great trouble and expense to avoid what it should not avoid and what we cannot permit it to avoid.

If the government collected hundreds of pictures, which is the case, while refusing to get and study other hundreds more, which is also the case, then the photographic evidence is both inadequate and incomplete. I shall in Whitewash III name the photographers whose pictures are not in the government's files and who were not among its witnesses.

If the government called and heard many witnesses to a single point and these witnesses were honestly wrong or perjurers, the number of these witnesses is but a monument to deceit. As Shakespeare said in All's Well That Ends Well, Act IV:

' Tis not the many oaths that make the truth, But the plain single vow that is vow'd true.

And if, when a President is assassinated, there remains after the official investigation a single unanswered question within the capacity of man to answer -- or worse, an unasked question -- neither the President nor the institution is safe.

With this assassination there were more unanswered questions at the end of the investigation than existed when it began. Among these is the question of the involvement of Cuban refugees, in New Orleans, Dallas, Miami and elsewhere.

So the local investigation in New Orleans, involving a presumed violation of local law, can be regarded as but a part of what we must yet do and expect to do and face before we recapture the national honor and the respect of the rest of the world. It is important, if it is only a beginning. But it is and can be no more than a beginning.

Were any of this book to be printed in invisible ink, when the heat of exposure strikes it, the initials "CIA" would appear.

Everything Oswald did in New Orleans in 1963 is

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consistent only with the establishment of what in the spy trade is called a "cover." For whom and why he did these things may be a question. That he did them is not. Those strange acts of his, such as guaranteeing he would be caught by the right-wing Cubans with whom he had an open link while distributing pro-Castro literature of his own manufacture, cannot be dismissed as insanity; nor can his careful exploitation of this incident to get an extensive press, armed with which he went to Mexico and sought admission to Cuba as a "friend" of Castro. It is not accidental that apologists for the government persist in retailing the falsehood that he represented the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." His "Fair Play" committee had but one member -- Lee Harvey Oswald. He represented no one but himself and principals not yet positively identified. The government knows this is true, knows that he paid for the printing of his handbills, who did the printing and where and for how much.

Carefully expunged from the Report and possibly kept from the knowledge of the members of the Commission is the fact that among those other Americans who played roles in this bizarre story were some engaged in training Cubans, within the United States, for an invasion of Cuba.. It is no secret that this function was that of the CIA. These men continued for months in illegal activities that were unimpeded. They persisted in illegalities that were counter to declared national policy. Such things are neither done nor tolerated by accident.

Violation of national policy and law are not exceptional in the history of the CIA as it seeks to wield its share of the great power of our newly so powerful country that has not, as did other great powers before it, slowly grown into the use of power.

Consistent with this is the obfuscation of the still existing question of the nature of Oswald's relationship with the government. It is not enough for the Commis-

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sion to claim it could not prove a negative. It rea11y sought to prove nothing, only to brush this question aside.

Congressman Gerald Ford, a member of the Commission, put his name to a book on its work entitled Portrait of the Assassin. For this, like others who write in support of the account of the government and unlike those who write in opposition to it, he was not labeled a "literary scavenger."

His opening chapter is called "The Commission Gets Its First Shock." The first paragraph reads:

No sooner had the Commission investigating President Kennedy's assassination assembled its staff and tentatively outlined methods of operation than it was plunged into an astounding problem On Wednesday, January 22, the members of the Commission were hurriedly called into emergency session by the chairman. Mr. J. Lee Rankin, newly appointed general Council for the Commission, had received a telephone call from Texas. The caller was Mr. Waggoner Carr, the Attorney General of Texas. The information was that the FBI had an "undercover agent; and that that agent was none other than Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President Kennedy!

Several pages later he quotes Commission General Counsel (read "boss") J. Lee Rankin, former Solicitor General of the United States, as telling the members of the Commission:

"We do have a dirty rumor that is very bad for the Commission, the problem and it is very damaging to the agencies that are involved in it and it must be wiped out insofar as it is possible to do so by this Commission."

In answer to this still unanswered question the Commission accepted the denials of the heads of the various government investigative agencies.

Among those members of the Fort Worth-Dallas Russian community who sought to help Marina Oswald is Mrs. Anna Meller. When she saw Communist literature in the Oswald home, she told her husband who in turn called the FBI.

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Mrs. Meller was a witness before the Commission in Dallas. Five-sixths of the hearings were what amounted to back-room proceedings, without Commissioners and with only a Commission lawyer and stenographer and the witness present. In this case there was an exception, revealed in the effusive greeting by Assistant Counsel Wesley J. Liebeler. At 9 a.m. the morning of March 25,1964, in the office of the United States Attorney, Room 301 Post Office Building, Bryan and Ervay Streets, in Dallas, Liebeler exclaimed, "Come in, Mr. and Mrs. Meller, and sit down" (8H379). Thus we know that George Meller accompanied his wife and was present in the hearing room.

Not a single question was asked of George Meller. He is not listed as a Commission witness (R492). Nor was the single most pertinent question asked of Mrs. Meller, although Liebeler led her right up to it on a number of occasions.

Liebeler knew or should have known the answer to the question he should have asked, "What did the FBI say?"

Of course, the FBI could have said, "That's none of our business." They also could have said that with Oswald's defection from his defection and his unimpaired United States citizenship, what he did was not their concern.

They did not, and Liebeler knew they did not or he did not do his job and was not competent to do it.

Five weeks before this hearing a report was sent to Captain W. P. Gannaway head of the Special Service Bureau of the Dallas Police Department. It was signed by Detectives F. A. Hellinghausen and P. M. Parks. Under date of February 17, 1964, the detectives recount their interrogation of George Meller and his story of the call to the FBI Meller told them "he checked with the FBI and they told him that Oswald was all right."

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Liebeler had to try very hard to miss this one. This report is stamped "indexed." But as he "missed" other important evidence and other important questions in other parts of the inquiry, so Liebeler did in this case also.

So we still have a "dirty rumor," more imperative than before because of its avoidance and very much in point in the story of "Oswald in New Orleans." And we have another sample of the questions left by the Commission and of the nature of its investigation.

There are other things that relate to this chapter of the assassination story that are suppressed in the Report. Marina told the Secret Service that she and her late husband believed the FBI got him fired from every job as soon as they found out where he was employed. For this reason she at first refused to be interviewed by the FBI, as is shown by the transcript quoted above and a number of other documents to be printed in Whitewash 111. Whether or not this Oswald opinion is valid, it coincides with fact. Each time the FBI revealed an interest in Oswald, he lost whatever job he then had.

One of the obvious effects of this regular unemployment was to make him dependent upon other sources of income that might be available to him. As an informant or other contact of a government agency or of the only too numerous groups financed, directed and controlled by the government, especially the CIA, he would have been compensated.

There is no question about Oswald's connection with ` Cuban refugee groups. There may be a question of the character of the connection, but not of the fact of it. And there is not now and never has been any question of the relationship between the CIA and these refugee groups. The Cubans are the mendicants, the creatures of the CIA. This, too, is amply documented elsewhere.

This is the introduction from which we go into the account of "Oswald in New Orleans." As with all my

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other work in this field, the source material is wherever possible, entirely official. It is the information of the Commission, from their printed evidence or files, or readily available to it.

And it is opposed to their conclusions.

Here also I would like to acknowledge the indebtedness all authors have to others, too often, as in this case, too numerous to mention. Most of all I would like to thank the hundreds of people entirely unknown to me who have taken so many collective hours to write and phone the encouragement without which this most disagreeable work a writer can undertake would have been more uncongenial. Without their expressed approval, those many wearisome hours would have been more wearying.

It is important for a writer to know there are those who read and approve his work. In this case, these expressions mean more to me, for they bespeak the dedication of so many wonderful people to the beliefs and sanctity of our institutions.

Hyattstown, Maryland

April 18, 1967

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1. THE CAPTAIN AND THE GENERAL AND THE CUBANS

Wesley J. Liebeler, now professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles and one of the two most active and most important of the assistant counsel on the Commission's staff, conducted a major part of this investigation for the Commission and left big holes in it. This is not surprising, from his record of incomplete and inconclusive interrogations, interrogations in which he failed to ask the obvious questions and failed to introduce the most obvious evidence.

The deposition of slightly more than four pages that he took from Frederick S. O'Sullivan in the Old Civil Courts Building at Royal and Conti Streets in New Orleans, for some inexplicable reason is indicated as having been taken on two days, April 7 and 8, 1964. Yet Liebeler was a veritable whirlwind deposition taker in Dallas (Whitewash II, Part 3), eliciting more than twice this much testimony in but ten minutes.

O'Sullivan, then a New Orleans vice squad detective, had been Oswald's classmate in Beauregard Junior High School. They had been interested in the Civil Air Patrol together. Ferrie, the man arrested in New Orleans on November 25, 1963, as a suspect somehow involved in the assassination, had been the leader of each of the two New Orleans CAP wings.

In asking O'Sullivan about Ferrie (8H30), there was this exchange:

Mr. Liebeler: Am I correct in understanding that there has been publicity here in the New Orleans area concerning a possible relationship between Oswald and Ferrie?

Mr. O'Sullivan: Yes, sir; I believe Captain Ferrie was arrested. I am sure he was arrested, and I believe it was in connection with this Oswald situation. He was booked at the first district station. I don't know just what he was charged with, I believe just 107 under investigation of whatever it was, I don't know.

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There Liebeler's and all official interest in the Ferrie arrest ceased.

Likewise, although O'Sullivan informed Liebeler that the records of the Civil Air Patrol for the period when Oswald may have been a member still existed (8H30) and gave the name of their custodian, Robert Boylston, Liebeler did not call Boylston as a witness. Nor did he obtain the files, available under subpoena if not voluntarily. Lt. Paul Dwyer, of the New Orleans police, who went with O'Sullivan to examine Ferrie's plane, also was not called as a witness. The Report says Oswald "was briefly a member of the Civil Air Patrol" (R679).

Liebeler is an especially important man in the story of "Oswald in New Orleans," for he took depositions from a large number of people who, directly and indirectly, play significant roles, including Mrs. Sylvia Odio, Dean Andrews, Orest and Ruperto Pena, Eoaristo Rodriguez, FBI Agents John Lester Quigley and James P. Hosty, Jr., William E. Wulf, Carlos Bringuier, Lt. Francis L. Martello, Dial Ryder, Charles W. Greener, Gertrude Hunter, Edith Whitworth, Marina Oswald, Warren Reynolds, and General Edwin A. Walker.

General Walker's testimony is not unrelated to the account of the involvement of refugee Cubans and their organizations in the assassination. Liebeler took the deposition from the radical-right leader whose campaign to indoctrinate U.S. soldiers in Germany with the propaganda of the radical right led to an international scandal and his resignation from the Army. Liebeler acted as though they were old buddies.

This one deposition took more time than all of Liebeler's interrogations of the photographic witnesses whose pictures were the Commission's most important tangible evidence of the assassination (Whitewash 11 pp.l28ff).

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Yet Liebeler's interrogation of Walker is entirely superficial and almost jovial omitting those things concerned with the possibility of a right-wing conspiracy. Instead, Liebeler restricted himself largely to questions about whether Oswald had taken a potshot at Walker. The Commission, on the basis of no real evidence whatsoever, decided Oswald had, thus was violence-prone. Not even Walker believed it. Why this required 26 pages and more than three hours perhaps Liebeler can explain, for this is 12 times the time he devoted to James W. Altgens, who took the most important single picture of the assassination.

Whereas the Commission did not allow Mrs. Arnold Rowland to correct the transcript of her testimony to make it accurate (Whitewash 11 "Eyes So Blind"), Liebeler opened Walker's testimony with the statement that Walker and his attorney "will be given an opportunity to make whatever changes in the testimony may be necessary, so that the transcript reflects accurately what happened here today" (11H404). But earlier that same morning, 14 pages ahead in the printed volume, when Mrs. Ruth Paine pointed out an error in the page proofs of her earlier testimony (3H45), Liebeler promised, "I will correct the page proofs" (11H390), but he didn't.

While all the typed transcripts were still "TOP SECRET" three years after the assassination, Liebeler promised that "a copy of the transcript will be made available to General Walker" through the stenographer. It therefore is less than surprising that Liebeler offered this description of his allegedly vigorous, searching examination of the right-wing extremist general, " . . . this is almost a friendly, if I may say so session . . ." (11H415).

It was so friendly that Liebeler himself testified to other incorrect things, consistent with the general's politics, as with Oswald's membership in the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Oswald's was, in fact, an

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unaffiliated and entirely phony one-man, self-designated non-organization. Oswald's selection of the name of the national group seems to have been designed for no good purpose but for purposes consistent with the establishment of what in intelligence is known as a "cover," a fact that, from the record, entirely escaped the Commission and its assistant counsel.

In what amounts to a reversal of functions, Liebeler offered this "testimony":

"The fact that Oswald may have been a member of this organization which he was, of course, is a fact that can be viewed from many different ways." (11H420)

It was so friendly that Liebeler never mentioned or asked about one name above all that; from the evidence, he should have asked with the most persistent and penetrating questions of which he, as a professor of law, should have been capable. Not once did Liebeler mention the names, Colonel Caster, Colonel Castor, or Colonel Castorr. Oswald was known to have had connections with Cuban refugee groups. The FBI and Secret Service knew of the interest in these groups, described as political, of a Colonel Caster or Castor, whose full name and address they never sought from even the phone book and of whose activities the available record indicates a studious official avoidance. The existence of no colonel named Caster or Castor in Dallas at that time is revealed by the telephone book, as is also the existence of a Colonel L. Robert Castorr who is known to have been a friend of the general's and to whom we shall return.

As he did in other cases, such as where the Commission's files contained documentary evidence that 0swald was "all right" to the FBI before the assassination, Liebeler edged up to the point several times without touching on it. For example (11H425):

Mr. Liebeler: Do you recall speaking -- pardon me, not speaking, but

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going to any meetings of anti-Castro Cuban groups during the month of October 1963?

General Walker: During what month?

Mr. Liebeler: October.

General Walker: I don't remember a date of attendance (sic).

Then Walker acknowledged that he had attended a meeting of what apparently was the "DRE," or the "Student Revolutionary Council." Liebeler asked. "They came from Miami?" and Walker replied, "I believe they came from Miami."

Liebeler's only interest was in whether Walker met Oswald there; the general said he had not.

This group -- only one of the many Cuban refugee groups, and Liebeler asked not a single question about any other, including similarly named ones -- is, as we shall see, that of a former Oswald New Orleans contact, Carlos Bringuier. It is Bringuier who fought with him in August 1963 and gave Oswald the public image and newspaper clippings he used in Mexico City in an unsuccessful effort to pose as a friend of Castro and gain entrance into Cuba.

Aside from the numerous other groups and the possible, if not probable, connection Walker had with them, including by political interest and through the unidentified colonel, there is other remarkable concord between this too limited questioning by Liebeler and the Commission's knowledge, both its public record and its files. The characters in the story of "The False Oswald" were in Dallas at that time and they were from Miami near where they were engaged in training Cubans for an invasion of Cuba, save for one, who was a trainee. In this Liebeler had no interest, here or elsewhere in his relatively lengthy questioning of the radical-right general!

He did not even ask if Walker had any relations of any kind, directly or indirectly, with these Cuban groups with which the Commission's own evidence showed the general did have connections.

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Liebeler had no interest in the strong suggestion made by the general of Cuban involvement in the shooting of Warren Reynolds, one of the very few witnesses to the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit who did not immediately identify the man leaving the scene of the crime as Oswald. Walker volunteered of the Reynolds shooting that "a Latin type was seen running away" (11H418).

What can be said for Liebeler is that he inconsistent. With the witnesses he should have asked about the Dallas police document that quoted the FBI as saying of 0swald before the assassination that he was "all right." In his hearing room, Liebeler ignored that fact and the document. With Walker in front of him, Liebeler asked him not a single question -- in all three hours of largely pointless "friendly" questioning -- about his own relations with the Cuban groups so obviously involved in the assassination, either direct relations or through others, like his friend the Colonel or members of his own staff, whose composition Liebeler also failed to ask.

Not unrelated is the testimony of Warren Reynolds, the used car salesman who was shot through the head after he had not identified Oswald as the killer of Officer Tippit. Reynolds is one of a number of witnesses to the departure -- it can hard1y be called "flight" -- of the man who kil1ed the policeman. strange things have befallen others, as set forth in Penn Jones's book Forgive My Grief.

These excerpts from Reynolds's testimony bear on his relationship with Genera1 Walker, on the fact of physica1 violence against an eyewitness who was not in accord with the official account, a subtlety that from the record seems to have escaped Liebeler, and the description of Reynolds's assailant:

Mr. Liebeler: Have you considered, when you thought about this problem, that there are other people that actually went down to the police station and viewed Oswald in line-ups and have testified in

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Washington before this Commission, and received international publicity in connection with the identification of Oswald as the murderer of Tippet and that so far at any rate, they have not been attacked in any way such as you were?

Mr. Reynolds: Yes, I have.

Mr. Liebeler: Can you suggest to me why you were picked out to be shot for the reason and not these other people?

Mr. Reynolds: The ones that I know, I am the only aggressor In the whole bunch. I am the only one that actually did something more than just look. I actually did something.

Mr. Liebeler: But that is the only distinction you can see between yourself and those other people?

Mr. Reynolds: That's right.

Mr. Liebeler: Have you discussed this question of the possible relationship between your shooting and the assassination, with General Walker?

Mr Reynolds: Yes, I have.

Mr Liebeler: What did you say to him and what did he say to you about the matter, if you remember,

Mr. Reynolds: Oh, I said to him basically the same thing that I have said to you, and he said it could be and he thinks that it's strange that I was shot. I think anybody would think it strange. But of course, If you have ever talked to him, be wouldn't say yes or no.

Mr. Liebeler: Does General Walker know of any facts, so far as you know, that would relate your shooting to the assassination?

Mr. Reynolds: No.

Mr. Liebeler: He has never expressed a firm opinion to you one way or the other as to whether there was in fact, any connection between the two, has he?

Mr. Reynolds: Let me just let him answer that when be talks to you.

Mr. Liebeler: Did you know that be is going to talk to us?

Mr. Reynolds: Yes, I do.

Mr. Liebeler: How do you know that?

Mr. Reynolds: I talked to him.

Mr. Liebeler: Talked to him since we have invited him to come over and talk to us?

Mr. Reynolds: Yes.

Mr. Liebeler: When is the last time you talked to General Walker7

Mr. Reynolds: Around noon today.

Mr. Liebeler: Talked to him on the telephone? Or in person?

Mr. Reynolds: Telephone; yes.

Mr. Liebeler: Did you discuss with him your appearance before the Commission here?

Mr. Reynolds: Yea

Mr. Liebeler: Would you tell us the general subject of your conversation?

Mr. Reynolds: I Just don't want to answer that, really.

Mr. Liebeler: Preceding your conversation at noon today, when was the last time you talked to him before that, do you remember, approximately?

Mr. Reynolds: About a week ago. Maybe 2 weeks.

Mr. Liebeler: How many times have you talked to him about this question altogether?

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Mr. Reynolds: I have no idea five or six.

Mr. Liebeler: Now, in fact, General Walker sent a telegram to the Commission suggesting that we take your testimony, did he not?

Mr. Liebeler: You knew that he did? Did he tell you that?

Mr. Reynolds: Yes. May I go off the record?

Mr. Liebeler: Sure. (11H440-1)

Mr. Reynolds: I would like to say something that might be important. About 3 weeks after I got out of the hospital, which would be around the 20th of February, my little 10-year-old daughter -- somebody tried to pick her up, tried to get her in a car.

Now, again, whether that has any connection or not, I don't know, but it did happen, and it never had happened before nor after. But they even offered her money. She was smart enough to run and get away (11H441-2)

Mr. Liebeler: When did you see the man run off?

Mr. Reynolds: When I ran upstairs and ran around to the right to get this towel, and he came up out of the basement I saw him and two more people saw him.

Mr. Liebeler: You then got the towel. Did you call the police?

Mr. Reynolds: I was able to call the police. Then I laid down just for a few minutes and the ambulance got there and carried me to the hospital, and by some miracle, I survived, very much a miracle. The police got the call at 9:l9 p.m. in the evening of January 23.

Mr Liebeler: Now were you able to identify the individual who ran out of the basement?

Mr. Reynolds: No.

Mr. Liebeler: Do you have any idea who it was?

Mr. Reynolds: No.

Mr. Liebeler: What kind of fellow did he look like? Did you get a physical description of him?

Mr. Reynolds: No; it was just a blur to me. It was just a blur; but the people that saw him said he was around 5 foot 4, weight around 130 or 140 pounds, and was either Spanish or Cuban or Indian or something like that; not Negro.

Mr. Liebeler: He was not a Negro, but he was of a foreign extraction or foreign appearing, or dark colored?

Mr. Reynolds: Yes, dark colored, the way they described him. (11H437-8)

Reynolds described a Latin. He specifically said Cuban. Liebeler changed this to omit any reference to Latin or Cuban identification, substituting what is much less specific, "of foreign extraction or foreign appearing." What purpose this served consistent with an honest and thorough investigation he alone can explain. But this is only part of what Wesley Liebeler should explain.

Explanations are not forthcoming from him. Instead,

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we get charges, often slanders, against those who dare say the government has presented less than the truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. He usually commands a good press and generous attention. Most recently he has become the fox hired to guard the chicken house. He has actually bamboozled the University of California into sponsoring his "investigation" of the Warren Report, for he now says it is time for "both sides" to be heard, as though this is not what the taxpayers hired him and the rest of the staff to do, as though this is not what was expected of and promised in the Report.

Liebeler is happiest when he has no opposition. What he did as a member of the Commission staff he did and was able to do only because there was no opposing counsel and no press present to report the shortcomings of his performance. While he proclaims his own impartiality, something not substantiated by his own record, and has the taxpayers of California subsidizing his own self-justification (an "educational frill" Governor Ronald Reagan has not deemed necessary to make part of his "economy" campaign) with students he will be grading "investigating" him, he has a remarkable unwillingness to debate me on his performance or the record of the Commission of whose work he represents such an important part. He has been silent in answer to the exposure of his record in my earlier books on this subject, so silent, in fact, he has yet to pay his bill -- after nine months.

He has received a number of invitations from the electronic media to confront me and always manages not to accept or to seem to accept without ever showing up. There were four such invitations in two weeks in December 1966. It became so ridiculous that when I reached his home town of Los Angeles, where I expected to find him opposing me in a TV studio for a Sunday afternoon taping, he suddenly found the great need, from what was announced, to be working in the

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National Archives in Washington on that day, a day on which the Archives Building is closed. When there is possibility of radio or television confrontation, Liebeler usually has the width of the continent between us.

So Liebeler has never been asked questions about his handling of the evidence relating to the involvement of . the Cubans in the assassination.

Liebeler first attracted my attention during my initial researches in the Commission's evidence. He was one of the most active members of the staff. While he is not generally credited with it, I believe he also managed to be the lawyer who conducted the key interrogations.

In terms of the Commission's erroneous doctrine, that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone and unassisted assassin, Liebeler's importance is less than this. But in terms of who made the whitewash possible and who interrogated most of the witnesses from whom evidence could have come leading to a solution of the crime, I believe no one is more important than the vocal professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Usually Arlen Specter, now District Attorney of Philadelphia, is credited with being the most important member of the Commission's legal staff. Specter's work was in the pivotal areas of the autopsy and medical evidence and the reconstruction of the crime.

On a number of occasions I was asked to confront Arlen Specter. There were three radio and two television invitations from his own city, Philadelphia, and two that I recall from the Educational TV network or its eastern affiliate. In each case I accepted and in each case explained that, while I was aware of the beneficial influence of such exposure on the sale of Whitewash, I also wanted the media representative to know that I believed Specter should not be singled out from the staff, as the chairman should not from the members of the Commission, to be held responsible for the

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deficiencies of all. I said others were as much responsible. Above all of the staff, I had Wesley Liebeler in mind.

As Liebeler later accepted none of the invitations, so Specter then declined them. As Liebeler has been anxious to have radio and television programs to himself, where he does not have to face one intimately aware of the details of the Commission's work and Report, and to be interviewed alone by the press, so also has Specter, whose private press has run up to 15 overly friendly and entirely uncritical pages of U.S. News and World Report dignified with a fiction for a large cover headline: "Truth About Kennedy Assassination."

The two of them, in my opinion, Liebeler and Specter, each a workhorse, are the most important members of the staff. Each, then, was the most likely to be singled out for criticism when, as was inevitable, the false Report started to fall apart.

Liebeler was either less scrupulous or more alert, for he early took the initiative in pinning the rap on Specter. For this purpose he used Edward J. Epstein, who wrote a slight book that, despite contrary puffery, does not dispute the basic conclusions of the Report. Liebeler became Epstein's prime source of information. Epstein almost entirely ignored the Commission's evidence, of which he has scant knowledge, and instead wrote a book based on interviews. Liebeler opened his files to Epstein, including classified material. Although one might wonder what Liebeler was doing with classified government files in his possession, no one else has questioned it.

There is no doubt of the result. In Epstein's book Liebeler is the legal boy with the finger in the dike; the major villains are Chairman Earl Warren, Arlen Specter and General Counsel J. Lee Rankin.

Thus, major attention has been diverted from Liebeler's own record.

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But the more I got into the testimony, the more I realized that it is Liebeler who, more than any other, failed to ask the next obvious question of witnesses, Liebeler more than any other who failed to do what the requirement of the law and the less exacting, demands of special commission did require. With General Walker, who had his own Cuban connections, Liebeler's interrogation of the right-wing general became "friendliest" when he briefly skirted on the Cuban issue:

Mr. Liebeler: Do you recall speaking -- pardon me, not speaking, but going to any meetings of anti-Castro Cuban groups during the month of October 1963?

General Walker: During what month?

Mr. Liebeler: October.

General Walker: I don't remember a date of attendance.

Mr. Liebeler: Isn't it a fact that there were some meetings here in Dallas sponsored by an organization known as DRE, which is a revolutionary group that is opposed to Fidel Castro? Do you remember that?

General Walker: What does DRE stand for?

Mr.. Liebeler: It is the initials of a lot of Spanish words which stands for the Student Revolutionary Council. It is an anti Castro organization.

General Walker: What does DRE stand for? How would they have advertised themselves?

Mr. Liebeler: I think it is probably DRE.

General Walker: Meaning what?

Mr. Liebeler: It is Spanish words I am not familiar with.

General Walker: Well, there is a student directorate group, which I remember they call themselves, and that is the way they identified themselves. I attended a meeting sometime and listened to some speakers.

Mr. Liebeler: They came from Miami?

General Walker: I believe they came from Miami.

Mr. Liebeler: And you contributed $s to the organization that night?

General Walker: I believe I did.

Mr. Liebeler: Did you see Lee Harvey Oswald at that meeting?

General Walker: No, I did not. (11H425)

Here Liebeler discloses knowledge of more than he asks about; his questions are, rather, answers. He knew all about it, although there is no printed evidence I have seen to so reveal. And if Walker did not see Oswald at the meeting, did nothing else happen? Who were the speakers ? Liebeler did not care and did not ask.

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Nor was Liebeler, the college professor, unwilling to show a common touch. His reply to Walker's inquiry, "What does DRE stand for?" reveals this.

Note also Liebeler's indifference about the identity of the men who "came from Miami." This is exactly where those men who figure in the story of The False Oswald came from, and they were in Dallas at about that time. Liebeler saw to it that the exact date is not in the record. "During the month of October is all he says, yet he knew enough about this meeting to tell the general the size of his contribution. The Commission's files reveal more, as I have every reason to presume those of the New Orleans District Attorney now do.

The Commission's record shows less about this meeting than it might have, certainly much less than it should have, especially with the connections of the mysterious Colonel Caster -- Castor -- Castorr, Walker's friend and associate who was keeping the right-wing Cubans in Dallas stirred up. The secret documents reveal less than they should of this meeting. In so doing, they also disclose that what is missing in the secret files is who the speakers were and who attended the meetings. Liebeler reveals the Commission knew. He knew how much Walker had contributed. The reports I have, both written the same day, December 19, 1963, by FBI Agent Hosty, the "Oswald" expert, disclose that a list of those present was prepared and who has it. That list is not attached. How and under what conditions this choice meeting room was made available, especially by whom, might also be interesting. The reports do not show this or any desire to learn this or any of the other obvious things that should have been inquired into.

These reports are from File 205, pages 646 and 647. The first reads:

EDWIN L. STEIG, 713 Winifred Street, Garland, Texas, advised he attended a meeting of the Student Directorate of Cuba held on a Sunday evening at 8:00 p.m. some time during the month of October, 1963. There

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were about 75 persons present at the meeting which was held at the First Federal Savings and Loan Association Conference Room in the North Lake Shopping Village in Dallas, Texas. Mr. STEIG stated that he sat in the back of the room and listened to several speakers who talked about the situation in Cuba. STEIG stated that another individual sat in the back of this room who he believes is identical with LEE HARVEY OSWALD. This individual spoke to no one but merely listened and then left. Mr. STEIG stated that most of the persons present signed a guest roster which was taken by a Miss SARAH CASTILLO who held some position with the Student Directorate of Cuba.

The second reads:

Miss SARAH CASTILLO, 2177 Valley Ridge Drive, Dallas, Texas advised she at one time was secretary for the Student Directorate of Cuba and on Sunday, October 13, 1963 at 8:00 p.m. her organization held a meeting in the assembly room at the First Federal Savings and Loan Association building in North Lake Shopping Village, Dallas, Texas.

Miss CASTILLO stated among visitors present was former General EDWIN A. WALKER. Miss CASTILLO stated she does not recall LEE HARVEY OSWALD being present at this meeting but she did not observe all of the visitors. Miss CASTILLO stated that most of the persons present signed a guest roster which has been forwarded to Miss ANNA DIAZ-SILVEIRA who is with the Cuban Student Directorate, whose address is Post Office Box 613, Miami 45, Florida..

How many more strange "coincidences" can there be in this case? Can it be just coincidence when these men so integral to it, these Americans training Cubans in Florida for an invasion of Cuba, these men two of whom were arrested in Dallas October 17 and "sprung" without trial right before the assassination, these men so long avoided by all the investigative agencies of government and not sought until after the Report was done, these men one of whom was likely The False Oswald and hence involved in the assassination, were the ones General Walker wanted to hear and whose names Wesley Liebeler did not want to hear? He never asked their names, nor did he offer the names for the record, whether or not the general knew their names. If the government did not know -- and I believe it did -- it would have had no problem at all learning the names.

That these names are not in the record means simply that Liebeler did not want them there. He can say

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why -- or that he is "sloppy," the new defense of the Commission's apologists and a fair paraphrase of some of Liebeler's comment, relating to others.

Now if there is only a single member of the Commission staff who knew or should have known what "DRE" stands for, that single man is Wesley Liebeler. Prior to this July 23 "interrogation" of General Walker, Liebeler interrogated Carlos Bringuier, head of the DRE in New Orleans. This was two and a half months earlier. With the indefiniteness that characterizes so much of the identification of the testimony, Volume 10 gives the date as "April 7-8, 1964" (10H32). If it was both days, the testimony was edited to make it appear as though all the testimony was continuous. If it was one day, Liebeler, at least, should have known, whether or not the stenographer or editor did.

When Bringuier was head of the DRE in New Orleans, what is true of the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" of Oswald's manufacture was also true of it: It was a one-man outfit -- Bringuier. George Lardner, Jr., writing in the Washington Post of Thursday, February 23,1967, revealed that:

On Monday, February 20, 1967, Ferrie met with Carlos Bringuier. And Bringuier, according to Lardner, "went on the speaking circuit."

The time of this tour is indicated in J. Edgar Hoover's May 26, 1964, letter to Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin (26H427), in which he reports, "Carlos Bringuier has been away from New Orleans on an extended speaking tour." This was after Bringuier's testimony.

An LP recording of what is billed as the "actual debate" between Bringuier and Oswald in New Orleans on August 21, 1963, complete with a "dynamic documentary by Dr. Hargis," is sold by Key Records.

In passing, it is perhaps worth noting Bringuier's description of this fight (10H38):

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