Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  Hoffman said nothing until Thanksgiving 1963, when he met his policeman relative at a family function. Despite his parents’ warnings, he told his story to Dallas policeman Robert Hoffman, who assured him that the federal authorities were investigating the case and that, in fact, the assassin had already been caught. Robert Hoffman later explained:

  I know that Eddie’s a very bright person and always has been, and can’t think of any reason why he would make up something like this. . . . His father was very, very concerned that Eddie knew anything about the assassination at all. It was time when suspicions were running high and he was worried about Eddie getting involved in any way. . . . It just wasn’t a time for loose statements that couldn’t be proved or backed up with any evidence.

  Confident that he had done his civic duty and that the case was closed, Ed Hoffman said he didn’t consider telling his story to anyone else.

  However, as the years went by, Hoffman became more and more aware of the official version of the assassination and knew that the theory that one man had fired from the sixth floor of the Depository did not agree with what he had seen.

  Finally on June 28, 1967, at the urging of coworkers, Hoffman visited the Dallas FBI once again. Apparently Hoffman had difficulty in communicating with the agents or they purposely distorted his story, because the FBI report of that day states:

  Hoffman said he observed two white males, clutching something dark to their chests with both hands, running from the rear of the Texas School Book Depository building. The men were running north on the railroad, then turned east, and Hoffman lost sight of both of the men.

  The report added:

  Approximately two hours after the above interview with Hoffman, he returned to the Dallas office of the FBI and advised he had just returned from the spot on Stemmons Freeway where he had parked his automobile and had decided he could not have seen the men running because of a fence west of the Texas School Book Depository building. He said it was possible that he saw these two men on the fence or something else [sic].

  Whether or not the FBI agents were able to understand Hoffman correctly, they did talk to his father and brother on July 5, 1967. Both said Hoffman loved President Kennedy and had told his story to them just after the assassination. However, they also said Hoffman “has in the past distorted facts of events observed by him.” Of course, it was his father who had urged him not to become involved in the case at all, so there was motivation to downplay his son’s story.

  Officially, this was the end of any investigation into Hoffman’s story at that time. Unofficially, Hoffman said one FBI agent told him to keep quiet about what he had seen or “you might get killed.”

  Despite this not-so-subtle attempt to silence Hoffman, he continued to tell his story to fellow workers at the Dallas electronics firm where he was employed since before the assassination. Hoffman retired in the late 1990s and died in March 2010.

  On March 25, 1977, one of Hoffman’s supervisors who understood sign language contacted the Dallas FBI office. He said he felt that the FBI did not fully understand what Hoffman was trying to tell them during the 1967 interview and that Hoffman deserved to be heard.

  At this urging, FBI agents again talked with Hoffman on March 28, 1977, and even accompanied him to the site on Stemmons Freeway. This time, with his supervisor acting as translator, Hoffman was able to give more details. He said he thought he saw a puff of smoke near where the men were standing, and essentially his story was the same as the one he told in 1985 except he said he saw both men run north into the rail yards.

  Although this time the FBI took photographs of the area based on Hoffman’s testimony, they again showed little interest in pursuing his story.

  On the cover sheet of their report to the FBI director, the Dallas agents wrote:

  On Pages 71–76 of the Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the witnesses at the Triple Underpass are discussed, but the Warren Commission’s investigation has disclosed no credible evidence that any shots were fired from anywhere other than the Texas School Book Depository building. In view of the above, the Dallas Office is conducting no additional investigation.

  In other words, since the federal government concluded Oswald was the lone assassin, Hoffman must have been mistaken. The agents were careful to include in their report his father’s opinion: “The father of Virgil Hoffman stated that he did not believe that his son has seen anything of value and doubted he had observed any men running from the Texas School Book Depository.”

  Such dismissiveness might account for the fact that there was no mention of Hoffman or his testimony by the US government until researchers obtained reports on him through the Freedom of Information Act in 1985.

  Since Hoffman, despite his hearing disability, appears to be a most credible witness and since his story only reinforces those of others who told of gunmen on the knoll, it deserves serious consideration. However, as late as 2007, some were still sniping at Hoffman’s account. M. Duke Lane argued that surely the policemen on or near Stemmons Freeway would have reported Hoffman’s attempts to gain their attention. Despite the fact that everyone, including witnesses in Dealey Plaza, did not realize what had happened for several minutes and police there had already released traffic stopped for the motorcade, Lane wrote:

  During this time, because of their proximity to the Triple Underpass, the officers were undoubtedly on the lookout for anything that might have seemed suspicious in any way, or even just out of the ordinary: after all, the President had just been “hit” and was on his way to the hospital; the shooter or shooters might still be in the area. The police were not taking chances. . . . While it may be somehow possible that Ed saw and approached none of them, it is implausible that none of them saw him, made no moves to detain him at any time, and simply let him speed away in his car. . . . We’re left with the inescapable conclusion that the Ed Hoffman tale . . . is nothing more than a tale, a figment of the imagination of a humble and otherwise unassuming man who, for whatever reason, got caught up in a story possibly not of his own making, but which nevertheless created and sustained that “fifteen minutes of fame” all men are said to be entitled to.

  Such an ad hominem attack would seem ill supported since many of the details in Hoffman’s story have been independently corroborated—the crowds on Stemmons, the automatic rifle, the cop on the railroad bridge, and the testimony of Jesse Price, who saw a man running behind the picket fence from the roof of the Union Terminal Annex. His account may be the best version to date of what happened behind the picket fence. Hoffman’s experience also serves as a vivid commentary on the FBI’s failure to follow serious leads, the bureau’s attempts to intimidate witnesses into silence. and the unremitting attacks on anyone who would dare challenge the official government version of assassination events.

  In reviewing the experiences of the people in Dealey Plaza the day Kennedy died, it is apparent that not one single person saw the assassination as it was described by the government’s investigations.

  In the motorcade, Governor Connally’s testimony—totally corroborated by the Zapruder film—indicated that both he and Kennedy could not have been struck by the same bullet.

  Many people, including Sheriff Decker, Royce Skelton, and Austin Miller, saw one bullet strike Elm Street. Others, like Policeman Foster, saw a bullet hit the grass on the south side of Elm.

  Some heard shots coming from at least two separate locations, while those on the Triple Underpass even saw smoke drift out from under the trees on the Grassy Knoll. Still others reported a bullet strike on the Stemmons Freeway sign. Motorcade riders heard shots from separate locations, but the majority believed shots came from the direction of the Triple Underpass. Both Sheriff Decker and Police Chief Curry ordered their men to rush to the railroad yards behind the Grassy Knoll.

  Despite great efforts on the part of authorities to establish the Depository as the source of all shots, public attention—both in 1963
and today—kept returning to the infamous Grassy Knoll.

  PART II

  MEANS, MOTIVES, AND OPPORTUNITIES

  The assassination of president John F. Kennedy was not an isolated event. It occurred within a complex matrix of national and international events and issues. Therefore, for any truthful understanding, the assassination must be placed within a context of the times.

  As president, Kennedy daily was juggling a wide variety of responsibilities on many different fronts—foreign policy, civil rights, agriculture, finance, politics, crime-busting, and defense considerations.

  Likewise, Lee Harvey Oswald—the man identified by two government panels as Kennedy’s assassin—did not live isolated from the world of his time. During his brief twenty-four years of life, Oswald came into contact with an incredible array of groups and individuals, all of whom had reason to wish for the elimination of Kennedy. Beginning with an uncle connected to organized crime, young Oswald moved through a shadowy world of soldiers, intelligence agents from both sides of the Cold War, Russian communists and anticommunists, pro-and anti-Castro Cubans, FBI men, and right-wing extremists. To place the events of November 22, 1963, in proper perspective, it is necessary to become familiar with these groups and with their relationships to Oswald and each other.

  After all, every good detective begins a murder investigation by determining who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the act. The obvious starting place is with the one man universally acknowledged as the person most closely connected to the assassination—Lee Harvey Oswald.

  Lee Harvey Oswald—Assassin or Patsy?

  Prior to his enlistment in the Marines and with the possible exception of the early death of his father, Lee Harvey Oswald’s boyhood was little different from that of millions of other Americans.

  Oswald was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1939, two months after the death of his father, Robert E. Lee Oswald, a collector of insurance premiums. While this unfortunate event must have had some effect on young Oswald, it was a fate endured by thousands of other young Americans, none of whom have felt compelled to murder national leaders.

  In 1945, Oswald’s mother married for a third time, but three years later the marriage ended in divorce. From that point on, Oswald and his brother, Robert, were brought up by their mother, Marguerite.

  A Mother in History

  The House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 concluded that President Kennedy was “probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.” However, they maintained that Lee Harvey Oswald was the actual killer and that another gunman—whose presence was established by two separate scientific tests based on a Dallas police recording of the gunfire in Dealey Plaza—escaped and remains unidentified.

  This finding was a milestone to the many Americans who had come to disbelieve the lone-assassin theory of the Warren Commission.

  Typically, however, this reversal of official American history was still not enough for the mother of the accused assassin, Marguerite Oswald. She told news reporters:

  The committee members have made a first step in the right direction. It’s up to us to do the rest. . . . I hope and know the future will vindicate my son entirely. It took us 15 years to come this far. It may take another 15 years or longer. I probably won’t be around, but the world will know that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent of the charges against him.

  This was the statement of a woman who was much more than merely a supportive mother. It came from a woman who faced more public hostility than most murderers—a woman who faced the autumn of her years alone and in poverty. And all because of a child she bore.

  Marguerite Claverie was born in New Orleans in 1907, of French and German descent. Her mother died a few years after her birth, leaving young Marguerite and her five siblings in the care of her father, a streetcar conductor. According to relatives, the Claverie family was poor but happy.

  At the age of seventeen, Marguerite completed one year of high school. She then dropped out to become a law-firm receptionist. In August 1929, she married Edward John Pic Jr., a clerk. However, the marriage was not successful and the couple divorced in 1931, several months after the birth of her first son, John Edward Pic.

  In 1933, she married Robert Edward Lee Oswald, himself recently divorced. She described her marriage to Oswald as the “only happy part” of her life. Out of this union came a second son, Robert. Then her happiness came to an end. Two months before the birth of Lee Harvey Oswald in October 1939, her husband died of a sudden heart attack. Making her way alone, she saw an opportunity to establish a family once again by remarrying in 1945. Sending the two elder sons off to boarding school, she and her new husband, Edwin A. Ekdahl, took six-year-old Lee and moved to Benbrook, Texas, a small town south of Fort Worth.

  However, soon there were arguments over money and charges of infidelity against Ekdahl. A divorce was granted in 1948 and she was allowed to use her former name of Oswald. It is interesting to note that Ekdahl’s divorce attorney was Fred Korth, who in the fall of 1963 was fired as secretary of the Navy by President Kennedy amid charges that Korth may have been involved along with Lyndon Johnson in a scandal over the General Dynamics TFX airplane contracts.

  John Pic and Robert Oswald rejoined their mother, but both soon left home to join the military. Marguerite was left with only young Lee. Some accounts say Marguerite overly mothered Lee, while others claim she neglected the boy. However, the former seems to be closer to the truth in light of the fact that she became a practical nurse charged with babysitting the children of prominent Texans such as Amon Carter Jr. and former Texas representative Tom Vandergriff. Despite much conjecture, there is little evidence that Lee’s childhood was any better or any worse than many others.

  Lee dropped out of school to join the Marines. But in 1959, he received a sudden discharge and returned to Fort Worth for a two-day visit with his mother. Lee said he was off to New Orleans to work for an import-export firm, but several weeks later Mrs. Oswald read in the newspapers that her twenty-year-old son had turned up in Russia, where he told US officials he wanted to defect.

  Instead of branding her son a traitor, she told reporters, “I feel very strongly that as an individual, he has the right to make his own decision. Lee has definite ideas. I believe God gives us a conscience and the ability to know right and I feel he has the right to make his own decision.”

  Despite this motherly support, Lee seemed to make every effort to avoid Marguerite after his return from the Soviet Union in 1962. At one point he moved his Russian bride and their infant daughter from Fort Worth to Dallas without leaving his mother a forwarding address.

  The family was reunited only briefly during those dark days of November 1963.

  Mrs. Oswald was on her way to work on November 22 when she heard over the car radio that Kennedy had been shot while riding in a motorcade in downtown Dallas. She also learned that a young ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald was being held by police as the suspected assassin.

  Concerned by the broadcasts and apparently with no friends to turn to, she contacted the local newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and asked if someone would take her to Dallas. She told reporter Bob Shieffer, who drove her to the Dallas police station, “I want to hear him tell me that he did it.”

  Mrs. Oswald also told them that she had been persecuted since her son’s journey to Russia and knew the meaning of suffering. She described being fired by her last employer, Star-Telegram publisher Amon Carter Jr. She said she had been acting as a day nurse for the Carters’ children until about two weeks prior to the Kennedy assassination. The Carters suddenly let her go after arriving back from a weekend trip to Las Vegas.

  She once told this author, “You don’t know what it’s like to have someone look at you and say, ‘You’ve done a good job, but we no longer need your services.’” She also noted this was the same weekend Jack Ruby was reported visiting in Las Vegas.

  Following the assassination in Dallas, Mrs. Oswald was
unable to hear the confession she sought from her son—she was not allowed to talk with him. And Oswald steadfastly maintained his innocence. He shouted to news reporters gathered in the police station hallway, “No, sir, I didn’t kill anybody. I’m just a patsy!”

  After Oswald’s murder by Jack Ruby two days later, his mother’s tone changed to one of suspicion and accusation, blaming the Dallas police and federal authorities for her son’s death. She asked bitterly, “Why would [ Jack Ruby] be allowed within a few feet of a prisoner—any prisoner—when I could not even see my own son?”

  To compound her suspicions, she maintained until her death that the FBI had shown her a photo of Ruby the night before her son was slain. She said about 6:30 p.m. on November 23, the night after the assassination, an FBI agent and another man knocked on the door of the hotel where she and Lee’s wife were being kept by the authorities. After being told that her daughter-in-law was tired and couldn’t talk with the men, the FBI agent asked Marguerite a question. She recalled the incident to news reporters a week later:

  He had a picture coupled [sic] inside his hand and asked me if I had ever seen that man before. I told him, “No sir, believe me, I never have.” Then he left. A few days later, I walked into the room where I was staying and, in front of my son Robert and a lot of witnesses, I picked up a paper and when I turned it over I said, “This is the picture of the man that FBI agent showed me.” I did not even know at the time he was the man who shot my son. I was told that the picture was [of] Mr. Jack Ruby.

  FBI officials, when informed of her statement, speculated that she must have been confused as to the date she was shown the photograph.

  On July 10, 1964, FBI agent Bardwell D. Odum signed an affidavit with the Warren Commission stating that he had shown the picture to Mrs. Oswald. He said the photo was furnished by FBI superiors, who obtained it from the CIA. The FBI said they included the photo as a Warren Commission exhibit. It was reportedly supplied by the CIA, which was secretly photographing visitors to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City.