The Man Who Killed Kennedy
Page 26
Johnson, sensing that those who surrounded him had begun to question their new boss’s authority, put on a virtuoso performance. He went to hide in private, so the occupants of Air Force One could find him, acting as if he were losing his mind in this tragedy. If the incessant, insensitive demands could not be met out of his new authority, they might be met out of pity.
When McHugh went to look for Johnson, he found the new president holed up in the bathroom.
“I walked in the toilet, in the powder room, and there he was hiding, with the curtain closed,” said McHugh. Johnson was feigning delirium. “They’re all going to get us. It’s a plot. It’s a plot,” Johnson said. According to McHugh, Johnson “was hysterical, sitting down on the john there alone in this thing.”44
McHugh proceeded to slap Johnson, prompting the president to “snap out of it.”45
Johnson righted himself, and, as Sarah Hughes arrived, the new president had one more inconvenience for the Kennedy party. Once again summoning O’Donnell, Johnson asked for Jackie to stand in for the swearing-in ceremony.
The conversation is well detailed in RFK by C. David Heymann:
Once Judge Hughes arrived, the new president addressed Ken O’Donnell. “Would you ask Mrs. Kennedy to come stand next to me?”
“You can’t do that!” O’ Donnell cried. “The poor kid has had enough for one day. You just can’t do that to her, Mr. President.”
“Well, she said she wanted to do it.”
“I don’t believe it.”
But when O’Donnell found the now-former first lady, she agreed to stand by her husband’s successor. “At least I owe that much to the country,” she whispered. In her pink wool suit stained by blood and gore from Jack’s shattered skull, she watched as Lyndon Johnson raised his right hand to take the oath as the thirty-sixth president of the United States.46
Jackie may have had her own reasoning for standing in on the ceremony. When asked by Lady Bird before the ceremony if she wanted to change her blood-stained clothing, Jackie was adamantly against it.
“I want them to see what they have done to Jack,”47 Jackie said.
But what they had done to Jack would never be seen.
The results of the autopsy were made to correspond with the official story in play. While Air Force One was in flight to Washington, the White House Situation Room informed the passengers that there was no conspiracy. Only four hours after the president had been murdered, they had their man in custody: Lee Harvey Oswald.48
“That is conclusive evidence of high-level US governmental guilt,” wrote Philadelphia attorney Vincent J. Salandria. “The first announcement of Oswald as the lone assassin, before there was any evidence against him, and while there was overwhelmingly convincing evidence of conspiracy, had come from the White House Situation Room. Only the assassins could have made that premature declaration that Oswald was the assassin.”49
On arrival in Maryland at Andrews Air Force Base, John Kennedy’s body was quickly loaded into an ambulance and taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital. At Bethesda, although Bobby Kennedy authorized a full autopsy,50 it would be a carefully scripted farce.
Under military supervision, three pathologists—J. Thorton Boswell, James J. Humes and Pierre A. Finck—moved certain wounds and disregarded others to fit the narrative. The exit wound at the back of his head would now be an entrance wound.
The neck wound would be disregarded, and the pathologists would not track the bullet hole in the upper back. When brought to testify during New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s criminal trial against Clay Shaw in 1969, Dr. Finck would admit the pressure put on him by the military present:
Q: This puzzled you at the time, the wound in the back and you couldn’t find an exit wound? You were wondering about where this bullet was or where the path was going, were you not?
FINCK: Yes.
Q: Well, at that particular time, doctor, why didn’t you call the doctors at Parkland or attempt to ascertain what the doctors at Parkland may have done or may have seen while the President’s body was still exposed to view on the autopsy table?
FINCK: I will remind you that I was not in charge of this autopsy, that I was called—
Q: You were a co-author of the report though, weren’t you, Doctor?
FINCK: Wait. I was called as a consultant to look at these wounds; that doesn’t mean I am running the show.
Q: Was Dr. Humes running the show?
FINCK: Well, I heard Dr. Humes stating that—he said, “Who is in charge here?” and I heard an army general, I don’t remember his name, stating, ‘I am.’ You must understand that in those circumstances, there were law enforcement officers, military people with various ranks, and you have to coordinate the operation according to directions.
Q: But you were one of the three qualified pathologists standing at that autopsy table, were you not, doctor?
FINCK: Yes, ‘I am.’
Q: Was this army general a qualified pathologist?
FINCK: No.
Q: Was he a doctor?
FINCK: No, not to my knowledge.
Q: Can you give me his name, colonel?
FINCK: No, I can’t. I don’t remember.51
James Curtis Jenkins, a technician who was at the autopsy table, saw a shot that had blown off a portion of the back of Kennedy’s skull. To his dismay, this finding did not appear in the autopsy report. “I found out that he was supposedly shot from the back. I just, you know, I just couldn’t believe it, and I have never been able to believe it.”
George Burkley, John Kennedy’s personal physician, present with both the medical staff at Parkland and the pathologists at Bethesda, was never to be called to testify in front of any of the official investigations and never questioned by the Secret Service or the FBI.52
When asked in 1967 if he agreed with the Warren Commission report as to the number of bullets that entered the president’s body, Burkley’s response was simple: “I would not care to be quoted on that.”53
Burkley was never brought before the Warren Commission because his testimony was one of many that could only damage the story being massaged from on high. The Commission would also not permit its members or witnesses who testified to view photographs or X-rays. Instead, the Commission used sketches that provided a likeness of the integral evidence.
“The doctors almost begged for the production of the photographs during their testimony, especially Dr. Humes,” assassination researcher Harold Weisberg said. “And finally, after this happened three or four times, the Commission asked, ‘Well, would your testimony be any different if you had the pictures here?’ What was the poor doctor going to do? Say he testified incompetently? Or falsely? Obviously, he just said ‘No. But—‘ But he did put a ‘but’ in, and he insisted that the pictures would have been best. And he insisted that pictures and X-rays are basic and normal to an autopsy—apparently, everybody’s autopsy but that of a president.”54
The orders, as many of the others that day, had come from above.
“This was a political assassination, and there was a lot of power behind it,” said Vincent Salandria, one of the earliest Kennedy assassination researchers in 1967. “A lot of power. If you want to find the men behind it, you have to raise your sights. You have to screw your courage way up high. You have to look even higher than J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.”55
NOTES
1. Nelson, LBJ: Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, pg. 412.
2. Ibid, pg. 485.
3. Ibid, pg. 372.
4. Baker, Russ, Family of Secrets, pg. 132.
5. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 80.
6. Ibid, pg. 82.
7. Ibid, pg. 89.
8. Manchester, pg. 234.
9. educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19632
10. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 90.
11. Ibid, pg. 90.
12. Warren Commission Testimony of Ruth Jeanette Standridge, March 21
, 1964.
13. Newcomb, Fred T., Adams, Perry, Murder From Within, pg. 138.
14. Ibid, pg. 131.
15. Ibid, pg. 132.
16. Crenshaw, Trauma Room One, pg. 81.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Warren Commission Testimony of Roy H. Kellerman.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Crenshaw, Trauma Room One, pg. 62.
23. Crenshaw, Assassination Science, pg. 45.
24. Aguilar, Gary L. MD, “The HSCA and JFK’s Skull Wound”, March 30, 1995.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. HSCA Final Report, pg. 41.
28. Ibid, pg, 43.
29. Mantik, Assassination Science, pg. 109.
30. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 119.
31. Ibid.
32. Crenshaw, Trauma Room One, pg. 89.
33. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 119.
34. Manchester, Death of a President, pg. 257.
35. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pgs. 112–113.
36. Ibid, 113.
37. Manchester, Death of a President, pg. 269.
38. Ibid, 271.
39. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 132.
40. Ibid, pg 118.
41. Heymann, RFK, pg. 348.
42. Ibid, pg. 125.
43. Manchester, Death of a President, pg. 316.
44. Gillon pgs. 127–128.
45. Anderson, Jackie after Jack, pg. 11.
46. Heymann, RFK, pgs. 348–349.
47. “Selections from Lady Bird’s Diary on the assassination” www.pbs.org/ladybird/epicenter/epicenter_doc_diary.html.
48. Kelin, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 5.
49. Ibid.
50. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 16.
51. Clay Shaw Trial Testimony of Pierre A. Finck.
52. Ibid, pg. 16–17.
53. Oral History interview with Admiral George G. Burkley; 10/17/1967. jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/burkley.htm.
54. Kelin, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 280
55. Kelin, John, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 338.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PATSY
“When a rich man dies, he is loaded with his possessions like a prisoner with chains,” Lee Harvey Oswald once said. “I will die free; death will be easy for me.”1
The proclamation couldn’t be further from the truth.
William Bobo. That was the name assigned to the gravesite of Oswald. The fictitious name was procured to ward off the media and potential grave robbers. Bobo, slang for fool or sucker, couldn’t have been more appropriate.
It would be argued that Lee Harvey Oswald adopted more than one alias during his life. He allegedly used the name A. Hidell to order the Italian carbine used to kill the president. O. H. Lee was reportedly the name he was registered under in the boarding house at 1026 N Beckley Ave, his last residence.
More interesting than the names attributed to Oswald would be imposter Oswalds who had taken his.
The pretenders had used Oswald’s name and identity from as far back as 1961 when a group of men in New Orleans claiming affiliation with the anti-Castro group “Friends of Democracy” attempted to buy a volume of Ford trucks, using the name “Oswald” on the purchasing documents.2 In September 1963, another Oswald appeared at the Dallas-area apartment of Cuban exile Sylvia Odio. This Oswald ranted to Odio about the Cubans being gutless for not assassinating Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs.3 On November 9, 1963, on a day spent with his wife Marina at her friend Ruth Paine’s house, Oswald impostors were seen in several areas. One Oswald applied for a job at the Dallas Southland Hotel, while another recklessly test-drove a car at a Dallas Lincoln Mercury dealership.4 A third Oswald cropped up at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas. This Oswald displayed excellent marksmanship to witnesses and a repugnant temperament.
On a recorded phone conversation the day following the assassination, J. Edgar Hoover told Lyndon Johnson that he knew of an imposter Oswald in Mexico City.
“We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet Embassy using Oswald’s name,” said Hoover. “That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there. We do have a copy of a letter which was written by Oswald to the Soviet embassy here in Washington, inquiring as well as complaining about the harassment of his wife and the questioning of his wife by the FBI. Now of course, that letter information—we process all mail that goes to the Soviet embassy. It’s a very secret operation. No mail is delivered to the embassy without being examined and opened by us, so that we know what they receive … The case, as it stands now, isn’t strong enough to be able to get a conviction … Now, if we can identify this man who was at the … Soviet embassy in Mexico City … This man Oswald has still denied everything.”5
Contained in this phone conversation is not only the knowledge by Hoover of Oswald being impersonated, but knowledge of a conspiracy that would subsequently not be pursued by Hoover or Johnson. Hoover and the FBI had known about Oswald since the late ’50s.
“A file concerning Oswald was opened,” Hoover wrote to the Warren Commission, “at the time, newspapers reported his defection to Russia in 1959, for the purpose of correlating information inasmuch as he was considered a possible security risk in the event he returned to this country.”6
What is more alarming is that Hoover had personally known and written to the State Department’s Office of Security concerning the possibility of an Oswald identity theft as early as June 1960.
“Since there is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald’s birth certificate,” Hoover wrote, “any current information the Department of State has concerning subject [Oswald] will be appreciated.”7
The FBI wasn’t the only agency keeping tabs on Oswald. The CIA also had a particular interest in and an extensive file on the young defector. After Oswald was murdered in cold blood, many of these files, when requested by the Warren Commission, were withheld or manipulated, leaving a puzzling paper trail. Oswald, according the agency, was of no interest to the CIA. Subsequent discoveries in the matter found documents on him scattered and deposited in varied nooks throughout the agency.
Jane Roman, a retired CIA officer who signed many of the agency’s documents concerning Oswald prior to the assassination, was interviewed by journalist Jefferson Morley and former US Army Intelligence officer John Newman. The interview was an attempt to add framework to the agency abyss in which the truths of Oswald lied. The query began with Roman’s denying knowledge of Oswald prior to the assassination. Newman then furnished copies of CIA cables that Roman had signed in regards to Oswald from 1959 till the time of the assassination.8 From that point, Roman admitted to pre-assassination knowledge of Oswald and agreed to answer questions. Newman and Morley were particularly interested in the mysterious actions of the agency while Oswald was in Mexico City in late September to early October 1963.
Newman read off to Roman the wide variety of agency names that were signed to agency routing slips in September 1963.
“Is this the mark of a person’s file who’s dull and uninteresting?” Newman asked. “Or would you say that we’re looking at somebody who’s … ?”
“No, we’re really trying to zero in on somebody here,” Roman replied.9
Newman then unearthed a document dated October 10, 1963 composed by Charlotte Bustos, an employee on the agency’s Mexico desk. The document stated that the “latest HDQS [headquarters] info[rmation]”10 concerning Oswald was a report from May 1962. Roman had signed off on this document, which purported that the agency had no previous reports on Oswald for over a year, but only a few days prior, Roman had signed reports on him.
It’s not even a little bit untrue,” Newman said.” “It’s grossly unt
rue.”11
It was at this point in the interview that Roman admitted to a few agency truths held close to the chest on Oswald.
“Problem, though, here,” Newman said pointing to the words “latest HDQS info.”
“Yeah, I mean I’m signing off on something that I know isn’t true,”12 Newman admitted.
“And I’m not saying that it has to be considered sinister, don’t misunderstand me,” Newman added later. “It is one thing if I don’t say anything, I tell you ‘You don’t have a need to know.’ But if I tell you something that I know isn’t true, that’s an action [that] I’m taking for some reason … I guess what I’m trying to push you to address square on here is, is this indicative of some sort of operational interest in Oswald’s file.”
“Yes,” Roman replied. “To me, it’s indicative of a keen interest in Oswald held very closely on a need-to-know basis.”13
It was at this point in the query that Roman, using her operational knowledge of agency workings, released a stunner.
“There wouldn’t be any point in withholding it [the recent information about Oswald],” she answered. “There has to be a point for withholding information from Mexico City.”
“Well, the obvious position which I can’t contemplate would be that they [meaning the people with final authority over the cable] thought that somehow … they could make some use of Oswald,”14 Roman added.
Oswald’s CIA contact in Dallas was George de Mohrenschildt, who claimed to be an oil geologist and consultant. He was prompted to contact Oswald by Dallas CIA man J. Walton Moore.15 From October of 1962 until April of 1963, de Mohrenschildt was a close friend to Lee and Marina Oswald, watching over them.
De Mohrenschildt, in his Warren Commission testimony, talked of helping the Oswalds out and spending a good deal of time with them. It is suspect that an educated, worldly man such as de Mohrenschildt would meet and maintain relations with Oswald, a man whom, to the Warren Commission, de Mohrenschildt considered to be “a semi-educated hillbilly. And you cannot take such a person seriously. All his opinions were crude, you see.”16 Before he died in 1977, de Mohrenschildt’s assessment of Oswald had changed considerably.