Not sure anyone wants to hear from an “irresponsible fanatic” (I’ve been called worse things) — especially one who hardly followed the JFK controversy for 25 or so years after working for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, but I want to add to the point of a recent JFK Facts post: the CIA chose to wait out the Wareen Commisions
See: ‘Jim [Angleton] would prefer to wait out the Commission…’(See the June 7, 2014)
They did the same to us at the HSCA.
That was one of the main points I made in my presentation at the Wecht Institute conference on JFK in Pittsburgh in October 2013. (Watch it here.)
To correct Jim on one point, as to degree, we never had indictments drawn on anyone; that’s not something Congress does. What we did do was push for a referral for a perjury investigation to the Justice Department, and, hopefully, an indictment. But that didn’t happen. By the time we spoke to Anne Goodpasture, we thought she had also committed perjury but we knew that we weren’t going to get a referral on her after we had been rebuffed on Phillips.
So we didn’t even push internally that hard on that one. (That illustrates how fanatical we were, I am sure.)
Advice from a CIA man
At the very beginning of my involvement with the investigation, I interviewed Joseph Burkholder Smith, a retired CIA officer. Upon our arrival, we handed him our HSCA credentials, telling him we were there to ask him some questions on behalf of Congress. He flipped the credentials back at us and told us, “So you represent Congress, what the f*** is that to the CIA. You’ll be gone in a few years and the CIA will still be here.” He knew they could wait us out, and would.
The issues on which the HSCA met the most resistance was Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko, Bill Harvey’s security files, and Mexico City. See Record No. 180-10124-10039, Record Series: Transcript of Executive Session Hearings, Record p. 17, Tran. p. 14 (Aug. 15, 1978).
While we were able to negotiate on Nosenko, and Harvey’s files dropped off the table, Mexico City was the point of most serious resistance. Bob Blakey, HSCA general counsel at that time, speculated that the Agency was either “terribly concerned that we are looking into something and will find something wrong,” or “we are touching on very sensitive issues of Agency performance and sensitive sources and methods.” The latter, in my opinion, did not justify the level of resistance which we met. By then, most of the world knew about the U.S. surveillance of the embassies in Mexico City.
Talking to David Phillips
The biggest stress point in the interview with David Phillips came, not when we were asking him about the Mexico surveillance operations, but when I started pressing him on all the post-assassination sources of dis-information that I could trace back to his former, or active (in ’63) assets. And I think he had a very good reason for letting that make him nervous.
An interesting configuration of — shall we call them “circumstances” — can now be pieced together from the released records. According to former CIA man Bayard Stockton, David Phillips recruited the leadership of DRE while serving in Havana in the late 1950s and was the DRE’s first case officer. (See Stockton’s “Flawed Patriot,” p. 210)
After moving to headquarters in late 1963, Phillips was responsible for some of the early disinformation operations aimed at the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (see “Oswald and the CIA” by John Newman, pp. 240-241). While overseeing anti-Castro propaganda operations at headquarters, Phillips worked directly for Bill Harvey on Task Force W. I believe his oversight of the CIA’s Cuban disinformation effort continued after his transfer to Mexico City. (I believe we documented this at the HSCA, but have not found the records.)
George Joannides was hand picked by Richard Helms to be the DRE case officer after DRE’s public opposition to the U.S. government’s policies during the October, 1962, missile crisis. Joannides was to report out of channels directly to Helms. (*Stockton, p. 221.)
So, with that background, consider these time-framed events:
On July 31, 1963, Joannides’s supervisor, in a fitness report, commended him for doing “an excellent job in the handling of a significant student exile group which hitherto had successfully resisted any important degree of control.” The same report lists his second specific duty as “Case officer for student project involving political action, propaganda, intelligence collection and a hemisphere-wide apparatus.” Record No. 104-10304-1000, Record Series JFK-MISC, Annual Fitness Report – George Joannides, Operations Officer (CIA, Jul. 31, 1963).
Between August 9 and August 21, 1963, Oswald becomes something of a celebrity in New Orleans after his encounter with the local branch of DRE while passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. Joannides’s Fitness Report covering this period has not been released. On September 16, 1963, the CIA “informed” the FBI that it is considering action to counter the activities of the FPCC in foreign countries. Church Committee, Vol. 5, p. 65. (The Church Committee’s conclusion, on p. 67, that “there is no reason to think the CIA propaganda program was underway before the assassination” is based on the unfounded, and unsupportable, assumption that the CIA would not have begun the operation before receiving information requested from the FBI.)
On September 17, 1963, Oswald applies for and receives a Mexican travel visa in New Orleans. On September 27 Oswald arrives in Mexico City. On September 27, the Mexico City Station begins testing an impulse camera aimed at the door of the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. In late September Phillips leaves Mexico City TDY for Headquarters and Miami, during which time he is promoted to Chief of Covert Operations. On October 1 the Mexico City Station sent “bulk materials” to Headquarters by an untraceable transmittal manifest (TM 251905) by pouch (No. 4083) “to be held in registry until picked up by Michael C. Choaden presently TDY HQS.” Record No. 104-10500-10077, Bulk Materials Being Sent Under Transmittal Manifest (CIA, Oct. 1, 1963).
I would have loved to have been able to question Mr. Phillips and Mr. Joannides about these “circumstances.” Did Oswald manage to connect with pro-Castro students at the University of Mexico? What did the 16mm film of the Consulate entrance show? Was film from September 28 in TM 251905? Did any of this have anything to do with Phillips’s promotion? While TDY did he meet with Helms and/or Joannides? Was the bulk material sent to Phillips at HQ showing the test results of this new program targeted at FPCC?
I realize some may consider those questions as “speculation.” They are not. They are questions that need to be asked and answered. Maybe it is just a coincidence that Eddie and I were pressing the Agency (and Phillips) hard on back channel communication methods, trying to find out to trace the transmittal manifest, Harvey’s activities with the mob plotters, Phillips’s propaganda operations and assets and their ties to the immediate post-assassination disinformation operations, and just what was he doing TDY in late September?
But just let me just ask one more question as an unreasonable fanatic: why would the Agency run an undercover operation aimed at shutting down this specific aspect of the HSCA investigation by assigning that job to a retired officer who ran the DRE after Phillips and the propops out of JM/WAVE in 1963 while lying to the HSCA to conceal that officer’s background? Just another coincidence with an innocent explanation?
If I were not such an unreasonable fanatic, I am sure that I would understand that they brought Joannides out of retirement to shut us down just to protect sources and methods, not where the bodies were buried. After all, I suspect, he knew what and where all of them were.
Because of your expertise regarding the JFK assassination, I would be very interested in your answers to the following questions:
PREFACE
1. If you are familiar with Harry Dean (aka Harry J. Dean) Harry claims that during the summer of 1963 he was an eyewitness to the planning and discussion about a “John Birch Society plot” to murder JFK which involved individuals such as former U.S. Congressman John H. Rousselot (California), Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker (Dallas TX), and Guy Galbadon, Loran Eugene Hall, and Lawrence Howard.
2. Harry Dean also asserts that he was an “undercover informant” or “political spy” for the FBI in Chicago and subsequently in southern California during the period from 1960 thru 1965 and that he reported to the FBI about JBS members involved in the “plot” as well as about pro-Castro and anti-Castro individuals and organizations.
3. Harry also claims that he provided information to the CIA.
QUESTIONS
1. Are you familiar with Harry Dean’s story?
2. If you are familiar with Harry, do you believe that he was ever an FBI or CIA informant or undercover operative?
3. Do you place any credence in his “JBS plot” theory?
4. During your research over the years, has anybody you have contacted or interviewed ever mentioned Harry Dean as a reliable source of information?
5. During your research, has anyone provided you with what you consider to be credible information in support of Harry Dean’s story regarding a “JBS plot” to murder President Kennedy and frame Oswald for the deed?
Thanks!
Ernie Lazar = ernie1241@aol.com
Jeff thanks for all the work that you do keeping the investigation alive. I Ann Goodpasture still alive? If so can you get her to do a live interview?
Interesting discussions here. I’m wondering if everyone who has an opinion here, ON BOTH SIDES of the issue, has read their own materials/theory and realized that, factoids, mis-statements, erroneous reports, speculation, and countless hours of reading hearsay have led to ‘gridlock’ on the JFK Assassination discussion. Coincidence does not really account for much. Here’s an anecdotal story, all true. What were the chances?? Right???
As a kid I actually had the great fortune to have JFK come to Connecticut to visit Waterbury for the 2nd time. On his 2nd trip he actually had his Limo pull over and spoke every-so-briery to my mother and her kids (us). Later on in life the woman I married revealed that, as a kid her family farm and Ice Cream business, in Wallingford CT, was visited many times by Joe Kennedy Jr. and JFK when Joe Jr. would visit JFK at Choate, located next to their farm. Even later in life, we bought a home in Middlebury Ct, once owned by, of all people, the family of JFK Jr’s in-laws, the Bessette’s. Actually, we still sit at a small granite/marble bench dedicated to the girls.
Coincidences do happen and, in the JFK case, do not rule out happenstance…and rule in coincidence. What I think has really muddied the water however, is that the connections decided to keep quiet about the more nefarious actions…and thereby led to the appearance of culpability and guild. That’s it…. Peace.
Psst…I still think Oswald was stalking Kennedy….then stalking Ruby…then being stalked by Tippit…and unknowingly being stalked by Ruby. 😉
” journalists paid by CIA to disseminate disinformation?”
That was true in the 60’s – but In February 1976, Director of the CIA, George H. W. Bush, announced a new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” He added that the CIA would continue to “welcome” the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists…
Today , journalists are said to have ‘collaborative’ relationship with CIA:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/04/former-l-times-reporter-cleared-stories-cia-publication/
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/09/04/email-correspondence-reporters-cia-flacks/
It’s been decades since Carl Bernstein wrote How Americas News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the CIA and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up:
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#Church_Committee_investigations
At the risk of commenting on current affairs, the Senate and the CIA are now in a contest over release of the Senate’s report on torture. The CIA appears to be delaying release of the report and attempting to postpone release until after the November election, when political control of the Senate may change. This would appear to be today’s version of the “wait them out” strategy described above.
ps- A History Channel documentary last night on the Gestapo said that organization labeled torture as “intensified interrogation”.
“At the risk of commenting on current affairs”
Is this not allowed? It might be easier to understand the JFK assassination if we look at subsequent assassinations etc.
“Gestapo labeled torture as “intensified interrogation”.
Just last month , the New York Times’ executive editor Dean Baquet said will end its long-held and widely criticized practice of calling torture by the U.S. government “enhanced interogation techniques” and instead call it by its “common” name: torture.
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-end-of-the-bill-keller-era/
Thank you for pointing out the New York Times change of heart on “enhanced interrogation”. My reference to commenting on current affairs was an attempt at humor, motivated by the hope that the events of the Kennedy assassination and aftermath might have lessons for us in the present and future.
You know, this is ridiculous. We are supposed to engage with these people in the spirit of good faith.
Yet, they do not deal in the spirit of good faith.
This is easily provable.
Just google Gary Rowell and David Slawson.
You will see that this whole discussion was already gone over by Anthony Marsh with McAdams many moons ago. He knows all of it since Anthony was quite specific since he had the Rowell article. Now, we are supposed to think that McAdams somehow forgot all about that discussion he had, and he wants me to go ahead and recycle it for him. Just to waste my time doing something that was already established right in front of him. Why? So he can say, what do you think Slawson really meant by that?
Please. Spare us the rhetorical pose.
If you listen to Lisa Pease’s last appearance on BOR you will hear her describe a tactic just like this one. She was on a forum with the professor when he denied Shaw ever wrote in his Who’s Who entry that he was a board member of Permindex. He called this a Kennedy conspiracy “factoid”, you know his word for a fact he does not like. This went on for night after night.
Finally, someone got sick of it and he got the volume at at the library, copied it, and took it home and scanned it into the forum. All long it was McAdams who was preachng factoids.
Did he apologize after he was caught? Nope. A couple of nights later, Lisa was roaming the web when she saw McAdams on another forum. Guess what he was saying? Shaw never was on the Board of Permindex. LOL
So now, even though he has been through the whole Rowell and Slawson dynamic, he wants me to go through it with him again.
Got better things to do, like showing how wrong you are about Shaw and Novel.
Use google.
Jim, your problem is that you loudly insist that this or that has been proven, when it’s been proven to your satisfaction, but not the the satisfaction of more critically-minded people.
As for “Gary Rowell:” Do you mean Amanda Rowell?
Yes, she got a letter from Slawson. I’ve seen the letter, and it says:
Not much different from what he told FRONTLINE. One slight exception is that he rejects the claim that the voice wasn’t Oswald’s — at least so far as he could tell.
As for the business of Shaw and Permindex, I’ve long known that Shaw accepted a position on the Board of Directors.
In fact, I’ve had the image of what Who’s Who entry online about forever.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ngarchive/Shaw.gif
I think what Lisa was claiming what that that proved that Shaw was some sort of spook for the CIA in Italy.
Shaw’s own story was that he didn’t manage to make any of the meetings.
Do you have any evidence that he made any of the meetings?
Hell . . . Jim, you need evidence that he was in Italy for five years, since you believe that wacky third-hand claim that Shaw was a CIA spook in Italy for five years.
John McAdams July 18, 2014 at 1:54 pm
Oh dear! DiEugenio pulled Anthony Marsh on you. How bad is that?
That’s not fair Bill.
Anthony Marsh has proven his mettle as a researcher and even debater on McAdams’ newsgroup.
Gerry Simone September 9, 2014 at
In retrospect I should not have made the negative comment and apologize for doing so.
I give Marsh high credit for collecting documents and knowing a great deal about the JFK assassination.
However, I’ve found that what Marsh claims the documents say and what they actually say can often be two different things. For example, Marsh claims that NSAM 263 orders ALL troops out of Vietnam by 1965. That is NOT what the document says. The document is written in black and white so there is no debate about what it says. No matter how many times Marsh, Newman, DiEugino and others claim this it simply is not true. I could go on but this is enough I think.
Because he went back on his initial reaction.
To Gary Rowell, before Frontline, he was unhesitating. He heard the tapes.
Frontline, if you recall, was worked on by Gus Russo, I know for a fact when Russo works on projects he handpicks and pre screens his interviewees.
So sorry, I will go with the initial reaction.
Nice was to avoid Hoover and his 7 weeks marginalia. I guess J. Edgar was lost without a cane by then eh?
Please, give it up. The tapes were not erased.
Post his initial reaction: verbatim.
If he has been changing his story, that does not help his credibility. To FRONTLINE, it was a bit of one tape. Now you are saying he heard multiple ones?
If so, it’s a bit like Coleman, who has gone both ways on his “meeting with Castro.”
Let us add even more, from sources McAdams likes.
How about the WC?
In his review of Willens book at CTKA, Martin Hay quotes one of of the WC investigators in MexCity, Dave Slawson, on this subject. Dave said words to the effect that its a bunch of BS that the tapes were erased before the assassination. After all he heard them.
Then there is WIn Scott who said the same.
Then there is Jim Angleton who went down there to break into Win Scott’s safe to retrieve them.
Turner, Watson, Whitten, Slawson, Scott and Angleton.
Two of the three heard the tapes way after the murder. (Actually three with Coleman) And Angleton held them in his hands as he stole them.
This is what I mean about McAdams being a bull in a china shop. He never looks behind him to see what it is he is about to bump into next.
And here, with knowledgeable people, you have to professor. This isn’t a bunch of newbies in your class.
You have simply ignored my point, Jim.
The issues is whether any “tapes” were flown from Mexico City to Dallas, and the evidence is overwhelming that the answer is “no.”
There are all sorts of reports of this or that tape surviving in Mexico City. That’s a different matter.
What you need is tapes flown to Dallas on the evening of the assassination.
Why is it when you folks hear the word “tapes” you just free associate?
Evidence!
Or is this like your Novel story about Hoover in a dress?
Dave said words to the effect that its a bunch of BS that the tapes were erased before the assassination. After all he heard them.
That’s not what he told FRONTLINE. He said he heard part of one tape, represented by Win Scott to be of Oswald (although Slawson could not tell, since the quality was poor).
Interestingly, he never mentioned this in the secret report he wrote for the Warren Commission about Mexico City. He did say he had heard a phone tap of the Cuban Counsel talking to Havana.
That’s not what he told FRONTLINE. He said he heard part of one tape, represented by Win Scott to be of Oswald (although Slawson could not tell, since the quality was poor).
Interestingly, he never mentioned this in the secret report he wrote for the Warren Commission about Mexico City. He did say he had heard a phone tap of the Cuban Counsel talking to Havana.
You have simply ignored my point, Jim.
The issues is whether any “tapes” were flown from Mexico City to Dallas, and the evidence is overwhelming that the answer is “no.”
There are all sorts of reports of this or that tape surviving in Mexico City. That’s a different matter.
What you need is tapes flown to Dallas on the evening of the assassination.
Why is it when you folks hear the word “tapes” you just free associate?
@John McAdams
This long thread has taken lots of twists and turns. Are you challenging the statement that there were tapes of Oswald in MC or simply that Hoover was wrong when he said tapes had been flown to the US. I’m willing to admit that Hoover could have misspoken but that would not necessarily negate the issue if the person on one or more tapes in MC was Oswald. Just have to point to different source for the truth of such a statement, right?
@Jean- you are relying on Ruth Paine to characterize Oswald’s Russian? she was learning Russian from his wife. hardly a credible figure in my book.
Lawrence,
Several witnesses say essentially the same thing — Oswald was fluent in Russian but spoke with an accent and made grammatical errors (as one might expect from a non-native). Even de Mohrenschildt said this:
De MOHRENSCHILDT. Well, he spoke fluent Russian, but with a foreign accent, and made mistakes, grammatical mistakes, but had remarkable fluency in Russian.
JENNER. It was remarkable?
De MOHRENSCHILDT. Remarkable–for a fellow of his background and education, it is remarkable how fast he learned it.
UNQUOTE
Oswald had lived and worked in the USSR for over a year when he met Marina, and he’d had private tutors in the language.
Contrary to myth, Marina didn’t think he was a native speaker:
QUOTE:
Mr. McDONALD. At this time [when you met LHO] you were speaking in Russian together?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes. He spoke with accent so I assumed he was maybe from another state, which is customary in Russia. People from other states do speak with accents because they do not speak Russian. They speak different languages.
Mr. McDONALD. So when you say another state, you mean another Russian
state?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes, like Estonia, Lithuania, something like that.
UNQUOTE
Amazing how much effort gets devoted to making a weak and misdirected case, isn’t it? You’re right, the point is the tape and it’s content, not Hoover and his.
However, the written and audio record left behind by Hoover is nevertheless a challenging conundrum. He was clearly intent on communicating to the POTUS that a tape supposedly of Oswald but not actually of Oswald was in existence. I reject the notion that he was misinformed on a matter of critical global importance (IE national security), namely did Russia/Cuba assassinate the POTUS? That Hoover never corrected his record retroactively bolsters the deduction that this was not a subordinate’s mistake. He would have fired that incompetence and corrected the record. Over and done with.
So, excluding that plausibly impossible scenario, two intriguing possibles (that I can think of anyway) remain: One is he was doubled back upon by his own subordinates as they later wrote their memos and depositions stating they never “heard a tape of Oswald” (clever words that are true if it was an impostor they heard). Imagine the “my power compared to somebody else’s” message that would have sent to Hoover. What likely looked to him (and many others) to be a very fishy situation from the very beginning was showing clear signs of having grown a very sharp set of shark’s teeth which may have appeared headed straight in his direction. At that point he may have started swimming the other way. No point in “correcting” the record that was obviously never going to come back on him and it would just draw attention to what he was perhaps swimming away from.
Second imagined scenario with a similar outcome to the first: Hoover had inside information that allowed him to know that what he was told (in good faith or otherwise) by his subordinates about the tape was wrong, so he naturally reported what he knew to be the truth to the POTUS. Here again, no need to correct the record. It was the truth, saying otherwise would be a lie, and would just stir things up unnecessarily. Here again, in a power match-up, Hoover would know where he stood and what the stakes were, plus he may have felt he had done his duty in providing the information and where it went from there was not his function in government, except to support with any further investigations whatever direction was being taken, as a matter of serving what he perceived as a national purpose.
Either of these two is far easier for me to believe than it was “The Keystone Cops Get Tied up in Knots by some Whacky Not a Tape Not from Mexico”. In ruling out gross competence and in the absence of its attendant compensations, Occam’s razor applies, in my view.
Actually, he would have been more likely to “correct the record” had it been some sort of cover-up.
Frank,
So far as I know, Hoover never acknowledged any of the mistakes he made in the LBJ phone calls, and there were some doozies.
He said “the policeman” was killed in a shootout at the Texas Theater, that Oswald had fired from the 5th floor then ran upstairs to drop the weapon, that the rifle had been shipped to a woman named Ana Heidel (2 of these here):
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=807&relPageId=3
The subordinates’ memos telling Hoover he was wrong began 11/22 and didn’t say they “didn’t hear a tape of Oswald” — they said there *were* no tapes sent to Dallas.
Possibly Belmont misheard “transcripts of tapes” as “transcripts and tapes”? And since the CIA photo wasn’t of Oswald, maybe he assumed the tape wasn’t, either? I don’t know, but I do know that weird misunderstandings happen, as shown by Hoover’s other gaffes.
@ Jean,
I agree with Frank’s fresh analysis.
As I’ve said before, those ‘doozies’ you cite are inconsequential errors in the grand scheme of things (5th fl vs 6th fl of TSBD, or Tippit shot at the theater instead of 10th & Patton nearby), and are also OBVIOUS errors which can be safely shrugged off.
Also, no matter how you try to explain how ‘transcripts’ were confused with ‘tapes’, nobody can reconcile how that possible error could morph into Hoover saying that it wasn’t Oswald or didn’t sound like him.
(Last time I checked, transcripts don’t emit sounds).
Jean,
Much of what you call “doozies” I would call secondary noise. Certain secondary details that are at variance with facts as they turned out to be documented later are not surprising nor particularly significant vis a vis Hoover’s agenda. He was a big picture guy not bogged down in detail. Certainly what he got wrong does not make everything he said, or implied, wrong also. It’s the general push or gist of his message that matters the most. Hoover was drawing the outlines for LBJ of the picture he was developing for public consumption. LBJ didn’t question or redirect him. It was a high level briefing (by a veteran in such matters) to the Chief Executive that allowed for plausible deniability while obtaining the essential implied approval that he needed as he demonstrated his intent to hang it on Oswald. Any details he got wrong were details he knew he could get wrong in that they didn’t alter his message nor did they really matter to LBJ, but you can be sure that the items that did matter to the big picture were the items he knew something about. Such an item would be the tape and the information on it.
Frank (and Gerry),
You seem to be saying that Hoover could be wrong about inconsequential details but not about anything that mattered. I don’t understand why you think so. How would Hoover know anything about a tape other than what someone told him? He wasn’t there.
@ Jean, September 7th, 2014 at 9:17 pm
Yes Jean, Hoover could be wrong on minor details that:
(a) don’t materially alter the single assassin case against Oswald or his alleged guilt in the slaying of a police officer,
(b) and which are obvious errors.
Large publicized blunders WERE corrected (albeit in a way that didn’t make the Bureau or Hoover look incompetent), such as the FBI’s original investigation report (David Von Pein explains this latter point in the following link).
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.conspiracy.jfk/l96lyVQ8ChI/H8WnzgUzaFAJ
Hoover knew practically anything that was classified or important to national security with respect to the investigation of Kennedy’s murder, whether he was physically somewhere or not.
This ensured that the right hand knew what the left hand was doing.
Somehow he knew about a tape recording purportedly of Oswald that wasn’t Oswald, but this was kept secret until official records were declassified.
Those memos you cite which you say are at odds with Hoover’s irrevocable verbal and written admissions, may be simply unrelated if not reflective of orders to omit details of any tapes.
Bottom line, it’s impossible to reconcile two important, corroborative historical records about an audio tape of Oswald that doesn’t sound like him, to a mere transcript, unless it actually existed.
Gerry,
The FBI and Hoover never acknowledged that its original investigative report was in error, so far as I know — the link you posted doesn’t say that.
You seem to give Hoover almost godlike powers of omniscience, or at least you have a lot more faith in him than I do. He wasn’t on the scene and he wasn’t psychic. He had to get his information from other people. Human beings can’t compartmentalize and make mistakes only on little things, not on the biggies. (If only that were true!)
The HSCA concluded that the memo claiming that agents had listened to a tape was mistaken:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=800&relPageId=280
See also these 2 pages from its Lopez Report:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=68639
The HSCA conclusion was partly based on the paper trail showing that agents on the ground were almost immediately telling Hoover he was wrong.
Win Scott gave the surveillance material to the FBI Legat in Mexico City, who gave it to agent Eldon Rudd, who carried it by plane to Shanklin in Dallas.
This 11/22/63 Shanklin memo says that Rudd was flying up from Mexico with “a transcript” and photos:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1465&relPageId=27
Here’s the 4-page memo Eldon Rudd delivered to Shanklin. It contains transcripts and says “these tapes have been erased”:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=61085&relPageId=2
Next a teletype from Shanklin to Hoover, 11/23/63 says:
“SET FORTH HEREINAFTER IS TRANSCRIPT OF CONVERSATION RECEIVED BY LEGAT MEXICO FROM CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE [the CIA], WHICH IS CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET. IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE ACTUAL TAPE FROM WHICH THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS MADE HAS BEEN ERASED.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=5581&relPageId=47
Last, page 2 of a 11/25 cable from the FBI Legat in Mexico to Hoover:
“There appears to be some confusion in that no tapes were taken to Dallas but only typewritten transcripts supplied by CIA, the tapes not being available because they had been erased.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=5740&relPageId=55
If there had been a coverup, it should’ve been moving in the opposite direction, with Shanklin and/or the others talking about a tape and then silence because they’d been told to shut up. Instead it was Hoover who shut up because he was wrong.
I think the evidence is absolutely clear that no tapes were ever flown to Dallas with Rudd. If you read the links that Jean and I have posted, that should be obvious.
Hoover’s statement was wrong. The origin was Alan Belmont’s phone conversation with Shanklin, with Belmont apparently misunderstanding Shanklin. Shanklin would have told Belmont that the photos flown up were not of Oswald.
A tape or tapes in Mexico City is more difficult, since people who believe that a tape or tapes survived quote Slawson’s and Coleman’s testimony from the 1990s.
But that’s more complicated, since in a secret report they wrote for the Warren Commission they never mentioned hearing any tapes.
And for the HSCA, Slawson said that he “never listened to any tapes.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=38228&relPageId=5
Also for the HSCA, Coleman was asked if he was told why the CIA did not have an actual recording of Oswald’s voice, he said:
“I don’t know if they had it or if they didn’t.”
(At least, that’s the way I hear it. The recording is poor.)
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/unpub_testimony/audio/coleman_excerpts/HSCA_Coleman_8-2-78_e9.MP3
As for Goodpasture, see (above):
https://jfkfacts.org/assassination/fact-check/waiting-out-the-warren-commission-the-hsca-and-the-american-public/#comment-522561
So the “tapes in Mexico” issue is not the “slam dunk” that the “tapes in Dallas” is.
But on net, I doubt that any tape or tapes survived after they were transcribed.
I’m impressed with the number of bogus and questionable “memories” that pop up 30+ years after the fact. And I’m talking about from honest witnesses.
Michael Paine’s claim to have seen one of the Backyard Photos is just one example.
At the SMU conference last fall David Slawson said that when he and William Coleman went to Mexico City in April 1964 they were offered audio tapes of the ‘Oswald visit’ to listen to. According to Slawson, Coleman told Slawson to go to another location to interview FBI personnel and Coleman alone listened to the tapes. Slawson stated that for this reason he knew the tapes existed in April 1964. Slawson’s statements were carried on C-Span.
That is what Slawson told Shenon. Note that it differs from the 1993 Frontline version, where Slawson says he heard a part of a tape himself.
Also, Coleman told Shenon that he didn’t remember hearing any tape.
@ Dan,
It would be great if you had a link to this info you cite from last fall’s SMU conference, which can be bookmarked for future reference.
Thank you.
I find these mental gymnastics (to explain away the Mexico City impersonation) by Davison and McAdams incredulous. The whole episode smells of someone manipulating the evidence, and the bosses in D.C. scrambling to cover it all up. Oswald supposedly mentions KGB assassin Kostikov, and the station destroys any photos or audio tapes? You’ve got to be kidding me!!! I believe Peter Dale Scott’s and Bill Simkin’s interpretation.
Here is the link to the SMU conference last year where David Slawson spoke of the Mexico City audiotapes. From notes I believe this content is between minutes 55 and 57 of the video, although I was not able to check that today as the video would not fast forward.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?315423-1/work-warren-commission-staff-part-1
You need to post your evidence all all of these fellows, Jim.
Slawson is the only one I know of who claimed to have heard “a tape” (not tapes).
Second-hand reports of “tapes,” or your unsupported belief that Angleton “stole the tapes” don’t count.
Seven weeks after the assassination, Hoover wrote in the marginalia of a memo that he could not trust the CIA anymore because of their cover up of French espionage activity in the USA, “nor the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico, only to mention two instances of their double dealing.” (Destiny Betrayed, p. 360)
McAdams wants us to think that seven weeks later, Hoover was still out of the loop on this?
Yeah sure.
What clearly happened is that Goodpasture, Phillips and their buddy at FBI, Rudd, understood that the tape sent to Texas was a real problem in exposing the skullduggery in Mexico City. So they concocted this cover story about the tapes not surviving.
With Goodpasture and Phillips it was absolutely necessary to do so. Since they controlled the daily take and this could bring suspicion onto them. Which is one reason the HSCA went after them. And this is why Goodpasture lied continually to Eddie and Dan about her true role in the daily coverage for Phillips. This is one of the most disturbing parts of the Lopez Report.
But Burt Turner of the FBI wrote a memo on November 25th saying the tapes had been reviewed in Dallas and two CIA officers, Watson and Whitten, also knew they survived. Watson was stationed in MexCity and Whitten was the guy running the CIA inquiry of the JFK murder. (Ibid, p. 358) Doesn’t get much better than that does it?
Mexico City was the key to the plot. Period.
And what did Bill Turner know? Was he in Dallas? Did he have any first-hand knowledge of any tapes?
Knew? Or thought?
There are all kinds of reports of this or that tape surviving in Mexico City, but the issue is whether any tapes were sent to Dallas and listened to by FBI agents there.
Jim, do you think Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City?
And wasn’t hendrix one of the journalists paid by CIA or used to disseminate disinformation? Im loathe to question the integrity of anyone i havent had a chance to meet and know. However, based on their body of work, Fonzi tends to have more veracity to me.
And just to be clear, I’m a lawyer just like dan. We ain’t all bad 🙂
No. He was a journalist who was close to several CIA sources, and clearly anti-communist.
I doubt that, these days, you would object to (say) a New York Times reporter who reported on environmental issues, and was close to several environmentalist sources.
But suppose he was a CIA spook. How would that justify Fonzi publishing a flat out lie about a story he wrote?
Is the argument: he was a spook, so it’s OK to lie about him?
such an exaggeration is certainly not acceptable. I dont know enough about Hendrix which is why I asked.
I recommend checking out this CIA document regarding Hal Hendrix from the Mary Ferrell database: https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=34852&relPageId=2
Even assuming that McAdams is correct about no tape (perhaps Jeff can clear up what win Scott sent), the translator said the person alleged to be Oswald spoke terrible russian but poor spanish. The opposite of oswald.
JFK “Facts” ….. In light of all the mystery and contradictions regarding the JFK affair, will someone/anyone carefully explain why they are positive it is a “fact” that JFK was in fact killed and buried ?
If JFK wasn’t killed, would LBJ have been allowed to take the oath of office on the plane right in Dallas? This country doesn’t have 2 Presidents at the same time. I mean-I’m not sure of your point, John.
if McAdams actually read the literature he would have the answer to his perjury question; see Fonzi’s book The Last Investigation. It’s all there, but I’m not going to do any more of McAdams’ work for him. Like too many others on his side he just tosses off disinformation blithely; the idea is to tell so many untruths that it becomes impossible to fend them all off.
Fonzi lacks credibility.
He used a bogus story about a reporter named Hal Hendrix.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bogus.htm#fonzi
If you want to argue something here, argue it.
“No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth.
[Undated 1948 “Democratic Party” speech]”
― John F. Kennedy
It is my fondest dream to open another investigation, this one non-partisan and non-government funded to investigate this case. Experts should be from around the world. Members should be chosen by their known agendas or lack thereof. It is my next goal!
I’m with you on that, Gayle.
Dan Hardway, I’ve become a fan of you personally and your efforts. I think that your assessment (correct me if I’m putting words in your mouth) that those behind the assassination believed it to be a necessary act for the greater good and therefore justified takes us a long way through the labyrinth of understanding the assassination. Thanks for this particularly detailed account of certain aspects of your/the HSCA investigation. Would that more public officials that were privy to this level of information (which is strengthened by their and your first hand experience and grasp of the nuance in the interviews and testimony) would step forward with similar courage.
Mr. Hardway,
It was reported by Howard Kohn, editor of Rolling Stone magazine that an anonymous, HSCA source told him that the HSCA was trying to locate Charles Nicolletti, but that he was murdered the very next day, after phone calls had been made, trying to locate him. This is the article:
http://jfkhistory.com/mobsters/Nicoletti.html
Can you confirm or deny that claim?
Dan, I think it is fair to say that David Phillips did not know what had hit him during your questioning of him at the HSCA hearings. There is no doubt the CIA were fearful of revealing something to the HSCA. Hopefully we will find out what it was in the next few years.
Thank you Mr. Hardway for your most informative and relevant post.
Some do want to hear such. I’ve been called worse too, but never a lone nutter.
FREETHEFILES.
How about explaining why you thought Anne Goodpasture and David Atlee Phillips perjured themselves.
John, that is a very reasonable request. I base the statements here on my memory of what we did and recommended. The specification you request will require me to go back through the sworn statements. I will be glad to do that if and when I have time to get the executive session testimony transcripts, assuming both appearances are available, and go through them.
Fair enough.
I hope you will post here what led you to that conclusion.
To be honest, I’m wondering whether this was like Tannenbaum, who accused Phillips of lying about the erased tapes on the basis of an erroneous report from Hoover in DC.
But I would like to see what caused you to believe that about Phillips and Goodpasture.
I disagree that Hoover made a mistake.
We have a letter and telecon by Hoover that a tape recording of Oswald doesn’t sound like Oswald’s voice.
How can he be wrong twice and not correct or retract written and oral statements by him that are extremely prejudicial to the lone assassin scenario?
His communications to the Chief of the SS and President Johnson are more secret & revealing than some underling’s transmittal letter who’s probably taking orders as to confidentiality and covering up certain things.
It causes one to wonder how many times a director of the FBI has transmitted information that is critical to national security yet grossly erroneous to the POTUS (due to some imagined communications failure internal to the federal agencies involved). Could this be the one and only time?
“erroneous report from Hoover in DC.,” Are you implying that when Hoover told LBJ on the 23 Nov. that 6 FBI agents in Dallas had listened to the supposed audio tapes of oswald in Mexico City, where the agents determined it was NOT oswald on the tapes; Are you saying that is somehow an erroneous report? It’s available at LBJ library or even on youtube…you can hear the conversation…Hoover telling this to Johnson. Now just what is erroneous about this report? If that’s what you’re claiming?
I apologize in advance for my tone, but mr. mc adams you don’t have much credibility w/me, based on everything i’ve witnessed you say and do.
There is no doubt that Hoover said that, but it was an erroneous report. You need to read this:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/clueless3.htm
Bottom line: nobody in Dallas said they heard any tapes at all. Not in 1963, and not when questioned by the HSCA in the 70s.
Every report of “tapes” in Washington came via one source: Alan Belmont, who talked to Shanklin early in the morning of the 23rd, and apparently misunderstood what he was told.
The document that Rudd brought up from Mexico City explicitly said the tapes had been erased:
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/fbi/105-3702/124-10230-10430/html/124-10230-10430_0002a.htm
And this was long before anybody could have known of any “voice not of Oswald’s” and concocted a false story to cover that up.
Then you need to know that you don’t have much credibility with me.
JM….
“Bottom line: nobody in Dallas said they heard any tapes at all. Not in 1963, and not when questioned by the HSCA in the 70s.”….
Actually nobody (in Dallas) said they “heard a tape of Oswald”. Well of course not. If he was impersonated, it would not have been a tape of Oswald that they heard, so their statements would be “true”. (No lie).
No. No tape at all. No tape of Oswald. No tape of somebody who was not Oswald.
“No. No tape at all. No tape of Oswald. No tape of somebody who was not Oswald.”
Your words. That is not what they actually stated. Refer to your own links.
If you will actually read the links, you will see that no tapes were brought to Dallas from Mexico City.
Saying “no tapes in Dallas” is the same technical lawyer speak as saying “I never heard a recording of Oswald”. The tape could have been outside of Dallas, or played over the phone, or simply described over the phone and then reported to Hoover. The statements are lawyer speak to avoid lying without stating a truth. That kind of thing is as old as the hills.
The notion that there was some communications snafu about a tape of Oswald being impersonated simply does not wash by any standard. But once the decision was made to bury the info, pension protection kicked in and it was deep-sixed, perhaps forever.
The “communications snafu” about the tapes was explained in these two pages from the HSCA’s “Lopez Report”:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=799&relPageId=11
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=799&relPageId=12
Coverups move from the top down, not the bottom up. The first person on record who said there were no tapes in Dallas was the agent in charge there. The second was another FBI agent in Mexico who was involved in sending the CIA materials to Dallas.
Who should be more informed about what Dallas received — those two guys or someone in Washington, D.C.?
@ Jean:
Even if that ‘someone’ is the Director of the FBI who I should add was very meticulous?
JD…
“Coverups move from the top down, not the bottom up.”
Sounds like a rule from some kind of a card game. The real world does not follow rules like a card game.
“The first person on record who said there were no tapes in Dallas was the agent in charge there.”
Always the tapes. What about the person who said he heard a tape and after hearing the tape said it wasn’t Oswald? We can play Three Card Monty with the tapes ad-infinitum but it doesn’t resolve the fact that someone said they heard a tape and said it wasn’t Oswald. Now you may think that person is an idiot or does not exist, but I don’t. The truth of that fact is covered up; top down, bottom up, or sideways with an end around.
Gerry,
Hoover’s phone calls to LBJ show how inaccurate he was about many things in the beginning. In the same call in which he claimed there was a tape sent to Dallas, he also made mistakes like saying that the rifle was shipped to “a woman by the name of A. Hidell,” that the whole bullet was found on JFK’s stretcher, that Oswald fired from the 5th floor then went upstairs and left the rifle on the sixth — among other things.
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/html/LBJ-Nov-1963_0029a.htm
Hoover was getting all of his information secondhand, and some of the things he heard evidently got muddled as it passed from one person to another. “Very meticulous”? No way.
No, you just continue to repeat a factoid and treat it as a fact.
You can’t point to any witness who heard any tape and said it wasn’t Oswald.
Everything about the “tape not of Oswald” came from Alan Belmont, who apparently misheard what Shanklin said.
Reply to Jean Davison’s comment of July 14, 2014 at 4:29 pm:
Jean, those initial errors you cite are immaterial to the WC version (except perhaps the stretcher issue) – there is no comparison to the gross error concerning the Oswald tape recording.
If the tape recording error was cleared up as you and McAdams state, why would Hoover later write a meticulous letter to Rowley repeating what he told LBJ?
That tape recording error was extremely prejudicial to the lone assassin case.
Therefore, why did Hoover NOT retract his letter to Rowley for the benefit of the written record?
Where is the phone conversation with LBJ that fixes this monumental error?
It would seem that there was no error, and the true account was reflected in the most privileged communications at the top echelons of authority.
“…who apparently misheard what Shanklin said.”
Your use of the word “apparent” is telling. You don’ know after all. It’s apparent because that is your interpretation; one you have no latitude on since any other interpretation unravels an extremely huge ball of string. The evidence we DO have says the voice heard by someone, or some number of agents, somewhere, was not Oswald’s voice, whether the tapes were played and/or heard in Dallas, Mexico, Fort Worth, or Timbuktu.
Frank,
I said “apparently” because I don’t know exactly *how* this misunderstanding came about, but the record shows that there definitely *was* a misunderstanding and that Hoover’s underlings immediately let him know he was wrong.
Did you read the links to the Lopez Report? How about the HSCA’s conclusion that no tapes were sent to Dallas?
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=69318
Quoting the HSCA: on 11/23 “Shanklin advised Director Hoover that only a report of this conversation was available, not an actual tape recording….” Why would Shanklin (among others) tell Hoover he was wrong, if he wasn’t?
JD (and JM)….
The “highly sensitive source” referenced in Hoover’s memo likely has a lot to do with all of this. Ostensibly at least, it was top secret that the embassies were bugged, perhaps truly so even if Russians might have suspected it anyway. (These days every country is bugged.) By any standard, it was a matter of national security. Does it not follow then that leaks (internal or otherwise) of “sensitive” or covert activities need to be covered up, covertly; especially when national security also happens to coincide with one’s own meal ticket? At that point the usual rules do not apply. It’s all a picture that needs to be retouched, one way or another.
One thing that rings true is that the very top echelons really know what’s really happening, even if it is to be papered over down among the underlings, which “apparently” was the case.
I’ve re-read the links to the HSCA reports and the Lopez Report provided by Jean.
It just looks like damage control and double talk.
How can that tape error evolve from second hand info about a photograph and transcript that is passed on from & between experienced agents of either the CIA or FBI?
It can’t be that Hoover was only referring to the photograph because he wouldn’t have mentioned that his agents also heard the recorded voice of a LHO.
The type of error we are talking about is not something benign or an obvious mistake.
The HSCA also reports that the CIA withheld info.
They claim that there were photographs or reports of photographs, but their existence is denied or that they cannot later be found (the CIA DID photo surveillance, but ‘disposition of this photo is unknown’).
They even say that they can’t absolutely dismiss the possibility of an Oswald impostor based on other reports.
Their ultimate conclusion that there was no impostor is still subject to unanswered questions, inconsistent reports, unresolved possibilities, and missing photographs and a tape.
How can this convince the People that the truth is being told?
But that’s not the claim by conspiracists.
The claim is that agents in Dallas heard “tapes” and that the voice was not Oswald.
If you admit that’s wrong, you need to admit that the story was bogus.
“But that’s not the claim by conspiracists.
The claim is that agents in Dallas heard “tapes” and that the voice was not Oswald.”
Believe it or not, I don’t tailor my views to support the chosen views of others in the same way that you apparently do and perhaps believe that I should. I do listen to the views of others, including your own, then I draw my own conclusions.
I’m really not interested in whether the tapes were physically in Dallas. That factoid is not essential to an interpretation of the full gamut of information that is available (and remains hidden) on the subject in question, which is a possible impersonation of Oswald in Mexico. If we’re outside of your comfort zone, then I’ll be happy to drop it.
Frank,
Quote: “One thing that rings true is that the very top echelons really know what’s really happening…”
I’m amazed you would say that. Do you believe that the rifle was mailed to a woman named A. Hidell, that Oswald was living with his mother, and the other bits of misinformation in Hoover’s conversations with LBJ…?
Transcripts of LBJ’s phone calls are here:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/docset/getList.do?docSetId=1029
Whether Shanklin said he had a “tape” from the secret CIA surveillance or a “transcript” from the CIA surveillance it was the same “highly sensitive source.”
I agree wholeheartedly what Frank is saying.
After all, Hoover said “we have this tape UP HERE”, but did not specify where up here.
Moreover, if Hoover’s underlings actually corrected him, why didn’t Hoover correct or retract his prior communications to either the POTUS or the Chief of the S.S.?
Why would Hoover leave a major error outstanding for the record that was extremely prejudicial to the lone assassin scenario?
The probable answer is that it was an inconvenient truth kept secret by virtue of privileged communications.
Gerry,
So far as I know, Hoover didn’t correct any of his errors, he just let them drop. Here’s another one: he said Oswald had a gun battle with “the police officer” at the theater:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=807&relPageId=3
More telling, imo, apparently none of Hoover’s errors were pursued as though they were true. So far as I know there’s no record of a continuing search for a “woman named A. Hidell” or an imposter in Mexico. Wouldn’t the authorities want to find these people if they existed?
Jean Davison…
Two points. One, are you saying that because Hoover was wrong about several details then he was wrong about everything he said? Is there anything in the conversation he had with LBJ that was accurate? We know there was of course, so the fact of his being wrong on several details tells us nothing of the veracity of the rest of what he said.
Two, the details that were wrong were ancillary to the substance of what he was discussing, which substance did have veracity. The circumstances of the blanket and belongings at the house he mistook as his mother’s were accurate, if his relationship to Mrs. Paine wasn’t. The gender of the alias was wrong, yet he accurately identified A. Hidell as an alias of Oswald. So, it follows that while perhaps he had the location of the tapes wrong (although “up here” is hardly a location; did he mean DC? Dallas? Langley? New Orleans? we don’t know) the substance of the report, that of an Oswald impersonator can very easily be construed as accurate, despite any ancillary error.
@ Jean’s July 18th, 2014 4:25 p.m.
Gerry,
So far as I know, Hoover didn’t correct any of his errors, he just let them drop. Here’s another one: he said Oswald had a gun battle with “the police officer” at the theater:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=807&relPageId=3
More telling, imo, apparently none of Hoover’s errors were pursued as though they were true. So far as I know there’s no record of a continuing search for a “woman named A. Hidell” or an imposter in Mexico. Wouldn’t the authorities want to find these people if they existed?
Jean,
The two errors you cite WRT ‘gun battle’ or ‘woman named A. Hidell’ are obvious or conceivable mistakes.
That’s why the authorities didn’t waste anymore time with those.
HOWEVER, it’s a stretch to say that a transcript of Oswald didn’t sound like him.
Furthermore, an associated surveillance photo taken didn’t look like Oswald, which is consistent with the dissimilar voice remark, and supports the impostor suggestion.
The reason why the ‘authorities’ did not pursue the impostor is because their figureheads directed that such avenues not be pursued which we know from their pre-conceived notions (e.g. Katzenbach and Hoover memos).
Frank,
No, Hoover’s errors don’t mean that everything he said was wrong, it means that even an FBI director doesn’t necessarily know what he’s talking about.
Hoover got his information on this from FBI official Belmont, who had talked to Shanklin — in other words, JEH’s information was secondhand. The record shows that the people directly involved were disputing Hoover’s version *from the very beginning*.
A 11/22 memo by Shanklin says that FBI agent Eldon Rudd was flying from Mexico to Dallas with “a transcript” and photos:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1465&relPageId=27
Here’s the 4-page memo Eldon Rudd delivered to Shanklin. It contains transcripts and says “these tapes have been erased”:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=61085&relPageId=2
Next a teletype from Shanklin to Hoover, 11/23/63 says:
“SET FORTH HEREINAFTER IS TRANSCRIPT OF CONVERSATION RECEIVED BY LEGAT MEXICO FROM CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE [the CIA], WHICH IS CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET. IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE ACTUAL TAPE FROM WHICH THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS MADE HAS BEEN ERASED.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=5581&relPageId=47
Last, page 2 of a 11/25 cable from FBI in Mexico to Hoover:
“There appears to be some confusion in that no tapes were taken to Dallas but only typewritten transcripts supplied by CIA, the tapes not being available because they had been erased.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=5740&relPageId=55
I’m not going to disregard all that and believe that agents in Dallas listened to a tape simply because J. Edgar Hoover (or anyone else) said so. I don’t care what he said — what does the *evidence* say?
What the best evidence shows is that a tape of the Oswald conversation survived the assassination and was listened to by various people. The best evidence comes from the woman whose job it was to handle the tape, Anne Goodpasture.
Please note that Goopasture, as the custodian of the tape from the time it was made on October 1 until November 22, is a far better source than the FBI men in the United States who may or may not have eventually received the tape.
Also note that Goodpasture made her remarks under oath to the ARRB. And when I interviewed Goodpasture in Dallas in May 2005, she repeated, on tape, the same comments she made to the ARRB. Anything as important as an American making contact with the communist embassies, the station made “a dub,” a short excerpt edited from much longer the daily take of the LIENVOY tape recorders. The dub went into the file; Win Scott’s the the the longer tape was reused.
The innocents of the Warren Commission believed the story that Dick Helms fed them via Lee Rankin. It sounded plausible: the Agency simply hadn’t recognized the importance of Oswald and the recording of Oswald’s voice was lost when the tape was reused. It was a clever answer in that it was factually true–the Oswald tape was reused–and quite misleadin–It was reused after a copy had been made.
Goodpasture’s testimony that the CIA had a tape of Oswald that was never made public has been corroborated in multiple ways.
Coleman and Slawson heard an Oswald surveillance tape in April 1964
A November 1964 notation by Goodpasture speaks of a “voice comparison.”
Goodpasture’s testified that Win Scott had stored the Oswald tape in his office safe. The CIA inventory of the contents of the tape included tape recordings.
So it doesn’t matter too much what the under-informed FBI men in Dallas said or thought about this tape. J. Edgar Hoover believed the CIA had a tape of someone calling himself Oswald. He was right.
Frank and Gerry, thanks for trying to speak to the deaf, it’s a worthy effort trying to get the truth out to uninformed readers.
Frank I’d like to point out though it’s never been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that in spite of the fact a fake ID was found in one of his wallet’s that Oswald ever used the alias Hidel.
Richard Case Nagel claims to have.
Reply to John McAdams.
The document you refer to says there are photographs of a person who is not Oswald (or else he surely would have been referred to as such) and is “possibly identical” to somebody who called the embassy and identified himself as Oswald. Why do you supposed there is some doubt? Is it that the caller might or might not have been Oswald or the caller was not Oswald and might or might not have been the person in the pictures? As for the tapes it says, “With regard to the tapes [big redaction] referred to within.” Don’t you think the redaction makes it a bit unclear what is being said? “Referred to within” does not refer to the tapes because there is no other reference to any tapes so we can’t know what tapes are being referred to. It also does not say when the tapes were destroyed. It says “the CIA has advised”, but that doesn’t mean it was true. It just means that was the story that needed to be told.
No, Jeff, she is not a good witness at all as to what FBI agents in Dallas heard.
Remember, the story is that FBI agents in Dallas heard a tape with a voice not of Oswald’s.
And is decades old testimony of Goodpasture better than contemporaneous documents?
How do you explain these?
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/fbi/105-3702/124-10230-10430/html/124-10230-10430_0002a.htm
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/images/Shanklin112263.pdf
Note that it does not do you any good to claim that tapes survived in Mexico City. You need tapes in Dallas, listened to by FBI agents there.
Why do I “need” FBI agents to have heard the tape? That’s a secondary point. What matters is that Hoover told Johnson there was a tape–and so there was.
We have Anne Goodpasture’s sworn testimony to that effect and the corroboration of Slawson, the corroboration of Goodpasture’s handwritten notation.
What matters is that the tape of someone identifying himself indisputably existed after JFK’s assasssination. It wasn’t made available to the HSCA or the public. The whereabouts of the tape today are unknown. So the CIA withheld material evidence in the case of the murdered president.
Thank you Jeffmorley for helping everyone understand this better. This shows that there is more info from other sources like Goodpasture that make the Dallas shenanigans moot. Fortunately for us, you have collected it, processed it, and presented it concisely.
As one last aside it appears that the Dallas paper trail is often used today as a bright shiny object of distraction, deployed to shunt discussions away from areas that are far more relevant to the questions that continue to be asked.
No, Jeff.
Here is the story (IIRC, you admitted to having fed this stuff to Riechmann):
http://www.jfklancer.com/LNE/LHO-Mexi.html
Why did Hoover say there was a tape? Because he had been told there was a tape in Dallas.
This is the one of the memos that all the conspiracists quote (Hoover to Rowley):
If there was no tape in Dallas, Hoover’s statement was mistaken, based on bogus premises.
So wispy reports of some tape on Mexico City don’t help you.
. Regardless of what Hoover said about a tape of Oswald’s voice in Dallas, there was a tape of someone identifying themself as Oswald on November 22 and afterwords. The tape was held by Win Scott.
By “wispy reports” I guess you are referring to Goodpasture’s sworn testimony, corroborated by contemporaneous documents and the comment of two Warren Commission staffers.
Jeff,
With all due respect, I don’t see how Goodpasture can be the best source on whether a tape was sent to Dallas when she told the ARRB that she didn’t know whether a tape was given to the FBI or not and asked if they had interviewed Eldon Rudd:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=1621329
And I don’t see how the people directly involved could be “under-informed.” Are you saying that the FBI Legat didn’t know what the CIA gave him, Rudd didn’t know what he carried to Dallas, and Shanklin didn’t know what he received? I don’t understand that.
Whether Slawson and Coleman heard a tape in Mexico City in 1964 is, imo, a separate issue. If a tape turned up later, they may have heard it even though the people in Dallas did not. I don’t think their statements many years later (which disagree with their 1964 report) can be used as evidence that because they heard a tape, the men in Dallas must have, too. And so far as I know, neither man has claimed he heard a voice that wasn’t Oswald’s.
Someone at the CIA suggested that the translator made a notation about the voices on two calls being the same based not on a comparison of tapes but on his memory of Oswald’s “faulty Russian.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=32941&relPageId=32
Goodpasture said something similar about the “voice comparison” at line 7 here:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=126&relPageId=22
Did the CIA inventory specify which audio tapes these were? There’s a record of a lot of CIA tapes from *after* 11/22.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=37147&relPageId=3
I look forward to your comments, Jeff, and welcome back.
I didn’t say Goodpasture was the best source on what happened with the tape in Dallas.
I said she is the best source on the existence of the tape after the assassination, which is the primary issue here.
The issue isn’t did Eldon Rudd hear a tape? Let’s assume for the sake for argument he didn’t.
Hoover thought there was tape of someone identifyig himself as Oswald who wasn’t Oswald. Was he right or wrong about the existence of that tape?
The best source about the existence of the tape is the person who handled the surveillance tapes on a daily basis in Mexico City, not an FBI agent in Dallas.
That person stated under oath (and repeated to me personally) that the tape existed after Nov. 22. So Hoover was right about that? Was Hoover right the person on the tape who identified himself as Oswald not the real LHO.
We would have to hear the tape to answer that question. But, thanks to the CIA, we don’t have the tape.
I didn’t say she was the best source on whether the tape was in Dallas. That is a secondary issue and not terribly important.
The real question is Did the tape with Oswald (or someone identifying themself as Oswald) exist after the assassination?
The answer is yes. the sources are Goodpasture under oath; William Coleman to Anthony Summers, David Slawson to Anthony Summers and deputy station chief Alan White to Anthony Summers. Two former CIA employees and two staffers of the Warren Commission.
What happened to the tape?
We don’t know. But we do know that the CIA made sure that the public never got to listen to it. Draw your own conclusions.
Jeff, it seems to me you have your answer:
“No, Hoover’s errors don’t mean that everything he said was wrong, it means that even an FBI director doesn’t necessarily know what he’s talking about.”
Hoover said there was a tape in Dallas.
Hoover’s statement was clueless.
If there happened to be a tape somewhere else, that doesn’t change the fact that Hoover was wrong about a tape in Dallas, with a voice not of Oswald.
As for:
Goodpasture’s testimony was the result of a leading line of questioning (she seems to have been told as a fact that FBI agents had heard a tape not of Oswald):
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=146573&relPageId=146
When flatly asked if there was a tape of an October 1 conversation (presumably of Oswald), she says “I think there was.”
As for Slawson and Coleman: in their secret report to the WC, they did not mention any tape of Oswald. They did mention hearing a tape of a conversation between the Cuban Counsel and Havana.
You have a tendency to use 30+ year old testimony.
As for “contemporaneous documents:” how about posting the links?
Goodpasture’s testimony that the tape existed after November was under oath. She repeated her sworn testimony to me.
Coleman and Slawson didn’t mention the tape in their memo because of concerns about the LIENVOY program which obtained the tape. Coleman and Slawson later volunteered to others that Scott had played a tape for Slawson. They have repeated those statements. Those statements have been published. Coleman and Slawson did not repudiate them. If you don’t they listened to the tape, call them up and ask them.
So we have sworn testimony of a former CIA employee, voluntarily repeated in a recorded interview, plus on the record corroboration from two Warren Commission staffers. For you to say this is not solid evidence is silly. For you to then demand that I produce more evidence so that you can dismiss it isn’t silly. Its kind of stupid. You think I’m as stupid as you are acting. I’m not.
Jeff,
Was my post of July 25 rejected?
Jean
no
He was wrong. He clearly believed there was a tape in Dallas, and that FBI agents there had listened to it and said the voice was not of Oswald.
The fact that you believe that another tape or tapes survived in Mexico City is irrelevant.
You have zero evidence that anybody listened to any “tapes” and heard a voice claimed to be Oswald’s that was not Oswald.
None of your latter-day accounts say that, and you have nothing from November 1963 supporting that, except the obviously bogus account from Hoover.
Its not question of what I believe. Its a question of what the evidence tells us. If you think that the sworn testimony of a career CIA employee, repeated word for word to me in an on-the-record recorded interview with me, qualifies as “evidence,” what’s the point in even having a discussion? Why don’t you ask Jean Davison if Goodpasture’s deposition qualifies as evidence. After that we can chat.
Jeff:
The Lopez Report explained why Hoover “thought there was a tape of someone identifying himself as Oswald who wasn’t Oswald.” It says Hoover got this idea from Belmont, who misunderstood something Shanklin told him and was immediately corrected by the people who were actually involved:
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt/html/LopezRpt_0011a.htm
This explanation is supported by the record — statements by Shanklin, Eldon Rudd, and the FBI Legat who got the CIA surveillance material from Win Scott. All of them said *at the time* that no tapes were sent to Dallas. How would you explain these documents? Did they lie to Hoover?
No tapes in Dallas doesn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t a tape that turned up later in Mexico and played for Slawson/Coleman. However, their 1964 top secret report to Rankin was very open about the LIENVOY program. It says that Scott showed them “the actual translations” of “all the telephone intercepts” and reels of photos taken outside the two embassies:
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcmemos/Trip_to_Mexico_City/html/104-10011-10097_0025a.htm
I don’t think either Slawson or Coleman has said he heard a voice claiming to be Oswald that wasn’t Oswald. Did anyone other than Belmont/Hoover ever make that claim?
The point is that the CIA, by not releasing the tape–material evidence in the murder of a sitting president–means that we cannot answer the question of who was speaking. The question was first raised, not by conspiracy theorists after the fact, but by the CIA BEFORE the assassination.
Boris Tarasoff, the monitor of the tape, says the speaker spoke terrible Russian. As George De Mohrenschildt noted, Oswald’s Russian was excellent.
You need to tell me whether you think her testimony is “evidence” of some tape that somebody heard and thought was not Oswald’s voice, or whether it is merely “evidence” of some tape.
Jeff, anybody can read her testimony. She’s speculating, after having been told about the Hoover report of a tape.
Do you really think some tape was sent to Laredo?
Here is where she is primed to talk about a “tape:”
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=1621328
On the very next page she is asked if she has any recollection of any tape being given to the FBI.
Her answer is a flat “no.”
She is asked if she has any recollection of a tape as “not being . . . not having Oswald’s voice on it.”
Her answer is a flat “no.”
She says “I think I brought a tape in and gave it to the [redacted].” You seem to be treating this as an iron-clad certainty.
She says an FBI agent “may have carried a tape dub to Laredo.”
This is zero evidence of a tape in Dallas that FBI agents heard and said was not of Oswald.
Jeff, I think this evidence is way more frail than you think.
Jean Davison (who else?!) turned this up:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=38228&relPageId=5
When asked about “telephone conversations involving Oswald” Slawson says that (in the words of the HSCA staffer) “He was shown actual transcripts but never listened to any tapes.”
Then there was what he told Tony Summers, which is indeed as you represented it.
But then there is what Slawson and Coleman told Shenon (in Shenon’s words):
Shenon cites his own interviews with Coleman and Slawson.
So we seem to have different versions from Slawson.
But the biggest thing here is simple logic: if the CIA lied about there being no extant tapes, why would Scott tell WC staffers (in effect) “we lied?”
Jeff,
As for Goodpasture, if you will check the Lopez Report, you will see that she gave a sworn deposition that the tapes no longer existed after the assassination.
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=68996
Jeff,
Everyone seems to rely on de Mohrenschildt’s praise of Oswald’s Russian, but other Russian speakers who knew him were more critical.
Paul Gregory said, “It was this poorly spoken Russian, but he was completely fluent. He understood more than I did and he could express any idea, I believe, that he wanted to in Russian. But it was heavily pronounced and he made all kinds of grammatical errors, and Marina would correct him, and he would get peeved at her for doing this. She would say you are supposed to say like this, and he would wave his hand and say, ‘Don’t bother me.’”
Ruth Paine said that Oswald had a larger vocabulary than she did but “less understanding of the grammar, and considerably less regard for it.[…] He didn’t seem to care whether he was speaking it right or not.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=19190
IMO, a professional translator’s saying the caller spoke broken Russian doesn’t necessarily exclude Oswald at all.
First, I notice you have evaded talking about Hoover, whose claim of a tape in Dallas was obviously bogus.
As for LIENVOY, that’s the program that intercepted the conversation between the Counsel and Havana, isn’t it? So having intercepted the conversation with the Counsel would be as sensitive as having intercepted an Oswald conversation, would it not?
Then there was this request of mine that you ignored:
How about doing that?
I’ve always thought it curious, if not suspicious, that Oswald’s activities, over the Summer and Fall of 1963, were closely tied into CIA corresponding activities (New Orleans, Mexico City, Dallas) and those of certain Mob associates (Trafficante, Marcello, Roselli). The ‘blow-back’, at Kennedy, from the operational street level due to his ordering the CIA to cut funding to exile groups, and the FBI to raid training camps (FL and NO), would essentially lead to clandestine funding other than US government sources (rogue CIA agents, mob bosses, mercenaries, businesses, private parties) who could then “direct” the trained exiles in the actions they wanted carried out. Were Phillips, Harvey, and mob figures (in control of certain exile group leaders) complicit in JFK’s murder?
Government agencies did the same thing to the temporary Assassinations Records Review Board. – ARRB, especially the Office of Naval Intelligence – ONI – knowing the ARRB would eventually disappear, just waited it out, as they knew there would be no enforcement of they JafK Act after the ARRB was gone. And they were right.
It’s a shame. Almost makes one think that they are going through the motions to keep critics at bay.