The second annual November in Dallas conference, sponsored by JFK Lancer, was held at the Dallas Grand Hotel from November 20 through November 22, 1997. This article is a survey of that conference, and consists of its highlights. It is by no means complete in its highlight selection; there were some presentations I skipped, and others that I have omitted due to my own time constraints.
I tape recorded most of this conference on a microcassette recorder, so all quotations are as exact as possible. Since no one speaks naturally in "sound bite" form, there has been a degree of editing, mostly aimed at reducing the word count presented here. Also, because of the low fidelity of most of the recordings, not all the playback was easily decipherable. I have done my best to be as accurate as possible.
Lastly, in several instances, quotations have been either enhanced or expanded on by using a line or two from the speaker's own text --- either a handout or an abstract, as published in the conference program. This has been done with the intention of best presenting the speaker's ideas.
During the course of the weekend, certain common themes emerged: Truth is on our side. Closure is at hand. Stick together.
More than once, it was noted that Dallas that weekend was hosting two separate JFK conferences. Some suggested that this was ludicrous and counter-productive. Others simply made neutral observations --- that was the way it was. Others still seemed willing --- please pardon the expression --- to take sides, as if some competition were underway.
While it may appear, in this issue of Fair Play, that greater weight has been given to one camp over another, readers draw meaning from that at their peril.
I arrived at the Lancer conference around 1pm on Thursday. The first event I attended was a workshop, "Files and Documents," which was already in progress. The first speaker I saw was Joseph Backes, the Assassination Records Review Board specialist and a regular contributor to Fair Play. Unfortunately, my two-and-a-half year old son got his mitts on my tape recorder after I got home from the conference, and erased most of Joe's comments. (Sorry, Joe.)
There remained on my tape, however, a lively discussion about locating documents pertinent to the case --- where to find them, and ways to ferret them out.
"There are a lot of things out there that you can use, besides the Archives," said researcher Barbara LaMonica in an off-the-cuff speech. "There are papers --- people have left their papers to university libraries. They're scattered all over the country." She recommended using the public library system. "Go to the reference section and ask them for something called the Specials Collection Index. The Specials Collection Index is an index of all peoples' papers and memorabelia, and where they are." She added that librarians working with these collections "are very glad to hear from you, because probably nobody ever calls them. So they're willing to do a lot of work for you."
She also advised using Government Depository Libraries, which house a multitude of government documents and publications. A good public library, she said, would be able to refer one to such a library.
Chris Courtwright discussed the tremendous volume of newly released material at the Archives, all stemming from the JFK Act of 1992 and the ARRB that law created. "There is so much stuff in the Archives," he said, "they don't know what they have --- the agencies don't know what they have." Particularly useful, Courtwright said, is the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection web site (http://www.nara.gov/nara/jfk/jfk.html).
On the other hand, there may be no substitute for actually going to the Archives, said Dr. Jerry Rose, editor of The Fourth Decade, who also spoke at the Files and Documents workshop. The indexing of RIFs [Reader Identification Forms], for example, makes searching for specific subjects via the NARA web site a hit-and-miss proposition. He showed a sample document that dealt with Priscilla Johnson, "...one of our favorite mysterious people. And the RIF on that [Johnson] document, the heading is 'knowledge of pre-assassination time in the Soviet Union,' or something to that effect ... But it doesn't mention Priscilla Johnson, and you never would have found that document by putting her name in your search."
Dr. Rose also said that the importance of documents as they relate to the Kennedy case should never be underestimated. "All of the statements that are made, or complaints that it's too late, really, to do research on something that happened over thirty years ago --- people forgot, witnesses died, physical evidence has deteriorated, etc etc --- the one area that evidence doesn't really die, if properly preserved, is precisely in the documentary material."
Thursday evening ran very late, and necessitated the rescheduling of Angus Crane to the following morning. Crane's paper was called "Assassins: Why Oswald Is Unique." His essential premise is that unlike all previous and subsequent presidential assassins and would-be assassins, Lee Oswald did not claim responsibility for killing Kennedy, and in fact specifically denied it. In short, he does not fit the assassin profile. A full treatment of this may be found in Mr. Crane's article, "A Clue of Singularity," published in Fair Play #15. See the link to the Fair Play archive on the main page of this (and every) issue.
Brad Parker's presentation was on the medical evidence. "If you read Exhibit 392 [Warren Report, Appendix VII]," he said, "you see that there is evidence of a second gunman --- they published excerpts of that right in the Report itself. The one volume they must have assumed everyone was going to read ... The physicians at Parkland were interviewed in 1964 by Arlen Specter, and without fail, they all described a posterior exit wound. They didn't term it an exit wound; they said it was a large hole in the back of the head."
Parker then described his contacts with several of the Parkland doctors involved in the desparate attempts to save Kennedy's life. Drs. Jenkins, Perry, Carrico had by this time, in the early 90s, changed their stories so that they supported the Warren Commission's lone gunman finding.
He described writing Dr. Malcolm Perry and asking him to comment on a sketch of the head wound by Dr. Robert McClelland [above]. Dr. Perry replied that only Dr. Kemp Clark had closely examined the head wound, and that Dr. McClelland had merely assisted. Any sketch made from memory, without measurements, was worthless.
Parker said he wrote Perry back and thanked him for the reply --- and added, "If this type of research is worthless, as it is based on recollection, then the Warren Commission and subsequent House Select Committee wasted a considerable amount of time and money speaking to you and your colleagues of Trauma Room 1..."
Dr. Perry shot back that recollection made immediately after an event is probably more accurate, although often wrong. He further advised Parker to read the autopsy report found in the Warren Commission volumes. "The reason I contacted him at all," Parker noted, "was because I had gone through all that" and found it inadequate.
Dr. Adolph Giesecke also got a copy of the McClelland sketch from Parker, with a request for comment. Dr. Giesecke said that while he no longer had a clear memory of the wounds, he would agree with the findings of Gerald Posner.
"My favorite group of Parkland physicians are the guys who stand by what they say," Parker said. "Bob McClelland is a prime example of that. He's been seen in numerous interviews --- The Men Who Killed Kennedy --- he's been in all kinds of things, talking about this large wound he saw in the back of the head ... he told the Warren Commission --- and I'm sure you've heard this a million times --- 'I know that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted, had been shattered, apparently by the force of the shots...'
"I asked him to comment on that injury based on his observations, and his viewing of the Zapruder film," Parker continued. "He said the bullet hit from the front, hitting tangentially in the side of the head ... and blew out part of the skull, then continued out the back of the head..."
Bill Drenas discussed the shooting of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit. He had prepared a timeline of Tippit's movements on 11-22-63, and began his presentation by asking everyone in the audience a question: "What time is it right now?" When the answers that were shouted back to him varied by as much as seven minutes, he made his first point: none of the watches we wear or the clocks we see on the wall every day are synchronized with each other.
The first presumed sighting of Tippit that day thirty-four years ago was around 10am at the Dobbs House Restaurant, located a few blocks from the Oak Cliff rooming house where Lee Oswald was staying. Oswald was there that morning, too, and a witness, who later gave a statement to the FBI, reported that the two men looked at each other. "She said there was no indication, however, that they knew each other," Drenas said.
But as Drenas noted, "The questioning that was done by the FBI was to investigate the Oswald-Ruby connection, not to retrace Tippt's movements," so Tippit's presence at the Dobbs House cannot be confirmed. But it was his usual practice to stop there for coffee.
Dobbs House was about six miles from Tippit's assigned Patrol District (#78). This became one of Drenas' main points: that he was often seen away from district 78, and the day he died was no exception.
Tippit is next seen at Austin's Barbecue, also in Oak Cliff, where he had coffee with another officer. He was later known to have had lunch at home, in an area also off his assigned beat.
Around 12:45pm --- fifteen minutes after the assassination --- the Drenas timeline places Tippit at a service station near the Houston Street viaduct. There he stayed for about ten minutes before driving off at a high rate of speed. Responding to a police dispatcher, he said he was at "Keist and Bonnie View," which Drenas said was highly improbable.
"The next Tippit encounter ... took place at the Top Ten Record Shop," Drenas continued, "which is near the corner of West Jefferson Boulevard and Bishop Avenue, about one block west of the Texas Theater." Between 1 and 1:05pm he rushed into the store, where he was known to the clerks, and used their telephone. He waited "long enough for it to ring seven or eight times" but hung up without speaking, then hurried off "upset or worried about something."
He sped away in his squad car. No more than ten minutes later he was dead. Just who he placed his last phone call to remains unknown.
Drenas then brought up a story "that has perplexed many researchers over the years." This was the report by Earlene Roberts, the housekeeper at Oswald's rooming house, that a police car with two officers inside pulled up in front of the rooming house around 1pm while Oswald was inside. According to Roberts, the squad car's horn sounded twice; then the car drove off.
It has been widely speculated that Tippit may have been one of the two officers in this car, and that the horn was a signal to Oswald of some sort. For one thing, Drenas said, Tippit was alone in his car that day. For another, "At approximately the time Earlene Roberts states this event happened we have at least two witnesses at the Top Ten Record Shop that state Tippit was in the shop at that time." Even allowing for the differences in the timepieces everyone uses, Drenas said Tippit could not have been outside the rooming house honking his horn. Moreover, he cited an interview with Roberts "on the afternoon that all this went on, and she didn't mention this" event with the two cops.
Drenas later cited the Warren Commission testimony of Virginia Davis, who lived at the corner of Tenth and Patton --- just a few houses from where Tippit was gunned down. She heard the shooting and witnessed the escape of the gunman. She also said she'd seen Tippit's police car parked on the side of the road --- by "the apartment house where he lives in..."
Tippit did not live there, but the questioner, David Belin, "did not ask any questions to clarify" why he was seen so often in the neighborhood, some people thought he lived there. "Because the proper questions were not asked, we only have a vague outline of Tippit's regular activities in the neighborhood where he was killed, [and] some of the true events of this day might never be known."
The final speaker of this Friday morning lineup was Jim Marrs, the author of Crossfire. "The first thing I want to talk about," he began "is --- during this conference, and many other conferences, and all of the material that's now circulating around --- and oh, my goodness, we're talking about everything, time frames down to the second, dah-de-dah ... I'm just going to hit the two things that I think are the crux of this case, and explain to you why I think it's important.
"First, obviously, I think the crux of the entire case, is the Single Bullet Theory [SBT]. If the SBT doesn't work, then the lone assassin theory doesn't work. Okay? And the Single Bullet Theory doesn't work." Originally, Marrs said, the official position was that there were three shots over approximately six seconds time: two hit Kennedy and one hit Governor Connally, "...which is a somewhat reasonable scenario."
But that somewhat reasonable scenario became untenable with the emergence of James Tague, the bystander who was hit in the cheek by a ricocheting bullet or piece of concrete. The Warren Commission was unable to ignore him, even though he was evidence of a fourth shot --- which makes the three shots/three hits scenario fall apart. "So Arlen Specter comes up with what he figures must be the conclusion: the first shot passed through Kennedy and Connally, caused both [of them] wounds. Second shot missed, struck the Main Street curb, nicked Tague. And the third shot hit Kennedy and killed him. That became the official version of the Warren Commission, which is really a fallacy, because it's an improbable scenario."
In Case Closed, Marrs continued, Gerald Posner shook things up a little bit by saying the first shot missed, the second shot went through Kennedy and Connally, and the third shot hit Kennedy in the head. "So that has now become, I guess, the quasi-official version of the assassination, which is that maybe the first shot missed. But it all hinges on one shot passing through Kennedy and Connally."
Then Marrs read from the Warren Report and its statement that JFK was first struck by a bullet entering the back of the neck, and exiting the front of his neck. "If you take away anything from my little talk here, please take away this --- and remember this: Kennedy was never shot through the neck. He was never shot through the neck! Okay?...
"Here's the shirt with the bullet hole in it," he said, referring to a projected image of Kennedy's shirt. "Down the back, toward the shoulder blades, to the right of the backbone. Again, totally consistent. Here's the jacket, with the bullet hole. Down the back. Between the shoulder blades."
These pictures, which are from the FBI Supplemental Report of January 1964 (Exhibits 60 and 59, respectively), have been called "the simplest and perhaps most elegant proof of conspiracy which demolishes the Warren Report..."
Later, as his talk drew to a close, Marrs said he had recently spoken with a researcher who said he didn't think the truth in the Kennedy case would ever emerge. "I'm sick and tired of hearing that," Marrs said. "Is --- is there any news media in the room?" He paused, waiting; one could almost here the ticking second hands of a clock.
"No, of course not," he continued. "I mean, hell ... we're not talking about --- only the President of the United States, and what changed the course of this country.
"But we do know what happened. And I'm here to tell you ... when we're going to squabble over details of this case, let's do it among ourselves ... because here's the problem: the media comes to meetings like this, and they go off, and write stories that say, 'Conspiracy theorists swap tales...' You know? And that's demeaning, and it's dishonoring, and it's disrepsectful --- and that's what the public hears about you all...
"If Oswald acted --- which is a big if --- he certainly didn't act alone. Anybody disagree with that? By dictionary definition, we got a conspiracy. Okay? Do we all agree with that? Now: why don't we know more about this assassination conspiracy? Because at the highest levels of the federal government, there has been obfuscation, stonewalling, blocking ... that elevates a murder to a coup d' état. We had a coup d' état in the United States in 1963.
"Let's tell that to the media --- and let's tell that to the media in one voice! So that they understand that we know what went on. Oh, yeah, we can argue and debate over three tramps, four tramps, or four shots or three shots, or this that or the other thing. But we agree there was a conspiracy --- and it involved people at the highest levels of the Federal government of the United States --- and it was a coup d' état in 1963.
"Case closed."
Friday afternoon began with a presentation by George Michael Evica, the noted author of And We Are All Mortal, as well as the November in Dallas Program Chairperson and the Senior Editor of The Assassination Chronicles.
His presentation was entitled "Intercept: The Opening of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mail," which he described as "an interim report." It concerned the Bureau of the Chief Postal Inspector (BCPI), US Intelligence, the FBI-CIA mail intercept program, and Dallas Postal Inspector Harry Holmes.
The FBI was a close ally of the postal inspectors in the 50s and 60s, Evica said, and Harry Holmes was a regular informant for the Dallas FBI office. He reported to FBI agent Charles T. Brown, Jr., who was a working associate of James Hosty, the "Oswald Agent" in the Dallas FBI office.
The US intelligence mail intercept program began in 1952 and was directed by the CIA. All mail to and from the Soviet Union and United States was tagged, photographed, and often opened and its contents shared with other intelligence units. They were "using kettles to steam open the mail," Evica noted. "Put the kettle on."
Oswald's mail was thus monitored from 1959 through 1963 by both the FBI and CIA, thanks to BCPI's cooperation and its field agents.
Oswald, using the name "Hidell," ordered the alleged assassination rifle by mail order from a Chicago sporting goods firm in early 1963. The FBI had to have been aware that weapons were being delivered to Oswald's Dallas post office box before the assassinaton. "And if that weapon could have been placed in Lee Harvey Oswald's hands," Evica said, "then the chain of evidence would have been, to say the least, strong. But the only way US intelligence could have forged that strong chain was to admit that it knew of the ordering and delivery of that weapon. And yet it neither informed the Secret Service, nor took steps to alert Dallas and Federal law enforcement, that a reputed supporter of Fidel Castro ... an announced Marxist ... a onetime defector to the Soviet Union ... [was] now armed, and again a resident of Dallas, Texas, just months before the President's visit to the state.
"US Intelligence and its running of illegal mail intercepts, that included Oswald from '59 to '63, had become the prisoner of those forces running the post-assassination coverup. For if Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed the assassin, then the BCPI, the CIA, and the FBI were all accessories before the fact.
"The weakness of the case against Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed its strength."
Ian Griggs followed George Michael Evica; he focused on Dallas Postal Inspector Harry Holmes. Holmes, Griggs said, was a man with four faces, after a British expression, "He has more faces than Big Ben," the four-faced London clock tower.
"The first face is that of the FBI informant," Ian said. One of Holmes' functions was to keep the FBI and Secret Service appraised of the allocations of postal boxes in the Dallas area; this is what brought Lee Harvey Oswald to his attention.
"Face number two of Harry D. Holmes: the man was an eyewitness to the assassination." He saw it from his office in the Terminal Annex Building at Commerce and Houston, overlooking Dealey Plaza. "He was possibly unique, in that he watched it through a pair of binoculars." Holmes was asked during his Warren Commission questioning --- seemingly out of the blue --- whether he'd watched with the aid of an optical instrument. "Holmes replied, 'I had a pair of 7.5x50 binoculars.' Now, as far as I know, no question like that was ever put to any other witness. So why to Holmes? Any reason for that?"
Face number three was that of expert witness. This was because of Holmes' involvement in the investigation of Oswald and the post office boxes. "Right from the beginning, immediately after the assassination, he was very, very active --- almost independently active. In his own testimony, he said, 'I never quit. I didn't get to bed for two days.' And he also said, 'I was doing all I could to help other agencies.'"
The fourth face, Ian said, is most important. "This is the fact that he was present at the final interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald." He told the Warren Commission that his presence was rather a spur of the moment thing. After dropping his wife off at church, according to Holmes, he went by the police station, where Captain Will Fritz invited him to sit in on the interview.
"Now what exactly is that all about?" Griggs asked. "Why did the Chief of Homicide invite the Dallas Postal Inspector to attend such an important session?" The only others present were Forrest Sorrels and Thomas Kelley, both of the Secret Service, and --- "depending on whose testimony you believe" --- either three or four Dallas Homicide detectives.
Ian said there is obviously a lot more to be learned about Harry D. Holmes. He left the audience with one final fact: Holmes is the only witness he knows of who was allowed to keep a Commission Exhibit --- one of the notorious "Wanted for Treason" posters that appeared in Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963.
Next, a member of the Assassination Records and Review Board spoke. Thomas E. Samoluk is the Board's Deputy Director, and previously served as its Associate Director for Communications.
"This week," Samoluk said after some preliminary comments, "we did two major releases" of files and documents relating to the case: 1) previously classified military records relating to U.S. policy toward Cuba, and 2) selections from the notes of Captain Fritz.
Of the former, Samoluk stated: "Although the Board's mandate is not to reinvestigate the assassination, but rather to make the historial record available to the public, we do get interested ourselves when we find records that catch our eye. And I'd just like to make note that in the Cuban collection, of one document that did catch our eye.
"The document describes an individual," Samoluk continued, "an American named Pfeiffer [this spelling is a guess -- Ed.], who had, according to this document in the military files, high-level contacts with Alpha 66, the anti-Castro Cuban group.
"And as one of my colleagues looked at this document, then showed it to me, two words came to mind. Of course, I'm not speaking officially, but we do have fun with the documents, and we thought the two words that came to mind were Maurice Bishop ... I don't know if there is any connection, but it is an interesting document."
Samoluk said this on November 21. About a week later, the magazine Newsday ran a story based on the document Samoluk was apparently referring to. While it, too, named Maurice Bishop, and pointed out that Bishop is widely believed to be a pseudonym, it said nothing of "Pfeiffer." It also failed to state that Bishop is believed to be David Atlee Phillips, who in 1962 headed the CIA's clandstine operations in Mexico City. A very safe attribution for Newsday would have been author and former HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi, who wrote in his 1993 book The Last Investigation, "'Maurice Bishop' was David Atlee Phillips. I state that unequivicolly..." [The Last Investigation, p. 408.]
The Board re-interviewed many of the "primary players" involved in the medical evidence in the assassination --- the autopsy doctors, for example. "We had hoped, as some of you know, to have made that public by now," Samoluk said. "We had said, at one point --- perhaps overly optimistically --- that at the end of last year [1996] we were going to have made that public." But things kept happening in developing that data, Samoluk said, so it has not yet been released. "But I assure you, all of that will come out."
The Review Board also made strides in the New Orleans part of the assassination story, obtaining records from the family of the late Jim Garrison, records from the family of one of the attorneys for Clay Shaw, and records that belonged to Clay Shaw himself. Samoluk also recounted the story of the Board's clash with current New Orleans DA Harry Connick, Sr. "That's still an ongoing matter," he stated.
Samoluk reminded the audience that the ARRB has also acquired a number of films that had previously been unknown or were virtually unknown. These included outtakes of news footage --- the so-called "Cooper film" --- and film shot by Dave Powers in the presidential motorcade.
"People continue to come forward, as demonstrated by the acquisition of the Fritz films, as demonstrated by another film that we are processing right now, we just got a deed of gift on, which is not from the day of the assassination, but from the morning that Oswald was shot." [Note: It appears Samoluk misspoke himself. There is no "Fritz film" that we're aware of; his comments came at the same time the notes Capt. Will Fritz were made public.]
During a question-and-answer session that followed, Chris Courtwright asked what would happen if important documents surface after the Board ceases to exist in October of 1998, and also how President Clinton's Executive Order regarding delcassification, in Chris's words, "fits into the mix."
Samoluk replied that not all of that is addressed in the JFK Act of 1992. "We intend to make recommendations regarding the release of records. The President's Executive Order is better than the old Executive Order, but not as good as the JFK Act. It is not clear what will happen as far as who will be the intermediary, or who will be the caretaker. Certainly, there will be no Review Board. And that puts some burdon, perhaps, on the National Archives. It puts a burdon on the agencies themselves. But we intend to do what we can to have a system in place that will continue at least a shadow of what the Review Board was, and tried to do."
Peter Dale Scott said that "it is quite clear that there are areas where records were destroyed after the assassination --- military intelligence, military security, and so on --- and other areas where people were not forthcoming, and coming forward with those records ... Is the Board --- does it have any method for deposing, if necessary subpoenaing, people to find out why records were disposed, if there are records pertaining to the destruction of records --- has there been any progress in this area?"
"One thing that the Review Board has done is to set up what we call the Federal Agency Compliance Program," Samoluk replied. "We have an individual, an attorney on staff, who is really riding herd on all of the agencies to file statements on their compliance, under oath. And we intend, if there are not satisfactory answers given during the course of the next several months, that we will put people under oath. And the Act specifically addresses the Review Board's authority to deal with the destruction of records, and we are taking that very seriously."
Next, a man who did not identify himself said, "You know that Babushka Lady --- she was facing President Kennedy when he was shot, and she was facing the grassy knoll. And she has never really been identified, and her film has never been recovered. Very strange. Any progress in that area?"
"That's a tough one," Samoluk said. "Certainly that remains an issue that is unresolved. That's one that, if there is such a film, if that person was holding a camera, as it appears that she was, we'd love to find that. If anybody has any leads on where to go on that one, we would be very interested."
Beverly Oliver is a Dallas woman who has long been on the record as stating she is the so-called "Babushka Lady." As it happened, she was in the audience, and she made her way forward to comment. She spoke quickly and directly:
"Mr. Samoluk, I am Beverly Oliver, and I am the Babushka Lady. I appeared before your committee on November 18, 1994."
"Yes, I remember," Samoluk replied.
"I'm still the same person," Oliver said with a slight laugh. "I'm still here, and my film is still missing. I was taking a film, and it was confiscated Monday, November 25th, 1963."
"Thank you," Samoluk said, as Oliver returned to her seat.
Another man asked about the tax records of Lee and Marina Oswald. Marina Oswald Porter, he said, was conditionally offering to sign a release for the tax records. "Are you cooperating with her?"
"As far as we're concerned, we're fully cooperating with her," Samoluk replied. "We had asked for Mrs. Porter's cooperation relative to tax records of Lee Harvey Oswald. I believe the relevant year is 1962. Mrs. Porter has raised some questions about records that she would like to see released. The assumption is that they exist. And what we have said is that if those records exist, we agree that they should be part of the historical record. There is --- according to the agencies, they don't exist. So if anybody has any information that can demonstrate to us that there is someplace else that we can go, or another way to present the question, or if there are records that demonstrate that there is something missing, then we would gladly go after any records."
Finally, in response to a question, Samoluk said that in all likelihood, this is it for the Board --- after September 30, 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board will cease to exist.
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