Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination

by Richard Belzer

  So there is a simple answer to the question: Who shot Officer Tippit? Gary Marlow, not Lee Harvey Oswald. Marlow was a highly professional cold-blooded killer. In pursuit of his prey, which apparently was Oswald, he was approached by a police officer. He calmly chatted with Officer Tippit. Then, when Tippit must have figured he had his man and got out of the driver’s side of his police car, the shooter calmly put three bullets in his chest.4 According to eyewitnesses at the scene, just to make sure, he calmly walked up to the body and fired a fourth coup de grâce shot, killing him instantly.5 Then, also according to the best witnesses, he calmly walked away, unloading his shells, and tossing them in the bushes.6 His photo is below; note that his “bushy hair” also matches the eyewitness descriptions of the pedestrian who was speaking to Officer Tippit that day. The photograph was taken in New Orleans in 1962.7

  This is a photo of the man (on right) who apparently murdered Officer J. D. Tippit. He told James Files (pictured at left) that “things got messed up today” “—”I didn’t get Oswald” and that “he had to burn a cop.” His name was reportedly Gary Eugene Marlow, a lifelong friend of Files. He died in 2007.

  The intention to eliminate Oswald is further supported by some obvious “funny business” with Oswald’s ID. A highly reliable FBI agent, Robert M. Barrett, maintained

  1 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong (Skyhorse: 2012), 131-136.

  2 Dankbaar, “James Files Interview”

  3 Joe Lanier, “Part One: Who Shot President John F. Kennedy?,” The Conspiracy Zone, accessed 25 Sept 2012:

  http://www.theconspiracyzone.org/posts/28151

  4 Earl F. Rose, M.D. & Coroner, Judge Joe B. Brown, Jr., “Autopsy Report: J. D. Tippit,” 22 Nov 1963: http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JDT/jdtaut.txt

  5 Dale K. Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J. D. Tippit (Oak Cliff Press: 1998)

  6 Donald E. Wilkes Jr., Professor of Law, “The Rosetta Stone of the JFK Assassination?,” 20 Nov 2002, Flagpole Magazine: http://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1145&context=fac_pm

  7 Wim Dankbaar, Email to author, 24 Sept 2012.

  Photo courtesy of Wim Dankbaar and JFKMurderSolved.com

  with certainty that Oswald’s ID was found at the Tippit murder scene. Special Agent Barrett testified that he was at the Tippit crime scene when a wallet was found there and that he was then asked by Dallas Police Captain Westbrook if he knew the names “Lee Harvey Oswald” or “Alek Hidell”; Special Agent Barrett therefore logically assumed that those two IDs were in the wallet, and he always confidently maintained that belief even when it was politely suggested that he might possibly be mistaken.1 Here is the photo of law enforcement officials looking at the wallet at the Tippit crime scene:

  At the crime scene of Officer Tippit’s murder, FBI Special Agent Robert M. Barrett testified that when a wallet was found, Dallas police Captain W. R. Westbrook asked him if he knew the names “Lee Harvey Oswald” or “Alek Hiddel” because those IDs were in the wallet.

  The problem with that is simply a matter of “too many wallets.” Oswald’s wallet was in his pants pocket when he was arrested at the Texas Theater. So why would a wallet containing his ID be found at the Tippit crime scene? In fact, there is even a much more obvious point that should be made here:

  The apparent fact of the matter is that, just like most men at the time, Oswald had his wallet right in his back pants pocket. The wallet at the Tippit crime scene, just like the discarded jacket that was found there, did not actually belong to Oswald; they were left there by the man who murdered

  Tippit, whom was not Lee Harvey Oswald, in an obvious attempt to frame Oswald for that murder.

  Some researchers have speculated that J. D. Tippit was a “dirty” cop who was somehow involved in the JFK assassination himself.2 We looked into that possibility very seriously and here’s what we concluded from examining the available research:

  1 John Armstrong, “Harvey and Lee: November 22, 1963,” 1998: http://www.mindserpent.com/American_History/books/Armstrong/November/November_22.htm

  2 “J. D. Tippit: Was he part of the conspiracy?,” The Education Forum: JFK Assassination Debate, accessed 18 Sept 2012: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2862&st=15

  Here’s a Question for You: What kind of an idiot would shoot a cop and then leave a wallet containing his own ID right there at the murder scene?

  Answer: He wouldn’t. Not even an idiot would.

  Not likely.

  We checked with our “Black Ops” friend, Tosh Plumlee, a former pilot for the CIA and a Military Intelligence veteran with over fifty years experience in undercover intelligence operations. His intelligence bonafides can be verified at: http://toshplumlee.info/

  It was Tosh Plumlee’s affidavit in our book, Dead Wrong, which substantiated the historical record that Lee Harvey Oswald was operational with U.S. Military Intelligence.1

  From checking on the covert side of things, we uncovered information which sheds new light on the matter of Officer Tippit’s death. We learned that, far from being suspect, Officer Tippit was known to be involved in and aware of ongoing covert Military Intelligence operations in Dallas. Officer Tippit, along with other select members of the Dallas Police Department, would operate in support of those Intel operations as part of a special tactical team from the Dallas police.2

  In his Congressional testimony, Mr. Plumlee also stated that certain members of the Dallas Police Department were part of an elite team that operated in support of broader U.S. intelligence operations. That special unit of the Dallas police was “hooked up” with the 112th Military Intelligence Group in Texas. That special unit was “DPD and their tactical team which was operating INTEL in and around Oak Cliff with MI associations from Fourth Army, Dallas Love Field, as well as other connections at Redbird Airport and the near-by ‘Oak Cliff’ Country Club often used by ONI personnel from Hensley Field.” Bear in mind also that, as Plumlee observed, “Dallas Oak Cliff is where ‘Oswald’ was hanging out at the Beckley rooming house.”3

  It has also been vaguely insinuated that Officer Tippit was out of his assigned area that afternoon because of his “womanizing.” But Mr. Plumlee also revealed that J. D. ­Tippit, and fellow Dallas police officer Roscoe White, were both members of that special tactical team and that their function on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, was to escort members of the Abort Team to Redbird Airport.4 That would certainly put a different perspective on what a frantic Officer J. D. Tippit was doing in Oak Cliff that afternoon.

  In that respect, it makes a great deal of sense that Officer Tippit’s desperate actions in his last moments were actually in attempted support of Oswald’s actions. Plumlee’s personal speculation on Oswald (and bear in mind that Plumlee was in Dealey Plaza operationally as a component of the Military Intelligence Abort Team that attempted to stop the assassination), is that Oswald was operational in Dallas. Others with direct knowledge have also confirmed that Oswald was “working an Intel mission” in Dallas.5

  1 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong, 111-115.

  2 William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, Email to author, 18 Sept 2012

  3 William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, email to author, 3 Oct 2012.

  4 “J. D. Tippit: Was he part of the conspiracy?,” The Education Forum: JFK Assassination Debate, accessed 18 Sept 2012: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2862&st=15

  5 William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, Email to author, 21 Sept 2012. Others who indicated that Oswald was working an Intel mission in Dallas were: Captain Edward G. Seiwell, Military Intelligence, Fourth Army, Dallas Love Field, Captain Gilbert C. Cook , special unit of 49th Armored Division, 156th Tank Battalion, connected to the 112th MIG (Military Intelligence Group), Dallas, Texas and San Marcos, Texas, Military Intelligence operative Richard Case Nagell, Jay Harrison, Dallas Police Department, Charles Plumlee, Dallas Police Department; Tommy Pugh, Dallas Police Department, Judyth Vary Baker, Billy Sol Estes, Clint Murchiso
n and Gordon McClinton. Also see Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong: “Affidavit of William R. Plumlee” and “eighteen U.S. intelligence veterans with direct and pertinent knowledge concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was operational with U.S. Intelligence.”

  The Navy’s ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) operations at Bachman Lake, at the time, were working a special operation in conjunction with the 112th (112th Military Intelligence Group), Fourth Army, Dallas Love Field, concerning the Alpha 66, Miami Dallas Cubans, and weapons that were being pilfered, perhaps stolen from National Guard Armories in the Dallas and southwest Texas areas.

  This, I believe, ONI, was Oswald’s assigned “cut out”, and the 112th, as well as the 49th Armored Div., Dallas Love Field were his prime contacts for the Dallas P.D. UC (undercover) operations. This was not a federal operation, but a local law enforcement investigation launched toward Intel on the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) and the Texas Minutemen. Oswald was acting as a “paid informant”, a CI (confidential informant) for the Dallas police, as well as the Dallas FBI. Marina almost let this slip on national TV some years ago. This timeline started shortly after Oswald came back to the USA from Russia with Marina. This was about a year or so before that day in

  Dallas.1

  And lest one think that is not a serious claim, just consider this: Remember that other name that the Dallas police Captain asked the FBI agent about at the Tippit murder scene because they had found a wallet? It was Alek Hidell. “Alek Hiddell” was well-established as an operational cover name used by multiple covert operatives of U.S. Military Intelligence.2

  Oswald possessed a false ID when he was arrested. Identification in the same false name, Alek Hiddell, was also found at the crime scene of Officer Tippit’s death, as well as an ID in Oswald’s real name. The name “Alek Hiddell” was a well-known operational cover name in Military Intelligence that was used by many operatives. It was what is known in Intelligence parlance as a “floating alias”; other operatives could even recognize by the name that the person using it was also operational.

  1 William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, Email to author, 21 Sept 2012

  2 Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much.

  So that changes the landscape of the event dramatically: One of the Military Intelligence operatives who used the Alek Hidell cover name was Lee Harvey Oswald. When we observe the events of the murder of Officer Tippit from the perspective that both he and Lee Harvey Oswald were acting in concert with U.S. Military Intelligence, it is like putting on a pair of eyeglasses of the proper prescription and viewing the event properly for the first time.

  Here is a noteworthy portion of Tosh Plumlee’s Congressional testimony, much of which is still, to this day, classified as “Sealed: Top Secret, Committee Sensitive”:

  The team was to meet at Redbird Airport, or at the safe house near the Oak Cliff Country Club southeast of Redbird. Officers from the Dallas

  Police Department would escort most of the abort team to the location for departure from Redbird.1

  As far as what happened “in Dallas that day,” Plumlee pulls no punches as far as his knowledge of what was taking place on his end of events:

  Tippit and White both had Military Intel and CIA fingerprints all over

  Dallas and Fort Worth before the assassination of Kennedy. They both knew about the “Abort Team” and why and how they were dispatched to Dallas that day.2

  When you go back and look at our Timeline of J. D. Tippit’s last day with that in mind, it then suddenly makes a great deal more sense.

  So, as you look at the shooting of Officer Tippit, bear in mind that, only minutes before, the President of the United States was assassinated and that a Military Intelligence Abort Team was, at that precise moment, ex-filtrating Dealey Plaza en route to Redbird Airport in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas; part of the extraction team were select Dallas police officers who were supposed to be escorting the Abort Team members to Redbird. If you look at the map of Officer Tippit’s locations with that perspective in mind, he’s not “out of his area” at all; from an operational intelligence standpoint, he’s right at the optimum location: Watching the down ramp from Dealey Plaza traffic at the Houston Street Viaduct, from which it is a straight shot south through Oak Cliff to Redbird Airport.

  Obviously, a lot of things went wrong that day; the Abort Team made it to Dealey Plaza, but communications were difficult, they couldn’t intervene and the President was killed.3 Some critics have made the simplistic argument that the whole assassination could have been avoided if someone had just called the Secret Service and told them not to go through Dealey Plaza. Aside from the fact that it’s pretty easy to quarterback Sunday’s football game on Monday morning, for problematic reasons, that apparently was simply not feasible. The President’s trip to Chicago had been altered dramatically for security purposes, and then the same types of security alterations to planned

  1 “Testimony of William Robert Plumlee to House Select Committee on Assassinations,” Email to author, 18 Sept 2012

  2 William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, Email to author, 18 Sept 2012

  3 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong, 110-128.

  appearances occurred in Florida, as well, immediately prior to the trip to Texas.1 For various considerations at that time, which may have been more bureaucratic than anything else, it was not deemed feasible to simply tell the Secret Service to “call it all off.” It may sound logical in retrospect, but in “Boots-on-the-ground in real-time” it obviously wasn’t.

  Something also obviously went wrong during the ex-filtration of the Abort Team. J. D. Tippit apparently figured something out—possibly that Oswald was supposed to be eliminated as the coup de grâce of the conspiracy—and his last actions, which were frantic in nature, were apparently intervening to accomplish some component of the best interests of the intel team or its ex-filtration. It’s not clear what he was specifically doing, but it is clear that he must have been acting operationally. Whatever he figured out culminated in the intense focusing of his attention on suspicious individuals near Oswald and/or others and he did indeed locate one. Confronting that individual, however, quickly ended in his own murder.

  Simplified, Oswald was on the same team as “the good guys” and Officer Tippit (“the good guys” also) was apparently intervening on his behalf. That intervention cost him his life.

  Conclusions Based On Evidentiary Indications

  The man whom Officer Tippit stopped was NOT Lee Harvey Oswald.

  The man who shot Officer Tippit was NOT Lee Harvey Oswald.

  Whatever it was that Officer Tippit was so desperately searching for in his final moments, it appears that those acts were clearly linked to some aspect of his liaison with Military Intelligence and/or the extraction of the Military Intelligence Abort Team from Dallas on November 22, as a direct result of his being part of a tactical team from the Dallas Police Department being used as support in sensitive intelligence operations.

  1 Lamar Waldron & Thom Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005).

  Victim

  Lee Harvey Oswald

  Cause of Death

  Single Gunshot

  Official Verdict

  Murdered by a Dallas nightclub operator, Jack Ruby, for the purpose of not forcing President Kennedy’s widow to endure a criminal trial of the accused.

  Actual Circumstances

  Even though the accused assassin of the President of the United States was the most prominent suspect in American history, Jack Ruby walked right through an unlocked door at the Dallas Police Department, approached the Nags suspect without challenge from any of the army of police

  officers guarding Oswald, then drew his weapon, also without challenge, pointed it at Oswald, also without challenge, and then fired—all captured on live television to a stunned audience of millions of Americans who literally could not believe the implausibility of the event they had just witnessed.

  Inconsistencies

  1
. Oswald could not have been at the so-called “sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor because his verified actual location a couple minutes later completely precluded that possibility.130

  2. Oswald was operational with U.S. Military Intelligence, as we established in Dead Wrong.131

  3. Voice Stress Analysis on Oswald’s recorded voice revealed that he was actually telling the truth when he made the statements “I’m a patsy” and “I didn’t kill anybody.”132

  4. Never in American history has an important criminal been so poorly protected. It would be dramatic understatement to say that security was “very lax.” The ease with which Ruby executed the guarded prisoner, and the complete absence of police intervention, made it seem as though the event was scripted that way before it happened, a point which was not lost on the viewing audience.

  5. It has been conclusively established that Jack Ruby knew Oswald well, even though would-be investigations like the Warren Commission went to great lengths and did everything in their considerable power to minimize that fact. Jack Ruby’s very clear connections to the Mafia and to U.S. Intelligence via its anti-Castro operations in which Ruby participated were minimized in exactly the same manner.

  6. As has been speculated, part of the original assassination plan was probably to eliminate Oswald right after the President was shot. That would have made it a nice neat package with no loose ends. Oswald, however, temporarily escaped that fate. But once in custody, he was a “sitting duck” for that eventuality. It befell upon Jack Ruby to finish the job.133