5 Posner, 186n; emphasis in original. This false claim was originally made within the Agency by an anonymous official to CIA Genera] Counsel Lawrence Houston. See Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), 381.
6 Summers, 381; Warren Commission Document 692; CIA Document 590-252.
7 Lopez Report, 137-41. The Lopez Report called explanations offered by CIA employees on the matter of the false Oswald description "hard to accept" (139) and "implausible" (140).
8 Posner, 191 (footnotes 99 and 100), 193 (footnote 105). These cite pages in Summers immediately before and after the account of the photos in Oswald’s file.
9 Posner. 355.361.
10 Scott. 198-99; 5 AH 170ss; 9 AH 164-69. The stake of Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz. and the Chicago mob in the Riviera is confirmed by one of Posner’s other Ruby witnesses, William Roemer, War of the Godfathers (New York: Donald I. Fine. 1990). 82. 167.
11 In 1963 Roemer was the FBI expert on Sam Giancana, in part because Roemer’s chief mob informant (and close friend) was Giancana’s close associate Richard Cain (cf. Roemer, War of the Godfathers, 141, 220). Soon after Ruby killed Oswald, Roemer’s young partner John Bassett helped elicit from Giancana-Patrick associates like Dave Yaras the assurances that Ruby "was not outfit connected" (22 WH 372, cf. 317, 357) that later found their way into the Warren Report (R 790). Roemer told Posner that Ruby’s Junk Handlers Union local "was a legitimate union when Jack was involved" (Posner, p. 352). This demonstrable falsehood (the mobster Paul Dorfman had already moved in; cf. 22 WH 438) was based on earlier FBI misinformation (22 WH 320) from a witness, Ted Shulman, who had once been closely interrogated by McClellan Committee Counsel Robert Kennedy about his "collusive deals" with Paul Dorfman (Scott, Crime and Cover-Up, 39; McClellan Committee, 16084-16103). Roemer also told Posner that "Ruby was absolutely nothing in terms of the Chicago mob. . . .We talked to every hoodlum in Chicago after the assassination, and some of the top guys in the mob, my informants, I had close relationships with them—they didn’t even know who Ruby was" (Posner, p. 354). This evasion was clearly deceptive: some of the "top guys" talked to. and specifically Dave Yaras (22 WH 372) and Lennie Patrick (22 WH 318, cf. 9 AH 948-52). freely admitted knowing Ruby for years.
12 Posner, 348n. Alexander actually said that he would "charge Oswald with murdering the President ‘as pan of an international Communist conspiracy’" (William Manchester, The Death of a President [New York: Harper and Row, 1967], 326; Scon, Deep Politics, 270). Alexander’s recollection of the reaction from his superiors ("What the hell are you trying to do, start World War III?") is accurate, and hardly trivial: the risk that local officials would provoke a war was Johnson’s excuse for federalizing the murder case and giving it to the Warren Commission.
13 "Shortly after the Inquirer incident, Alexander and two local reporters concocted a story that Oswald had been FBI informer S-179 and had been paid S200 a month. Lonnie Hudkins, one of the reporters, printed the story, attributing it to an unidentified source. The fallout was so great that the Warren Commission held a January 22, 1964, executive session to discuss the issue. ‘I never much liked the federals,’ Alexander says. ‘I figured it was as good a way as any to keep them out of my way by having to run down that phony story’" (Posner, 348n). One of those who printed the "phony story" was Joe Goulden (Philadephia Inquirer, December 8, 1963).
14 Posner, 395; G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, The Plot to Kill the President (New York: Times Books. 321-22.
15 Posner, 395-96. Posner says "three" Dallas policemen, instead of four. Is he mindful of the problem with Dean’s testimony which he does not share with his readers? Accepting Jack Ruby’s version as if it were authoritative. Posner also claims (396n) that the House Committee "ignored the fact that Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels also said he heard Ruby tell I the Dallas police]. . . that he had come down the ramp (Dallas Morning News, March 25. 1979)." He thus rebukes the Committee for ignoring a "fact" that emerged after their report was published. In 1964 Sorrels testified under oath that he did not recall hearing Ruby comment on how he got into the basement area (13 WH 68).
16 WR 128. citing 1 WH 119, 14.
17 Warren Report, p. 189.
18 Posner, Case Closed, 120.
19 Scott, Deep Politics, 271, 289; cf. discussion at 289-91; 22 WH 596, 786; 5 WH 389-90.
20 Posner. 225; cf. 22 WH 681 (FBI interview of March 19, 1964); 3 WH 165.
21 WCD 5.330, emphasis added; cf. 3 WH 169.
22 24 WH 229.
23 3 WH 175; quoted in Posner, 242. Cf. 3 WH 179: "I heard three shots. But at first I told the FBI I only heard two—they took me down—because I was so excited, and I couldn’t remember too well. But later on, as everything began to die down, I got my memory even a little better than on the 22d, I remembered three shots."
24 Like Williams, Norman, when testifying to the Warren Commission, recanted details of an earlier statement he had made under oath (3 WH 194; cf. 17 WH 208).
25 Stephen White, Should We Now Believe the Warren Report? (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 57-58.
26 Posner, 227. For just some of the many problems of the alleged Oswald-by-the-elevator encounter (later doubled to become two Oswald-by-the-elevator encounters), see Gordon Miller, The Third Decade (September 1993), 33-35. Miller does not mention that Bonnie Ray Williams (3 AH 168) attributed to the first encounter an exchange of words between Givens and Oswald which Givens (6 AH 351) attributed to the second encounter (when Williams was not present). Posner, undaunted, reports both elevator-encounter stories, along with the Givens version of the exchange of words, as if they were incontestable facts. Posner also names Jack Dougherty as a witness to an 11:45 am elevator-encounter, citing (without page reference) an "affidavit of Jack E. Dougherty, November 22, 1963" (Posner, 540, footnote 12). When Posner omits page references, one’s suspicions are rightly aroused. The affidavit (24 WH 206) says nothing about an elevator encounter at all. There is also no elevator in the testimony (6 WH 377-78), where Dougherty stated, "It was about 11 o’clock—that was the last time I saw him."
27 Summarized in Sylvia Meagher, "The Curious Testimony of Mr. Givens," Texas Observer, August 13, 1971; reprinted in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch, and Russell Stetler, The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond (New York: Vintage, 1976), 246-47.
28 AR 50.
29 6 WH 345-56; WR 143; cf. WCD 5.329 (FBI interview of 11/22/63); all summarized in Meagher, 245-47.
30 WCD 5.330 (FBI memo of 11/22/63); 6 WH 345-56, WR 143 (Givens testimony); WCD 735.296-97 (Revill to FBI), 5 WH 35-36 (Revill to Commission); Meagher, in Scott. Hoch, and Stetler, 245-48.
31 Posner, 227; emphasis added.
32 Posner does not supply a footnote for his statement that Shelley saw Oswald "at 11:45 A.M." What Shelley told the Commission, unambiguously, is that he saw Oswald on the first floor at "about ten to twelve."(6 WH 328). The difference of five minutes, trivial in practice, is devastating to Posner’s logic; for 11:50 is the Commission’s time for the first encounter at the elevator on the fifth floor. In other words, Shelley’s testimony cannot be written off as compatible with the highly dubious elevator story.
33 22 WH 635; FBI interview of March 18, 1964, emphasis added.
34 22 WH 634 (Arce), 22 WH 645 (Dougherty), 22 WH 649 (Givens), 22 WH 655 (Jarman), 22 WH 666 (Norman); cf. Howard Roffman, Presumed Guilty (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975), 185.
35 6 WH 354 (Givens); 3 WH 168. 171-72. 173, 180 (Williams); 3 WH 194 (Norman).
36 Posner, 227.
37 Givens’ testimony is consistent with his original affidavit to the Dallas Police on November 22 that at twelve noon he took his lunch break and left the building. A very similar statement ("At lunch time at 12:00 noon I went down on the street") had been signed and sworn to by Danny Arce (24 WH 199). Arce’s different statement to the Warren Commission, that he ate lunch in the "domino room" (6 WH 365), is thus open to question. This leaves only Jack Dougherty,
a witness the Warren Report very understandably calls "confused" (WR 153) and who testified twice to Warren Commission Counsel Ball that the shots were fired "before I ate my lunch" (6 WH 379).
38 Since this review was first published. Prof. David Wrone has noted yet another instance of Posner’s misrepresentations (Journal of Southern History, February 1995, 186). Posner cites an FBI report for the claim that Oswald ordered the printing of Fair Play for Cuba Committee handbills at the Jones Printing Company in New Orleans (Posner, p. 127). In fact the cited witness told the FBI, when shown a photo of Oswald, that "she could not recognize the person represented in the picture as the person who placed the order for the handbills" (22 WH 797).
39 Journal of American History, December 1994, 1379-80.
NAME INDEX
--- A ---
Aarons, Mark 41
Abramson, Rudy 46
Abt, John 72
ACLU 72, 75, 112-113, 115-116
Adamcik, John 83
Agee, Philip 8, 18, 37, 130-132
Aguilar Guajardo, Rafael 136
A.I.P. 35
Alberu, Luis 38, 96
Aleman, Miguel 39
Alexander, William "Bill" 24, 71-73, 76-78, 152
Allelueva, Svetlana 12
Allen, Robert 34
Alsop, Joseph 54
Alvarado, Gilberto 24-25, 36-40, 43, 94-96, 98, 102-108
AMLASH see Cubela
AMMUG 106
AMTILT 57
AMTRUNK 34, 47-49, 55, 66
Anderson, Clark 36, 104, 127
Anderson, Jack 58-59, 66-69
Angleton, James Jesus 5-6, 9-10, 12, 14, 17-20, 31-32, 40-42, 98
ARRB 117, 118, 130-131
Army, U.S. 48
Army Intelligence, U.S. 2, 34, 80, 87, 111
Artime, Manuel 36, 48, 60-61
Ashman, Charles 102-103
ATF 111
Attwood, William 47, 49-51, 53-57, 64-66
Aynesworth, Hugh 78
Azcue, Eusebio 7-8, 15, 36, 81-82, 84, 94, 105, 123, 126-127, 130
--- B ---
Bagley, Tennant H. "Peter" 5, 10, 14, 17, 30-32, 42, 125
Banister, Guy 112, 116
Barker, Bernard 34
Barnes, Tracy 43
Barquin, Ramon 34 barium meal 91-92
Barron, John 97
Bassett, John 136
Batista, Fulgencio 60, 68, 132
Bayo, "Eddie" (alias Perez) 57, 69
Becquer, Napoleon 34
Belin, David 12
Bellino, Carmine 63
Belmont, Alan 11, 74-76, 78-79
Bentley, Charles 119
Benton, Sam 103
Berne 42
Beschloss. Michael 19, 44-46, 51, 54-57
Bethel, Paul 35
Billings, Richard 69, 98, 100. 106
Bissell, Richard 27, 60-61
Blakey, Robert 69, 98, 100, 106
Bliss. Barbara Ann 119
Block, Alan 60, 63
Bludeau, Todd P. 12
Bolden, Abraham 132
Bookhout, James 83, 87
Bowen, John 7
Brashler, William 61, 135
Breckenridge, Scott 63, 118, 134
Brykin, Oleg 30, 125
Buccieri, Fiori 133
Buchanan, Jim 35
Buendia, Manuel 136
Bundy, McGeorge 45-48, 50-51, 54-56, 65
Butler, Edward Scannell 24, 72
--- C ---
Cain, Richard 22, 117, 130-136
Calderon, Luisa 105-106
Califano, Joseph 49
Calvillo, Manuel 22, 118
Carballo Moreno, Samuel 68
Carlson, George 84
Caro Quintero, Rafael 136
Carr, Waggoner 71-74
Carrandi, Fernando 35
Carter, Cliff 74
Castillo, Jorge 135
Castillo Cabrera, Angel Luis 69
Castro, Fidel 1, 20, 22-24, 28, 34-35, 37, 41-70, 72, 74-75, 82, 85-87, 90, 92-96, 98-103, 105-107, 111-117, 120-121, 132-134
Cellini, Dino, 59-60, 62
Cellini, Eddie 59-60, 62
Cellini, Goffredo or Girodino 59
Cellini, Julia 59
Chase, Gordon 51, 56
Childs, Jack 90, 93-96, 99, 106-109
Childs, Morris 93
China 50
CIA 1, 3-73, 82-99, 101-108, 114-115, 117-121, 124-136
CISEN (Mexican Secret Police) 136
Clark, Comer 90, 98, 100, 102, 106-108
Cobb, June 106
Coleman, William 12, 103-104, 108, 131
Colosio, Luis Donaldo 117, 136
Connally, John 67
Connell, Lucille 113
COPA 90
Cordoba Montoya, Jose 136
Corn, David 48, 114
Cornwell 38, 128
Corso, Philip J. 34
Corson, William 42, 91
Covelli, Gerald 135
Coyle, Edward 2, 87, 111
Crile, George 62
Cuba Libre 113
Cubela Secades, Rolando 44-45, 48-53, 58-60, 63-66, 68
Cumming, Hugh S. 27
Curry, Jesse 75-79
--- D ---
Daniel, Jean 55, 65
Davis, John 21, 53, 57, 61, 63-64, 66
DeBrueys, Warren 14
Dean, Harry 68
Decker, J.E. 75, 88
De Giorgio, Giuseppe 59-60
DeLoach, Cartha 72, 85, 101
Demaris, Ovid 133, 135
DFS (Mexican Secret Police) 7-8, 12, 21-22, 36-39, 81-82, 84, 86, 105, 117-136
DGI 62-63, 106
Díaz, Miguel 49
Díaz Ordaz, Gustavo 37, 39, 128
DiMona, Joseph 58
DINA 35
Directorio Revolucionario 68
Donovan, James B. 52-53, 64-65
Dorfman, Paul 137
Dorticos, Osvaldo 105, 124, 128
DRE 87, 132, 112-14, 141
Dulles, Allen 39-43
Dungan, Ralph 56
Duran, Sylvia 7-9, 14-16, 21-22, 36-39, 41, 51, 81-88, 94, 100, 102, 105, 107, 117-131, 134
--- E ---
Eastland, Sen. James 24-25, 40, 72
Echeverria, Luis 37, 82, 131, 135
Eddowes, Michael 14
Edwards, Sheffield 59, 61-63, 68
Egerter. Ann 17, 26-28, 31-33
Ehrlichman, John 58
Ellsworth, Frank 111, 114-115
Elrod, John 110, 114
Emery, Fred 68
Epstein. Edward Jay 5, 10, 18, 32, 106
Escalante. Fabian 134
Ewing, Michael 60
--- F ---
Fain, John 27, 29, 79
FBI 2-6, 8, 10-11, 13-14, 16-21, 23-36, 41, 52, 59-60, 63, 69-80, 82-96, 98-101, 103-105, 107-108, 110-113, 115, 118-121, 125-127, 129, 131, 133, 136-137
FBN 135
Feighan, Michael 34
Fernandez Capada, Fernando 35
Ferrell, Mary 111
FI/D 18
FitzGerald, Desmond 31, 42, 44-45, 49, 51-53, 56-57, 64-66, 69, 88
544Camp Street 112
Fonzi, Gaeton 8-9, 12, 35-36, 41, 45, 69, 97, 102
FPCC 31, 74, 76-77, 81, 83-85, 91, 104, 109, 111-112, 116, 129
Fritz, John Will 71, 76-78, 113
Furiati, Claudia 134
--- G ---
Galindez, Jesus de 63
Gannaway, W.P. 78
Garcia, Joe B. 82
Gamer, Mrs. Jesse 115
Garrison, Jim 67
Garro, Elena 22, 38, 106
Gaudet, William 20
Gentry, Curt 5, 20, 63, 74, 78, 93
Giancana, Sam 22, 52, 57, 61-64, 117, 131-136
Giorgio, Giuseppe de 59-60
Glover, Everett 139-40
Goodpasture, Annie 11, 26, 45, 117, 134
Goodwin, Richard 56, 61
Goshko, John 98
Goulden, Joe 71, 152
Griffin, Burt 114
&
nbsp; Guevara, Che 46, 50
Guin, Ramon 49, 66
Gunn, Edward 68
Gutierrez Barrios, Fernando 82, 106, 117, 120, 130, 135-136
--- H ---
Haig, Alexander 49
Haldeman, H.R. 58, 67-68
Halleck, Charles 24, 71
Halpem, Samuel 52-53, 64-66
Hard way, Dan 3, 26, 35-36, 101
Harriman, Averill 18, 46, 50-51, 54
Harvey, William 5, 18, 20, 68, 134
Helms, Richard 6, 8-9, 20-21, 40-42, 44, 49, 52-53, 58, 65-68, 104
Hemming, Gerry Patrick 103
Hendrix, Hal 56-57, 96
Hernandez, Rogelio 135-136
Hernandez Armas, Joaquin 114, 128-129
Herrera Novales, Jaime 135
Hersh, Burton 40-41
Hill, Thomas 116
Hinckle, William 44-45, 48-50, 55, 57-58, 60, 63, 68-69, 103, 133
Hoch, Paul 68, 98-99
Hoffa, James 61-62, 67-68
Hoover, J.Edgar 5, 11, 17-20, 28, 63, 71-72, 74-79, 93, 95, 99, 104, 112
Horrock, Nicholas 91, 98, 100
Horton, John 83, 86, 88, 120
Horton, S.H. 27
Hosty, James 21, 27-28, 30, 73-75, 78-80, 82, 85-88, 96, 110-111
Hougan, Jim 63, 68
Howard, J.M. 119
Howard, Lisa 46, 50-52, 64-65
HSCA 5, 22, 60, 62, 68, 82-83, 86, 92-93, 97, 101, 108, 114, 117-118, 122-124, 126, 128, 132-136
HT/LINGUAL 17-18, 41
Hughes, Howard 61-63
HUMINT (Human Intelligence) 8, 96-97
Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics Page 35
