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

by Richard Belzer

  7. Oswald never got his “day in court,” and the silencing of a key witness was never more obvious.

  2

  Oswald joined the Marines in 1956, and by 1957 was in specialized intelligence training in Nags Head, North Carolina. Veteran undercover operative, Tosh Plumlee, who remembers seeing Oswald there, said it was for training, prior to “going international,” in false identities, maintenance of cover stories, etc. CIA veteran Victor Marchetti confirmed that the “false defector” operation was being run out of Nags Head at that time.

  Lee Harvey Oswald,

  November 24, 1963

  130 Richard Belzer, “Defaming History or, Who Didn’t Kill JFK,” August 13, 2007, Huffington Post: http://www

  .huffingtonpost.com/richard-belzer/defaming-history-or-who-d_b_60188.html

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

  132 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong, 127-128.

  133 Simkin, John Roselli: Biography

  Two days after the assassination of President Kennedy, a national television audience watched incredulously as mobster Jack Ruby easily approached and murdered the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald—live on TV—as the prisoner was being transported by the Dallas Police Department (with whom Ruby had well-established ties). Never has the silencing of a crucial witness been more obvious or suspect.

  In the most obvious case of witness elimination in history, the accused assassin—there was never a trial or eyewitnesses—of President Kennedy was gunned down in broad daylight, even though he was surrounded by a bevy of law enforcement officers, as the prisoner was being transferred to another jail. A stunned nation watched in silent disbelief because the event had been televised and everyone had wanted to get a look at the accused killer. We all got much more than a look. We got a taste of incredulity because people literally could not believe the obviousness of a crucial witness being eliminated before their eyes.

  Here’s how one of the millions of witnesses to it described the incredible event. As you read it, keep in mind that the President of the United States had just been brutally slaughtered in broad daylight about forty-eight hours previous:

  Two days later, in one of the most bizarre, phantasmagorical events ever witnessed on national television, Oswald was fatally shot by a man identified as Jack Ruby, adding to the bewilderment of an already stunned audience of viewers. So unprecedented had been the spectacle of horror, Agnes Meyer, mother of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, reportedly seethed, “What is this, some kind of goddamn banana republic?” The American media struggled to sustain a semblance of calm and order, still insistent

  Oswald’s “defection” to Russia was part of an ongoing intelligence operation, the False Defector Program of ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence). But the KGB (Russian Intelligence) were no fools and disbelieved the authenticity of his actions.

  Lee Harvey Oswald had been the lone crackpot assassin and had acted unilaterally. But observers and journalists in other countries had already started speculating Oswald had been killed to keep him from talking.134

  In addition to the substantial evidence we provided in Dead Wrong conclusively documenting that Oswald was a component of an intelligence operation known as the False Defector Program, we found even further substantiation. U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker, a veteran Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, was Co-Chairman of a U.S. Senate Subcommittee to investigate the JFK assassination in 1975. In 2007, after retirement, Senator Schweiker was specific that Oswald’s phony defection to the Soviet Union in 1959 was actually part of an intelligence operation, the False Defector Program:

  Oswald “was the product of a fake defector program run by the CIA.”135

  As we noted in Dead Wrong, CIA officer Victor Marchetti confirmed the existence of the top-secret CIA/ONI False Defector Program in Nags Head, North Carolina in the late 1950s, during an interview with author Anthony Summers. Marchetti confirmed that account on October 4, 2007, in an interview with Peter Janney, in the book Mary’s Mosaic. Author Joan Mellen also reconfirmed that “the ONI program was overseen by the CIA’s counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton. Upon Oswald’s return to the U.S. in 1962, he was, in fact, ‘debriefed’ by a CIA officer named Aldrin (‘Andy’) Anderson. The debriefing report was read by CIA officer Donald Deneselya, who confirmed this in an interview for this book on May 25, 2007, as well as in the 1993 PBS Frontline program, ‘Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?’ ”136

  134 Janney, Mary’s Mosaic, 282.

  135 David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Free Press, 2007), 381.

  136 Janney, Mary’s Mosaic, 430.

  The CIA suspected that Oswald’s Russian wife, Marina Prusakova, was KGB: How could a Russian teenager manage to meet the 2nd and 3rd U.S. defectors to the Soviet Union, in cities hundreds of miles apart, speak to them in English, and marry one of them (Oswald) within days of their first meeting, then leave the Soviet Union without any exit difficulties, at the height of the Cold War? Marina’s uncle, Ilya Prusakova, a Colonel in the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs, a.k.a. Soviet Secret Police), approved the very sudden marriage between his niece and the American defector. So U.S. Intelligence utilized George de Mohrenschildt, a Russian émigré and CIA asset who befriended Oswald in Dallas, to try to monitor the Oswald-Marina Prusakova situation. Mohrenschildt died under very suspicious circumstances, just before he was scheduled to testify about what he knew.

  Quite unlike the well-established actions of political assassins throughout history, Oswald continually professed his innocence, telling anyone who would listen that he had been set up as the “patsy” to take the fall for the crime. There’s a pretty good reason for that too; the man was stating a fact.

  The cover story for the murder of Oswald was one of the most transparent fabrications in contemporary history— his killer, Jack Ruby, said he wanted to “spare the President’s widow of a trial,” which is about as likely as the moon really being made of green cheese. Jack Ruby killed Oswald live on television and a national audience immediately sensed that something clearly stunk about the whole scenario. There were cops all over the place—it was the Dallas jail, for heaven’s sakes—but nobody made the slightest move to stop Ruby and the gun he brazenly displayed, even though they were supposedly “guarding” the most important prisoner in American history.

  To add further fuel to the whole fiasco, Jack Ruby was seriously hooked up with just about everybody suspected of playing a major role in the assassination, from the Mafia

  When Oswald returned from Russia, his actions were clearly calculated to create a “legend” for a sophisticated intelligence operation. He was intentionally arrested in New Orleans, for “disturbing the peace,” as part of that process. He was simultaneously pro-Castro/anti-Castro, infiltrated the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and was involved with Alpha 66 anti-Castro Cubans at CIA “safe houses” in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas and government-sanctioned gunrunning operations.

  Rather than taking credit for the shooting, as political assassins have done throughout history, Oswald vehemently denied shooting Kennedy or anybody else, and politely but forcefully maintained that he was “a patsy.” His recorded words were subjected to new voice analysis technologies which determined that he was actually telling the truth when he made those statements.

  to U.S. Intelligence and its (and Ruby’s) involvement in ongoing anti-Cuban intelligence operations. It’s absolutely preposterous to presume for even a second that those connections weren’t directly linked to the real reasons that he murdered Oswald.

  After his arrest, even Oswald’s expressions seemed to capture a man completely perplexed by the untenable situation in which he found himself.

  As far as Lee Harvey Oswald, his recorded voice stands up to the technological scrutiny of modern voice analysis. According to the VSA testing, it clearly determined that Oswald was telling the truth when he said that he hadn’t killed anybody and that he was a patsy.137 Wouldn’t it be nice if we could
use that voice testing technology on our politicians who tell us what supposedly happened and swear it’s the truth?

  137 George O’Toole, The Assassination Tapes: An electronic probe into the Murder of John F. Kennedy and the Dallas cover-up (Penthouse Press, 1975).

  Victim

  Jack Ruby

  Cause of Death

  Cancer

  Official Verdict

  Natural Causes

  Actual Circumstances

  Ruby maintained throughout his incarceration that he had been injected with cancer cells. Although that claim seems odd, it is much more relevant than first meets the eye. It is now known that a rapid onset “super-cancer” was being developed for use as a bioweapon to be deployed

  Actual Circumstances

  against Fidel Castro. Ruby was in the same nexus as those developing the bioweapon and would have had knowledge of its development. Ruby’s cancer was rapid onset and occurred shortly after he was granted a new trial, at which time he would have been able to present evidence; an opportunity he had long sought, because he maintained that he would be murdered if he ever revealed what had really happened.

  Inconsistencies

  1. There was NO MOTIVE for Ruby to have killed Oswald other than Ruby’s extensive links to the Mafia and to U.S. Intelligence via anti-Cuba gunrunning operations with which Ruby was heavily involved.

  2. Jack Ruby clearly knew all the players in the assassination drama, from the Chicago mobsters, to the anti-Castro CIA agents, to the Dallas police officers, to Lee Harvey Oswald himself.

  3. Ruby was clearly in fear for his life, both before and after the shooting of Oswald. Police officers reported that he was actually very relieved when told that Oswald had died from his wounds. His fear then manifested in the fact that he was not safe in a Dallas jail. He pleaded with Chief Justice Earl Warren to take him to Washington, D.C., where he would then be able to explain what had actually happened. They denied his request.

  4. The occurrence of Ruby’s rapid-onset cancer coincided with medical visits to him in jail from a well-known MKULTRA expert. (MKULTRA was the top-secret CIA program, part of which was aimed at using drugs, hypnotism and anything else available to control an individual’s will, even to the extent of making them perform murder.)

  3

  Jack Ruby,

  January 3, 1967

  The case is closed, is it? Well I’d like to know how in a big smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby—operator of a striptease honky tonk—could stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it were a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers was keeping a “tight security guard” on Oswald.

  Security! What a word for it.

  I wouldn’t try to speak for Dallas, but around here, the people I talk to really believe that a man has the right to be tried in court.

  When that right is taken away from any man by the incredible combination of Jack Ruby and insufficient security, we feel chilled.138

  With those words, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen openly stated what had been on millions of Americans’ minds ever since Jack Ruby casually strolled up to the most wanted criminal in history and forever eliminated his possible testimony.

  Frankly, mobster Johnny Roselli’s version of the event sounds a lot easier to buy. Shortly before he was murdered, Roselli also told the Washington Post reporter, Jack Anderson:

  When Oswald was picked up, the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive US crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald.139

  Few Americans are aware of some dramatic conclusions reached—very officially—by the investigation and Final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979:

  . . . Ruby’s shooting of Oswald was not a spontaneous act, in that it involved at least some premeditation. Similarly, the committee believed it was less likely that Ruby entered the police basement without assistance, even though the assistance may have been provided with no knowledge of Ruby’s intentions. . . . The committee was troubled by the apparently unlocked doors along the stairway route and the removal of security guards from the area of the garage nearest the stairway shortly before the shooting. . . . There is also evidence that the Dallas Police Department withheld relevant information from the Warren Commission concerning Ruby’s entry to the scene of the Oswald transfer.140

  In other words, it was a set-up; they had to let Ruby shoot Oswald because Oswald had to be taken out of the equation.

  Whatever we may think about it, we should take serious note of what Jack Ruby himself thought—and he clearly believed that he had been injected with cancer cells.

  Dallas Deputy Sherriff Al Maddox stated the following:

  Ruby told me, “Well, they injected me for a cold.” He said it was cancer cells. That’s what he told me, Ruby did. I said you don’t believe that bullshit. He said, “I damn sure do!” (And then) one day when I started to leave, Ruby shook hands with me and I could feel a piece of paper in his palm . . .

  (in the note that he handed to him) he said it was a conspiracy and he

  said . . . if you will keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, you’re gonna learn a lot. And that was the last letter I ever got from him.141

  Ruby also made it very clear that he blamed the new President, Lyndon Johnson, for the assassination of President Kennedy—specifically implicating him in its planning.

  138 Dorothy Kilgallen, 29 November 1963, New York Journal American.

  139 Richard Mahoney, Sons and Brothers, 418.

  140 “HSCA Final Assassinations Report,” House Select Committee on Assassinations, 157-158.

  141 Marrs, Crossfire, 431-432; Gil Jesus, “Video: Ruby’s Letter from Prison,” 2 July 2007: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10399

  He spells it out very clearly in video interviews that can be accessed on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDDxYOqyqlc

  Ruby: “When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson, if he was Vice President there never would have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy.” (JFK almost chose Stevenson as Vice President instead of ­Johnson)

  Reporter: “What do you mean by that, Jack?”

  Ruby: “Well, your answer is the man in office now (Lyndon Johnson).”

  Here was another one:

  Ruby: “Everything pertaining to what’s happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what

  occurred—my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I’m in, will never let the true facts come above board to

  the world.”

  Reporter: “Are these people in very high positions Jack?”

  Ruby: “Yes.”142

  Ruby also seemed certain of his fate and, for a man clearly facing death, would seem to have little reason to lie at that point:

  Not long before Ruby died, according to an article in the London Sunday Times, he told psychiatrist Werner Teuter that the assassination was “an act of overthrowing the government” and that he knew “who had President Kennedy killed.” He added: “I am doomed. I do not want to die. But I am not insane. I was framed to kill Oswald.”143

  Ruby also said:

  . . . I want to tell you this, I am used as a scapegoat . . .144

  It’s one thing to sound a bit despondent due to trials and confinement—it’s another thing entirely to be so fatalistic that you sound as if your fate has been sealed; Ruby was the latter, not the former.

  142 “Jack Ruby Press Conference,” YouTube, 7 May 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we2eucWXqjg

  143 Wikipedia, “Jack Ruby,” citing: Martin Shackelford, “Warren Commission Errors,” 22, Sept. 1999, http://www

  .jfklancer.com/LNE/report35.html; Marrs, Crossfire, 431-432.

  144 Wim Dankbaar, “Jack Ruby,” JFK Murder Solved, accessed 24 Nov. 2012: http://www.jf
kmurdersolved.com/ruby.htm

  Ruby: But I won’t be around, Chief Justice. I won’t be around to verify these things you are going to tell the President.

  Attorney: Who do you think is going to eliminate you, Jack?

  Ruby: I have been used for a purpose, and there will be a certain tragic occurrence happening if you don’t take my testimony . . .145

  The written record from Jack Ruby is quite illuminating. He told it straight out to the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and to a United States Congressman:

  Gentlemen, I want to tell the truth, but I cannot tell it here. If you want a fair shake out of me, you have to take me to Washington.146

  He also told the Warren Commission that he not only feared for his own life, but had been warned of reprisals against his family, especially his brother. Notice the constant fatalism—he sounds as if he’s already dead and speaking from the grave:

  Well, you won’t see me again. I tell you that a whole new form of government is going to take over the country, and I know I won’t live to see you another time.147

  Here’s more, from a letter that he wrote in jail, to someone he trusted:

  . . . you must believe me that I know what is taking place, so please with all my heart, you must believe me, because I am counting on you to save this country a lot of blood-shed. As soon as you get out you must read Texan looks at Lyndon (A Texan Looks at Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley), and it may open your eyes to a lot of things. This man is a Nazi in the worst order.148