Over the postwar years, we have granted to the elite and secret police within our system vast new powers over the lives and liberties of the people. At the request of the trusted and respected heads of those forces, and their appeal to the necessities of national security, we have exempted those grants of power from due accounting and strict surveillance. Hale Boggs -- Speech before Congress (April 22, 1971)
[FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover lied his eyes out to the [Warren] Commission -- on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it. Hale Boggs -- Speaking to an aide, quoted by Bernard Fensterwald
Hale Boggs corpse was never found.
In viewing Abraham Zapruder's home movie of President Kennedy's assassination an observer can't help wondering why Jackie Kennedy was crawling out onto the trunk of the presidential limousine after her husband had been hit. What was she trying to do? Was she simply reaching out to the Secret Service agent who dashed toward her, scrambling up onto the car's rear?
In a recent book, JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass pulls together the evidence and testimony that has emerged in recent decades from various sources: the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations, interviews with people who overcame fear in order to share their knowledge of some facet of the fateful event, the work of other writers, declassification of the Kennedy presidential papers, access to the files of the former Soviet Union, and information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
All told, it has taken nearly forty years to ascertain the exact words the president's widow used in her description of the assassination. In 1975, Harold Weisberg obtained through FOIA what he believed to be her complete Warren Commission testimony. Nevertheless, in 2001, filmmaker Mark Sobel through his FOIA request obtained the stenographer's original tape that revealed her statement in its entirety.
The part that the Commission wished to keep from the American people and the rest of the world was Jackie Kennedy's description of the fragment of her husband's skull that had been separated from the back of his head by the force of a bullet, a bullet that was later determined to have entered through his throat. She crawled out over the car's trunk in order to retrieve it, but it floated off the rear bumper into the roadway. One can only imagine her despair as she tried to stem the hemorrhaging by pushing his hair over the wound as he lay collapsed in her lap while the limousine sped toward Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Why did the Commissioners deep six this part of her testimony? The answer is simple. It blew to smithereens their Oswald-did-it postulation because a shot that caused this kind of damage to the President's head had to be fired not only from a position in front of the vehicle but also from below it in order to fit the bullet's trajectory. In other words, from the infamous grassy knoll. It could not have come from above and behind. That is to say, from a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building.
There is another mysterious feature to the Zapruder tape. Where were the Secret Service agents that we customarily see running alongside the presidential limo, one hand gripping the car, whenever a president is on display? Zapruder's film shows none of them in place nor any standing on the two specially-constructed platforms built into the rear of the car. They are all riding in a car behind the limousine. We see the motorcycle escorts that had accompanying the presidential party pull back as the motorcade moves into Dealey Plaza. According to Douglass, these men had been instructed to leave the presidential car in this vulnerable position at this particular point.
In September of 1964, the seven member commission that President Johnson had appointed to investigate the assassination finished its work They included Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John J. McCloy, former High Commissioner of Germany, Allen Dulles who had been fired by Kennedy from his post as CIA Director, and Gerald Ford, a longtime House member from Michigan and future president.
Although they signed the Report, the three remaining members - John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky and Richard Russell of Georgia, both US Senators, and Hale Boggs of Louisiana, the House Majority Leader - disagreed with the finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. Boggs was the most emphatic and outspoken about his disagreement. Douglass writes that Bernard Fensterwald in Coincidence or Conspiracy quotes Boggs saying to an aide, "[FBI Director] Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission - on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it."
In October of 1972, Boggs died in a plane crash in Alaska while on a politically-oriented trip. No trace of the plane was ever found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_Boggs
He was one of the people associated with Kennedy's murder who also met untimely deaths. (see below)
Douglass's research about Oswald's service in the Marines, his defection to the Soviet Union and return to the United States boils down to this: Oswald became a CIA employee sometime between September 1957 and November 1958 while a Marine stationed in Atsugi, Japan, a CIA installation and base for the illegal U-2 flights. He was then transferred to a base in Santa Ana, California, where he also had access to top-secret information.
Within months of leaving the Marines, he appeared at the American Embassy in Moscow on October 31, 1959, to renounce his American citizenship. Sent to the Soviet Union as an undercover agent, he supposedly gave the Soviets information about U-2 flights while gathering intelligence about Soviet activities. Oswald returned to the States in the same month as the April 1961 ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Oswald, under the direction of his CIA handlers, began his journey at that time to become the scapegoat for Kennedy's murder.
Like the steady drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet, damning evidence accumulates showing that the CIA with tangential Mafia involvement and FBI help plotted to kill Kennedy and to set up the Soviets and the Cubans as instigators of the assassination, using Oswald as their hit man, in hopes that military retaliation would be taken against one or both countries.
President Johnson scrapped this part of the CIA plan. He did not want to get into a shooting war with the Soviets. But he did endorse their portrayal of Oswald as the lone assassin who was characterized as a troubled young man, unable to establish relationships with others, and who had rejected democracy in favor of communism, and had a need to be noticed.
What motivated the CIA to kill a president of the United States? Douglass explores the answer to this question at length, setting forth in his book a convincing argument that not only was the CIA furious with Kennedy for reneging on air support for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, but that the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted air strikes, even permission to use nuclear weapons, as a way of settling the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Pentagon as well as others in Kennedy's administration wanted to ratchet up tensions with the Soviets, and wanted to increase troop presence in Vietnam rather than withdraw which Kennedy privately indicated he wanted to do.
Although Kennedy's public pronouncements led many Americans to believe that it was business as usual in fighting the Cold War, secret correspondence from the files of both Khrushchev and Kennedy tell us that after the missile crisis the two began working on plans to end the Cold War. A first step was the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that took place in August 1963.
Douglass points time and again to Kennedy's first public revelation of his vision for a peaceful world - his June 10, 1963, commencement speech at American University in Washington, D.C. -and how remarkable it was. In an oft-quoted paragraph, Kennedy sums up the direction in which he intends to go: "So, let us not be blind to our differences-but let us also direct our attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."
This book leaves the reader with several questions. Is the CIA an out-of-control rogue operation? If so, it does not act to enrich its own members, Mafia-wise. What powerful forces outside of government would feel that their interests were being threatened by Kennedy's objectives?
Perhaps Eisenhower anticipated this question when just before leaving office he warned us about the military-industrial complex although he himself did precious little to curb its growth. Phrases like "the elimination of war and arms," "check the spiraling arms race," and "arms can finally be abolished" that were sprinkled throughout Kennedy's commencement address must have struck daggers into the hearts of the war profiteers as they realized Kennedy was beginning a campaign to enlist the support of the American people in his initiatives for peace.
The CIA's covert operations in other parts of the world (Honduras being the most recent), have all been carried out in the interests of one or another faction of corporate America. Do we have one government for show and another that lurks in the shadows, using the CIA for its own private purposes?
JFK and the Unspeakable makes it very clear that the Warren Commission let the CIA get away with murdering a president of the United States that paved the way for pumping up profit-making via another war. In this, the twenty-first century, did the Bush-appointed National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States play the same role in regard to 9/11?
Deaths of Witnesses
Some writers who have investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy have claimed that a large number of witnesses to the event have died in mysterious circumstances. The Sunday Times reported that "the odds against these witnesses being dead by February, 1967, were one hundred thousand trillion to one." When the Select Committee on Assassinations questioned the newspaper reporter who wrote the article, he admitted he had made a "careless journalistic mistake".
In his book Crossfire, the author Jim Marrs, provided a list of 103 people who he claims died in mysterious circumstances between 1963 and 1976. In reality, most of these people died of natural causes. Some of these people did die in accidents. Others were murdered or committed suicide. However, these people rarely had information that would have been important in helping investigators discover if there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
The first person to die linked to the case was Karyn Kupcinet. In his book, Forgive My Grief, W. Penn Jones reports that "a few days before the assassination, Karyn Kupcinet, 23, was trying to place a long distance telephone call from the Los Angeles area. According to reports, the long distance operator heard Miss Kupcinet scream into the telephone that President Kennedy was going to be killed." Karyn's body was discovered on 30th November, 1963. Police estimated that she had been dead for two days. The New York Times reported that she had been strangled. Her actor boyfriend, Andrew Prine was the main suspect but he was never charged with the murder and the crime remains unsolved.
Some researchers claimed that there was a link between the death of Kupcinet and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was argued that the conspirators were trying to frighten off her father and journalist, Irv Kupcinet from telling what he knew.
Grant Stockdale, a close friend of John F. Kennedy died on 2nd December, 1963 when he fell (or was pushed) from his office on the thirteenth story of the Dupont Building in Miami. Stockdale did not leave a suicide note but his friend, George Smathers, claimed that he had become depressed as a result of the death of the president. However, it later became known that four days after the assassination Stockdale flew to Washington and talked with Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. On his return Stockdale told several of his friends that "the world was closing in." On 1st December, he spoke to his attorney, William Frates who later recalled: "He started talking. It didn't make much sense. He said something about 'those guys' trying to get him. Then about the assassination."
After the assassination of President Kennedy, Gary Underhill told his friend, Charlene Fitsimmons, that he was convinced that he had been killed by members of the CIA. He also said: "Oswald is a patsy. They set him up. It's too much. The bastards have done something outrageous. They've killed the President! I've been listening and hearing things. I couldn't believe they'd get away with it, but they did!"
Underhill believed there was a connection between Executive Action, Fidel Castro and the death of John F. Kennedy: "They tried it in Cuba and they couldn't get away with it. Right after the Bay of Pigs. But Kennedy wouldn't let them do it. And now he'd gotten wind of this and he was really going to blow the whistle on them. And they killed him!"
Gary Underhill told friends that he feared for his life: "I know who they are. That's the problem. They know I know. That's why I'm here. I can't stay in New York." Underhill was found dead on 8th May 1964. He had been shot in the head and it was officially ruled that he had committed suicide. However, in his book, Destiny Betrayed, James DiEugenio claimed that the bullet entered the right-handed Underhill's head behind the left ear.
There has been a significant number of people who have died who did appear to have important information about the case. This includes several journalists investigating the murder. On 24th November, 1963, Bill Hunter of the Long Beach Press Telegram and Jim Koethe of the Dallas Times Herald interviewed George Senator. Also there was the attorney Tom Howard. Earlier that day Senator and Howard had both visited Jack Ruby in jail. That evening Senator arranged for Koethe, Hunter and Howard to search Ruby's apartment.
It is not known what the journalists found but on 23rd April 1964, Hunter was shot dead by Creighton Wiggins, a policeman in the pressroom of a Long Beach police station. Wiggins initially claimed that his gun fired when he dropped it and tried to pick it up. In court this was discovered that this was impossible and it was decided that Hunter had been murdered. Wiggins finally admitted he was playing a game of quick draw with his fellow officer. The other officer, Errol F. Greenleaf, testified he had his back turned when the shooting took place. In January 1965, both were convicted and sentenced to three years probation.
Jim Koethe decided to write a book about the assassination of Kennedy. However, he died on 21st September, 1964. It seems that a man broke into his Dallas apartment and killed him by a karate chop to the throat. Tom Howard died of a heart-attack, aged 48, in March, 1965.
On 21st July, 1964, Dr. Mary Sherman was murdered in New Orleans. She had been stabbed in the heart, arm, leg and stomach. Her laboratory was also set on fire. The crime has never been sold. Later Edward T. Haslam published Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus : The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory. In the book he argued that Sherman was working with David Ferrie. Haslam believed that this Central Intelligence Agency backed research involved disease intelligence gathering and cancer research using laboratory-made biological weapons. Haslam claimed this biological weapon was to be used against Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Judyth Baker later began giving interviews aboout involvement in an anti-Castro conspiracy. She claims that in 1963 she was recruited by Dr. Canute Michaelson to work with Dr. Alton Ochsner and Dr. Mary Sherman in a CIA secret project. This involved creating the means to insure Fidel Castro developed cancer.
In 1963 Judyth moved to New Orleans where she worked closely with others involved in this plot. This included Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw and Guy Bannister. Later she claimed she began an affair with Oswald. The research into this biological weapon was carried out in the homes of Ferrie and Sherman. Oswald role in this conspiracy was to work as a courier. However, the project was abandoned in September, 1963, and Oswald was ordered to Dallas.
Oswald kept in touch with Baker and in November, 1963, he had been forced to join a plot to kill John F. Kennedy. Oswald believed that the conspiracy was being organized by Mafia leader, Carlos Marcello and a CIA agent, David Atlee Phillips. Oswald told her he would do what he could to ensure that Kennedy was not killed. After the assassination of Kennedy and the arrest of Oswald, Baker received a phone-call from David Ferrie warning her that she would be killed if she told anyone about her knowledge of these events.
On 12th October, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot dead as she walked along the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath in Georgetown. Henry Wiggins, a car mechanic, was working on a vehicle on Canal Road, when he heard a woman shout out: "Someone help me, someone help me". He then heard two gunshots. Wiggins ran to the edge of the wall overlooking the towpath. He later told police he saw "a black man in a light jacket, dark slacks, and a dark cap standing over the body of a white woman."
Soon afterwards Raymond Crump, a black man, was found not far from the murder scene. He was arrested and charged with Mary's murder. The towpath and the river were searched but no murder weapon was ever found.
The media did not report at the time that Mary Pinchot Meyer had been having an affair with John F. Kennedy. Nor did it reveal that her former husband, Cord Meyer, was a senior figure in CIA's covert operations. As a result, there was little public interest in the case.
During the trial Wiggins was unable to identify Raymond Crump as the man standing over Meyer's body. The prosecution was also handicapped by the fact that the police had been unable to find the murder weapon at the scene of the crime. On 29th July, 1965, Crump was acquitted of murdering Mary Meyer. The case remains unsolved.
In March, 1976, James Truitt gave an interview to the National Enquirer. Truitt told the newspaper that Mary Pinchot Meyer was having an affair with John F. Kennedy. He also claimed that Meyer had told his wife, Ann Truitt, that she was keeping an account of this relationship in her diary. Meyer asked Truitt to take possession of a private diary "if anything ever happened to me".
Ann Truitt was living in Tokyo at the time of the murder. She phoned Ben Bradlee at his home and asked him if he had found the diary. Bradlee, who claimed he was unaware of his sister-in-law's affair with Kennedy, knew nothing about the diary. He later recalled what he did after Truitt's phone-call: "We didn't start looking until the next morning, when Tony and I walked around the corner a few blocks to Mary's house. It was locked, as we had expected, but when we got inside, we found Jim Angleton, and to our complete surprise he told us he, too, was looking for Mary's diary."
James Angleton, CIA counterintelligence chief, admitted that he knew of Mary's relationship with John F. Kennedy and was searching her home looking for her diary and any letters that would reveal details of the affair. According to Ben Bradlee, it was Mary's sister, Antoinette Bradlee, who found the diary and letters a few days later. It was claimed that the diary was in a metal box in Mary's studio. The contents of the box were given to Angleton who claimed he burnt the diary. Angleton later admitted that Mary recorded in her diary that she had taken LSD with Kennedy before "they made love".
Leo Damore claimed in an article that appeared in the New York Post that the reason Angleton and Bradlee were looking for the diary was that: "She (Meyer) had access to the highest levels. She was involved in illegal drug activity. What do you think it would do to the beatification of Kennedy if this woman said, 'It wasn't Camelot, it was Caligula's court'?" Damore also said that a figure close to the CIA had told him that Mary's death had been a professional "hit".
There is another possible reason why both Angleton and Bradlee were searching for documents in Meyer's house. Were they looking for material that Meyer had been collecting on CIA's covert activities?
In 1963 Desmond FitzGerald was in charge of the CIA's Cuban Task Force. In this post he personally organized three different plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. According to Dick Russell, FitzGerald had a meeting in France with a Cuban code-named AM/LASH, finalising a plan to eliminate Castro, at the same time John F. Kennedy was assassinated. FitzGerald died of a heart attack while playing tennis in Virginia on 23rd July, 1967.
Lisa Howard died at East Hampton, Long Island, on 4th July, 1965. It was officially reported that she had committed suicide. Apparently, she had taken one hundred phenobarbitols. It was claimed she was depressed as a result of losing her job and suffering a miscarriage. At first no one associated Howard's death with the Kennedy assassination. However, it has recently emerged that Howard was involved in secret negotiations with Fidel Castro on behalf of John F. Kennedy.
Winston Scott was the CIA's station chief in Mexico. Scott retired in 1969 and wrote a memoir about his time in the FBI, OSS and the CIA. He completed the manuscript, It Came To Late, and made plans to discuss the contents of the book with CIA director, Richard Helms, in Washington on 30th April, 1971. Four days before the agreed meeting Scott died of a heart attack.
Michael Scott told Dick Russell that James Angleton took away his father's manuscript. Angleton also confiscated three large cartons of files including a tape-recording of the voice of Lee Harvey Oswald. Michael Scott was also told by a CIA source that his father had not died from natural causes. Scott eventually got his father's manuscript back from the CIA. However, 150 pages were missing. Chapters 13 to 16 were deleted in their entirety. In fact, everything about his life after 1947 had been removed on grounds of national security.
Nancy Carole Tyler worked as secretary to Bobby Baker. At the time of the assassination she was living with Mary Jo Kopechne, who worked for George Smathers (she later became secretary to Robert Kennedy). According to W. Penn Jones Jr, it was Tyler and Kopechne who told Baker that John F. Kennedy planned to replace Lyndon B. Johnson as vice president. Tyler died in a plane crash, near Ocean City, Maryland, on 10th May, 1965. Kopechne was later to die in the car of Edward Kennedy on 18th July, 1969.
Dorothy Kilgallen, a crime reporter of the New York Journal, obtained a private interview with Jack Ruby. She told friends that she had information that would "break the case wide open". Aware of what had happened to Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe, she handed her interview notes to her friend Margaret Smith. On 8th November, 1965, Kilgallen, was found dead. It was reported she had committed suicide. Her friend, Margaret Smith, died two days later.
Two of the men that Jim Garrison believed were involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, Guy Bannister (June, 1964), David Ferrie ( February, 1967) and Eladio del Valle (February, 1967) died before they could be brought to court.
Roger D. Craig was on duty in Dallas on 22nd November, 1963. After hearing the firing at President John F. Kennedy he ran towards the Grassy Knoll where he interviewed witnesses to the shooting. About 15 minutes later he saw a man running from the back door of the Texas Book Depository down the slope to Elm Street. He then got into a Nash station wagon.
Craig saw the man again in the office of Captain Will Fitz. It was the recently arrested Lee Harvey Oswald. When Craig told his story about the man being picked up by the station wagon, Oswald replied: "That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine... Don't try to tie her into this. She had nothing to do with it."
Craig was also with Seymour Weitzman when the rifle was found on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository. He insisted that the rifle was a 7.65 Mauser and not a Mannlicher-Carcano.
Craig became unpopular with senior police officers in Dallas when he testified before the Warren Commission. He insisted he had seen Lee Harvey Oswald get into the station wagon 15 minutes after the shooting. This was ignored by Earl Warren and his team because it showed that at least two people were involved in the assassination. Craig, unlike Seymour Weitzman, refused to change his mind about finding a Mauser rather than a Mannlicher-Carcano in the Texas Book Depository. Craig was fired from the police department in 1967 after he was found to have discussed his evidence with a journalist.
In 1967 Roger D. Craig went to New Orleans and was a prosecution witness at the trial of Clay Shaw. Later that year he was shot at while walking to a car park. The bullet only grazed his head. In 1973 a car forced Craig's car off a mountain road. He was badly injured but he survived the accident. In 1974 he surviving another shooting in Waxahachie, Texas. The following year he was seriously wounded when his car engine exploded. Craig told friends that the Mafia had decided to kill him. Craig was found dead from on 15th May, 1975. It was later decided he had died as a result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
When the Select Committee on Intelligence Activities and Select Committee on Assassinations began investigating Kennedy's death in the 1970s the deaths of potential witnesses increased dramatically. This included several criminals with possible links to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Those who were killed or who died in suspicious circumstances during this period included Malcolm Wallace (1971), Lucien Sarti (1972), Charles Willoughby (1972), Thomas Davis (1973), Richard Cain (1973), Dave Yarras (1974), Sam Giancana (1975), Jimmy Hoffa (1975), Roland Masferrer (1975), Johnny Roselli (1976), George De Mohrenschildt (1977), Charlie Nicoletti (1977) and Carlos Prio (1977).
William Sullivan, the main figure in the FBI involved in the Executive Action project, was shot dead near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, on 9th November, 1977. Sullivan had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period in 1977. Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and his liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested and Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene.
Several important figures in the Central Intelligence Agency died before they could give evidence to the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigations. Sheffield Edwards, the CIA official who attempted to organize the assassination of Fidel Castro, died in July, 1975. William Harvey, head of the ZR/RIFLE project, died as a result of complications from heart surgery in June, 1976. William Pawley, who took part in Operation Tilt, died of gunshot wounds in January, 1977. David Morales, who some believe organized the assassination, died aged 53, on 8th May, 1978. Another important figure in CIA covert operations, Thomas Karamessines died of a heart attack on 4th September, 1978.
John Paisley was deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide.
According to the journalist, Victor Marchetti, Paisley was a close friend of Yuri Nosenko. Marchetti also claimed that Paisley knew a great deal about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was murdered during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation because he was "about to blow the whistle".
Open Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1) James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed (1963)
On that evening of November 22, 1963, Gary Underhill was a deeply troubled man. What he had learned, and the fact that they knew he had learned it, were too much for him. He had to escape. Once he was out of Washington, he could regain his equilibrium. Then he would decide what to do. He had friends in New York he could talk to without fear of the word getting back to Washington.
(2) Paul Golais, The Citizen's Voice (8th April, 2001)
Only hours after Kennedy was shot, CIA agent Gary Underhill left Washington, D.C., and drove to the home of friends on Long Island, N.Y. Underhill says he fears for his life and he must leave the country. "This country is too dangerous for me. I've got to get on a boat. Oswald is a patsy. They set him up. It's too much. The bastards have done something outrageous. They've killed the president! I've been listening and hearing things. I couldn't believe they'd get away with it, but they did. They've gone made! They're a bunch of drug runners and gun runners - a real violence group.I know who they are. That's the problem. They know I know. That's why I'm here.''
(3) James DiEugenio, review of Gerald Posner's book Case Closed (1993)
Posner writes that there is no source for the claim that Gary Underhill was a former CIA agent, and "no corroboration that he ever said there was CIA complicity in the assassination." I hate to plug my own work, but in Destiny Betrayed, Posner would have learned there are several sources for Underhill's wartime OSS career and his later CIA consulting status, including Underhill himself. As for his accusations about the CIA and the murder of JFK, he related them quite vividly to his friend Charlene Fitsimmons within 24 hours of the shooting. She then forwarded a letter to Jim Garrison relating the incident in detail.
(4) Penn Jones, Jr, Disappearing Witnesses included in The Rebel (22nd November, 1983)
Shortly after dark on Sunday night, November 24, 1963, after Ruby had killed Lee Harvey Oswald, a meeting took place in Jack Ruby's apartment in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas, Texas. Five persons were present. George Senator and Attorney Tom Howard were present and having a drink in the apartment when two newsmen arrived. The newsmen were Bill Hunter of the Long Beach California Press Telegram and Jim Koethe of the Dallas Times Herald. Attorney C.A. Droby of Dallas arranged the meeting for the two newsmen, Jim Martin, a close friend of George Senator's, was also present at the apartment meeting. This writer asked Martin if he thought it was unusual for Senator to forget the meeting while testifying in Washington on April 22, 1964, since Bill Hunter, who was a newsman present at the meeting, was shot to death that very night. Martin grinned and said: "Oh, you're looking for a conspiracy."
I nodded yes and he grinned and said, "You will never find it."
I asked soberly, "Never find it, or not there?"
He added soberly, "Not there."
Bill Hunter, a native of Dallas and an award-winning newsman in Long Beach, was on duty and reading a book in the police station called the "Public Safety Building." Two policemen going off duty came into the press room, and one policeman shot Hunter through the heart at a range officially ruled to be "no more than three feet." The policeman said he dropped his gun, and it fired as he picked it up, but the angle of the bullet caused him to change his story. He finally said he was playing a game of quick draw with his fellow officer. The other officer testified he had his back turned when the shooting took place.
Hunter, who covered the assassination for his paper, the Long Beach Press Telegram had written:
"Within minutes of Ruby's execution of Oswald, before the eyes of millions watching television, at least two Dallas attorneys appeared to talk with him."
Hunter was quoting Tom Howard who died of a heart attack in Dallas a few months after Hunter's own death. Lawyer Tom Howard was observed acting strangely to his friends two days before his death. Howard was taken to the hospital by a "friend" according to the newspapers. No autopsy was performed.
Dallas Times Herald reporter Jim Koethe was killed by a karate chop to the throat just as he emerged from a shower in his apartment on Sept. 21, 1964. His murderer was not indicted.
What went on in that significant meeting in Ruby's and Senator's apartment?
Few are left to tell. There is no one in authority to ask the question, since the Warren Commission has made its final report, and the House Select Committee has closed its investigation.
(5) Bill Sloan, JFK: Breaking the Silence (1993)
At approximately 2 a.m. on the morning of April 23, 1964, Hunter was sitting at his desk in the press room of the Long Beach police station and reading a mystery novel entitled Stop This Man, when two detectives - both of whom were later described as "friends" of Hunter - came into the room.
Initially, there was considerable confusion over exactly what happened next. One officer was first quoted as saying he dropped his gun, causing it to discharge as it struck the floor. Later, he changed his story to say that he and the other detective were engaged in "horseplay" with their loaded weapons when the tragedy occurred.
Whatever the case, a single shot suddenly rang out, striking Hunter where he sat. An autopsy later showed that the .38-caliber bullet plowed straight through Hunter's heart.
He died instantly, without ever moving or saying a word.
"My boss called me at 2 a.m. and told me Bill Hunter had been shot," Bill Shelton recalls. "He wasn't satisfied with the story that the cop had dropped his gun, and as it turned out, that wasn't what happened at all."
The newspaper charged police with covering up the facts in the case, which Long Beach Police Chief William Mooney vigorously denied. Detectives Creighton Wiggins, Jr., and Errol F. Greenleaf were relieved of their duties and subsequently charged with involuntary manslaughter. In January 1965, both were convicted and given identical three-year probated sentences.
Two weeks after the shooting, in a letter of resignation to his chief, Detective Wiggins wrote: "It is a tragic thing that this must come about in this manner, for I have lost a wonderful friend in Bill Hunter and so have all the police officers of the department... he was truly the policeman's friend."
While Hunter's death made sensational headlines in California, it was scarcely noted 2,000 miles away in Dallas. Jim Koethe surely mourned his friend, but if he connected Hunter's death in any way with their visit to Ruby's apartment five months earlier, he didn't mention it to any of his acquaintances at the Times-Herald.
(6) New York Journal American (15th November, 1965)
The death of Dorothy Kilgallen, Journal-American columnist and famed TV personality, was contributed to by a combination of moderate quantities of alcohol and barbiturates, a medical examiner's report stated today.
As many personalities whose multiple duties and responsibilities demand unceasing attention, Miss Kilgallen experienced recurring tensions in meeting her deadlines for performances - both as a newspaperwoman and TV performer.
In his report today, Dr. James Luke, Assistant Medical Examiner, said that although Miss Kilgallen had only "moderate amounts of each," the effect of the combination had caused depression of the central nervous system "which in turn caused her heart to stop."
(7) Jim Marrs, Crossfire (1989)
Whatever information Kilgallen learned and from whatever source, many researchers believe it brought about her strange death. She told attorney Mark Lane: "They've killed the President, (and) the government is not prepared to tell us the truth . . . " and that she planned to "break the case." To other friends she said: "This has to be a conspiracy! . . . I'm going to break the real story and have the biggest scoop of the century." And in her last column item regarding the assassination, published on September 3, 1965, Kilgallen wrote: "This story isn't going to die as long as there's a real reporter alive - and there are a lot of them." But on November 8, 1965, there was one less reporter. That day Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her home. It was initially reported that she died of a heart attack, but quickly this was changed to an overdose of alcohol and pills.
(8) Matthew Smith, JFK: The Second Plot (1992)
Roger Craig had been named Officer of the Year by the Dallas Traffic Commission and he was promoted four times. He was to receive no further promotion or commendation after his refusal to withdraw his identification of the Mauser and admit to being wrong about his identification of the man who ran from the Depository to be picked up by the Rambler on Elm Street. For this he suffered the most dire consequences. Craig was forbidden to speak to reporters about these things and when, in 1967, he was caught doing so he was fired. Thereafter he spoke of a consciousness of being followed, and was fired at by an unknown assailant. The bullet came uncomfortably close and, in fact, grazed his head. He began receiving threats and, in 1973, his car was run off a mountain road causing him a back injury, the pain from which was to become a permanent feature of his life. On another occasion his car was bombed. His marriage broke up in 1973 as a consequence of the continuing harassment, which did not abate. In 1975 he was shot at and wounded in the shoulder by another unknown gunman. At the age of 39, Roger Craig, suffering from the stress of the constant back pains he endured and the financial pressures he encountered because of finding it difficult to get work, succumbed, they said, and committed suicide. They said.
Enter keywords... NGfL, Standards Site, BBC, PBS Online, Virtual School, EU History, Virtual Library,
Excite, Alta Vista, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AOL Search, Hotbot, iWon, Netscape, Google,
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http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdeaths.htm text with links to sources
Hale Boggs
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
17th Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives In office
January 3, 1971 - January 3, 1973[1]
Deputy
Tip O'Neill (whip)
Preceded by
Carl Albert
Succeeded by
Tip O'Neill
3rd Majority Whip of the United States House of Representatives In office
January 10, 1962 - January 3, 1971
Leader
Carl Albert
Preceded by
Carl Albert
Succeeded by
Tip O'Neill
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana's 2nd district In office
January 3, 1947 - January 3, 1973
Preceded by
Paul H. Maloney
Succeeded by
Lindy Boggs
In office
January 3, 1941 - January 3, 1943
Preceded by
Paul H. Maloney
Succeeded by
Paul H. Maloney
Born
February 15, 1914
Long Beach, Mississippi
Died
presumably October 16, 1972 (aged 58)
Alaska, United States
Political party
Democratic
Spouse(s)
Lindy Boggs
Alma mater
Tulane University
Profession
lawyer, politician
Religion
Roman Catholic Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr. (February 15, 1914- Undetermined; presumably October 16, 1972, not declared dead until January 3, 1973) was an American Democratic politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for Louisiana. He was the House Majority Leader.
In 1972, while he was still Majority Leader, the twin engine airplane in which Boggs was traveling over a remote section of Alaska disappeared. The airplane presumably crashed and was never found. Congressman Nick Begich was also presumed killed in the same accident.
Early start in politics
Born in Long Beach, Mississippi, Boggs was educated at Tulane University where he received a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1934 and a law degree in 1937. He first practiced law in New Orleans, but soon became a leader in the movement to break the power of the Long Machine, the political machine of late U.S. Senator Huey Long, who died in 1935. Long had previously broken the power of local New Orleans politicians in 1929. A Democrat, Boggs was elected to the U.S. House for the Second District and served from 1941 to 1943. At the time he was elected he was, at twenty-six, the youngest member of Congress. After an unsuccessful re-election bid in 1942, Boggs joined the United States Navy as an ensign. He served the remainder of World War II.
Political career
President Lyndon B. Johnson with House Majority Whip Boggs
After the war, Boggs began his political comeback. He was again elected to Congress in 1946 and was then re-elected 13 times, once just after he disappeared, but before he was presumed dead. In 1951, Boggs launched an ill-fated campaign for governor of Louisiana. Leading in the polls early in the campaign, he was soon put on the defensive when another candidate, Lucille May Grace-at the urging of long-time Louisiana political boss Leander Perez-questioned his membership in the American Student Union in the 1930s. By 1951, the ASU was thought to be a Communist-front group. Boggs avoided the question and attacked both Grace and Perez for conducting a smear campaign against him. Even so, Boggs placed third in the balloting for governor in early 1952, the last time he was involved in state politics.
In 1960, the Republican Elliot Ross Buckley, a cousin of William F. Buckley, Jr., challenged Boggs but drew only 22,818 votes (22 percent) to the incumbent's 81,034 ballots (78 percent).
David C. Treen, a Metairie lawyer who became the first Louisiana Republican governor in 1980, challenged Boggs in 1962, 1964, and 1968. Treen built on Buckley's efforts in the first contest, and Goldwater momentum in Louisiana helped in the second race. It was in the 1968 election, however, that Treen fared the best: 77,633 votes (48.8 percent) to Boggs's 81,537 ballots (51.2 percent). Treen attributed Boggs's victory to the supporters of former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, Jr., who ran for president on the American Independent Party ticket. Treen said that Wallace supporters "became very cool to my candidacy. We couldn't really believe they would support Boggs, but several Democratic organizations did come out for Wallace and Boggs, and he received just enough Wallace votes to give him the election." Republican officials seemed convinced that fraudulent votes in some Orleans Parish precincts benefited Boggs and that Treen may have actually won the election[citation needed]. There were rumors[who?] of election officials who cast votes for people who did not show up at the polls and signed for them in the precinct registers.
Boggs unsuccessfully sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1951-1952. He lost out to a field of opponents, including the eventual winner, Judge Robert F. Kennon of Minden, whom Boggs supported in the runoff. Kennon "adopted" Boggs's intraparty choice for lieutenant governor, C. E. "Cap" Barham of Ruston in Lincoln Parish. In that race, one of the candidates, "Miss" Lucille May Grace, filed suit in an unsuccessful attempt to remove Boggs from the ballot on the grounds that he was either a "communist" or had been a "communist sympathizer" in his earlier years. As it turned out, Miss Grace's maneuver was arranged by Boggs's long-term political rival, Judge Leander H. Perez, the political "boss" of Plaquemines Parish.
During his tenure in Congress, Boggs was an influential player in the government. After Brown v. Board of Education he signed the Southern Manifesto condemning desegregation in the 1950s and opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yet unlike most Southern Congressmen of his era, he supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Open Housing Act of 1968. He was instrumental in passage of the interstate highway program in 1956 and was a member of the Warren Commission in 1963-1964.
He served as Majority Whip from 1961 to 1970 and as majority leader (from January 1971). As majority whip, he ushered much of President Johnson's Great Society legislation through Congress. Boggs is one of numerous public officials known to have drinking problems during the time.[2]
In April 1971 he made a speech on the floor of the House, strongly attacking FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, and the whole of the FBI. This led to a conversation between then President Richard Nixon and the Republican Minority Leader Gerald Ford in which Nixon said he could no longer take counsel from Boggs as a senior member of Congress. In the recording of this call, Nixon is heard to ask Ford to arrange for the House delegation to include an alternative to Boggs. Ford speculates that Boggs is on pills as well as alcohol.[3]
Boggs's influence also led to charges of corruption. Controversy surrounded him, when a contractor who remodeled his home in Bethesda, Maryland, at a reduced cost sought his help for obtaining a $5 million extra payment for building a garage adjacent to the United States Capitol building.[citation needed]
Disappearance in Alaska
Disappearance and search
As Majority Leader, Boggs often campaigned for others. On October 16, 1972, he was aboard a twin engine Cessna 310 with Representative Nick Begich of Alaska, who was facing a possible tight race in the November 1972 general election against the Republican candidate Don Young, when it disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. The only others on board were Begich's aide, Russell Brown, and the pilot, Don Jonz;[4] the four were heading to a campaign fundraiser for Begich. (Begich won the 1972 election posthumously with 56 percent to Young's 44 percent, though Young would win the special election to replace Begich and won every election through and including 2008.)
Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force planes searched for the party. On November 24, 1972, after 39 days, the search was abandoned. Neither the wreckage of the plane nor the pilot's and passengers' remains were ever found. The accident prompted Congress to pass a law mandating Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT's) in all U.S. civil aircraft.
Both Boggs and Begich were re-elected that November. House Resolution 1 of January 3, 1973 officially recognized Boggs's presumed death and opened the way for a special election.
Speculation, suspicions, and theories
The events surrounding Boggs' death have been the subject of much speculation, suspicion, and numerous conspiracy theories. These theories often center on his membership on the Warren Commission. Boggs dissented from the Warren Commission's majority who supported the single bullet theory. Regarding the single bullet theory, Boggs commented, "I had strong doubts about it."[5] In the Robert Ludlum novel, The Matarese Circle, Boggs was killed to stop his investigation of the Kennedy assassination.
Family
In 1973, Boggs' wife since 1938, Lindy Boggs, was elected to the second district seat left vacant by his death, where she served until 1991.
Hale and Lindy Boggs had three children: U.S. TV and public radio journalist Cokie Roberts, born December 27, 1943, and the wife of journalist Steven V. Roberts; Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr., a prominent Washington, D.C.-based attorney and lobbyist; and the late Barbara Boggs Sigmund, who served as mayor of Princeton, New Jersey. In 1982, Mrs. Sigmund lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate to Frank Lautenberg.
Tributes
The Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River in St. Charles Parish, is named in memory of the former congressman. The Portage Glacier visitor center, located at Portage Glacier in South Central Alaska is named the Begich-Boggs Visitor Center. The Hale Boggs Federal Building at 500 Poydras Street in New Orleans is also named after him.
In 1993, Boggs was among thirteen politicians, past and present, inducted into the first class of the new Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.
Notes
United States Navy portal
1. ^ As Boggs was missing and not officially declared dead until January, he formally retained an office after his disappearance.
2. ^ Steven Waldman (January 1988). "Governing under the influence; Washington alcoholics: their aides protect them, the media shields them". Washington Monthly. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n12_v19/ai_6306545.
3. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZmkwqEK9Kk&feature=related []
4. ^ "Hale Boggs - Missing in Alaska". Famous Missing Aircraft. Check-Six. http://www.check-six.com/lib/Famous_Missing/Boggs.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
5. ^ Epstein, Edward J. Inquest, (New York: Viking Press, 1966), p. 148.
References
Boulard, Garry, "The Big Lie--Hale Boggs, Lucille May Grace and Leander Perez in 1951-52" (2001)
Maney, Patrick J. "Hale Boggs: The Southerner as National Democrat" in Raymond W Smock and Susan W Hammond, eds. Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership Over Two Centuries (1998) pp 33-62.
Strahan, Randall. "Thomas Brackett Reed and the Rise of Party Government" in Raymond W Smock and Susan W Hammond, eds. Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership Over Two Centuries (1998) pp 223-259.
"Boggs, Thomas Hale, Sr., (1914-1972)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=b000594. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Hale Boggs
Hale Boggs at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Transcript, Hale Boggs Oral History Interview, 3/13/69, by T. H. Baker, Internet Copy, LBJ Library. Accessed April 3, 2005.
"Hale Boggs - Freedom of Information Privacy Act page". Federal Bureau of Investigation. http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/boggs.htm.
Hale Boggs Telex - Debunked
United States House of Representatives
Preceded by
Paul H. Maloney
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Louisiana's 2nd congressional district
1941 - 1943
Succeeded by
Paul H. Maloney
Preceded by
Paul H. Maloney
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Louisiana's 2nd congressional district
1947-1972
Succeeded by
Lindy Boggs
Party political offices
Preceded by
Carl Albert
House Majority Whip
1961-1971
Succeeded by
Tip O'Neill
House Majority Leader
1971-1972
Members of the Warren Commission
Earl Warren (Chairman)
Hale Boggs John Cooper Allen Dulles Gerald Ford John McCloy Richard Russell
Majority Leaders of the United States House of Representatives
Payne Underwood Kitchin Mondell Longworth Tilson Rainey Byrns Bankhead Rayburn McCormack Halleck McCormack Halleck McCormack Albert Boggs O'Neill Wright Foley Gephardt Armey DeLay Blunt (acting) Boehner Hoyer
Democratic Party Leaders in the United States House of Representatives
Richardson Williams Clark Underwood Kitchin Clark Kitchin Garret Garner Rainey Byrns Bankhead Rayburn McCormack Rayburn McCormack Rayburn McCormack Albert Boggs O'Neill Wright Foley Gephardt Pelosi Hoyer
Majority Whips of the United States House of Representatives
Tawney Watson Dwight Bell Knutson Vestal McDuffie Greenwood Boland Ramspeck Sparkman Arends Priest Arends Albert Boggs O'Neill McFall Brademas Foley Coelho Gray Bonior DeLay Blunt Clyburn
Democratic Whips of the United States House of Representatives
Underwood Lloyd Bell Oldfield McDuffie Greenwood Boland Ramspeck Sparkman McCormack Priest McCormack Albert Boggs O'Neill McFall Brademas Foley Coelho Gray Bonior Pelosi Hoyer Clyburn
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana
1st district
Livingston, E. White Johnson White Slidell Sére St. Martin Dunbar Eustis Bouligny Sypher Lawrence Gibson Hunt St. Martin Wilkinson Meyer Estopinal O'Connor Fernández Hébert Tonry Livingston, R. Vitter Jindal Scalise
2nd district
Gurley Thomas Ripley Chinn Dawson la Branche Thibodeaux Conrad Bullard Landry Hunt Taylor Mann Sheldon Ellis Hahn Wallace Lagan Coleman Lagan Davey Buck Davey Gilmore Dupré Spearing Maloney Boggs, T.H. Maloney Boggs, T.H. Boggs, L Jefferson Cao
3rd district
Brent Overton Bullard Garland Moore Dawson Harmanson Penn Perkins Davidson Newsham Darrall Acklen Darrall Kellogg Gay Price Broussard Martin Montet Mouton Domengeaux Willis Caffery Treen Tauzin Melancon
4th district
Bossier Morse Moore Jones Sandidge Landrum Vidal Newsham McCleery Boarman Smith Levy Elam Blanchard Ogden Breazeale Watkins Sandin Brooks Waggonner Leach Roemer McCrery Fields McCrery Fleming
5th district
Ransdell Elder Wilson Mills McKenzie Passman Huckaby McCrery Cooksey Alexander
6th district
Sheridan Nash Robertson, E. Lewis Irion Robertson, E. Robertson, S. Favrot Wickliffe Morgan Sanders, Sr. Favrot Kemp Sanders, Jr. Griffith Sanders, Jr. Morrison Rarick Moore Baker Cazayoux Cassidy
7th district
Pujo Lazaro De Rouen Plauche Larcade Thompson Edwards Breaux Hayes John Boustany
8th district
Aswell Overton Dear Allen Long, Doc McSween Long, G. Long, S. Long, G. Long, C. Holloway
At-large
Clark Poydras Robertson Butler Johnston Sheridan
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_Boggs" Categories: 1914 births | 1972 deaths | American military personnel of World War II | Disappeared people | Louisiana lawyers | People from New Orleans, Louisiana | American Roman Catholic politicians | Louisiana Democrats | Majority Leaders of the United States House of Representatives | Members of the United States House of Representatives from Louisiana | Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States | United States Navy officers | Members of the Warren Commission | Watergate figures | Tulane University alumni | Tulane University Law School alumni | Accidental human deaths in Alaska
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