On December 31, 1963 a rumor surfaced in Villa Park, Illinois that Oswald had purchased a new Lincoln Continental from the Dallas car dealership and he was supposed to pick it up the day of the assassination, because of this the FBI was swarming all over the place. As a revealed in a remarkable series of documents CE 329 p. 521-538, none of which was published in the Warren Commission exhibits FBI agents Arthur Carter and Will Hayden Griffen conducted 10 interviews before finally tracing the rumor to L.G. "Red" Harrington a former "new car get ready man" from Downtown Lincoln Mercury. On January 6th one of these agents phoned him, and he provided a bar bones version of the Bogard allegation, which he had heard from a shop foreman.

"I phoned Red Harrington a few weeks ago. No one has spoken to him since that day when the FBI talked to him and he told me that the FBI agent who interviewed him told him to keep his mouth shut."

Carter and Griffen went straight to Downtown Lincoln Mercury. The two agents finished their investigation by interviewing Frank Pizzo, an assistant sales manager, who admitted he had also seen the man Bogard identified as Oswald. A little later that month Bogard was fired. On January 21, Warren Reynolds was interviewed by the FBI. He was a used car salesman for the Reynolds Motor Co. who had followed a suspect from the scene of the Tippet shooting. Reynolds could not positively identify the suspect as Oswald. Two days later he was shot in the head. An unknown assailant had been waiting for him in the darkened basement of the used car lot office. Nothing was stolen.

This could be a coincidence or it could be a message meant to encourage another Dallas car salesman, Bogard to change his story, which he did not do.

Albert Bogard was not the only car salesman from downtown Lincoln Mercury to attract the attention of NBC and the FBI. On December 5th, eight days after they were requested to find Jack Lawrence that two Dallas FBI agents finally inquired about him at Downtown Lincoln Mercury. Frank Pizzo told the agents that Lawrence had been fired on November 23, 1963, but he did not tell them why. Instead, Pizzo told the FBI that Lawrence had told another salesman Robert Teter that he (Lawrence) had received a bad conduct discharge from the military because he had tried to help Fidel Castro overthrow Batista in Cuba. By December 7, this is what the FBI had been told about Jack Lawrence and these things are not necessarily true but this is what the FBI had been told.

(Now wait a minute, Sheldon. You said they didn't go to the car dealership until December 8, then they are told stuff on Dec. 7th, the day before? I think you got your dates mixed up. Unless they really went on December 7 and wrote their reports on Dec. 8th.)

The FBI was told that Lawrence was an emphatic Castro supporter, who had received a bad conduct discharge from the military, he had checked into the same Dallas YMCA where Oswald had been staying two days earlier, he had been working at the same car dealership where Oswald had test driven a car and he had reported this incident to the FBI the day after the assassination, he was an associate of Jack Ruby, he lied to NBC reporters during an interview, and left town within a few weeks of the assassination. The FBI must have considered Lawrence to have been highly suspicious.

Two Pittsburgh based FBI agents interviewed Lawrence in Charleston, West Virginia on December 11, 1963. Sheldon was struck at how gentle the FBI was with Lawrence compared with Bogard. The Pittsburgh office forwarded 30 copies of their interview to the Dallas FBI office.

On January 6, 1964 FBI agents Carter and Griffen asked Mr. Jim A. Rozzell, the secretary treasurer of Downtown Lincoln Mercury where could they locate a couple of other employees named by Red Harrington. Rozzell offered a lot of information about Lawrence but this does not appear in the FBI report of Frank Pizzo.

(I checked my Warren Commission CD-ROM to see if there is anything on Pizzo. Interestingly, in Volume 5 p. 64 there are Frank Pizzo exhibits, which are two photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald. Marina is asked to identify if she recognizes her husband in the photos, or anyone else.

Mr. RANKIN. I'll hand you what is marked as Frank Pizzo Exhibit No. 453--A, which is a photograph, and ask you if you recognize your husband there, and also, any of the other men there in the picture?*
*Mrs. OSWALD (examining instrument mentioned). I recognize only my husband.
Mr. RANKIN. Is your husband the man with the marks that sort of look like a "T" in light green?*
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. I ask you if you recognize anyone besides your husband in Frank Pizzo Exhibit No. 453-B?*
Mrs. OSWALD. No. *No. [Examining instrument mentioned.] No.
Mr. RANKIN. But you do recognize your husband there?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes--yes.
Mr. RANKIN. He has a green mark over his photograph, does he not?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER. (Exhibiting photograph to witness) I want to show you two pictures which have previously been marked "Pizzo Exhibits 453-A and 453-B."
Mr. WULF. Right.
Mr. LIEBELER. I ask you if you recognize any of the individuals in those pictures?
Mr. WULF. Well, yes; Oswald marked "1" on the top picture, "Pizzo 453-B," and, of course, Oswald again marked with the "X" in green on "Pizzo 453-A."
Mr. LIEBELER. You recognize that as Oswald?
Mr. WULF. Yes. That is one of the things. I saw these films on TV and I subsequently saw them at the station. That is Oswald, as far as I can associate.
Mr. LIEBELER. When you say "these films," you are inferring that these pictures that I have shown you are still photos taken out of----
Mr. WULF. Yes. These are 16 mm. prints--I can tell by the grain--and they are either 16 mm. or 32 mm., probably 16 mm. prints, and these are the ones, as far as I know, that WDSU had. I don't believe that is what you want though. That is the only one I can associate on there. I do not associate the other man marked----
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you identify this man as Oswald based on your observation of him at the times you have mentioned, and not from having seen his pictures at other places in the newspaper?
Mr. WULF. No; I base that picture on--when I first saw those films originally, when it was originally shown on TV, I had a slight inkling that it was the same person, as far as I know. I mean, like I said, it was many years ago, it was --- oh, 8 years ago, 8 or 9 years ago. He was younger, he was a little bit heavier then, in the face especially, but he seems to me to be the same person.

Well, sorry to break up my review of Sheldon's presentation but I'm intrigued.)

Sheldon cannot explain the FBI's seeming disinterest in Jack Lawrence. He feels that they were more interested in dismissing the Oswald test drive story than anything else. When Mr. Pizzo testified he was not asked about Jack Lawrence but it was implied that Albert Bogard is on the run. Volume 10 p. 351 "Mr. JENNER. I have attempted to locate Mr. Bogard, just by calling around this morning, but I haven't been able to run him down yet. If you get any lead on where I might reach him, I would appreciate your telling me. I don't mean to suggest that he is trying to escape or anything, but quite the contrary. I just haven't been able to reach him."

Bogard was located in time to testify on April 8, 1964. He testimony is very brief. shortly afterwards Bogard is badly beaten, after this he left Dallas.

In a letter dated Sept 1, 1964 with its report nearly at the printers the Warren Commission asked the FBI for further investigation into both Bogard's allegation and Jack Lawrence. Eugene Wilson is interviewed on September 8, 1964 is interviewed for the first time. Wilson said the incident occurred on November 2, yet the FBI said, "Wilson could not recall the exact date.". On September 4, the Dallas FBI forwarded the Commission's request along with a copy of the 9 month old Rozzell interview to Pittsburgh with instruction to reinterview Lawrence. The Pittsburgh office complied 10 days later. The FBI agents waited an additional two days before filing a report on Sept. 16, 1964. The agents said that Lawrence said he did not see Bogard produce a business card with Oswald's name on it after hearing the name on the radio. Lawrence later told Inkol that he (Lawrence) did see Bogard do this and that he told that to the FBI.

Inkol states emphatically that the FBI did not want the Warren Commission to know about the test drive or about Jack Lawrence.

The FBI finally located Bogard on September 17. He was being held in a Dallas jail for passing worthless checks and theft by conversion. Bogard stuck to his story. The Warren Commission was published 10 days later, with no mention of Jack Lawrence. All the employees of Downtown Lincoln Mercury mentioned in the report no longer worked for the dealership. The report implied that Bogard was a liar. Less than a year and a half later Bogard was dead.

After the Warren report was issued the FBI was interested in the story of the Oswald test drive. In October 1964 the FBI was investigating two Los Angeles men, one of whom was working at the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership at the time of the assassination. Harry Randolph McCall was 39 in November of 1963 when he worked at the dealership. The second man, Joe Wesley Coe was in Dallas at the time. He was 27 but unemployed. According to William Johnson, a coworker of the men in LA, McCall told him the following shortly after the assassination. He (McCall) was employed at a car dealership in Dallas in November 1963 and he talked to Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald tried to purchase a Lincoln Continental. Oswald took a test drive along the same route that President Kennedy's motorcade would later travel. Joe Coe was at the exact location where Kennedy was assassinated. McCall said he purchased a Lincoln Continental himself, paying in cash, though he said it was stolen in Dallas a few days later. Johnson said that McCall and Cole returned to LA before the end of November with `lots of cash', which enabled Cole to open the West Coast Contact Club. The money was supposedly obtained from the sale of a home McCall had owned in the Bahamas. Johnson owned a second club, the Hollywood Contact Club and Johnson said that both clubs were places to meet for sexual deviants. This October 23 airtel ended with "possibility exists McCall employed at agency under assumed name. Dallas note similarity of description of McCall with Albert Bogard."

Inkol theorizes that if the FBI suspected that Bogard is really McCall then they probably also suspected that Lee Oswald who drove the car with him was really Joe Coe.

The FBI interviewed McCall and Cole at their residence on October 26, 1964. The result was sent to FBI headquarters and Dallas in an urgent airtel that same day. McCall did confirm that he did work at the dealership in November 1963. He said that all he knew about the Oswald test drive came from Albert Bogard and other salesmen. He said he lied about purchasing a Lincoln continental in order to impress Johnson. McCall did say he sold a home in the Bahamas for $1200. He said he lied about witnessing the assassination.

Inkol does not accept their retractions. He thinks that one or both of them could be the men standing next to Emmet Hudson on the stairs in Dealey Plaza.

Inkol stated that he has concluded that Jack Lawrence was not an assassin, nor was he involved in any conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. The information about Jack Lawrence familiar to most people in the research community comes from Mr. Rozzell and is pure disinformation.

Mr. Teter used to be a drinking companion of Lawrence. Inkol thinks that Teter may have also lost his job because the FBI was snooping around after Lawrence's call, and being a friend of Lawrence was also fired. Teter then give false disparaging information about Lawrence to the FBI. By December 5, 1963 Teter was at another car dealership and had no kind words to say about Lawrence.

D.A. Garrison sent Tom Bethell to interview Pizzo, Teter and Brown in 1967. Bethel did interview Lawrence on January 12, 1968. Bethel believed Lawrence.

Garrison was still interested in Downtown Lincoln Mercury. William Wood, a CIA officer and one time Garrison investigator using the false name "Bill Boxley" thought that Robert Perrin did not commit suicide in New Orleans on August 28, 1962 and may have faked his death. Perrin had a false name of "Jack Starr" complete with a separate social security number. Penn Jones thought the same. (See "Forgive my Grief III Revised" p. 38-47.) Inkol does not think that Perrin was alive after his reported death. He believes that "Boxley" was trying to link Perrin to Downtown Lincoln Mercury.

Another interesting employee of Downtown Lincoln Mercury was Fred A. Lawrence. Mr. Lawrence was a German immigrant raised in Nazi Germany and served in the German Army during World War II. He did contract work for the U.S. Dept. of Commerce for two years. He may have worked for Shell oil at one time. Bill Turner asked Rev. Jerry Owen on July 2, 1968 if he knew of a Jack or Fed Lawrence.

Inkol found Fred Lawrence and talked to him on the telephone. Inkol had found a job application Lawrence had filled out which he got from the AARC. Lawrence was not very cooperative. Lawrence said he was having lunch with the general manager at the time of the assassination and did not know it had occurred. He heard nothing about an Oswald test drive. Lawrence worked at the dealership well into 1964. Inkol believes Lawrence is lying on these points but doesn't know why. Lawrence left Dallas and went to Europe. He stayed in Europe for about a year working for Ford International. Lawrence returned to the U.S. and lived in Los Angeles in 1965.

Sheldon would like to see the following materials. I took this to be his shopping list to give to the ARRB.

1.) the filmed interview with "Bogard and other salesmen" mentioned by Walter Winchell.

2.) Tom Pettit's "recording" of a lengthy interview with Albert Bogard before 11/28/63

3.) notes or recordings from any other NBC interviews of Bogard and/or Jack Lawrence in November 1963.

4.) the transcript, recording, or film of an interview Mark Lane conducted with Oran Brown on 4/4/66

5.) reports of interviews Tom Bethell conducted with Robert Teter and Eugene Wilson around 1/67

6.) an interview with Oran Brown that was allegedly taped by Bernard Fensterwald in the sixties.

7.) the interviews with "former employees" of Downtown Lincoln Mercury cited in "Cover-Up" by J. Gary Shaw and Larry Ray Harris, and which also involved Penn Jones.

Sheldon Inkol first wrote about Jack Lawrence in "The Third Decade Vol. 6 # 4 May 1990 pps 5-11 in an article called "Other Patsies", wherein he said Lawrence looked like Buell Wesley Frazier. Again in Vol. 7 #5 July, 1991 pps 1-18 in an article called "Jack Lawrence, assassin or fall guy?". And again in "The Third Decade" Vol 8 #6 September, 1992 pps. 1-16 in an article "Jack Lawrence Responds".

A very interesting paper by Sheldon. However, he did not convince me that it was Oswald that test drove the car.

Next was Dr. Jerry Rose, host of the conference with a great title to his presentation "INCA Dinka Doo". I love that.

Jerry began by saying that the main sources for his presentation are an article by Arthur Carpenter in a magazine "Louisiana History" in 1989 called "The social origins of Anti-Communism; The Information Council of America." , also a series of newspaper clips from the New Orleans Times-Picayune. There are a large quantity of papers from Alton Ochsner, creator and founder of INCA at The New Orleans Historical Collection. Jerry passed out some papers associated with his presentation. Butler was warning a Dr. Crowley (sic?) that Garrison was going to conduct an investigation with INCA as the victim. Dr. Rose referred to the back page of the then current issue of "The Fourth Decade" which has a reproduction of an advertisement "Oswald-Self". This is an ad for a TV "documentary" based on the Oswald radio "debate" with Bill Butler, William Stuckey and Ed Butler on WDSU-radio in New Orleans. All of whom are now know to be FBI propaganda men. Ed Butler is billed as Lee Harvey Oswald's "enemy". Schick Safety Razor Co, is billed as the sponsor of this crap.

Jerry said he called his paper "INCA Dink Doo" with apologies to Jimmy Durante, because INCA did play a very interesting tune in the background and foreground of the assassination. The paper explores INCA during three interesting times, the "Communizing of Oswald"in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, in helping to create after the assassination a climate of fear that the assassination was the result of a Communist conspiracy, and it's continuing efforts to promote that idea of the assassination especially during the time for the Garrison investigation.

Carpenter says that INCA was created to protect the interests of the New Orleans economic elite including the fruit companies and shipping that were highly dependent on a stable situation in Latin and South America. They were of course aghast at the economic instability caused by Castro's Cuba. Enter Dr. Alton Ochsner, founder of the Ochsner clinic which catered to an elite Latin America medical clientele. The Samozas were Latin American dictators that came from New Orleans, they were treated at the Ochsner clinic. Also enter Ed Butler, a professional public relations man. Dr. Rose described INCA's origins, "After an abortive attempt in 1961 to promote Latin American anti-communism through an outfit called "The Free Voice of Latin America" with headquarters in the International Trade Mart, Butler later that year came to Dr. Ochsner to form INCA." Butler claims to have thought up the idea of INCA while still in the Army, in what Peter Dale Scott's refers to as a quite little town near Alexandria, Virginia, in a special Army outfit. INCA was formed Butler of course did not mention New Orlean's elite interests. INCA main aims were cash and patriotic anti-communism. INCA claimed that it's "truth tapes", broadcast throughout Latin America, were the best way to fight off Communism until the Alliance For Progress gets under way.

"Now an opportunity for an INCA truth tape presented itself in August 1963 when Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Soviet "defector", and a one man member of the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, became embroiled in a series of highly publicized incidents with INCA operatives. I refer of course to Oswald's pro-Castro leaf letting, which led to the scuffle with Carols Bringuier and the WDSU radio debate with Carols Bringuier. This led to Oswald being perceived in the public's mind as a Soviet defector and a pro-Castro disloyalist."

The role of INCA in both the leaf letting and the debate is more profound that has been generally recognized. WDSU-TV's interest in a rather routine leaf letting is highly suspicious. Carpenter notes that Edgar Stern, one of the owners of WDSU was a leading figure in INCA. There was a Percival Stern who was an even more active member of INCA. So WDSU seems to have a quite strong connection with INCA. Also, Bringuier was a member of INCA, at least in 1967, Jerry found his name on a membership rooster, and his interest and support of INCA go back before the assassination. After the debate Bringuier called for a Congressional investigation of Oswald and the FPCC. He also urged people to support organizations such as INCA and Ed Butler, who dedicates his life fighting Communism, especially in Latin America.

Apparently INCA and Butler reciprocated the admiration and had Bringuier as a guest speaker on their second "Truth Forum" on November 19, 1963. One of the topics of discussion was Argentina. During his speech Bringuier mentioned a variety of Communist techniques in use in Argentina. This is interesting because John Armstrong talked about Marguerite Oswald seeking possible asylum in Argentina. It is also interesting because of the parallel to the Oswald scuffle in New Orleans in August 1963. Jerry got this from a Times-Picayune article "This is the way they do it. You get two Communists starting a street corner debate. One will defend Capitalism and the other Communism. When a large enough crowd congregates the one defending Democracy will concede that the pro-Castro Communist speaker is right." Sounds like Bringuier learned from the enemy.

The next step of INCA Oswald propagandizing occurred in the next few hours and days following the assassination. Butler and Bringuier were the principal activists in this. Carols Bringuier wrote a book which is his take on the assassination called "Red Friday".

Jerry did not mention a document that shows that Bringuier wanted to have a press conference within hours of the assassination, before Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base. I reviewed this on "Fair Play" in my review of the 7th batch released by the ARRB, "Document # 104-10015-10108 is a one page cable from JM/WAVE to Director, CIA. It is dated 11/22/63. This is the document about Carols Bringuier wanting to have a press conference on Nov. 22, 1963. This was written before Air Force One touched down at Andrews. The CIA is admitting to having files on Lee Harvey Oswald and is not passing them onto the FBI, the Secret Service or the State Dept. These are AMSPELL files. I do not believe that they have been released yet."

About the time of the Garrison investigation in 1967 Butler issued a press release saying they knew of Oswald a few days before the assassination because Butler said he was called to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Actually, he went there on his own initiative. Dr. Rose mentioned that he noted in an update in the Third/Fourth Decade that Butler was in the office of Congressman Hale Boggs on the day of the assassination. Later Boggs came out as a believer in the Butler scenario. On November 24, Butler made a visit to Senator Thomas Dodd .

The chosen instrument of Bringuier's propaganda to cast Oswald as a communist and the assassination as a communist conspiracy was the DRE, Cuban Student Directory of which Bringuier was the New Orleans delegate.

The HSCA was told a story by Clare Boothe Luce about having been contacted by Cuban exiles the night of the assassination with information that Castro was behind the assassination. The HSCA interviewed, based on Mrs. Luce's information, Jose Antonio Lanusa. HSCA Volume 10 p. 83 "Jose Antonio Lanusa was interviewed by the committee on April 22, 1978. Lanusa said that on November 22, 1963 he and a small group of DRE members were at a Miami Beach hotel when they heard the news of the assassination of the President. When Oswald's name was broadcast, Lanusa recalled the name as that of someone who had something to do with one of the DRE delegates, so Lanusa and those who were with him went to the Miami DRE office to search the files to determine if Lanusa's suspicion was right. By late afternoon, they had found delegate Bringuier's report from New Orleans detailing his encounter with Oswald. Along with it was a sample Fair Play for Cuba leaflet and a tape recording of the radio debate. With this discovery, someone immediately called a CIA contact. This person told them not to do anything or contact anyone else for at least an hour. He said he needed that time to contact Washington headquarters for instructions. Nevertheless, Lanusa said, he was so anxious to release the information that Oswald was associated with a pro-Castro group that he contacted the major news organizations before the hour was up."

That delegate, Bringuier's report contained a recording of the Bringuier-Oswald debate.

In 1967 with the Garrison investigation INCA apparently thought they could co-opt the investigation. On February 21, 1967 Butler wrote to Garrison to "offer INCA's facilities, contacts, and no how in the areas of Communist psycho-warfare".

Apparently Garrison did not accept this kind offer for by June of 1967 Butler had moved INCA's files from New Orleans to Los Angeles. By this time Ochsner and Butler were fearful of Garrison coming after them. Ochsner became suspicious of Garrison investigator Tom Bethell. Ochsner asked a Louisiana congressman if HUAC had any information on Bethell.

When Mark Lane began making speeches in the New Orleans area Ochsner complained to the President of the Young Businessmen's club at the Roosevelt Hotel, which of course was owned by INCA member Seymour Weiss (sic?) that Lane was "affiliated with Communistic front organizations" and that his writings indicated that "he had apparently had concluded that because Oswald was a Communist, he did not do it."

Ochsner also wrote to the Tulane University president, also an INCA member saying that he hope Tulane would be an area of control over the likes of Garrison and Lane.

Ochsner went to HUAC on Lane and got a lot of reports on Lane's Communist ties like the fact that Lane was a member of the National Lawyers Guild and the New York Council to Abolish HUAC.

For all of the Garrison bashing by INCA there is nothing to suggest that Garrison was thinking of prosecuting INCA. In neither of Garrison's two books, "A Heritage of Stone" and "On the Trail of the Assassins" is there any mention of INCA, Butler, or Ochsner. The name Bringuier does not appear in the index to "On the Trail of the Assassins"

"Are we dealing then with a case of severe paranoia or maybe guilty conscience on the part of INCA, imagining that Garrison is after them? Or with an actual co-optation by INCA", Jerry wondered.

There was a group of citizens that formed a group called "Truth or Consequences" that helped raise funds for Garrison. Peter Dale Scott in "Crime and Cover-Up" pointed out that two of the three leaders of T & C, Willard Robertson and Cecil Shilstone were founding members of INCA! Robertson was an especially active member. When INCA opened it "Truth tapes" operation in 1961, Robertson was prominent at the dedication ceremonies and had donated for INCA's use in local fund raising a bright red sound equipped station wagon, presumably a Volkswagen because Robertson was the exclusive Volkswagen dealer in New Orleans.

For this and presumable other services Robertson was given an INCA "Fighter for Freedom" award at an INCA ceremony on December 11, 1963.

Actually the INCA ties to T & C and to Garrison go beyond the Robertson Shilstone connection. Jerry is still awaiting documents on this link from the Archives.

The leading founder of T & C, oil tycoon Joseph Rault jr., arguably had ties to INCA as well. He certainly was close to Ochsner. There is a letter in the Ochsner papers soliciting Rault for contributions for INCA. Rault was supposedly present on the airplane with Garrison and Senator Russell Long when Long suggested that the Warren Commission did not do a good thorough investigation. (See "Destiny Betrayed" by Jim DiEugenio p. 124).

The Long connection to Ochsner and Garrison is interesting. A biography of Ochsner shows a surprising friendship between Ochsner and Long. It is surprising because in the same biography earlier in Ochsner's career at the Tulane Medical School around 1930 Ochsner had a bitter confrontation with Long's father Huey Long over questions of leadership over a hospital in New Orleans. Russell Long once praised Ochsner in noting the controversy over Huey's medical treatment at the time of his assassination saying, "You know if my father had had you to take care of him he would be alive today." Ochsner modestly replied, "I didn't know Russell realized this."

Jerry referred to Eberhard Deutsch and some other names associated with INCA. Deutsch as noted by Peter Dale Scott In "Crime and cover-Up" p. 16 was the general counsel for Standard Fruit and Jim Garrison's former law partner and political mentor.

"We start to get the picture, INCA which is supposedly in mortal combat with the Garrison investigation has at least four of its associates among the leaders of "Truth & Consequences", the money bag outfit for the Garrison investigation. Did T & C get what it had been paying for? ie immunity for INCA from Garrison prosecution? Certainly those INCA people who were T & C involved were not ostracized by INCA for sleeping with the enemy. In fact two of them, Robertson and Shilstone, were re-elected as INCA directors in September 1968 after T & C had been operating for a year and a half.

Jerry finished by saying that he has not proven that the Garrison investigation was co-opted by INCA but he said there does seem to be a lot pointed in that direction.

The next speaker was Peter Whitmey. Peter was there to talk about Perry Raymond Russo. Peter pointed out that Lilly O'Keefe in JFK was a composite character based on Perry Raymond Russo and three other individuals who linked Shaw with David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald. Russo became famous when he testified in March 1967 at the preliminary hearing in New Orleans against Clay Shaw. On March 1, 1967 Shaw was indicted charged with conspiring to kill President Kennedy in league with the recently deceased David Ferrie and others. Russo claimed to have become a friend of pilot David Ferrie in the early 1960's while studying political science at Loyola and to have attended a party at Ferrie's apartment in late September 1963 in which Ferrie, Shaw and several Cubans and Lee Harvey Oswald discussed plans to kill JFK.

Peter Whitmey explained, "Russo was initially interviewed by the local media in Baton Rouge where he was working as a life insurance agent shortly after the mysterious death of Ferrie on February 22, 1967 and subsequently contacted Garrison's office. Russo claims he contacted Garrison before Ferrie's death, but according to Garrison's book they never received the alleged letter.

When first interviewed by Garrison's staff he agreed to be hypnotized by a qualified doctor, and he was also given sodium pentathol in a follow up interview.

Both of those became quite controversial aspects of the case. Garrison became satisfied that Russo was a credible witness. And given the fact that Russo was a college educated, clean cut, articulate individual he appeared to be a strong witness.

Later it was said he was easily susceptible to answering questions while under hypnosis. Peter Whitmey mentioned that it appeared that Russo had "spent a lot of time being hypnotized in the past."

Russo testified again, nearly two years later at Shaw's trail. This despite pressure on him from Walter Sheridan to retract his allegations along with a job offer in California, with a new identity, if memory serves. To his credit Russo refused and refused to change his story although he slightly waivered as to whether the discussion to kill JFK was a serious one or a "bull session". However, Russo was still certain that both Shaw and Oswald were at the party, even though Oswald was supposedly on his way to Mexico by then and that Shaw and Oswald both knew each other both before and after the assassination. This point was supported by several other witnesses including a couple whose son had taken flying lessons from Ferrie who was seen in the company of Shaw at the airport.

After the trial Russo returned to a life of anonymity as a cab driver in New Orleans. He was charged with theft in 1970, for which he was initially found guilty, this was reported in the New York Times, but was later overturned. Peter explained that this involved a key which was found in Russo's home.

Russo was also interviewed by James Kirkwood for his 1970 book "American Grotesque". Russo was also referred to in "The Kennedy Conspiracy" by Paris Flammonde, and "The Garrison Case" by Milton Brener and "Counterplot" by Edward Epstein. Interestingly, Russo is not mentioned in "Heritage of Stone", Garrison's first book, although Peter explained he thought that was for legal reasons, given that Shaw was indicted again.

In the early 1970's Russo had to testify again in regard to Garrison's attempt to prove that Shaw had lied in stating that he did not know David Ferrie but this time Russo refused to answer any questions on the grounds of self-incrimination. This was in a Federal Court. In 1975 Russo was declared dead by Robert Morrow in his book "Betrayal". Morrow claimed poor research by an unnamed assistant.

The HSCA studied the Garrison investigation, including the Giesbrecht allegations, Russo was not interviewed. He is not mentioned in Anthony Summers book "Conspiracy", which is based largely on the HSCA hearings. Russo is mentioned in Garrison's second book "On the Trial of the Assassins" published in 1988. Now the public became aware again of Perry Russo, his story, and that he was still alive and living in New Orleans.

"Nevertheless, in the Dec. 1990 issue of "Texas Monthly" the article "I was Mandarin" by Gary Cartwright, in making an analysis of the Ricky White statements, wrote, `One of the more obscure faces turned out to be the late Perry Raymond Russo, who once testified that he had attended a meeting in New Orleans where the plot to assassinate President Kennedy had been discussed; also in attendance was Lee Harvey Oswald.' Written below the picture were the words, `Big Mouth you talked after all.' So even as recently as Dec. 1990 "Texas Monthly" thought Russo was dead and this is after Garrison's book had been published."

Peter then explained that he first wrote to Perry Russo in February 1990 and got a brief reply in March 1990. Peter found his address by just asking information, Russo was still listed in the telephone book. Russo included the business address of Judge Garrison. Peter wrote to Garrison several times about the Giesbrecht incident but never got a reply. Russo was interested in the direction of Peter's work, worrying about whether Peter was out to discredit him (Russo).

In a second letter Russo stated that he was in regular contact again with Garrison and appeared anxious to talk about the assassination. Russo said he heard the news about the assassination after leaving a class at Loyola university.

Peter found Russo's next comments startling, "I was shocked but satisfied. Kennedy destroyed this country." it was in this letter that Whitmey learned that a movie was in the works based on Garrison's book "On the Trail of the Assassins" to be directed by Oliver Stone.

Russo continued to work as a cab driver. He was filmed in his cab for a segment for "Entertainment Tonight" after Stone's "JFK" came out. Russo was hired as a consultant for the film. He played the anti-Kennedy loudmouth in the bar scene where Garrison goes to watch developments on a TV when he hears about the assassination. Russo was also the voice on the phone in the call to Garrison's daughter in the film. Russo told Whitmey that he was agreeable to the creation of the composite character "William O'Keefe" played by Kevin Bacon. Russo was probably relieved that he would not be depicted as the star witness. Whitmey feels this is a major flaw in the film, especially (these are Peter's words) "in using an uneducated, sexually depraved male prostitute as the principal witness, as opposed to a college educated, clean cut `Young Republican',who admired Richard Nixon and hated John Kennedy"

Peter asked Perry Russo if it would be allright if he (Peter) wrote to Perry's brother, who is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of New Orleans. Prof. Russo returned Peter's letter of Dec. 27, 1991 with a few comments in the margins, indicating that his brother's testimony was genuine. Prof. Russo did not know why Perry had not come forward immediately after the assassination. Prof. Russo believed his brother's story. He did believe that it was true that Perry had been under psychiatric care as a college student for 18 months as alleged during the trial. Peter believes this was connected to an earlier suicide attempt in 1960. Perry may have suffered from depression.

Peter, fortunately for all of us, interviewed Perry on audiotape. Peter sent a letter with some questions and Perry recorded his answers on audio.

In March 1992 Perry was suing GQ magazine and felt burned out over the media attention in the wake of "JFK". In September of `92 Perry moved to a new address. Perry was involved in a car accident as well at this time. Perry did give Peter a nice compliment saying that Peter was one of the positive things that was going on during this time of media attention to him.

In the fall of 1993 Peter asked Perry for newspaper articles pertaining to the death of Judge Jim Garrison.

In July 1993 and a year later Peter got his last correspondence from Perry Russo. Perry was still feeling "burned out" and was recovering from accidentally shooting himself in his cab on May 28, of I assume, 1994. Peter asked him if he ever met Clem Sehrt. Perry said no although he believed the name was mentioned in Garrison's office. He was not sure if Dean Andrews and Clem Sehrt knew each other.

Perry died of an apparent heart attack in 1995. Peter thinks it is a shame that Perry never attended any of the conferences held over the years.

The audiotapes of the interviews that Peter did with Perry Russo are available from Ulric Shannon.

Next came the Keynote Speech by Prof. Peter Dale Scott.

Peter started by saying he was grateful for this weekend. JFK assassination conferences are becoming more and more frequent and he feels are getting better and better. He said that this Fredonia conference has been one of the best he has ever been at. Peter said he started researching this case in 1969 and went to his first conference in 1973.

He mentioned that he knew people, friends of his, that researched this case that committed suicide, one was institutionalized, and one was murdered. In the early years there was a sense that one should not be questioning the government. There was a great deal of paranoia. That first conference was sponsored by Bud Fensterwald who practically advertised that he had some connection to the CIA. It was very hard to trust fellow researchers in those days. There was great psychological trauma in those days because people felt that they had to research on their own.

Peter feels that the goal of the research community is not to solve the case in a grand Agatha Christie sort of way but to understand the case. Chances of actually bringing anyone to justice over this is extremely thin, if not impossible.

The theme of his paper was bringing it all together. He felt it was quite important to understand what happened in 1963 because it goes to understanding today. There is a great deal to bring together, perhaps more than one person can bring together.

Mentioning the old paranoia he hoped that there will be minutes of the "secret meeting"of researchers held in California recently that was a topic of concern on the Internet.

Peter spoke of the great number of CIA records that are now open and available.

Many on Oswald in Russia, and more than you would want to know, (almost) on Oswald in Mexico City. The Mexican secret police, the DFS, is mentioned repeatedly in those documents. He thinks that the person we think of as Oswald never went to Mexico at all. By knowing more about the DFS, we learn more about the case. It is not a distraction. Drug running in Mexico is a subject that ties Ruby and Sam Giancana together, as an example. Ruby's drug running through Mexico to Chicago goes back to the 40's. Neither one ever convicted of drug running. Three people from the mob who knew each other through the CIA were John Roselli, John Martino and Richard Cain and they are very interesting. They are involved in intelligence operations disguised as journalistic investigations paid by LIFE magazine. This was a reference to the Bayo-Pawley affair. (See the "Fish is Red" p. 164-173, the authors, Turner and Hinkle on p. 167 refer to this as as, "The Founder (Henry Luce of LIFE) was taking his gremlins beyond the familiar world of checkbook journalism into the nether reaches of paramilitary journalism.")

"These three mobsters are very different than Blakey's "mob' figures in the House Committee report. Blakey's "mob" is almost like space aliens coming in and corrupting our beautiful Protestant America with their sinister and exotic plans.

(Laughter)

"In "Deep Politics" I argue strenuously against that. Protestants are American and so are mob people, both are American as apple pie and have been for a long time

and an American way of doing things has incorporated the mob into the heart of business for a very long time indeed, much more than just this century."

"The opportunity to bring it all together at this moment is not just what you might call a horizontal convergence, where you look at Oswald in Mexico, and that takes you to arms and drug running, and that takes you to this weird episode in Dallas that the LaFontaines have written about, this John Thomas Masen who was a gun shop owner and a Minute man, a right-winger who has just made a trip to Guadalajara, Mexico in the summer of 1963, is working with Army Intelligence and a Cuban exile group, the DRE, which in turn is being subsidized by the CIA in Miami; you know if you are coming into this case for the first time that is complicated and a little bit off putting and you say that's more than I want to know about but if you have been focusing on the case for some time then you see all of these elements that once were disparate coming into a clearer relationship with each other. And if I add to that that one of the most significant findings I think from Mexico is that the so called CIA intercept program which heard Oswald was not a unilateral CIA operation at all. It was a joint operation between the CIA and the DFS in which the people who actually listened to the intercepts and heard somebody, allegedly identify himself as Lee Oswald, they were not CIA personnel, they were Mexicans! We know they were Mexicans. They were almost certainly working for the DFS and it was their impression that the man who identified himself as Oswald had difficulty making himself understood both in English and in Russian which makes him sound not very plausibly the Lee Harvey Oswald who went to Arlington Heights High School, or after hearing John Armstrong's presentation possibly some other high school. I could go on and on on that sort of thing. That's what I call horizontal convergence, a lot of what were previously dispersed topics are coming together.

"And let me add that Richard Cain, whose expertise was wiretapping, was down in Mexico City teaching the Mexican government how to wiretap and actually teaching a course on wiretapping at the University of Mexico.

"So that it's possible although I can't prove this at this stage that the mob, that is to say Richard Cain had their own claws into this program as well. They certainly had their own connection to the DFS because the DFS heroin and cocaine South of the border became mob cocaine North of the border particularly in Chicago, Richard Cain's home town. That's what I call horizontal convergence.

"But we are also getting into areas when we look at the Masen case [such as] the involvement of George Nonte at Ft. Sam Hood, who is the Army man, a major, in charge of munitions and ordinance there who apparently is making a habit of giving it away to people, the DRE, and the the Minutemen and to other groups.

"And at another conference I would say that this is a modus operandi that extends into a great many CIA operations not just operations against Castro.

"But we are bringing in an element of the government now, Military intelligence.

"And then also, we have a lot of releases, these are very important releases, I encourage you to look at them on Cuba policy in 1963 and it's very clear that the DRE were amongst the most anti-Kennedy elements, they were probably the most anti-Kennedy of all. They are sort of off the charts. Even the CIA does not quite know what the DRE is doing military. So they fly to Chicago and set up an important meeting in one of the most ritziest clubs in Chicago for someone they want to spy on the DRE in Chicago, who; there are two people, two groups, there is the DRE and also a man called Paulino Martinez Sierra, one of my favorite topics for many years. Who do they request in CIA headquarters [that] they want to meet and speak to? Richard Cain.

"So they meet with him in Chicago. They ask him in effect to report on what the DRE is doing. They ask him to report on what Paulino Martinez Sierra is doing. Let me give you my hypothesis is. It is not proven what is happening here. Paulino Sierra whom I have interviewed, is running an operation, Paulino Sierra says he was running it for Louis Williams who is a friend of Bobby Kennedy's and Sierra insisted to me that he believed that he was fulfilling a program that Kennedy wanted which was to pass money to a lot of extreme groups like Alpha-66 and the Second National Front of the Escrambe not for them to invade Cuba particularly but to get [them] out of the Unites States.

"And now we come to some very serious policy matters in 1963. Kennedy had agreed with Khrushchev that if Khrushchev pulled the missiles out of Cuba the United States would not invade Cuba. What did that mean exactly? We still don't know all of the details.

"But Alpha-66 knew that if they wanted to survive in their operations they had to torpedo that agreement. So they started to blow up Soviet ships in Cuban harbors until Kennedy told them at the end of March no more of this, stop this, and Alpha-66 was the primary group that had to stop. And I believe what Paulino Sierra was doing was trying to get those damn Alpha-66 people out of the United States because if they did this sort of event from Venezuela it wasn't going to threaten the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding. And at first I didn't have anything other than Paulino Sierra's word for this but then when I was reading Bobby Kennedy's biography written by Arthur Schlesinger there is among the footnotes a summary of a secret document not then declassified which is a meeting in the State Department which involves the State Department and Paulino Sierra and this was exactly the meeting Paulino Sierra described to me. And here was the documentary corporation of it.

"Now I am not trying to solve the case this evening. I am trying to give you an example of how horizontal convergence, going around the parameters on this level leads you into a kind of vertical convergence as well. And I can give you many more examples but we wouldn't go home, of how the new releases and particularly the policy releases, and particularly with respect to Cuba, how I wish we had the Vietnam releases as well, the Review Board says they are working on those but we got the Cuban releases, it is clear that the CIA mistrusted what Kennedy was doing and it is clear that there are some people who went off the CIA's charts at that time and that's why I think they went to Richard Cain.

And I think that this is an area that all serious students of the relationship between the case and policy differences at that time should be interested in.

I will just sum it up and say whereas there have always been tensions in America between Hawks and Doves, between Liberals and Conservatives, and people who put America first and who call themselves "America Firsters" in the 1940's versus the kind of people they call "New World Order people" both of these factions have always existed. They certainly exist today. There is a new book out.

Is Pat Robertson's book called "The New World Order"? I'm in it as a member of the Illuminati.

(laughter)

His paranoia about me is as sincere and as strong as my paranoia about him. that's life in America. There is always this kind of mistrust between divergent elements in America. And to tell this story, which again I am not going to tell tonight, is to tell the story of America itself. But it is relevant to say that that kind of tension was particularly acute in 1963. With the lack of clarity about what would happen to Cuba, with the lack of clarity about what would happen to Vietnam, above all else the lack of clarity about what was going to happen to the United States relations with the Soviet Union. When John F. Kennedy made this speech on June 10th, 1963 in which he said "And we are all Mortal" meaning we can't continue to live at the brink of nuclear warfare. that American University speech is relevant to our understanding of the case. These new releases, these new documents help relate what we know about Oswald and about what other sort of key figures on the horizontal level; how they interact with policy splits that divided the Kennedy administration from its very base to its very top in the National Security

Council.

"So that is a second kind of convergence, vertical convergence, is also important. I am going to try to suggest a third way, a new way, of looking at the case. It's not altogether new, some of us in this room have been doing it for many years but let me talk about the first way of looking at the case, what I call first position analysis of the Kennedy assassination that of The New York Times on November 25, 1963 when it said assassin killed in Dallas. They had already tried Oswald and found him guilty at the same time as his sentence which was death. Which is a state of mind which I would suggest to you is endemic in the controlling institutions of this country by which I include Universities of which I am part. If you see something go wrong in the society, if you see what we might call a dysfunction, it is the natural impulse of these people, it is not a control mechanism, sinisterly and Machiavellianly invented it is the sincere reaction of these people to say it must be some fringe element, it must be some marginal element that does it. It is natural for them to think that the President must have been killed by someone marginal. Just as if you go and take an example outside our focus McCarthyism in the early 1950's astonishing irrationality which momentarily took over American politics, the search for traitors in the State Department which is exactly what Oswald documents get caught up in in 1963, as I tried to say in my paper earlier, the charges of treason, the hunt for the traitors, McCarthyism, the phenomenon, all the establishment academic books about McCarthyism say this was a kind of a revolt against the prevailing rationality that normally rules our society to which I say that is not total bullshit but it is pretty biased. And if you are going to insist on that kind of first positional analysis which blames what goes wrong on the margins, whether it is one lone nut as in the case of the Warren Commission, or to say well that doesn't quite seem profound enough to deal with all of the data, then you have the House Committee which grinds and grunts and cogitates and then it says, "No, it's the mafia!' well the mafia is a lot bigger than Lee Harvey Oswald but it is still projected as something at the margin that is threatening the inherent decency, rationality of the center America.

Well if you throw out that kind of propaganda long enough, particularly in the middle of a Vietnam war, you are inviting what I call the second position analysis. it is an entirely predictable reaction to the first position analysis, `No, it's not the margins that did it it's the government that did it ' or the more usual form in which we've seen this, `The CIA did it.'. You turn the first position on it's head and throw the accusation back in the directions in which they came from in the first place. And in case you think well I am talking about the Garrison investigation, Garrison was an example of this but he was not the first example. And I think it is instructive of us to remember that the charge that "The CIA did it' which sounds as if it should be from Ramparts or, I don't know,The Guardian or something like that, it was first voiced in a very strong way very soon after the assassination by people who are a little hard to describe in terms of this difference between insiders and outsiders, center and margin. Philip Corso, for example, a former intelligence agent, working on the hill for Senator Thurmond. Would you call him an outsider or an insider? He was up there on the hill but he passionately hated people that he called insiders and he particularly hated the CIA. His theory was, and he said this, that Kennedy was killed by a Communist clique inside the CIA. Something very like this was published in "The American Opinion", the journal of the John Birch Society in February and March 1964 by Revilo Oliver, a man who again talked about insiders but before we define him as an outsider we have to remember that he was a former

senior researcher in the Army Security Agency. So he too came from in a sense inside.

This difficulty of defining people who are partly in and partly out is going to slow down my talk but it is extremely relevant to understanding the tensions, the context of our case. I have just read a very good research book on the right-wing by a left winger and she described the John Birch Society as outsiders, as a matter of fact as a grass roots movement, there has got to be something wrong here. Eleven people meet, one of them is the president of the national association of manufacturers, another is Robert Welch, who is the director of the national association of manufacturers, Revilo Oliver is there, he is almost the only one there who isn't a millionaire, and two more of the eleven are presidents of the state industrial counsels of where they live, if these are grass roots people they are certainly not your run of the mill grassroots, but why Sarah Diamond calls them grassroots is `They mistrust the CIA, they mistrust the Council on Foreign Relations',

all of the resentment and bitterness from World War II when it was felt by "America Firsters" that those internationalists on the Council on Foreign Relations plotted with British intelligence to get us into a war that America had no business being involved in. this splits me right down the middle because I'm anti-war and I think there is a measure of truth to that but I'm also a Canadian with certain links to Europe and my wife is Jewish and I also feel that; it doesn't persuade me that it would be a better world to live in if America had not been in that war. So this is a profound division inside America where I really feel in a sense I sympathize with both sides.

And this leads me to what I call third position analysis and if we are still walking and talking about World War II it is not that you reject first position analysis which says that the "America Firsters" were being funded by German intelligence, which has a measure of truth to it but does not begin to explain the profoundly rooted basis of the "America Firsters" and their sense of betrayal which I think is a major source for the charges of treason which get thrown around so easily in the McCarthy period, and again in 1963. You have a measure of sympathy for both the first position analysis and the second position analysis.

In general third position analysis does not say one side is wrong the other side is right. Third position analysis tries to go beyond looking for the good guys and the bad guys and from that point of view first position and second position have a lot in common. They both feel that you have a good America which has been attacked by a bad America, an evil America, a treacherous America. They just don't agree on who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. And if you can have sympathy for both positions, then you can stop; get the moralizing out of the discussion, and simply try to look at what happened with understanding which I believe leads to a certain amount of compassion from both sides.

Peter then went on to point out that the mob was bad for America in the early 1960's. The drug problem is bad. Peter would rather solve the drug problem than the Kennedy assassination. It is very romantic to point out that Robert Kennedy was out to get the mob out of America, at least out of American politics. And there is some truth to that story but it is only some truth because it was only some mob figures that he was going after. He could not take on everything at once, with maximum sympathy for Robert Kennedy and for what he was trying to do we cannot leave out the possibility that the mob helped get the Kennedy's into power in 1960.

This pisses me off. I am sick of this "the mob helped JFK become President" crap. John Chancellor said it best on the A & E show "Election Night 1960" "One of the enduring myths about the 1960 election is that Dick Daley stole it for Jack Kennedy, that Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago stuffed enough ballot boxes, or fiddled with enough voting machines to give Kennedy the 27 electoral votes of the state of Illinois and that those votes put Kennedy over the top and made him President. Some people believe that to this day but it's not true. If the 27 electoral Illinois votes had gone to the Republican candidate Kennedy still would have won enough electoral votes in other states to win the election. Illinois didn't change the outcome of the 1960 election. Further, Republican officials in Illinois never challenged the result and neither did Richard Nixon.

"Now maybe there was some cheating that night. Illinois and Chicago have a history of sometimes crooked politics but the Illinois vote did not make Kennedy president and he would have been elected without it."

But we still have some people needing this to be true to tie together people for dubious purposes.

Peter said this was particularly true in Illinois, and particularly true in Chicago and above all the 24th ward in Chicago, which is where Jack Ruby grew up and took part in local Democratic party politics for Jacob Arvey. "The fact that these people helped elect the Kennedy's has to do with their sense of betrayal when Bobby Kennedy started going after some of the mob figures which they thought they had bought some protection for. And it becomes interesting here that Sam Giancana, for whom Richard Cain was a chauffeur, became simultaneously one of the top men on Bobby Kennedy's short list of ten mob figures we want to get. And at the same time, I think less than a month after Bobby Kennedy had declared war on them in his book "The Enemy Within", which you might call a first position analysis, the CIA recruited Giancana to help out with the plots to assassinate Castro."

Peter also talked of the resistance of many in America to deal with the assassination at all. "We know we are on to something important when every, when so many people mindlessly, without knowing the first thing about what is going on here say, `you've got to be wrong will you please stop this nonsense.' It isn't just The New York Times at the center, it is William Buckley on the right and to my great chagrin over on the left is Alexander Koburn and Noam Chomsky, who even throughout in a radio discussion with someone I know, and by the way I know and respect Noam Chomsky, this is not an anti-Chomsky speech I am making here

but he has certainly made anti-conspiracy statements, and he even said wouldn't it be a wonderful way for the CIA to control dissidents by giving them a lot of papers to read, go and research and so on to take them away from what really matters.

Well, I wish Noah was here because I would say to him that the Mexican drug trafficking into America, doesn't that really matter? If we learn something more about the CIA's relationship to that drug trafficking into this country aren't we learning something important about our society? We don't need to be ashamed to do this kind of research. You should be asking yourself what is this resistance in you that not only won't do it yourself but gets so upset when other people go ahead and do it for you."

Speaking to the audience now, Peter told us, "You are conducting research and you are getting results. Not mind shattering results, not instant illumination of the whole thing but you test the hypothesis and by gosh as we have heard in some of the talks today there is stuff out there to corroborate the line of investigation even more. So on the one hand you are on the side of the truth, you may not have arrived at the truth but by golly you are searching for the truth and one thing we know, we-are-not-doing-it-for-the-money.

(Laughter)

That is actually a rather nice thing. People talk about the corruption of the university, the academic marketplace and so on, and it is a little sickening to go to the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association and hear a lot of prima donnas who are becoming millionaires by being fashionable armchair Marxists without any real relevance to anything that is happening. We are relevant, we are searching for the truth, we may be corrupt, but it is not money that is corrupting us, that we know, that is one thing that we know and we know that what we are doing is extremely upsetting to a great many people from all points of view. So I think that in a sense is a corroboration that we are on to something important.

And I think this is what it is, I think if we can persuade America that this was a conspiracy, whether or not we solve it, if we can make the American people, all of them, share in whatever level of understanding we have achieved about this case that will erode the first position analysis and the second position analysis which have become part of the ongoing problem of this country because those kinds of distinctions, `the people down there are doing bad things to this country', `we need less democracy' as a Harvard professor of government wrote in a book back in the middle of the 1970's, versus the second position analysis `those people up there are doing terrible things to us' the CIA, the FBI, the mistrust, the paranoia, if we can persuade America that we have a third way of seeing what happens then it will not only heal our own paranoia, which I think has already happened, I think it will be beneficial to the paranoia that is afflicting the political processes of this country as we meet here in this room.

So that is my hope that we are creating a new kind of community where we certainly have very divergent interests, I will never, I promise you, ever do a paper on Neutron Activation Analysis. Among the very divergent interests we have there is also a common concern and nobody is free from knowing that we are all mortal, nobody is free from ego, but one thing I know is I feel much better coming to a group like this one and even when I hear a paper that I occasionally really don't like very much I still feel good about being in this room where I feel extremely uncomfortable in most large national gatherings particularly on the academic level because of the prevailing corruption and decay of thought.

And I say this as a Canadian who never took American citizenship, I am in this country because I love it, because although terrible things have happened and we write about those terrible things and I write more about drugs, politics, guns, armies and the CIA in Central America, I mean there is a lot to be ashamed off and there is a lot of ground to have hope particularly when some many different people from so many different levels of society with such different backgrounds come together and help make the truth come out."

(Applause)

In Q & A Peter was asked if he looked at the right-wing theory of the assassination, especially Revilo P. Oliver's testimony. Peter said yes it was one of the first things he looked at long ago and it is almost time for somebody else to do so as we have more information now. The testimony of Revilo P. Oliver is interseting in that Oliver was criticizing the Warren Commission saying that it was an unconstitutional misdirection away from where it should be investigated, namely the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. The SISS agreed with Oliver and now that we have the release of Johnson's telephone calls in the first week we know that Johnson's motive for setting up the Warren commission was precisely to keep it away from the SISS who had already started their own investigation, who had already heard from Edward Butler. Peter said that we would have disliked the SISS version of the Kennedy assassination even less than the Warren Commission. And it is interesting that Oliver was quizzed on what were his sources. And he said military intelligence people and named one, Frank Capell, who was associated with this thing called the "Foreign Intelligence Digest" that was financed by the Hunt family in Dallas and it united a lot of senior veterans of Army intelligence with veterans foreign intelligence. The content of the full page ad, the wanted for treason thing according to Peter those were not issues just pulled out of the air they accurately depicted the divisions between these people and the Kennedy administration.

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