Reclaiming History (367 page)

^*
At least out at Love Field, the Department of Commerce records reflect that the wind was going in an easterly direction. But more than one witness in Dealey Plaza felt it was going in a northerly direction.

† One wonders how to reconcile these undoubtedly accurate on-site testimonials from Dealey Plaza witnesses as to the stiffness of the wind at the time of the assassination, with Weather Bureau records from the U.S. Department of Commerce, which show that the velocity of the wind at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, at nearby Love Field in Dallas, where the measurements were taken, was 13 knots, translating (a knot equals about 1.15 statute miles per hour) to around 15 miles per hour, a good but not a strong wind (U.S. Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau, Local Climatological Data, Dallas, Texas, Love Field, November 22, 1963, p.3; see also HSCA Record 180-10104-10458, November 1, 1978). When I posed this question to William Brown, a research meteorologist at the Department of Commerce Weather Bureau in Asheville, North Carolina, he said, “I’ve been to Dealey Plaza, and as you know there are many tall buildings in the area. When wind, like water, is funneled through a smaller channel—here, between buildings—the wind will
always
speed up, sometimes considerably. You’re forcing the same volume of air through a smaller area. It’s simple physics. In a water example, a wide river may not flow rapidly, but when funneled through a narrow canyon its velocity picks up immediately” (Telephone interview of William Brown by author on January 9, 2003). In other words, prairie winds, which are famous, are not strong because of the prairie, but because they are simply strong. A strong wind in the prairies surrounding Oklahoma City, for instance, will be even stronger in the city, not less strong.

^*
The fact that Bowers had a very busy day controlling trains on thirteen separate tracks that passed in front of the tower causes one assassination researcher to wonder whether Bowers was even at the window as he says he was. Jim Moore, author of
Conspiracy of One
, lives in Dallas and over the years has spent much time examining Dealey Plaza and the surrounding area. He makes this telling observation in his book: “[Bowers’s] work position required him to throw signal switches located on a panel in the center of the room. Sitting at the panel, Bowers could not have seen the area at the apex of the wooden fence where [Mark] Lane and [Sylvia] Meagher [conspiracy authors], among others, place their mythical assassin. Bowers, in order to view the area in question from a window somewhat removed from his control panel, would have had to leave his switches and walk over to the window. By all accounts, Bowers was a good employee, not a shirker of duty. It is inconceivable to me that he walked away from his control panel at a particularly busy time to stare at the back of a picket fence. Indeed, Bowers testified that he ‘threw red-on-red’—a signal that effectively blocked all trains—just after the fatal shot. He had to be sitting at his control panel to take this action.” (Moore,
Conspiracy of One,
p.32)

^*
The HSCA, in an allusion to Bowers as well as Holland, said that “none of the photographs of the grassy knoll that were analyzed by the photographic evidence panel revealed any evidence of a puff of smoke or flash of light” (HSCA Report, p.86).

† I say “almost” because it’s not uncommon for a person, when first asked about something, to be unable to recall it or some of the details, but when given help in the form of linkage by the questioner, the person finally does recall it. For example, “Do you recall telling Joe that _____?” “No.” “Don’t you remember he said to you that _____ and then you started laughing and said to him _____?” “Oh yes, I do remember telling him that now.” In the legal context, this is called “refreshing the memory,” and is usually achieved by documents the person is shown on the witness stand.

^*
Rivele said he was told that the two assassins to the president’s rear were firing regular bullets, but Sarti, from the grassy knoll, fired (naturally) a frangible bullet. Four bullets were fired. The first bullet was fired from the rear and struck the president in the back, and the second bullet, also fired from the rear, hit Connally. (As we know, the Warren Commission was originally perplexed by whether or not the shot that hit Kennedy went on to hit Connally, but finally concluded that it did—the single-bullet theory. David and Nicoli, however, debunked the single-bullet theory out of hand. How they would know this [i.e., how would even the alleged assassin who fired the bullet that entered Kennedy’s back know it did not go on to strike Connally?] Rivele does not tell the TV audience.) The third bullet, Rivele said, was the fatal head shot that was fired from the grassy knoll, and the fourth bullet, fired from Kennedy’s rear, missed.

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So we know this is a phony story to begin with, but did David even tell it to the Hollywood scriptwriter, Rivele? Someone who should know says he doesn’t believe he did. Jim Lesar, the scholarly head of the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington, D.C., was the lawyer Rivele got to try to prevent David’s extradition back to France. In a last-ditch effort, he almost succeeded. Lesar actually accompanied Rivele on three separate trips to France for Rivele’s interviews of David at La Santé prison, and says that although David and Rivele conversed in French, and Lesar’s French is very limited, it’s his impression that Rivele “inferred” the identity of the three gunmen from what David said, “putting two and two together.”
Even though David had previously said that two of the three killers Rivele names in the movie were innocent, David has supposedly written a letter in which he names all three presidential assassins. It is not known who they are (and therefore whether the two he previously exonerated are among the three) since David’s Parisian lawyer, Henri Juramy, has the letter, and as recently as the fall of 2003, Rivele told Lesar that he hadn’t been able to get Juramy to furnish him with a copy of it. (Telephone interviews of Jim Lesar by author on February 3, 2004, and February 18, 2006; FBI Record 124-10001-10390, March 7, 1988, pp.1–3) Like Rivele, I can’t wait to see who the chosen three are.
Because of David’s earlier exoneration of two of the three killers Rivele named, a French publisher whom Rivele had a contract with to publish his story, withdrew, and Rivele has never found an American publisher for his book. I can’t imagine why. Years later, Rivele got the book published in Spanish by Ediciones B, a small Madrid publishing house. In great despair over the total disintegration of his case over in Europe, Rivele returned to the United States only to find that his wife was divorcing him, in whole or in part because of his madcap adventure, which had brought him to the brink of bankruptcy, and Rivele contemplated suicide. But he made a comeback, co-writing the script for Oliver Stone’s movie
Nixon
, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. (Telephone interview of Jim Lesar by author on February 3, 2004)

^*
However, as to Sarti they found that on the day of the shooting, “he was undergoing serious medical treatment in France.” Whether that was inside or outside of Fort Ha prison in Bordeaux was not stated in the
London Sunday Times
report on the investigation. (
London Sunday Times
, November 24, 1991) The
Manchester Guardian Weekly
reported that on the day of the assassination, Sarti “was apparently on sick leave from his job as a dockwasher, following the loss of an eye” (
Manchester Guardian Weekly
, November 6, 1988,
Le Monde
sect., p.13).

† Though Central Television’s franchise was ultimately not revoked for presenting untruthful broadcasts, producer-director Nigel Turner did not fare so well. Turner “was censured by members of the British Parliament.” And the British regulatory agency, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, directed Central Television to present another broadcast devoted solely to exposing Turner’s misleading show and the lack of ethics he used in producing it. Called a “studio crucifixion” of Turner, the program, which was taped in Washington, D.C., was aired only in Britain on November 16, 1988, and was the first time that the British regulatory agency had ever compelled such an action. (
Manchester Guardian
, December 7, 1988; http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/holland3.htm)

^*
In an earlier, June 13, 1976, article by Meskill in the
Daily News
, he quotes Lorenz as claiming that in the fall of 1960, Frank Sturgis (real name, Frank Angelo Fiorini), one of the Watergate burglars and an alleged CIA operative, gave her two capsules of poisoned powder that she was supposed to put in Castro’s food, but she said that after entering Cuba on her secret mission, the capsules dissolved while concealed in a jar of cold cream in Castro’s room at the Havana Hilton, to which she still had a key from the previous year. In her autobiography, she says one of the two capsules slipped out of her hand and fell into the bidet and she flushed the other one down, realizing, since she still loved Fidel, how “utterly preposterous” it was for her to be there to “kill this man.” She says when Castro later returned to his suite and found her there, he asked her if she had come for him or to kill him (she acknowledged the latter) before they made love. (Lorenz with Schwarz,
Marita
, pp.77, 80–83; 10 HSCA 156) Gaeton Fonzi, an HSCA investigator who was assigned to investigate Lorenz’s claims about the Kennedy assassination, describes her as someone who has always “lived on the edge,” and the dominant characteristics of her life were “change and turmoil.” Because of her penchant for intrigue and strong anti-Castro sentiments, Fonzi believes she has been an informant at times for the FBI, U.S. Customs, and the DEA. (Fonzi,
Last Investigation
, pp.87–88)

† Hemming is a right-wing, ex-Marine soldier of fortune who keeps popping up in assassination literature. Like Sturgis and others, he went to Cuba to help Castro’s rebels overthrow Batista, and ended up trying to overthrow Castro with his own group of fellow adventurers, Interpen (Intercontinental Penetration Forces, which shunned CIA funds and control), when he discovered Castro was pink.

^*
By 1993, fifteen years later, Lorenz had apparently forgotten her earlier lie, and told a new one. In her autobiography she wrote that “the weaponry we carried” in the two cars en route to Dallas “would
only
be used for a
murderous
mission. The rifles were excellent assassination tools for fairly long range…I knew we were [going to Dallas] to kill somebody” (Lorenz with Schwarz,
Marita
, pp.131, 134).

† It is not known what polygraph examination Sturgis was referring to, but three years earlier, when counsel for the Rockefeller Commission asked Sturgis if he were involved in any way in Kennedy’s death, he said, “No, sir,” and then proceeded to offer to take a polygraph examination on his denial. There is no suggestion in the record that the Commission gave Sturgis such a test. (SSCIA 157-10005-10126, Deposition of Sturgis before Rockefeller Commission, April 4, 1975, pp.10, 14–15)

^*
Marchetti also predicted in his article that the CIA, during the HSCA hearings, “may go so far as to ‘admit’ that there were three gunmen shooting at Kennedy.” Where, pray tell, did Marchetti get all this “inside” information? At his deposition in Hunt’s lawsuit against him and Liberty Lobby for libel, he was forced to acknowledge that it came from two sources
outside
the CIA (which, I suppose, is the reliable way to get
inside
information, right?), one of whom was the loony conspiracy theorist A. J. Weberman. (Lane,
Plausible Denial
, p.145)
Six days after the
Spotlight
article, Joseph Trento, a reporter for the Wilmington, Delaware,
Sunday News Journal
, perhaps parroting without attribution the
Spotlight
article, wrote in his paper about the existence of the 1966 memo. When Lane took Trento’s deposition in the
Spotlight
lawsuit on June 28, 1984, Trento said he got his information about the memo from “sources within the agency [CIA] and outside the agency,” but refused to disclose their identity. On cross-examination he claimed he had actually seen the memo and it was initialed by CIA officials James Jesus Angleton and Richard Helms. (Lane,
Plausible Denial
, pp.162–163, 167) Apparently Angleton and Helms, both notorious masters of deceit and secrecy, not only wanted to put the CIA’s cover-up of Hunt’s participation in Kennedy’s murder in writing, but they wanted to make double sure, by their initials, that they got whatever credit they had coming for the cover-up.

^*
There was an earlier trial in 1981, after which the jury returned a verdict of $100,000 compensatory and $550,000 punitive damages in favor of Hunt, but the judgment was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (Case 82-5321).

^*
Conspiracy theorists maintain that Roscoe White was a Dallas police officer on November 22, 1963. Indeed, conspiracy icon Beverly Oliver said that she saw White, in his police uniform, walking away from the grassy knoll after the shooting in Dealey Plaza. But on November 22, 1963, White was only a Dallas police officer in a technical sense. Dallas police records show that although White was
hired
as an apprentice policeman on October 7, 1963, he didn’t even start his police training at the police academy until December 4, 1963, graduating from Class 79 on February 28, 1964, so he would not have been in any Dallas police uniform on November 22, 1963. White resigned from the force on October 7, 1965, exactly two years after he was hired, going to work for Page Drugs in Dallas.

† Roscoe White certainly had the background of someone one would expect to be a top-level CIA operative assigned to murder the president. He entered the U.S. Marine Corps, at the age of twenty-two, on February 19, 1957, and received his honorable discharge as a corporal on December 4, 1962. While in the military, he was trained as an auto mechanic and in artillery ballistic meteorology, and received a Good Conduct medal during his time in the corps. When he was discharged, and before he became a Dallas police officer, he worked in Dallas selling life insurance door to door for the American National Insurance Company and as a part-time agent for Farmers Insurance Company.