Chapter 11

The Catch-all Wrap-up

Fully prepared by his Ph.D. in history, Brown rewrites the U.S. Constitution (page 275). He notes that Albert Alan Surrey, an extreme right-winger in Dallas, "invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify thirty-one times." Brown says that it was wrong for the Commission to permit that because he was not "a major suspect."

What Surrey actually did was refuse to answer thirty-one specific questions. He did not refuse to testify. His testimony is, and Brown reports, in Volume V beginning on page 420.

The U.S. Constitution does not limit the rights of all under the Fifth Amendment, certainly not to murder cases.

When Brown and his wife visited me, he was quite pleased with and proud of what he regarded as something important and valuable he had done. He had actually counted the questions he says were asked by the Commission (page 276). With his usually scholarly devotion to precision and detail he does not say whether those "109,930 questions" are all of that asked in the fifteen volumes of testimony as printed or whether "The Warren Commission" itself asked those questions. The likelihood is that the members themselves asked enormously fewer questions and that Brown's total consists mostly of questions asked by their counsels and in depositions at which no member was present.

What point was there in Brown doing all that work, what value it has after he did it, was not clear to me when he boasted of it and it is even less clear in seeing that when, in his book he had a chance to give it some meaning, he says not a word more about it's intended value.

What is clear, as we see above and throughout, there is little on which Brown could have spent that time that would not have been more useful and that if he had spent that time on almost anything else he could have made less of a spectacle of himself than he does in this book.

As always, supremely confident that he knows all there is to know about everything, he next displays the most scholarly ignorance about how investigations are conducted. He sees them as akin to writing novels where all is just made up.

His very next sentence, his first words after reporting that "The Warren Commission asked 109,930 questions . . ." is: "It is a clear indication of the uselessness of the Commission's work that they were "created" on November 29, 1963, but heard no witnesses for sixty-six days." He then seeks to ridicule this, writing:

A political murder is committed in a major American city in 1995; a spokesperson for the investigating authorities steps before a bank of microphones and announces, "We plan to begin a thorough investigation sixty-six days from now." The thesis is ludicrous . . ." (page 277).

Brown, despite his limited control over his arrogance and his lack of control over his ego, reflects his ignorance and stupidity about how investigations are conducted. Again he provokes belief that he was never an FBI agent as he told me he had been.

All investigations intending to be honest and complete require preparation. The time required for that preparation varies with the complexity of the matter being investigated, the nature of the investigation at hand and the number of people who will handle the information before the first taking of any testimony can be justified.

In the end the Commission's files were about two hundred cubic feet. Of course not nearly that volume was on hand in the earliest days of the Commission's life. It did take those who did the planning time to decide, after believing themselves they had informed themselves enough, what would be included in the investigation and what, as of then, they believed they did and did not need. As Brown is aware, the Commission then divided its work into six areas and to each area it assigned staff. To begin with the staff of each had first to familiarize itself with the information on hand, then mostly the FBI and Secret Service documents. It then had to try to decide what further information it needed. And it then had to ask the FBI to try to obtain the information believed to be lacking. After getting and mastering that area, the staff had to decide whether there remained voids that had to be filled if possible. Only when it believed that the information in hand was adequate for questioning those to be asked about it was the staff, with or with out member participation, in a position to prepare the questions to be asked of the witness. And there were almost five hundred of them who in the end were questioned.

Only a dimwit can believe that a soon as an investigative body is appointed it can question right away. But then only a dimwit can proclaim that Arcacha is an important witness and not have a single word he can say about Arcacha and suggest not a single question to be asked of him.

If an investigation of any magnitude, leave alone any complexity, begins to take testimony under oath in fewer than sixty-six days, questions about the seriousness of the inquiry are and should be created.

This is true whether the investigation is a diligent and intendedly genuine one or one that is intended to be a whitewash. The investigative body had to have command of all the available facts.

Sixty years ago I did that kind of work professionally and unlike Brown I know the great amount of time, effort and thought that is required. I can remember a number of occasions in that work when for as much as five days at a time I did not get to bed. This is not the norm, of course, but it also is in some inquiries required.

The questioner must know much more than the questions required. Preparation also requires being prepared to perceive lines of questioning that cannot be anticipated to begin with and then to be able to ask those questions and have a pretty good idea of what the answers should be. There is also the need to be well enough informed to be able to perceive incompleteness of dishonesty in responses.

But a man whose ignorance of what is of value in examining an investigation is reflected by counting the number of questions asked and following that with the non sequitur quoted above; or who believed that a useful insight into the investigation is obtained by duplicating the list of witnesses and giving his characterization of the kind of testimony each gave and about which principal (Kennedy, Oswald, Tippit or Ruby) that testimony was given without; even after all that enormous waste of time, understanding that what was important was the nature of the evidence taken and its relationship to the crime; can not recognize the stupidity as well as the unfairness of his criticism of the time between the appointment of the Commission and its first taking of testimony.

Even then his lists are not in alphabetical order!

Aside from the meaninglessness of his determination of the nature of the testimony in any serious examination, what is important in evaluating an investigation is when what witnesses were questioned. With the importance of the Zapruder amateur movie in the Commission's work, Zapruder was not deposed until the month after the Commission had originally planned to have filed its Report! That is true of many of the Dallas witnesses, including the third man wounded in the shooting, Jim Tague.

Brown's complete befuddlement about what an investigation is and requires and what is of value in investigating it is reflected by his giving in his stupid table of his the number of questions asked of each witness without any indication of what element of the evidence was the subject of that inquiry.

Take the first page, 351, of that, those many pages wasted on all that gobbledygook, and the last four witnesses on this page. The last two are Robert Shaw and Charles Gregory. Shaw was asked 293 questions and Gregory 194. There can be no significance in the number of questions asked them. The "type" of their testimony in Brown's representation of his understanding of what is important is "JFK" after each. But that each is a doctor who gave medical evidence has no importance in any research or evaluation? And how in the world can either the character of the investigation or the value or importance of the testimony be indicated by the number of questions asked?

The two above them are Paul Stombaugh and James Cadigan. The questions asked them are 379 and 361 respectively. What is not indicated is that they were FBI lab agents and that each was a hair and fibers expert who testified in those areas of the evidence.

Some of the most important evidence can be covered with relatively few questions while investigative befuddlement requires a great number of questions that have little or no actual meaning.

The ignorance so enormous with which Brown began and represents himself as both an expert and one qualified to lay accusations and condemnations left and right are illustrated by this zany re-listing of the witnesses, and then not even in alphabetical order, or by his criticism of the time it took before the Commission questioned its first witness. He finds it "ludicrous" that beginning with no staff and not a piece of paper the Commission took two months to take its first testimony. What is ludicrous is this book and its author.

In this chapter Brown regurgitates these things that have no real meaning in any real inquiry or in any real evaluation of that inquiry.

As he goes into his arbitrary beak down of what is not important in evaluating an investigation, it turns out that even that depends on his judgment, the judgment that Arcacha would have been an important witness and Admiral Burkley would not have been. It is Brown who decides what is to the "point" and what is "vital."

And this dumdum then breaks those down into further tabulations about them and not the evidence!

So we have a man who agitates for Arcacha to have been a witness, Milteer, Ferrie and Banister to have been witnesses, too, and not have the President's physician; the only doctor to have been in the emergency room and at the autopsy; the doctor who in his certificate of death located the President's back wound so much lower than the Commission said and about whom even more can be said - we have this man deciding what is and is not vital, is and is not in point?

He not only has not the slightest notion, he is incapable of having that understanding.

Oblivious to all of this, he begins his chapter three which he titles "The Warren Commission" (pages 288-308). After noting how overly-committed the members were, but not putting it that way, by boasting: "I've read all twenty-six four times . . . (his emphasis, page 289)," he is again utterly oblivious of the self-indictment in it.

He actually thinks and says it is wrong for questions to be asked by first writing them out! When a witness asks for a question to be repeated, it is also wrong! (pages 289-90).

And after reading those-twenty-six volumes four times he still does not know what testimony is and is not or that witnesses are questioned before they testify!

"There are many instances of witnesses making statement that make reference to testimony [sic] taken much earlier in time - the previous day or week, which appeared nowhere in the record and suggested 'rehearsed.'"

"Rehearsed" is his evaluation. It is neither wrong or uncommon, particularly with the most technical of testimony by witnesses who are not friendly, to meet with and question them well in advance of their testimony. That is not, as this college-educated ignoramus says, "testimony."

Doing this is also important in a proceeding like this so that the staff and the members can begin taking the actual testimony as fully and as well informed as they can be. This was not a trial. It was an administrative, fact-finding proceeding.

If instead of wasting all the time he did on these twenty-six volumes that he hardly understood he had, instead of gleaning the fake books and the frauds, read and understood, let's say Post Mortem, he would have seen and understood that rather than these normal procedures being in any way secret or clandestine, memoranda were written on them for an understanding of testimony to be taken or problems with that testimony. As one of many illustrations, I select one that gave the Commission a problem. It is the April 22, 1964 staff memorandum on the conference of the day before to try to determine "which frames in the Zapruder film show the impact of the first and second shots" (pages 503-4). More than a dozen persons were there, ranging from doctors to the FBI to members of the Commission. The "problem" was that the Army's top expert in the matter of that kind of shooting, Dr. Joseph Dolce, "was very strongly of the opinion" that [bullet] 399 "could not have caused [Connally's] wrist wound."

For the significance of this, I refer readers to the lengthy handling of it in Never Again! For present purposes is it not clear that the Commission should have learned all it could about when what shots impacted before taking testimony of that? Was it not important for the Commission to know that an authentic expert disagreed with what the Commission believed and in the end said?

How in the world this Ph.D.ed stupidity believed he could make judgments and write a book when all of that is so much of a mystery to him is not easy to comprehend if one assumes rationality to begin with.

An educated man who is ignorant in some areas, which is commonplace, ought to be able to recognize that he was not born with full comprehension of all there is to comprehend.

Not Brown.

This book is his dedication to make a fool of himself - and glorifying in it.

As Brown's "Theories" with which he begins are not one of the three Books of this book, also this is the proof of his "Hypothesis" (pages 309-35) and of the epilogue that follows it.

But Brown has said that the Dallas police provided the assassins and he has not yet offered any proof of that and he ends with a "hypothesis" and no more after so horrendous an accusation? If fact it is a hypothesis. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a hypothesis is an "assumption or conjecture put forward to account for certain facts and uses as a basis for further investigation . . ." It is not an end, as it is with Brown. It is a beginning. Or should be.

And, it should be remembered, it is to "account for certain facts," not what is not fact.

Right off the bat, while there is no way of knowing why he said it, Brown refers to the Civil Air patrol as "a paramilitary recruiting ground" (page 309). It is not that any more than the Boy Scouts of America.

Expressing opinions on anything and everything at all, Brown announces that "aviation and radar training" are not like the Marines. In his concept marines do nothing but "storm whatever beaches need storming.' They are not doctors and nurses, not cooks or clerks, not all the many things the Marines needs require them to be. They only "storm beaches that need storming."

Still believing he knows all there is to know about everything and having heated himself up a bit over this he actually writes, "There's just nothing in there about Marine radar or aviation, although obviously it did exist - in this case for covert purposes." He goes so far as to say that the radar was "for a spy plane" (page 311).

The "there" in "there's nothing in there" is not explained. Which is probably fortunate. He is apparently lost in the stratosphere above Atsugi, Japan, because the CIA did fly U-2s out of there. But the purpose of the Marine radar was to be able to keep all planes flying, taking off and landing safely. The relatively few U-2 flights were an add-on and were not the reason the base had it radar installation and operation. The base was not "for covert purposes." It could not have been more overt.

Brown actually refers to this base as "a top secret CIA installation" when it was no such thing. The U-2 part was not only separated by a chain-link fence, it had special CIA guards to prevent any socializing. It was that separate from the base and from all those stationed at that base, including Oswald.

Still soaring in the stratosphere, Brown says of Oswald at Atsugi , that he was "going to be somebody after all. Unbeknownst to him, his marine career had reached a plateau. Also unknown to him, as well as his sponsors, was the portent that he would be world-famous for three days in November, 1963" (page 312). Sources? Don't be silly! For what stews in and out of Brown's head there can be no source. But he continues with it for all the world as though he has the remotest idea of what he says that follows, "Highly valued FBI man, Guy Banister, would create a scenario with similar underpinnings which caused his "separation" from the bureau. The key word in both separations is "scenario" (page 312).

Are those FBI scenario writers farsighted, very, very farsighted! They had a fake medical examination of Guy Banister when he was their Chicago SAC and left a record just for Brown's "scenario" that Banister had irreversible "brain damage, with a prognosis of deterioration and increasing erratic behavior," and it was only a cover.

So farsighted they did all of this before Oswald was even a teenager.

All those many years before Kennedy ever ran for President they knew he would have to be killed and would prepare themselves to do it - with Banister.

And Banister was so skilled a "black op" (Brown loves what he thinks is spook jargon, so we use it) that for all those years he lived the part, pistol-whipping willy-nilly and even getting fired as Assistant Superintendent of the New Orleans police so many years earlier as part of the "scenario" of his "separation."

It is not so certain, however, that, as Brown says, the "key word" for all this is "scenario."

When Oswald left for the USSR "his finances would be enhanced by small increments from the intelligence community, most likely the Office of naval Intelligence, as Oswald was not in the big leagues yet" (page 312).

Could Brown have double-plays in mind?

Because this is under "hypothesis" and a hypothesis is supposed to come from fact, it might be unfair to be rational in referring to what follows as insane, which it is, because there is fact in it: Oswald did slash his wrist:

We may never know, but Oswald may have overplayed his hand, and had to fall back on a fake suicide to impress whoever was deciding whether he would stay or be asked to leave, since his visa had expired. On a gut-level hunch, I doubt the Soviets truly bought the botched suicide.

Oswald was nevertheless debriefed, and extensively so. He told his Soviet interrogators a great deal of truth that they already knew, but he had no doubt been programmed to provide some disinformation as well, shortening the range of the U-2 and altering the "blind spots" in the U.S. West Coast radar apparatus to prime target spots. If the Soviets had ever tried to exploit the "blind spots" Oswald provided they would have found themselves on prime-time American radar" (page 313).

Oswald may indeed have overplayed his hand. If the Intourist guide had not decided to learn if he was coming or not he'd have bled to death. That would have been "overplaying." Score one, a very rare one, for Brown! Even if it is not what he was talking about.

He is inventive, too, this Ph.D. In addition to inventing the debriefing and those "Soviet interrogators," he even invented "prime time American radar."

Skipping more of this supposed "scenario" or "hypothesis" we find that "Oswald's arrival back in the United States amounted to a classic case of mixed signals. No law enforcement or serious intelligence operatives were there to meet him, a clear indication that hey did not want his cover shattered" (page 314). It is no less clear that they knew nothing at all about all of this, cared nothing about all of it and assuming that anyone undercover is meeting in public by any kind of spook, because there is not a thing to this there was no reason for a "greeter."

If none of this were true this is still pathetically puerile for a grown man, not a boy. What "cover" could there have been for the Oswald who had gone through the motions of defecting to the USSR and then that had been in the papers?

How childish it is when the government loaned Oswald just enough money to come back by the cheapest available transportation and after that to have "greeted" him but was afraid if it did that would "shatter" the "cover" he did not have and could not have had?

Sick! Sick stuff laughable in a novel!

Brown next says that if there had been a "genuine" (his emphasis) FBI interview after "his return from Russia he would have been placed in custody for a series of felonies up to and including treason" (page 315). This was inspired by Brown's saying that Oswald had "bristled" at some of the questions the FBI asked him.

This is not what the FBI's report Brown sees no need to quote or cite says. It is what Brown, for his own purposes, makes up.

That interview lasted an hour and the FBI was satisfied with it.

For "a series of felonies" and Brown cannot give single one?

The only charge that might have been laid on him was getting a fraudulent discharge from the Marines. But after reading those twenty-six volumes not once but four times, Brown did not know that the government assured Oswald in advance that no charges would be filed against him. He knew he had obtained that discharge by fraud and he did not want to face that and perhaps go to jail over it.

Treason is a crime only during wartime. There was no war then. And as we have seen, there was nothing Oswald could have given the Soviets worth anything at all to them.

But they are not Brown, are they? He can see value for them where they can not.

Nothing about these police assassins yet but there is some pretty neat stuff here so why waste it?

The FBI interviews, however, are moot, for long before the bureau got to Oswald, the CIA did. Through the intervention of the ever gracious George deMohrenschildt, Oswald was debriefed, told that he was still a valued member of "the team," and also was told that he should neither be overly concerned with his income nor live too lavishly with any private funding that came his way. He was also told that his covert role would involve frequent changes of employment and residence. Oswald accepted the tutelage and would henceforth follow deMohrenschildt like a puppy, until Oswald was ordered to New Orleans and Clay Shaw/Bertrand would take DeMohrenschildt's place" (page 315).

It is a bit strange, though, that nobody ever saw Oswald following "like a puppy." But that part about not living "too lavishly" is real. Oswald never did that!

There are hints in Oswald's conversations to his mother and brother that he was more than he appeared to be, and it is also known that the FBI, army intelligence (for a marine?), and other agencies kept close tabs on an individual that the CIA was claiming they never heard of.

To this point, however, we must recall that Oswald was an asset or a low-end contract agent. He would continue to be carried on American intelligence ledgers but would never be promoted to assassin. Anyone even remotely aware of Oswald's Marine Corps shooting ability would immediately rule out this possibility" (page 315).

There is a detail Brown misses in all of this about Oswald being a "contract agent," albeit with the skill to be contracted for, he was also unpaid.

Although it might seem unlikely that Brown can exceed what he has done, it gets better and better:

Mid-1962 provided the crossroads in Oswald's covert career. His mission to the Soviet Union had at best received mixed reviews, as it was difficult to posit that he successfully completed any imaginable mission save for some possible disinformation about the U-2's range, which would have been meaningless after Gary Powers' flight. With Oswald back in the United States, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), his original sponsor, would have to keep a distant eye on him and make a judgment on his readjustment to American society and his acceptance by that society. If he were totally shunned as a traitor, his usefulness to the intelligence community was at an end. If his past was forgiven or overlooked, it would forever remain on his résumé and might have value in the future. In the meantime, the CIA had stepped in, in the person of George DeMohrenschildt, but this would ruffle no feathers in the intelligence community, as the CIA could hardly be accused of muscling in on a top ONI operative.

The second half of 1962 held extremely significant portents for John Kennedy, however. His emerging liberalism, his unwillingness to confront either the Cubans or the Soviets forcefully, his drive for civil rights, his willingness to close oil-profit loopholes, his disdain for further intervention in Laos or Vietnam, and his willingness to prosecute those who misused the American system, added to his prospects for a reelection that could truly provoke change, alarmed those in the corridors of power.

Because of that, the subsequent sponsors of Kennedy's murder decided to send Kennedy a very personal warning, one that would tell him that he was vulnerable for his sexual peccadilloes as well as for his life: On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her California dwelling, coincidently at a time that RFK was nearby in San Francisco to make an address. While other researchers have seen Miss Monroe's death as either the suicide that it was officially ruled, or something more sinister, I would like to suggest, particularly for those who have seen The Godfather, that the death of Marilyn Monroe was the horse's head. It was the ultimate step this side of Dallas, and it was meant as a dire threat to the Kennedy brothers, even though it solved, temporarily at least, one of their problems (page 316).

Whether it was the head of the horse or the other end, it is apparent that Brown's genius is not limited to history:

For a while, "the horse's head gambit" worked. Kennedy talked tough on Cuba a few weeks later, and without firing a shot, forced the Soviet missiles and IL-28 bombers home, and left Khruschev with egg on his face. Americans also learned that we had a decided superiority in the arms race with the Soviets, and that superiority could be traced directly to Kennedy's promises during the 1960 campaign to bring an end to the "missile/bomber gap." Kennedy was speaking softly but carrying a very big stick.

As events subsequent to the Cuban Missile Crisis were to prove, however, it was not the all-encompassing American victory that had been perceived at the end of the terrifying "thirteen days" in October. Kennedy had pledged not to invade Cuba, and he would not only keep that pledge, but also begin a campaign to make sure that disaffected elements within the United States did not stir up any further problems. The military chieftains look on with horror as our Jupiter missile bases in Turkey and Italy were dismantled, giving rise to the suspicion that perhaps a trade had been agreed to between Kennedy and Khruschev, and that we had not scared the Soviets out of Cuba, but rather traded missiles for missiles.

The last straw was the beginning of the "thaw" in the Cold Ware, with the corollary that relations with Russia and Cuba might be improved and that Vietnam would have to defend itself with the indigenous population and with no largesse for American defense contractors. The hopes for the continuation of that "thaw" would die in Dallas.

"The horse's head gambit" had failed; now it was a matter of going for the head (not the tail) of the dog, as the Mafia metaphor would portray the event" (page 317).

With so many specialties it would be unfair to hold Brown to strict factuality even with history. He has gotten to where he is no slouch at mind-reading, the military mind, too, of those who had been ordered to remove those outdated, liquid fueled missiles from Turkey before the missile crisis. But because that had been ordered before the missile crisis, see how keeping up with history can interfere with the most brilliant writing?

Brown refers to Kennedy forcing those also out-of-date, which he also does not say, Russian bombers out of Cuba. But that was a missile crisis, not a bomber crisis. He says nothing about the removal of those missiles. Or that World War III could have been prevented by that solution.

As the gambitting continues and it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the horse's ends and where they apply, making the effort is important, even if perfection in making the distinction is not as easy as in making the application:

Although it is highly unlikely that there ever occurred anything like a conference among these various elements, the intelligence elements, which had so recently spearheaded the planning, were willing (and who wouldn't be?) to transfer the ownership of the project to Texas interests that were both financially powerful and politically connected. They would look for an assassination site far from Washington, and one that had a history of being conservative. It would also be helpful if that city had a police establishment of an equally conservative, anti-Kennedy bent, and one that could be purchased with petrodollars or related perquisites such as oil leases or franchises. All of this pointed to the South, where Kennedy had had some electoral successes in 1960, and would no doubt have more in 1964, because of the black vote. That, however, did not trouble the plotters; there were no black police officers in many places in 1963.

The official concern in early 1963, however, was still Castro and Cuba, and it was at this point that Oswald was reactivated and told to secure both a pistol and a rifle -- nothing fancy -- and to do so in the name of someone pro-Cuban. It may well have been that the ONI was willing to loan Oswald to the CIA to go after Castro, as Oswald could hardly be suspected of being a potential Castro assassin after having defected to the Soviet Union and then returned to the United States in a decidedly pro-Castro frame of mind. If such a mission failed, Oswald could easily be portrayed by the world press as the ultimate nut, dividing his time between supporting and stalking the bearded Cuban leader.

An alternate scenario revolves around what is today referred to as the issue of "gun control." In the early 1960's, key individuals on Capitol Hill were becoming increasingly concerned about the proliferation of weapons on American streets and the resulting crime. Narcotics imported by groups cited above had much to do with these problems, and the weapons proliferation was a way to protect their unique cottage industry. It has been argued that someone able to give Oswald orders told him to purchase both the rifle and the pistol, and be obvious about the purchases to the point of leaving a massive paper trail and being quickly photographed with both weapons and pinko literature. Somewhere down the road, those legislators who were using Oswald would reveal his nickel-and-dime antics and show how a returned, treasonous defector could openly purchase deadly weapons through the mail, and flaunt the practice.

Regardless of which scenario one follows, Oswald complied with the requests of his "handlers" using the fictitious "Hidell" identity "long with his own handwriting in ordering the weapons. It would be this mistake, the ability to link the "Hidell" who owned the weapons to the "Oswald" who had defected to Russia, that would cause intelligence planners to have Oswald posture as pro-Cuban, but they could no longer use him to assassinate Castro. If he had rented the box as "Hidell" and not "Oswald" and bought the weapons the same way, history might be different. (Because he did it as both names, he came in very handy immediately after the president was killed.) But as far as Cuba was concerned, such an attempted deception would have been seen as translucent, particularly when "the late Fidel Castro's" Soviet allies revealed what they knew of "Oswald." Kennedy, however, was also a target, and Oswald's posturing, in either postulated scenario, made him the perfect patsy.

Once Oswald received the weapons and was photographed with them, events began to accelerate. Oswald lost his job at Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall, a firm that worked with the intelligence community. Several reasons were cited for Oswald's termination, but the most important, if unstated, reason was that J-C-S could not be involved with an employee who might within days be arrested for attempted or worse: Elements within the intelligence community had reached Oswald and included him in a "scenario" involving the firing of a rifle at the residence of General Walker" (pages 318-8

Powerful stuff, really powerful stuff. And what a mind to conceive it and bring it all together in the assassination of the President! Like Francis Gary Powers; the Office of Naval Intelligence; the CIA; George de Mohrenschildt; Marilyn Monroe and her death; the movie The Godfather; the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; Khruschev with egg on his face; the arms race in general; the "horrified" military "chieftains;" and their missiles and missile bases in Italy and in Turkey; Vietnam; that horse and his parts, a pistol range and a rifle range (although the pistol and rifle need not be "pretty"); petro dollars, Oswald as a Castro assassin; gun control within the United States; narcotics, General Walker; and even getting Oswald fired from Jaggers-Chiles- Stovall (that large printing plant that has all those "connections" with the "intelligence community!"

All this is in so few pages and from but a single mind!

And we are not yet done - the list and that mind are not yet exhausted:

Ultimately, as the plotters' focus shifted to Dallas, Oswald would be terminated for the very absences that had been tolerated when needed, and the Reily Company would be "sanitized," as several employees would fall into jobs at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

While in New Orleans, Oswald would fall into the clutches of Banister, whose patron was also Clay Shaw, and David Ferrie, Oswald's tutor from his premarine days. Their plans, as revealed to Oswald, were for him to create a serious pro-Castro, strongly leftist posture, while they, along with the exiles being trained north of Lake Pontchartrain, were readying themselves to take "executive action" against Castro. Castro was the target as Oswald understood the scenario. Kennedy, however, had already replaced Castro among those creating the scenario. Castro, after all, could no longer be removed until Kennedy had been.

Oswald did what he was told, carrying out a simplistic pro-Cuban leaflet campaign in a city with only loathing for Castro. Oswald was always photographed in these brief leaflet adventures, and it is difficult to believe that news sources in New Orleans gave repeated free publicity to a street center nut with pro-Castro leaflets. On the contrary, the photos were intelligence-oriented, and would come in handy in late November, as well as for a commission appointed by the newly installed president from Texas.

In an equally leftist posturing effort, Oswald visited Clinton, Louisiana, to be part of a black-voter registration drive, a solitary and unmistakable white face in a long line of people who had already waited too long for fundamental American rights. Ferrie was also along on this trip, and was accompanied by either Banister or Shaw. The latter identification is not urgent: They were virtually interchangeable.

Fate intervened in that summer of 1963. After Kennedy's much publicized American University speech on June 10, followed by a civil-rights message the next day, his direction for America was more clearly revealed and lost him some remaining support in the corridors of power. At the same time, a Kennedy-ordered raid on the exile camps destroyed what little threat the exiles posed to Castro, and as a result, Oswald's -- and only Oswald's -- focus remained on the elimination of Castro, while Banister, and to a greater extent Ferrie, maneuvered Oswald into the rendezvous in Dallas.

The August 1963 fight in which Oswald received both the blows and the conviction almost completed his patsy résumé, and it began the winding down of his New Orleans efforts. It also came at the same time that the president's trip to Texas in the fall was announced.

One more ingredient was necessary to flesh out Oswald's "Cuban" background, and that objective was met when Oswald was dispatched to Mexico City on the pretext of attempting to get back to the Soviet Union via Cuba (pages 320-1).

Although not quite complete, this is so impressive a list, if impressive is the word, that a few adjustments other than can be recalled from previous chapters can be helpful, as can more translations.

That "sanitizing" at the Reily Coffee Company means those employees left for jobs that were better and paid better. It was not only "Reily" that was so "sanitized." All those who could, left jobs to go anywhere to get those better and better-paying jobs. This is what "sanitized," the expression originated with Jim Garrison, means.

Clay Shaw would not have been easy to get into the same room with Guy Banister and if that somehow had been arranged, Shaw would have fled as soon as he could. Shaw was both a man of culture and refinement and a mulatto. Banister was a racist.

There were more times when Ferrie was not active in the Civil Air Patrol unit for boys. One of those times coincided with the brief period Oswald was in it. There was no opportunity to Ferrie the "tutor" Oswald and what he would tutor him is left to the reader to spare Brown the full effort of making everything up. Other than flying, Ferrie had no skill of which I know. He had no experience of any kind in intelligence. So far as preparing Oswald for an alleged pro-
Castro operation, Ferrie has an FBI file on him for violating the neutrality act against Castro.

Those Cubans supposedly trained on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain were parts of scams, they trained for nothing, and one group of them brought an open U-haul trailer load of odds and ends of explosives into a residential area between Slidell and Mandeville started a fire that threatened the house they were using to store the explosives, endangering the area and were reported, as the frightened neighbor who did the reporting told me. This comes from Brown, as we have seen, as a "Kennedy-ordered raid on the exile camps."

Oswald and those photographs we have seen in reality and the only street-corner operation that was photographed was the one for which some skill Oswald himself arranged the attention it got. That one time.

Aside from the fact that Shaw and Banister wore pants and had gray hair, they were not really "virtually interchangeable."

If Oswald was "dispatched" to Mexico City, the dispatcher was a real skinflint. Living on almost nothing, Oswald was close to broke on his return after so short a time there.

So the reader can recognize the quality of the sources on whom Brown depends and builds, where he builds on anything other than what he wants believed and apparently believes himself, remember that Richard Case Nagell is the man who said he robbed a bank to have an alibi when the President was killed because he had prior knowledge of that. He did not go to jail as an accessory before the fact. He served his time as a bank robber:

Unbeknownst to the real Oswald, an imitator or imitators would begin laying false trails that would all point in his direction after November 22. Of equal interest was the thrust of Oswald's intention to "return" to the Soviet Union. On one hand, he did not possess even the down payment for such a venture, suggesting the necessity of outside funding if the venture were real. Second, his efforts came to naught when his reentry into the Soviet Union was vetoed by the Soviets. It may well have been at exactly this time that elements within the KGB ordered unknowing double agent Richard Case Nagell to eliminate Oswald, as the Soviets feared that he was up to something very serious, and given his thirty-one-month residence in the Soviet Union, they wanted no part of it.

Oswald was told to return to Dallas, where he would be an instrumental member of a group that would rid the world of Fidel Castro. This scenario assumed the usually nonemployment-motivated [sic] Oswald, but it overlooked the fact that Mrs. Oswald was expecting a second child, as well as her desire for common consumer goods such as a washing machine and someday an automobile. Oswald was propelled back into the job market, and fortuitously for everyone except JFK, found employment near Main Street in downtown Dallas.

What remained was to sell Oswald the final bill of goods and then guarantee that somehow the president's car could be placed in relative proximity to the book warehouse where Oswald was exercising his intellect for $1.25 per hour. Once it was learned that a Dallas motorcade would be included in the fall presidential Texas trip, the plan moved a giant step closer to fruition.

In the meantime, if Oswald was to be implicated fully, more evidence of violent or pro-Soviet behavior was necessary, so a fake Oswald or Oswalds -- or a very busy John Thomas Masen -- began appearing in and around Dallas in the fall of 1963, usually in gun- related or "I'll soon be coming into money" scenarios. The one failure in all of this was the plotters' unawareness of Oswald's inability to operate a motor vehicle. After all, every twenty-three-year-old drives; it's an integral part of the rites of passage. Every twenty-
three-year-old except Oswald, that is" (page 322, his emphasis).

This "scenario" did not require Marina and the infant to live in abject poverty. With the wealth of those oil tycoons, they could have had a decent meal once in a while and a few of what would have been luxuries for them and were minimum needs for others, without endangering that "scenario." Especially with Marina carrying another baby who would be born any minute. This stinginess could have led her to make a protest that, had she, could have endangered this "scenario."

John Thomas Masen did not just begin "appearing" in and around Dallas in the fall of 1963. He was in the gun business there.

Brown's "plotters" must have been the dumbest, most inept ever not to know that the man we are to take from this writing they expect to drive a car did not know how.

Those plotters knew Oswald did not have a car in the Marines and could not have had one in the Soviet Union. He'd had no need to learn how to drive.

But in a dumb book, dumb "plotters" are not expected to - even if the job did get done.

Because Masen seems to serve no really necessary role in this rather good-sized conspiracy - and it is a truism that the larger they are the more inclined they are to get exposed - perhaps Brown includes him not to feel one-upped when the book is which he is important, prepublication titled Oswald Talked, appears. The La Fontaine, man and wife team, had planned for its earlier appearance. They wrote a lengthy article for The Washington Post that I addressed at length. That seems to have caused a great delay of about two years in its appearance.

For the patient, their reward. Brown finally gets to his case of "Blue Death," of the police as assassins:

The Dallas scenario would be highly complicated in its planning and equally simplistic in its execution - which was also its purpose. As suggested earlier, at least three or four groups were brought within the orbit of the event, possibly but not positively including a Cuban exile group, an organized group, a southern right-wing crew, and a "Dallas police" - or imitator group, which had Dealey Plaza for their prime site. The first three groups were never more than stage props or backups, while the primary group, "Blue Death," was comprised of a small group of rogue police elements or those who could give the appearance of police, to avoid the immediate dragnet at the time of the shooting.

This thesis is reinforced by too many odd occurrences in Dallas law-enforcement circles; the selection of the Trade Mart as the luncheon site, which diverted precious police and Secret Service manpower, leaving the motorcade route guarded in many places by unarmed reserves; the total unwillingness of the sheriff's department to have any involvement in motorcade security (or later, in Oswald's transfer), as if they possessed clairvoyance uncommon in police circles; the small police presence in Dealey Plaza, with no officers posted between the corner of Elm and Houston and the triple underpass (a distance of five hundred feet), with the possible exception of those involved in the assassination; the failure of the police to clear the triple underpass of civilians, as those civilians would have gone to the next best vantage point to view the parade, putting them behind the picket fence; the unwillingness to hear of, or investigate, fake Secret Service men in Dealey Plaza; and the failure to react to witnesses observations regarding the Texas School Book Depository, at a time when the police - and civilian - surge was toward the knoll, where only railroad people or police would be found.

Subsequently the police would self-destruct their own case so that Oswald could never have come to trial for murdering the president, as police at Parkland, among other suspected activities, did not come to the coroner's aid in demanding a Texas autopsy for the president. They also handled the evidence against Oswald - as well as Oswald himself - so poorly that the ultimate result, had Oswald survived, would have been a trial for Oswald's participation in the murder of Officer Tippit. While that event was also on the "Blue Death" agenda, it reinforces that thesis because most police killers, particularly those linked to communism in the early sixties and those who might be accused of other serious crimes, would stand no chance whatsoever, Oswald would have received the death penalty, and the world would have easily concluded that he was equally guilty of killing the president" (pages 322-3).

There is no basis for disagreeing with Brown, his "Dallas scenario" is indeed highly complicated. But "the selection of the Trade Mart as the luncheon site" cannot be one of the "odd occurrences in Dallas law-enforcement circles," as this sentence begins. The White House advance team considered it the best of the available locations and decided upon it, not the local police or anyone else.

Unfortunately, there still is no evidence that the Dallas police were the assassins but at least we are not overlooking anything he may regard as making the case yet to be made.

If Brown found any Dallas police "linked to communism in the early sixties," he did what the FBI was unable to do. From recollection there were at the time of the assassination, which was "the early sixties," a grand total of six members of the Communist Party. Of them three were informers and one of those informers informed to two organizations. The FBI and the police had the Communists covered and would have known had there been a single cop among them.

Brown sees easily what others have difficulty seeing. He sees Oswald not only as a "participant" in the Tippit killing, but he also sees that he "would have received the death penalty" for it. The evidence is that he could not have been there - if he was there at all - until some time after the killing was on the police radio. Then , too, the bullets recovered did not match the shells from which they allegedly were fired and the FBI could not and did not testify that those bullets were fired from that Oswald pistol.

Moreover, the Brown"scenario" did not visualize a trial with a competent lawyer defending Oswald.

After referring again to that supposed Oswald letter to "Mr. Hunt," Brown writes, giving the letter an importance it did not and does not have:

Of equal importance was the other document penned by Oswald on November 8. This one was hand-delivered to the Dallas FBI office, and was subsequently destroyed by Special Agent Hosty, on the orders of Dallas special agent in charge Gordon Shanklin, within hours of Oswald's death. The FBI would like us to believe that the letter was a threat against the FBI because Oswald did not like agents of the bureau rattling Marina's cage; if this story had a shred of truth to it, the letter would have been kept and used for the dust jacket on the Warren Report. The destruction of the letter strongly suggests that it contained a message that the FBI never wanted the public to be aware of, perhaps a warning of ominous events later in the month that either the bureau did not take seriously or its director preferred to ignore. I recall that the previously referenced FBI telex regarding an assassination threat all but bore the signature of Oswald, as it was written in his dysgraphic idiom" (pages 324-5).

In this Brown is writing about the FBI he dreamed he was in, not the real FBI.

He has no source for saying that "The FBI would like us to believe that the letter was a threat . . ." What the FBI would like believed is that nothing like it happened and the inspector general's report sought that conclusion so diligently it had to re-interview some of the FBI Dallas employees as many as three times because it had been so careful to avoid so much when questioning them earlier.

Despite Dr. Brown's assurance that the letter with that threat would have been used for the dust jacket of the Warren Report, government publications do not have dust jackets, especially not mass paperback printings.

What he says in saying this is that the FBI knew two weeks before the assassination that Oswald was capable of violence and actually threatened it yet did nothing to let the police or the Secret Service know. Brown earlier imagined a Hoover retirement with a gold watch and thanks. This he would not have to imagine: there would have been no thanks and no gold watch.

There is hardly anything that happened in Hoover's lifetime that he could have regarded as much a threat to the FBI he loved than the appearance of a letter in which Oswald reflected any predisposition toward violence. That is why he ordered that Shanklin be ordered to have that letter destroyed as soon as it was known that Oswald was dead and there would be no trial.

What Brown has in mind, is anything real, in that "dysgraphic idiom" telex cannot be imagined because there was none.

Brown's imagination wore down when confronted with the Oswald note to Hosty that was destroyed by the FBI, a serious offense, as Brown does not mention, but he recovered it fully rapidly:

Oswald was given a simple mission by "Mr Hunt" but failed to understand its simplicity, hence the letter of November 8. Oswald was told that a fake assassination attempt would be staged, in Dallas, with John Kennedy as the target. Oswald's role was to deliver the Mannlicher, which had been purchased by FPCC member "Hidell" and was therefore traceable to pro-Castro elements, to an individual who would later use it, or a substitute, in a most obvious way in the sixth-floor window of the book depository, making sure to leave the Mannlicher-Carcano behind" (page 325).

Brown was fortunate to be able to write almost all this book while diligently avoiding the shooting. If he had bothered to learn anything about it he would have had difficulty writing this chapter that is not a chapter. He begins it reporting a "volley" of shots for the first shot without mentioning the number of shooters in his — is it really a "scenario"? (page 325). He does say at least one of that "volley" came from the Texas School Book Depository and one from the knoll. In addition, he has that blank fired from the Texas School Book Depository. Simply amazing how all those shots of those "volleys" could be coordinated so completely that each volley was heard, including by professionals in shooting, as a single shot each.

The second volley would occur a second and a half later, involving shuts from the west end of the TSBD (but not, as previously suggested by researchers, a "low-angle shot" from the Dal-Tex, because the downward slope of Elm Street and the presence of Secret Service agents on the rear seats and running boards of the follow-up vehicle would have prevented such a shot) and the roof of the jail. The jail shot hit the president in the upper back in Zapruder frames 231-32 and did not transit his body. The west-end depository shot ripped through the governor's chest about one-sixth second later, between Zapruder frames 234 and 236, and ricocheted into the limousine windshield or exited the vehicle after shattering and "riding" a rib" (page 326).

More magic from the man of magic: that roof shot entered the president's back "and did not transit the body." That means it remained inside the body. And did not show on any X-ray, another magic bullet!

Although Brown makes no reference to it this also involves still more acrobatics and gymnastics at superior speed with no built-in computer to provide guidance and direction. But that is nothing to the requirements he is about to add:

The final volley again involved the west-end TSBD shooter, the jail, and the knoll. The jail shooter hit the president in the back of his head, in the location indicated by Humes, in Zapruder 312; the knoll shooter had his aim compromised slightly by the Z312 shot from behind, which pushed JFK slightly forward. Thus the knoll shot impacted on the right temple, well in front of the ear, when it had been sighted in, literally, "right between the eyes." The head bullets were explosive, and despite the massive damage done by them, little trace remained, except the Mannlicher-like fragments thrown into the limousine by police elements at Parkland. The west-end TSBD shot was late, and did the remaining damage to Governor Connally (wrist and thigh wounds - note Connally's movements after the fatal head impact on Kennedy) within one-half second of the fatal shots to the president. This portion-of-a-second delay may account for many witnesses' perceptions that the final shot sounded like a double bang" (page 326).

Thus it is clear that not a single person in the building that included the jail or in the jail section itself heard that shot as it reverberated from concrete wall to concrete wall. That was also a magical bullet because more than thirty frames past here in the Zapruder film there is not a trace of blood on the back of the President's head, none on his shirt collar, both bright and clear, and none visible on the back of the jacket whose material may make such a positive statements appear to be exaggerated.

It was magical only because it, according to Brown, exerted minimal force on impacting, thus, the President moved only "slightly" forward.

Brown says the head bullets were "explosive" and that one hit the President in his "right temple." That is as Brown says, but I do not understand why, "well in the front of the ear." This would require a vastly enlarged conspiracy because of all the people who saw the President after he was shot and because the pictures taken at Bethesda do not show a bullet hit there, leave alone an :explosive" bullet"

Oswald had been told that the purpose of the fake attempt was that once a bullet or a blank was fired over the limousine into the expanse of lawn in the plaza, the Secret Service would swarm over the president, law-enforcement people would find the Mannlicher as planned, trace it to "Hidell" and hence to pro-Cuban forces, and the United States would clean out Castro's rats' nest once and for all. Oswald, who would have to leave town until noise cleared down, was told that when all was said and done, he would be the hero of the piece, and no blame could attach to him as long as long as he stayed away from the sixth floor during the motorcade. He may also have naively believed that it was not a crime to be a coconspirator in the firing of a blank as the president was passing, so even if he were linked to the rifle, what could he be charged with? (pages 326-7).

Of the many problems with this, and it is not worth taking time for many of them, it not only "posits" Oswald as a Mongolian idiot bit it also represents Brown's "insight" of Oswald not having been anti-Castro at all.

It is a blessing for Brown that after four readings of the twenty-six volumes he fails to remember so much that is so basic, like getting that rifle into that building that morning. Otherwise, the alternative being that Brown lied with, as to speak, malice aforesaid:

Oswald thus delivered his package to someone in either plain clothes or a uniform, near the rear door of the TSBD, which explained how Wesley Frazier saw the package leave his car after delivering Oswald, but no one in the TSBD saw it enter. The choice of the sixth floor could only have been made by a nonemployee, as that area was the busiest in the building because it was being refloored" (page 327).

All the evidence is that the bag Oswald carried that morning could not have held that rifle, not even disassembled. Moreover, the only person who saw Oswald enter the Texas School Book Depository swore he carried nothing at all. Oswald had nothing to deliver and he delivered nothing, no matter how Brown's "scenario" requires him to have.

Brown's theorizing about how busy that sixth floor was does not take into consideration the noon lunch break, when not a single one of those working on the floor was there.

Brown has both Tippit and Ruby witting, too (page 328) but he does not include the chorus line at Radio City. I spare the reader what Brown actually wrote about all that.

Meanwhile, let us not loose sight that "Blue Death" of the Dallas police as the assassins.

His luck really ran out when he was unwise enough to return to those three tramps when, if he had it, common sense would have told him not to mention them so many years after the disclosure of the officials records on them:

The three tramps taken into custody were diversions; street characters (but not tramps) hired for a few bucks to run in every which direction at the time of the shooting and catch possible onlookers' attention. They would then meet at a prearranged site in the railroad yards and leave town on the first freight out, only to be prevented by towerman Lee Bowers. In one photo of the tramps, the eldest tramp did, in fact, bear a striking resemblance to E. Howard Hunt; in the remaining photos, however, he looks more like a Cro-Magnon man. The tall tramp may resemble Charles Harrelson, aged twenty-five at the time, but until someone can produce either a 1963 photo of the subject, Harrelson's high-school yearbook and age-regress Harrelson to age twenty-five, the man in the photo remains unknown. The third "tramp" has been linked to the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr., and also has been "identified" as Charles Rogers, seen as a CIA knoll shooter. What is lacking is proof" (page 331).

How these tramps were to leave town on a freight that had no engine Brown does not say. And that one "linked to the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr., was not Charles Rodgers and had no link to the King assassination other than through the fakery I detected that forced the 1968 FBI investigation reported above. That sketch, by the way, was made in Mexico City. In my investigation of it I obtained a picture of the artist and of it as it was about to be flown out of Mexico City.

In dealing with an ego which there is no restraint and with an ignorance that is beyond belief perhaps at this point again is better to let Brown speak for himself as he ends his book, to which he did add an epilogue.

He does say, no ifs or buts, that the Dallas police killed the President.

We have seen what basis he had for saying that - none at all. He did have the certainty that the department itself could not sue him for libel. Otherwise this book could not have been published. He has not even a rational basis for suspecting that the police provided the assassins. And those megabucks just pooped out pages and pages ago. They just disappeared.

Before we get to his last words, verbatim, it should be remembered that rather than taking blame, Oswald insisted he was innocent. And if Brown thinks the mishmash of weird accusations makes against the government in this pathetic, poverty-stricken pretense of a book is the beginning of "the process of American citizens distrusting government pronouncement" it is to wonder where he has been most of his adult life.

To which he adds that they, the people, have not been told the truth - he really says what he produced is the truth - until this book. Here are those last words of his:

Blue death fired the shots that killed the president. "Dallas's finest" then released all suspects except Oswald and made a mockery of the investigation that could not be allowed to reveal the killers in uniform.

The Red patsy took the blame and a police accomplice's bullet. His presumed guilt, combined with the change in government leadership, effectively ended the existing thaw in the Cold War.

White lies began the process of American citizens distrusting government pronouncements and robbed us of the truth.

"Until now (his emphasis, page 335).