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

by Richard Belzer

  1 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong, 17-23. Douglas Caddy, Esq., “Letter to Mr. Stephen S. Trott, Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice,” August 9, 1984, The Estes Documents: http://home.earthlink.net/~sixthfloor/estes.htm

  2 Catherine Hornby & Robin Pomeroy, “King Ramses III’s throat was slit by assassins: experts,” December 18, 2012, Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/19/us-egypt-ramses-idUSBRE8BH19U20121219

  3 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong, 17-23.

  4 The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Truth Shall Make You Free (Documentary), Episode Six, 1995, Produced & Directed by Nigel Turner, in association with The History Channel (a nine-part series originally developed for UK ITV): http://youtu.be/VI07govlUqI

  5 The Men Who Killed Kennedy, accessed 18 Dec. 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Killed_Kennedy

  6 The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Truth Shall Make You Free: http://youtu.be/VI07govlUqI

  We can draw some clear conclusions:

  • The tremendous odds against all of these deaths being “coincidental” does indeed bear out. Many of these deaths clearly were the result of a clean-up operation, eliminating witnesses with “uncomfortable” knowledge before they could testify before the pertinent investigating committees. As the old saying goes in the intelligence community: “Twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.”1

  • A national security cover-up did indeed take place.2 It is evidenced not only by the silencing of key witnesses such as the honorable Lieutenant Commander William Pitzer, U.S. Navy (a case in which we even have the man who was asked to assassinate him), but by the ludicrously obvious and numerous instances of government lies and obfuscation that took place in the years following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

  • A component of that cover-up was the national security murders of those individuals who were considered dangerous to maintenance of the cover story.

  • In fairness, we should state that investigation also revealed that some deaths were not suspicious or even directly linked to the JFK assassination. The results of our investigations did reveal that some of the many deaths were actual suicides or from natural causes. For example, the death of former Ambassador William Pawley is often cited as suspicious due to the fact that it occurred just prior to testimonies in the investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. However, his death does appear to be coincidental to that investigation. Therefore, his and other deaths were not included as entries in this volume and, unless and until new information comes to light, they do not rightfully qualify as mysterious deaths.

  • Our research has determined, however, that—even in some of those cases—there is much that is officially incorrect. CIA official John Paisley was

  murdered—he did not commit suicide as the U.S. Government has continually alleged (in a prime example of continuous lies and obfuscation). On the other side of that coin, contrary to the official finding in the case, Dr. Mary Sherman was not murdered; she apparently died accidentally in a laboratory. But the secret nature of that laboratory necessitated a murder scenario. So that’s why and how they covered that one up.

  It should also be noted that there were some cases of “coincidental deaths” related to the JFK assassination which we did not have space to include in this book. We focused instead on what we considered to be the primary cases. However, fair examination of the foregoing facts in this book leads to some logically necessary conclusions. There is substantiated evidence that many of these deaths were indeed linked directly to a clean-up operation of “loose-ends” and problems that surfaced regarding the cover-up.

  1 Ian Fleming, Goldfinger (Jonathan Cape: 1959): “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action.”

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

  Beyond Potential Coincidence:

  To convey a sense of the implausibilities which become all too apparent here, consider this:

  David Ferrie and Eladio del Valle were the two key witnesses being sought by a fresh new investigation of the staff of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. They both died extremely violent deaths—on the same day—before those investigations could be properly conducted.

  Likewise, just as a Congressional investigation was gearing up to take important testimony, three of their most important witnesses died extremely violent deaths within the same week: Hitman Chuck Nicoletti, George de Mohrenschildt, Oswald’s CIA “overseer” who was shot the same day as Nicoletti—just as a Committee investigator was literally on the way to interview him—and anti-Castro Cuban politician Carlos Prío Socarrás, who was a prime component of the whole nexus in South Florida from which the JFK assassination was hatched. Others from that same nexus—like Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli—were murdered shortly thereafter, just as their testimony, too, was being sought by Congress.

  William Sullivan, a high-ranking FBI officer, explained to a close friend that he would be killed soon and that it would be made to look like an accident, but not to believe it; that it would actually be murder. A short time later, he died in a mysterious “hunting accident.” Coincidence? This was an intelligent individual making a precise prediction, so do not even utter such a naïve word, please.

  Mobster Jack Zangetty specifically predicted that:

  A man named Ruby will kill Oswald tomorrow and in a few days a member of the Frank Sinatra family will be kidnapped just to take some of the attention away from the assassination.

  Both of those specific predictions came true; Zangetty was then murdered. These examples are not even calculable for potentially being coincidence; they are mathematically impossible. They are demonstrative of knowledge, not conjecture.

  National Security Assassination Deaths:

  Lee Harvey Oswald

  Jack Zangetty

  Dorothy Kilgallen

  Lieutenant Commander

  William Pitzer

  Mary Pinchot Meyer

  Gary Underhill

  Eladio del Valle (same day as

  Ferrie)

  Rolando Masferrer

  Chuck Nicoletti

  George de Mohrenschildt

  (same day as Nicoletti)

  Carlos Prío Socarrás (shot same

  week as Nicoletti)

  Mac Wallace

  Sam Giancana

  Johnny Roselli

  William Sullivan

  As another old saying goes, the mafia “takes care of their own,” and it was quite obviously no coincidence that those with detailed knowledge of the anti-Castro intelligence operation which was apparently “turned” and used against President Kennedy were murdered near the time they would been forced to testify before the Congressional committee investigating the assassination. Among those very clear cases are: Sam Giancana, Chuck Nicoletti, Johnny Roselli, Eladio del Valle, and Rolando Masferrer.

  The elimination of witnesses by the government or those acting on its behalf—and apparently emanating from the office of the President of the United States (since Lyndon Johnson had a lot of tracks to cover up)—seems to have been executed in several of the more complicated and high-profile cases. Mary Pinchot Meyer, Lieutenant Commander William Pitzer, Dorothy Kilgallen, Gary Underhill and—if he was right about the method of his death—Jack Ruby, appear to have been eliminated due to their actions and intentions regarding specific information they possessed.

  It is also much worth mentioning that we know that witnesses such as Grant Stockdale, Hank Killam, and Gary Underhill were in extreme fear for their lives from some form of government assassination because they specifically expressed those fears to friends who left a clear record of it. But who knows how many of the other witnesses possessed similar fears, but left no record of them?

  The CIA’s supporters in mainstream media—and they have many1—maintain the preposterously silly notion that all this is just some pipedream from the “camp” of what they make a point of calling “conspiracy buffs” (as opposed to real researc
hers such as themselves, apparently), with no basis in reality whatsoever. Baloney, boys and girls!

  As an example:

  Journalist Tim Weiner, who covered the CIA for twenty years and wrote Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, is even more skeptical.

  “You could fill a five-foot shelf with books theorizing the CIA played a role in Kennedy’s assassination,” Weiner said, calling such efforts “hearsay, innuendo, gossip, and nonsense.”

  In fact, says Weiner, there are legitimate reasons to question the Warren Report and its findings about Oswald—but not, he says, to accuse the CIA of conducting domestic assassinations.

  The bottom line is, there’s not a shred of evidence—none—that the CIA ever killed anyone in this country.2

  Mr. Weiner is right. The CIA probably never has intentionally assassinated anyone on U.S. soil. They contracted it out, through the mob or in the case of Lieutenant Commander William Bruce Pitzer, to a Special Forces assassin who was willing to volunteer for the

  1 Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and The Media: How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why The Church Committee Covered It Up,” October 20, 1977, Rolling Stone Magazine: http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php and John Simkin, “Operation Mockingbird,” Spartacus Educational, accessed 19 Dec. 2012: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm

  2 Joseph P. Kahn, “One man’s suspicion, obsession, and an unsolved murder,” 26 May 2012, Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2012/05/26/north_shore_author_peter_janney_makes_his_case_for_the_cia_plotting_to_murder_john_f_kennedy_and_jfk_mistress_mary_pinchot_meyer/?page=full

  mission. In the case of Mary Pinchot Meyer, it was apparently contracted through a man with the operational codename William L. Mitchell, who was from some dark government agency connection so shielded that no one could even figure out where he really worked!1

  In other cases, it has been very clearly established that the mafia was used for domestic assassinations which—as Army Special Forces veteran Lieutenant Colonel Marvin has testified—was standard operational procedure during that historical time frame.2

  And the thing that’s clearest of all is that, if we rely on mainstream media, this information would never seem to get to us!

  1 Janney, Mary’s Mosaic

  2 The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Truth Shall Make You Free: http://youtu.be/VI07govlUqI

  Fresh New Evidence: On the Points Responsible for the Murder of President ­Kennedy

  Contrary to common perceptions, much is now known about how President Kennedy was actually assassinated. There have been major developments in the last few years that mainstream media, in its inimitable way, has managed to virtually conceal from public awareness:

  • The motorcade security of President Kennedy was structurally changed in Dallas, from the highly-protective wedge formation (which was used by JFK and was even considered standard dignitary protection), to a highly insecure motorcycle formation, thereby enabling the assassination;1

  • It was also the route-change of the motorcade in Dallas that enabled the assassination and the responsibility for that has been established also;2

  • Less protection than was normal for JFK was quite apparent in Dallas;3

  • Quite contrary to the officially sanitized version, JFK did not order Secret Service agents off the bumper of the limousine in which he was riding. Vince Palamara has substantiated that JFK never interfered with Secret Service protocol;4

  • The responsibility for the route change and the reductions in motorcade protection appears to lead directly to allies and associates of Vice President Lyndon Johnson.5

  1 Al Carrier, 2003 “The United States Secret Service: Conspiracy to Assassinate a President,” Dealey Plaza Echo, Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2003, 36-48: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=389290

  2 Vince Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect the President, 2006: http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v4n1.html

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Ibid.

  Secret Service protection was visibly reduced even though it was known that the threat-level in Dallas was high:

  The Secret Service men were not pleased because they were in a “hot” city and would have preferred to have two men ride the bumper of the President’s car with two motorcycle policemen between him (JFK) and the crowds on the sidewalks.1

  1 Jim Bishop, The Day Kennedy Was Shot (HarperCollins Canada: 1992), 134.

  • The freshly sworn-in President Johnson even “used conspiracy to preclude conspiracy.”

  Top LBJ aide, Cliff Carter, sent the new President’s message throughout Washington and Dallas, slamming the door on the mere mention of conspiracy:

  Dallas District Attorney “Henry Wade described three calls from Cliff Carter on Friday night (mere hours after JFK was murdered). Carter said that:

  ‘any word of a conspiracy—some plot by foreign nations—to kill President Kennedy would shake our nation to its foundation. President Johnson was worried about some conspiracy on the part of the Russians . . . it would hurt foreign relations if I alleged a conspiracy—whether I could prove it or not . . . I was to charge Oswald with plain murder.’

  In addition to Wade, Police Chief Curry and Texas State Attorney General Carr also received similar calls from Cliff Carter, instructing them to avoid any charges or remarks indicating conspiracy.”1

  So one might say that there was a second conspiracy to make it look like there was no conspiracy at first; and directed by a man who was apparently a major player in both!

  Summarized simply, it is now known that the following actions enabled the assassination of President Kennedy:

  1. Motorcade formation change from the standard dignitary protection “Wedge formation” to a wide-open formation that made the President an open target;

  2. Motorcade route change, taking it by the dog-leg turn and into the open shooting fields of Dealey Plaza;

  3. Agents being ordered off the bumpers of the limo, which was not at the direction of the President.

  1 Larry Hancock, Someone World Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History (JFK Lancer: 2010), Chapter 19: http://www.larry-hancock.com/excerpts.html

  The Many Roads Leading to Vice President Lyndon Johnson: As the motorcade leaves the airport in Dallas, mere minutes before President Kennedy is ambushed, US Secret Service Agent Don Lawton openly questions his superiors about being ordered off the riding bumper of the car of the President whom he is trying to protect. The order came from Emory Roberts, Special Agent-In-Charge of the Vice-Presidential Secret Service Detail, in the car toward which SA Lawton is gesturing.

  Formula for Murder:

  Motorcade Formation Change Enabling JFK Assassination

  Standard Formation

  The “Wedge Formation” is standard textbook procedure for established Dignitary Protection and Motorcade Security Standards and was used in other 1963 motorcades of President Kennedy (in second car).

  With the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind the President’s limo in the wedge formation, the President had secured protection. Note specifically that the five units being placed ahead of the pilot car rather than the President’s car in Dallas placed them in a completely ineffective position:

  There is an obvious problem with the positioning of these five units. Why would they be placed in front of the lead car when they were needed in front of the President’s limo, especially on Main Street, where the heavy crowds closed in to the degree that the four units to the rear of the limo could not move forward to keep the crowds back?1

  Why were the five lead motorcycles ahead of the lead car? Why were the four motorcyclists with the presidential limo ordered to stay back?2

  The motorcade formation employed in Dallas had the President so exposed that the driver of the Preside
nt’s limo, U.S. Secret Service Special Agent William Greer, literally kept his door held slightly open with his left hand to keep spectators at least at arm’s length away.

  The late Jean Lollis Hill, who witnessed the assassination in Dealey Plaza and was dating one of the motorcycle officers assigned to the

  1 Ibid.

  2 Ibid.

  Security Breach: This non-secure formation—reportedly at the direction of the LBJ team at Dallas airport—had the President needlessly exposed. (Charts by Al Carrier, 2003)1

  Security Expert Al Carrier immediately recognized the above-diagrammed wedge formation “as the motorcycle positioning in the 1962 Berlin Kennedy motorcade and the November 14, 1963, Tampa, Florida motorcade.”2

  The procedure was in place at the time of the assassination. For some reason, it was not followed on November 22, 1963.3

  1 Carrier, “The United States Secret Service: Conspiracy to Assassinate a President”

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid.

  Dallas Formation

  limo, ­reported in JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness that she was told that ­Johnson’s Secret Service Agents had changed the orders and advised the remaining four motorcyclists not to advance beyond the back tires of the limo.1