Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  Such questions prompted former-Minnesota-governor-turned–TV personality Jesse Ventura to reason, “If the government were telling the truth, there would be no reason to lock up anything from the people of this country. Clearly they are not, because here we are 50 years later, and they are still withholding documents from us.”

  Researcher William Kelly concluded, “Today, the American government is afraid of its people, afraid to enforce its own laws and afraid to allow its citizens to know the complete truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. Such complete truth must involve the term ‘coup d’état.’”

  A Question of Oswald

  One of the most intriguing yet misunderstood issues surrounding the JFK assassination involves questions about the identity of Lee Harvey Oswald. This issue can be broken into two segments—one is the evidence pointing to someone impersonating Oswald in the weeks prior to the assassination, and the second concerns the identity of the man Jack Ruby killed.

  This whole question of Oswald doppelgangers—or lookalikes—is admittedly bizarre. However, the evidence suggesting such duplication is considerable.

  Questions about Oswald’s identity did not suddenly surface years after the assassination, as many people believe. Recall that J. Edgar Hoover expressed concern over Oswald’s identity as far back as June 3, 1960, when he warned the State Department against an Oswald impostor.

  Despite assurances by government agencies at the time of the assassination that they were unaware of Oswald or his background, there is now evidence that people within the government were checking frequently on the ex-Marine long before the assassination.

  On March 31, 1961, the deputy chief of the Passport Office wrote to the Consular Section of the State Department regarding Oswald, stating:

  This file contains information first, which indicates that mail from the mother of this boy is not being delivered to him and second, that it has been stated that there is an impostor using Oswald’s identification data and that no doubt the Soviets would love to get hold of his valid passport, it is my opinion that the passport should be delivered to him only on a personal basis and after the Embassy is assured to its complete satisfaction that he is returning to the United States.

  Another State Department communication, this time to the US embassy in Moscow, on July 11, 1961, stated, “The Embassy’s careful attention to the involved case of Mr. Oswald is appreciated. It is assumed that there is no doubt that the person who has been in communication with the Embassy is the person who was issued a passport in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald.”

  Contrary to the public announcements, government officials were keenly aware of Oswald. Only two weeks before the assassination, someone signing for the State Department checked out Oswald’s file from military records.

  The New Orleans FBI office apparently kept close tabs on Oswald while he was in that city and then shipped its file on him to Dallas in the fall of 1963, where agent James Hosty tried to reach Oswald. At the same time, a military intelligence unit in Texas was receiving information on Oswald for its files.

  An Impostor

  After the assassination, literally hundreds of people claimed to have seen Oswald in the days preceding the tragedy. This outpouring of sightings is normal in a case of this magnitude. While this phenomenon is to be expected, many reputable people encountered a Lee Harvey Oswald at a time when Oswald was reported elsewhere and whose stories cannot be easily dismissed.

  However, the Warren Commission found it easy enough to dismiss these people. The Commission’s rationale was simple: if someone saw Oswald at a time when the Commission had determined him to be elsewhere, then the observer was mistaken in his identification.

  One such encounter with a bogus Oswald is especially intriguing since it occurred long before Oswald reportedly arrived back in the United States from his sojourn in Russia. Oscar Deslatte, manager of a Ford dealership in New Orleans, contacted the FBI immediately after the assassination. He told the bureau that a man identifying himself as “Joseph Moore” had tried to buy ten trucks on January 10, 1961. He said the man was accompanied by a Cuban and had said he wanted Deslatte to “give a good price because we’re doing this for the good of the country.” At this time the CIA and its Cuban allies were preparing for the April 17 Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba.

  Deslatte said “Moore” asked that the name “Oswald” be placed on the purchase estimate sheet. The man said “Oswald” would be paying for the trucks on behalf of an anti-Castro Cuban organization.

  In 1979, the FBI released a copy of Deslatte’s estimate sheet and it showed the anti-Castro organization involved was “Friends of Democratic Cuba,” which just happened to have been the anti-Castro group that included in its membership ex-FBI agent Guy Banister. Banister, of course, was the fervent anti-Castro agent who was connected to Oswald in the summer of 1963 at 544 Camp Street.

  Another story involves testimony heard by the Senate Intelligence Committee from a former immigration inspector in New Orleans. While keeping the man’s identity secret, the committee reported:

  He is absolutely certain that he interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald in a New Orleans jail cell sometime shortly before April 1, 1963. Although the inspector is not now certain whether Oswald was using that particular name at that time, he is certain that Oswald was claiming to be a Cuban alien. He quickly ascertained that Oswald was not a Cuban alien, at which point he left Oswald in his jail cell.

  According to the Warren Commission, Oswald did not arrive in New Orleans until the end of April, nearly a month after the inspector’s meeting with the jailed “Oswald.”

  During his time in New Orleans, Oswald was seen in many and varying situations. He was handing out pro-Castro literature on New Orleans streets, while at the same time approaching anti-Castro Cuban leaders with proposals to help train their followers.

  Some of the people who encountered Oswald in New Orleans described him as a clean and well-kept, courteous young man, while others said he was dirty and disheveled and a swearing hard drinker. It is difficult to believe these people were talking about the same individual.

  As the assassination drew closer, the strange reports of second Oswalds began to increase.

  On September 25, 1963, Mrs. Lee Dannelly, an official with the Selective Service system in Austin, Texas, reported that a young man came to her office for help. He said his name was Harvey Oswald and that he wished to get his military discharge with “other than honorable conditions” changed to an honorable discharge. The man said he was living in Fort Worth. Dannelly said she could find no such person in her files and she told the man to check with Selective Service in Fort Worth. She next saw Oswald on television after the assassination and promptly reported her experience. Oswald did have a dishonorable discharge and he had lived in Fort Worth, but on September 25, he was on his way to Mexico City, according to the Warren Commission.

  After the assassination, some residents of Irving said they recalled Oswald there. Leonard Hutchinson of Hutch’s Market came forward to say that he had been asked to cash a check for Oswald earlier in November. He said on one occasion this man, accompanied by a young woman, spoke in some foreign language. Hutchinson said he recognized both Oswald and Marina when their photographs were broadcast over television after the assassination. Near Hutchinson’s store was a barbershop where a man identified as Oswald went for haircuts. The barber also said he saw the same man entering Hutchinson’s store. Despite all this, the Warren Commission concluded, “Oswald is not known to have received a check for this amount from any source. . . . Examination of Hutchinson’s testimony indicates a more likely explanation is that Oswald was not in his store at all.”

  Next is the well-documented story of Oswald’s wild car ride weeks before the assassination. Albert G. Bogard, a salesman for Downtown Lincoln-Mercury, just west of the Triple Underpass in Dealey Plaza, told the Warren Commission that before the assassination—“the ninth day of November, I think it was, to be exact”—a man came into
the dealership and introduced himself as “Lee Oswald” and indicated he wanted to purchase a Lincoln Continental. Bogard told the Commission:

  I show him a car on the showroom floor, and take him for a ride out Stemmons Expressway and back, and he was driving at 60 to 70 miles an hour and came back to the showroom. And, I made some figures and he told me he wasn’t ready to buy, that he would be in a couple or three weeks, that he had some money coming in. And when he finally started to leave I got his name and wrote it on the back of one of my business cards, and never heard from the man any more.

  Bogard said on the day of the assassination, he heard Oswald had been arrested and threw away the business card with Oswald’s name on it, saying, “He won’t be a prospect anymore because he is going to jail.” His story was supported by two other dealership employees, Eugene Wilson and Frank Pizzo.

  However, the Warren Commission concluded:

  Several persons who knew Oswald have testified that he was unable to drive, although Mrs. Paine, who was giving Oswald driving lessons, stated that Oswald was showing some improvement by November. Moreover, Oswald’s whereabouts on November 9, as testified to by Marina Oswald and Ruth Paine, would have made it impossible for him to have visited the automobile showrooms as Mr. Bogard claims.

  In a 1977 Dallas Morning News story, Wilson said the FBI and the Warren Commission dismissed the story of Oswald’s drive because they had it occurring on November 9.

  Wilson told the newspaper the man was Oswald and that he did know how to drive and that the incident actually occurred on November 2, a more plausible date. He also said he recalled that when Oswald was turned down for a credit purchase, he said, “Maybe I’m going to have to go back to Russia to buy a car.” Wilson said he could pinpoint the date because later the day of Oswald’s drive, he used the same car to carry his wife and some friends home after a meeting of the Lone Star Bulldog Club. Wilson said the next day at a Dallas dog show he won some ribbons that carried the date.

  The Warren Commission indeed published a copy of an unsigned application for a Texas driver’s license in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald.

  If the car buyer was Oswald, he was expecting to come into money at the exact time of the assassination. If it wasn’t Oswald, it was an impostor.

  Recall the incident involving C. A. Hamblen, the night manager of Western Union in Dallas, who told of Oswald collecting money orders during the early part of November. Another Western Union employee, Aubrey Lee Lewis, said he recalled a man resembling Oswald as a “feminine, very slender-built fellow” who was involved with a small money order to the Dallas YMCA and was accompanied by a “man of Spanish descent.” The man used a “little Navy ID release card” and a library card for identification.

  This story of Oswald receiving money just before the assassination caused a minor uproar within both the Warren Commission and Western Union. Western Union’s officials were quick to remind employees that they were not to discuss customers or their money orders or amounts. It is apparent that the Western Union employees were under pressure not to tell more about the money order incidents.

  A check by Western Union failed to turn up any money orders in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald. But if it was not the Marine Oswald using a Navy ID and library card to receive money orders, then who was it? The Warren Commission apparently was unable to find out.

  It is interesting to note the Western Union workers mentioned someone they believed to be Oswald sending money orders to the Dallas YMCA.

  According to the Warren Commission, “Oswald did not contact his wife immediately when he returned to Dallas [supposedly from a trip to Mexico City in late September 1963]. . . . He spent the night at the [Dallas] YMCA, where he registered as a serviceman in order to avoid paying the membership fee.”

  YMCA records showed an Oswald staying there on October 3 and 4. The records also indicated that Oswald lived at the YMCA between October 15 and 19, 1962.

  The Dallas YMCA also had a member who frequented its health-club facilities quite often during this time—Jack Ruby.

  Dallas police saw a man resembling Oswald handing out pro-Castro literature on downtown streets in the months preceding the assassination. Was it really Oswald? The Warren Commission had Oswald leafleting in New Orleans at the time.

  Then there are the strange incidents involving Oswald or someone resembling Oswald using a foreign-made rifle in the weeks preceding the assassination. On November 1, a “rude and impertinent” man bought rifle ammunition in Morgan’s Gunshop in nearby Fort Worth. Three people recalled this incident after the assassination and claimed the man was Oswald. The Warren Commission, however, determined that Oswald was elsewhere at the time.

  Dial Duwayne Ryder, the service manager at the Irving Sports Shop, recalled working on a rifle but it was not an Italian weapon. He even gave the FBI an undated check stub for $6 that bore the name “Oswald.” The stub indicated that work done on the rifle was “drilling and tapping and boresighting.” Ryder said the work was probably done during the first two weeks of November.

  However, since there was a $1.50 charge for boresighting and the drilling and tapping was $1.50 per hole, it indicated to Ryder that three holes were drilled in the rifle for a telescopic sight.

  The Carcano identified as Oswald’s rifle had only two holes for the sight and the telescopic sight came already fixed to the rifle. Furthermore, neither Ryder nor his boss could readily identify pictures of Oswald as the man ordering the work. Thus it would appear that someone using Oswald’s name ordered work on a weapon that was not the Oswald rifle.

  The Warren Commission, never willing to admit the possibility that someone might have been fabricating evidence against Oswald, hinted that Ryder had made up the story about working on the rifle.

  Again in early November, shooters at the Sports Drome Rifle Range recalled a young man who was there sighting in a foreign-made rifle. One of these shooters, Malcolm Price, helped adjust the rifle sight for the man shooting and another, Garland Slack, argued with the man on another occasion because the man was shooting at Slack’s target. Both Dr. Homer Wood and his son, Sterling Wood, recalled the man and both were shocked to see his photograph on television in the days following the assassination. They remained convinced the man was Lee Harvey Oswald.

  However, the Warren Commission noted that these witnesses were not consistent in their descriptions of the rifle-range gunman or of the rifle and scope. In addition, some of the gun-range witnesses said Oswald was accompanied by a man in a late-model car. Since Oswald reportedly could not drive and did not know anyone with a late-model car, the Commission concluded, “Although the testimony of these witnesses was partially corroborated by other witnesses, there was other evidence which prevented the Commission from reaching the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the person these witnesses saw.”

  Furthermore, Price remembered helping “Oswald” sight his rifle on September 28, 1963, a time when Oswald reportedly was in Mexico City.

  In October 1963, Mrs. Lovell Penn heard shooting on her property just outside Dallas. Accosting three men shooting a rifle in a field, Penn ordered them to leave. After they left, she found a 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle shell near where the men had been target shooting. After the assassination, she turned the shell casing over to the FBI and told them that one of the men looked like Oswald while another was “Latin, perhaps Cuban.” However, the FBI reported that laboratory tests showed the shell had not been fired from the Oswald rifle.

  The reports of Oswald accompanied by Cubans came from many different sources. Recall the incident of three anti-Castro Cubans—one by the name of Leon Oswald—visiting Silvia Odio shortly before the assassination.

  Someone was posing as Oswald in the days preceding the assassination, carefully laying out a pattern of an irritating young man who was in possession of and practicing with a foreign-made rifle.

  But the Warren Commission stated, “In most instances, investigation has disclosed that there is no substan
tial basis for believing that the person reported by the various witnesses was Oswald.”

  Of course, if the man in question was not Oswald, it means that someone was laying a trail of evidence to the real Oswald. This gives great credence to Oswald’s cry to news reporters in the Dallas police station: “I’m just a patsy!”

  But the question of Oswald’s identity leads to even stranger areas.

  Was Oswald Really Oswald?

  Was the Oswald killed in Dallas the same Oswald born in New Orleans in 1939? Bizarre as this may sound, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the man killed by Ruby was not the original Lee Harvey Oswald.

  The first major publicity over this issue came in 1977 with the publication of The Oswald File by British author and attorney Michael Eddowes. Eddowes, who acknowledged to this author his connections with British intelligence dating back to World War II, theorized, “Lee Harvey Oswald was captured by the Soviets after traveling to Russia in 1959 and a look-alike substitute was returned to the United States in his place.”

  Eddowes said that after studying the issue of Oswald’s identity, he became “100 percent convinced” that President Kennedy was killed by a Soviet KGB agent impersonating the real Oswald. The British attorney noted the following discrepancies to support his theory:

  •A mastoidectomy scar that was noted on Oswald’s Marine Corps medical records was not mentioned in Oswald’s autopsy report.

  •Oswald’s Marine records showed a vaccination scar on his arm, along with other scars. No vaccination scar was noted in Oswald’s autopsy report and the location of scars differed from those in his military records.