JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (131 page)

In his handwritten speech notes, Oswald concluded with a similar skepticism toward both Communism and capitalism: “In returning to the U.S., I have done nothing more or less than select the lesser of two evils.” Warren Commission Exhibit 102.
WCH
, vol. 16, p. 442.

[
667
]. “Notes for a speech by Lee Harvey Oswald,” Warren Commission Exhibit 102.
WCH
, vol. 16, p. 441, where the Warren Commission’s reproduction of Oswald’s written text is too small to be legible. Using a blown-up version for double-checking, I have followed the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization as given “in the interests of clarity and legibility” on the Web site: mcadams.posc.mu.edu/speechnotes1.htm. I am grateful to Andy Winiarczyk and M. Steele Holt for bringing Oswald’s speech notes to my attention.

[
668
]. Ibid.

[
669
]. Donald Janson and Bernard Eismann,
The Far Right
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), pp. 174-76.

[
670
]. On the authority of Dallas Police detective Ira Van Cleave, the
New York Times
reported that the bullet fired into the wall behind General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963, was “from a 30.06 rifle.” “Walker Escapes Assassin’s Bullet,”
New York Times
(April 12, 1963), p. 12. However, as in the case of much assassination-related evidence, the bullet was transformed while in the custody of the FBI. An FBI ballistics expert identified it instead as “a 6.5 millimeter bullet,” thus making it compatible with Oswald’s rifle, which the Warren Commission then ruled was its source.
Warren Report
, pp. 186-87. Under pressure from federal investigators, Marina Oswald gave a series of totally contradictory statements on her husband’s involvement in the Walker incident, which the Warren Commission drew on selectively to accuse Oswald of shooting at Walker (used in turn as evidence of his capacity to kill Kennedy). After examining the same questionable testimony, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded: “we regretfully refuse to accept the judgment of the [Warren] Commission in regard to the Walker shooting.” HSCA synopsis of Marina Oswald Porter testimony. Cited by Armstrong,
Harvey & Lee
, p. 520.

[
671
].
WCH
, vol. 16, p. 441. mcadams.posc.mu.edu/speechnotes1.htm.

[
672
]. In what became known as “the Marine Corps incident of 1950,” President Harry S. Truman sent a letter on August 29, 1950, to California Representative Gordon L. McDonough stating: “the Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain.” In reference to McDonough’s and many others’ requests that the Marine Corps be represented on the Joint Chiefs of Staff (contrary to Truman’s position), the president added: “They have a propaganda machine almost the equal of Stalin’s.” When McDonough made Truman’s letter public, the uproar was sufficient to ensure both the Marines’ future in combat operations and their representation on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Franklin D. Mitchell, “An Act of Presidential Indiscretion: Harry S. Truman, Congressman McDonough, and the Marine Corps Incident of 1950,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
11 (Fall 1981), pp. 565-75.

[
673
]. Cited by Ray Marcus, “Truman’s Warning,” in Schotz,
History Will Not Absolve Us,
pp. 237-38.

[
674
]. Pioneer assassination critic Raymond Marcus has written of the lack of response to Truman’s remarkable December 22, 1963, article: “According to my information, it was not carried in later editions that day, nor commented on editorially, nor picked up by any other major newspaper, or mentioned on any national radio or TV broadcast.” Raymond Marcus,
Addendum B
(published by the author, 1995), p. 75.

[
675
]. Author’s note on change from hardcover text: I have added here six paragraphs on Allen Dulles’s attempt to get former president Harry Truman to retract his December 22, 1963, warning about the CIA. I am grateful to Raymond Marcus for bringing this incident to my attention, and for sharing his own thorough research into it.

[
676
]. April 21, 1964, Memorandum for Mr. Lawrence R. Houston, General Counsel [CIA], from A. W. Dulles. “Subject: Visit to the Honorable Harry S. Truman, Friday afternoon, April 17, 2 p.m.” (Truman Library Archives).

[
677
]. Ibid.

[
678
]. “From the Desk of Harry S. Truman,” December 1, 1963. Document 94, Papers of David M. Noyes (Truman Library).

[
679
]. Ibid. President Truman had either forgotten or was avoiding the fact that his National Security Council on June 18, 1948, approved top-secret directive NSC 10/2. U.S. intelligence agencies were thereby authorized to engage in “propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups” (Peter Grose,
Gentleman
Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles
[New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994], p. 293). NSC 10/2 was the secret foundation for the enormous buildup of the CIA’s “strange activities” that so alarmed Truman in December 1963.

[
680
].
WCH
, vol. 4, p. 435.

[
681
].
President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy: Report of Proceedings Held at
Washington, D.C., Monday, January 27, 1964
; published by Harold Weisberg as
Whitewash IV: Top Secret JFK Assassination Transcript
(Frederick, Md., 1974), p. 48; p. 139 of transcript.

[
682
]. Ibid., pp. 62-63; pp. 153-54 of transcript.

[
683
]. William Walter, February 27, 1978, interview by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, in the National Archives and Records Administration; cited by Joan Mellen,
A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History
(Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005), p. 349.

[
684
]. Orest Pena interviewed on
CBS Reports
, November 26, 1975. Cited by Summers,
Conspiracy,
p. 282.

[
685
]. Summers,
Conspiracy
, p. 283.

[
686
]. After Mark Lane met with Marina Oswald, who told him of the pressures put upon her by the FBI, Lane wrote: “Marina was incredulous when FBI agents informed her that Lee had been in Mexico from September 26 to October 3, 1963. How could that be, she asked, without her having known about it? She said that Lee had never said he had visited Mexico, had never brought anything into the house suggesting he had been there. She said that during the period in question she had been in contact with Lee, and since she had not been in Mexico at all, how, she asked, could he have been there? The agents insisted that Marina was wrong, asked her if she wanted to be deported, and told her to be more cooperative.” Mark Lane,
Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK?
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), p. 66.

[
687
]. Warren Commission Exhibit Number 2129;
WCH
,
Exhibits,
vol. 24, p. 704.

[
688
]. Earl Golz, “Salesman Insists FBI Discounted Facts on Oswald,”
Dallas Morning News
(May 8, 1977), p. 12A.
Warren Report
, p. 321.

[
689
].
WCH
, vol. 10, p. 380.

[
690
]. Smith,
JFK: The Second Plot
, pp. 269-70. Popkin,
Second Oswald
, p. 92.

[
691
]. Smith,
JFK: The Second Plot,
pp. 272-73.

[
692
]. Testimony of Nanny Lee Fenner,
FBI Oversight
, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-Fourth Congress, December 11, 1975 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 37.

[
693
]. Ibid.

[
694
]. Ibid. FBI Special Agent James Hosty testified that the letter in the envelope handed to him by Nannie Lee Fenner was instead “an innocuous type of complaint”: “the first part of it stated that I had been interviewing his wife without his permission and I should not do this; he was upset about this. And the second part at the end he said that if I did not stop talking to his wife, he would take action against the FBI.” Testimony of James P. Hosty, Jr., December 12, 1975, ibid., pp. 129-30. The House committee that investigated the destruction of the letter found Nannie Lee Fenner’s testimony more credible than James Hosty’s—or his superior J. Gordon Shanklin’s failure even to recall the existence of such a letter—and characterized the incident as “a serious impeachment of Shanklin’s and Hosty’s credibility.” Cited in Hurt,
Reasonable Doubt,
p. 253.

[
695
]. Fenner testimony, p. 37.

[
696
]. Ibid., p. 38. Again in contrast to Nannie Lee Fenner’s testimony, Special Agent Hosty thought the letter had been anonymous, not signed by Oswald: “I do not recall a signature on it.” Hosty testimony, p. 129.

[
697
]. Hosty testimony, p. 125.

[
698
]. Ibid.

[
699
]. In the Congressional hearing that probed the FBI’s destruction of the Oswald-Hosty letter, Representative Seiberling raised an obvious question to witness James Hosty: “Did you ever think that it was somewhat strange that Mr. Oswald, if he intended to assassinate the President in early November, would have come to the FBI and drawn attention to himself?”