p.182).

^*
Ryder’s credibility was weak enough without author Gerald Posner distorting Ryder’s statement and testimony. In
Case Closed
, Posner dismisses Ryder’s tale, writing that
“subsequent investigation found
that…the gun store tag was in [Ryder’s] handwriting, not in Oswald’s” (Posner,
Case Closed
, p.214 footnote), implying that Ryder attempted to lead authorities to believe that the handwriting was Oswald’s. But Ryder, in his very first interview with the FBI on November 25, acknowledged he had written the name” Oswald” on the tag (CE 1325, 22 H 523, FBI interview of Dial D. Ryder on November 25, 1963). Worse, Posner goes on to say that Ryder “refused to take a polygraph” (Posner,
Case Closed
, p.214 note). The opposite is true. The only polygraph issue that arose was limited to whether Ryder had or had not given the details of his story to a
Dallas Times
reporter, which Ryder denied. The reporter offered to take a polygraph test and Ryder testified that “I’m not one to volunteer for anything, [but] I’ll take the thing if you want me to take it” (11 H 238).

^*
Payroll records at the Book Depository Building show that Oswald worked continuously at the Depository from October 16 up to the time of the assassination, working full eight-hour days (8:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., with lunch from 12:00 to 12:45 p.m.) Monday through Friday, not missing one day of work. (The payroll records erroneously credited Oswald with a full day’s work on November 22, 1963. In view of what happened at the Depository that day, this type of error is more than understandable.) Conspiracy theorists have made much of the fact that since the Depository employees did not punch a time clock, there’s no way to know if Oswald was absent from work for a few hours here and there. But this ignores the fact that Book Depository Building supervisors kept fairly close tabs on their employees, making “a notation” if the employee was present at the start of the workday and another notation if he was still at work at the end of the day. Further, the supervisors reported to the payroll department any absence during the day for a period longer than that authorized (such as for lunch), and the time was deducted from the employee’s pay. (CE 1334, 22 H 537; CE 2454, 25 H 601–602) No evidence has ever emerged from anyone at the Book Depository Building that Oswald was absent from work at any time during the period between October 16 and November 22, 1963.

^*
As we have seen, the Irving Sports Shop impersonation and furniture store sighting of Oswald simply “don’t go anywhere.” Yet conspiracy theorists predictably aren’t cognizant of this fact. For instance, conspiracy theorist Michael Kurtz, who believes it
was
the real Oswald at both places, condemns the Warren Commission for not accepting the stories of Ryder and the two middle-aged women, saying this was a “rejection of evidence” (Kurtz,
Crime of the Century
, pp.147–148). But Kurtz doesn’t bother to ask the obvious question, “evidence
of what
?” Even if it were Oswald at both places, what would this prove?

^*
It should be noted that contrary to popular belief, a polygraph does not show whether or not one is telling the truth, only whether he believes he is; that is, the test, if it is accurate (which law enforcement feels it normally is when administered by a competent operator), measures the presence or absence of deception from the physiological response (breathing, pulse, perspiration, etc.) to the questions. Sociopaths (those who have no conscience or feeling of guilt or contrition for what they have done) often are able to lie on the test without the lie being betrayed by a physiological response.

^*
Marina told the FBI that her husband never told her he had seen or spoken to anyone about buying a car (CE 1403, 22 H 780, FBI interview of Marina Oswald on December 16, 1963). But since Oswald was notoriously secretive about everything in his life, not too much weight can be given to this.

^*
Unless—and this is a real possibility that the conspiracy theorists should start writing books about—there was a group of conspirators out to frame the conspirators who were framing Oswald.

^*
Two of the aforementioned witnesses said that “Oswald” came to the range with a companion, one saying the companion was around five feet nine inches (10 H 393, WCT Sterling Charles Wood), and the other saying he was a “tall boy” (10 H 381, WCT Garland Glenwill Slack). Several witnesses noted a bearded man at the range and one witness thought the man and Oswald were together, but the bearded man (one Michael Murph) was located by the FBI and found to have no connection to Oswald (CE 2897–2898, 26 H 350–351).

^*
Per Tippit’s wife, Tippit voted for Kennedy in the 1960 election, and those who knew him said he seemed to have no interest in politics (CE 2985, 26 H 486–488).

†The above discussion would be academic if Oswald, as some believe, had been walking west on Tenth Street before the Tippit confrontation, and changed his direction, possibly when he spotted Tippit’s police car driving eastbound on Tenth toward him. (See discussion in endnote section.) If, indeed, Oswald’s original direction was westbound on Tenth, the Redbird Airport, as well as Ruby’s apartment at 223 South Ewing Street, both of which were to the east of Tenth and Patton (Walker’s home, at 4011 Turtle Creek Boulevard, was to the northeast), would be eliminated as Oswald’s intended destination.

‡ As discussed in detail in the Oswald biography, Oswald was living in New Orleans throughout the months of July and August and most of September in 1963.

^*
In his book
Live by the Sword
, Russo quotes FBI agent Jim Hosty telling him in 1994 that the FBI investigation revealed there was a plane revving up at Redbird (Russo doesn’t mention a time for this) that took off around 3:00 p.m. Hosty told Russo, “We ran [the investigation] out but it got nowhere.” And the air traffic controller at Redbird, Louis Gaudin, told Russo about three well-dressed people flying out of Redbird in a Comanche-type aircraft somewhere between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m. on the afternoon of the assassination, returning forty minutes later with only two occupants, and being met by a part-time employee at the airport who was moonlighting (in the afternoon?) from the Dallas Police Department. (Russo,
Live by the Sword
, pp. 308–309) Gaudin told the FBI on March 7, 1963, that the plane took off between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. (Smith,
JFK: The Second Plot
, p.279). But I thought the assassination happened at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963. A plane departing a full two to two and a half hours later wouldn’t be that suspicious, would it? I also thought that Redbird Airport was a functioning municipal airport in November of 1963 and actually had planes departing and landing all the time. When they did, under what theory is this suspicious or unusual?

^*
Oswald’s autopsy report gave his height as five feet nine inches (CE 1981, 24 H 7).

^*
One advantage of being a conspiracy theorist is you don’t need any evidence to support your charge. Theories and speculations will do. Eddowes said, “
My theory
[nothing else, folks, just a theory, no evidence] is that…the KGB had substituted a forged print card in the FBI fingerprint files [which contained Oswald’s Marine Corps prints], the forgery substituting the imposter’s prints in place of [Oswald’s]” (Eddowes,
Oswald File
, p.139).

^*
Fifteen people witnessed the examination, including the four team members, four doctors who assisted them, three lawyers and their assistants, and a court reporter (
Dallas Morning News
, October 5, 1981).

^*
We know that people observing the same person or event can almost be expected to give different descriptions. Here, although Duran recalled the American at the consulate to have
light
blond hair, Azcue recalled the very same man to have
dark
blond hair (3 HSCA 136). Oswald himself described his hair color as “medium brown” (WR, p.614). As to Duran’s description of Oswald as being around five feet six inches and 125 pounds, Oswald’s autopsy report, as previously indicated, reads he was five feet nine inches. His “estimated weight” was 150. (CE 1981, 24 H 7) The estimation of weight seems high. At the time of his interrogation following the assassination Oswald himself gave his weight as 140 pounds (WR, p.614). Virtually every photo of Oswald shows him to be of slight frame. See photo section for a picture of the slender Oswald taken in front of the New Orleans Trade Mart in August 1963, the month before he went to Mexico City. Marina felt he looked like a “skeleton” during this period (McMillan,
Marina and Lee
, p.460). Alfredo Mirabal Diaz, a Mexican consulate employee, recalled Oswald as being “a rather small man, medium height or somewhat less, narrow shoulders” (3 HSCA 177).

^*
Consistent with the confusion and errors Hoover, and many others, made in the immediate wake of the assassination, in a 1:48 p.m. memo to his staff on the afternoon of the assassination, Hoover wrote, “The President and the Governor were shot at the corner of Elm and Commerce Streets” and that he had been told “the shots came from the fourth floor” of the Book Depository Building (FBI Record 124-10012-10169); in a 2:21 p.m. memo to his staff he said that he advised James W. Rowley, chief of the Secret Service, “that one of the Secret Service agents reportedly had been killed, and [Rowley] stated he did not know this” (FBI Record 124-10012-10167); in a 4:01 p.m. memo to his staff he relayed that after Oswald left the Book Depository Building he “ran into two police officers…a block or two away…and thinking they were going to arrest him, shot at them and killed one of them with a sidearm” (FBI Record 124-10012-10170).

^*
Mexico City, at the time, “had the most comprehensive, extensive telephone tap facilities…of any [CIA] station in the world,” said John Scelso, chief of the WH (Western Hemisphere) 3 branch of clandestine operations at CIA headquarters to whom the CIA station in Mexico City reported. There was only one problem, he said. “They had far more material to deal with than they could possibly handle…like ten times.” (HSCA Record 180-10131-10330, Testimony of John Scelso before HSCA on May 16, 1978, pp.4, 17, 58)

†Most of the trial preparation I did with my witnesses, who were living around the country (Phillips in Bethesda, Maryland), was by written correspondence and over the telephone from my home in Los Angeles, although once we all got to London, I interviewed each of them again in person before the trial started.

^*
At the London trial, although I was able to impeach Lopez’s credibility as a witness by other means, I didn’t have his own report to the HSCA, since, as indicated, it wasn’t released to the public until 1996, ten years
after
the trial. So when Lopez testified on direct examination by Gerry Spence that he had concluded that Oswald “had not” been to the Cuban consulate and Russian embassy in Mexico City and agreed with Spence’s assertion “that there must have been an imposter there,” I didn’t have Lopez’s own report to refute his testimony. However, I did have the conclusion of his employer, the HSCA (HSCA Report, pp.251–252), that it was the real Lee Harvey Oswald at the Cuban consulate and Russian embassy in Mexico City, which I introduced to the jury on cross-examination of Lopez. (Transcript of
On Trial
, July 25, 1986, pp.877, 894)

^*
On cross-examination of Lopez at the London trial, I brought out that he was a young law student without one day of law enforcement investigative experience when he was hired by HSCA chief counsel Robert Blakey, a law professor at Cornell University who met Lopez while the latter was attending law school there. The CIA submitted a formal complaint to the HSCA about Lopez showing up at CIA headquarters in shorts and jeans, and Lopez changed his attire thereafter. Knowing Lopez was a very shaky witness, I deliberately gave him free reign to self-destruct on the witness stand in front of the jury’s eyes, and he gladly obliged. Lopez told the jury he had his own opinion of who actually killed Kennedy and it wasn’t Oswald. “Just for the record,” I asked him, “could we have this chap’s name?” Lopez answered, “No, because I [am] under a secrecy oath [at the HSCA] never to disclose that name.” Unbelievably, Lopez, an otherwise pleasant and intelligent young man, said he and his colleagues at the HSCA received information from “a reliable source” that there was an actual photograph of this person shooting at Kennedy, but they weren’t able to get the photograph, and the FBI and CIA wouldn’t let him and his colleagues question Kennedy’s killer. I said, “You told me [in a pretrial interview] that this fellow was an agent for Castro, the CIA, and the FBI, but none of them knew this, is that correct?” “They probably know it by now, but they didn’t know it back then.” “So you’re a twenty-one-year-old kid out of Cornell, and the CIA, the FBI and Castro are using this guy and they don’t know he is an agent for all three of them, but Edwin Lopez knows?” When Lopez said yes and offered to tell why, I had run out of my allotted time on cross-examination, so I suggested he tell his lawyer, Mr. Spence, on redirect. But Spence, wanting to get Lopez off the stand as quickly as possible before he embarrassed and hurt the defense more than he already had, elected not to ask one single question of Lopez on redirect. (Transcript of
On Trial
, July 25, 1986, pp.892, 897, 903, 916–919)
This is but another example of what happened when conspiracy icons in the Kennedy assassination like Lopez, who had never been cross-examined on the case, were subjected to cross-examination at the London trial. Some of the icons, like Jean Hill (who wanted to testify for the defense very badly at the London trial) and Delphine Roberts, were so pathetically bad that the defense in London decided to not call them to the witness stand, period. By the way, I defy anyone to come up with any witness I called to the stand for the prosecution at the London trial who was made to look ridiculous or noncredible on cross-examination. Since none were either of these, I don’t believe you will be able to.