The Enigma of Jack Ruby

Warren Commission Counsel Wesley Liebeler described the killing of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit as the Rosetta Stone of the JFK Assassination.

Liebeler's supposition was that the killing of Tippit 45 minutes after the assassination by the accused Presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald clearly showed a predisposition of guilt and flight as Oswald killed Tippit to avoid capture.

However, I think Liebeler missed the mark by about 3-1/2 miles.

Because that is the distance from the 10th and Patton location in North Oak Cliff to the Dallas Police Headquarters on Harwood street in downtown Dallas.

This is the location of the real "Rosetta Stone" of the JFK Assassination: the cold blooded murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

And thus begins the examination of the enigma of Jack Ruby to solve the conspiracy issue in the JFK Assassination.

It Doesn't Pass The Eye or Smell Test

Ruby's guilt in the murder of Oswald was never in doubt.

The new age of television made sure of that as live television crews captured the murder in the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters and broadcast it simultaneously to a stunned nation.

Immediately the thought of conspiracy was catapulted across the nation as the obvious description of what the nation had just witnessed.

I mean how much more did you need than to have the accused Presidential assassin gunned down less than 48 hours after the assassination on live television under police protection while being transferred to the Dallas County Jail?

And by a man dressed in "mafioso-attire" who emerged from the shadows of the glaring television lights with a Saturday Night Special in his outstretched right hand who walked right in front of Oswald's two police escorts and put the barrel of the gun into his stomach and fired the fatal bullet.

Pandemonium ensured in the police headquarters basement.

The whole sordid affair was just too pat. It didn't look right in 1963, hasn't felt right since then and certainly doesn't pass the smell test of the majority of Americans 50 years later.

So Just Who Was Jack Ruby?

That is the million dollar question all these years later.

According to the Warren Commission, Jack Ruby was a 52-year old, Jewish local nightclub/strip joint owner in Dallas who befriended the local police officers who came into his club. Ruby was so distraught over the assassination of the young president that he closed his Carousel club the entire weekend. And, the thought of his beautiful wife having to come back to Dallas for the accused murderers trial so upset him that he spontaneously gunned Oswald down in the Dallas police basement in a spur of the moment passion-fueled murder.

That's right. It was all just a spontaneous fit of passion driven by his spirit of patriotism to save the first lady a return trip to Dallas.

They also reported that they found no credible evidence that Ruby was aided by anyone in the murder nor did they find any evidence that supported the fact that Ruby was a member of Organized Crime or associated with anyone with underworld background.

Ruby was just a hard-working, local businessman who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time with a loaded .38!

And the Warren Commission sold that alibi to the American people and its supporters have stood by that verdict since 1964.

But fortunately, over the years the Warren Commission legend of Jack Ruby has slowly and deliberately been whittled away as the tall tale that it was in 1963 for a variety of reasons.

Jack Ruby--Man of Mystery Unveiled

"To understand who killed President Kennedy and did he have help, I think you have to understand what happenened to the assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. I see Jack Ruby's assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald as a mob hit.", G. Robert Blakey, Counsel, House Select Committee on Assassinations.

This was the verdict of the chief counsel to the H.S.C.A. in the 1970's who came to this realization after overseeing the first government investigation into the JFK assassination since the original Warren Commission Report in 1964.

So let's take a closer look at several items of fact that show signs of a deeper involvement of conspiracy by Jack Ruby in the JFK assassination.

The Trial of the Century In Dallas

First, many people today may not be aware that Jack Ruby had a trial for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1964 and was found guilty of his murder and sentenced to a lifetime imprisonment.

That trial was a media circus in 1964 post-assassination Dallas that was led by the local Judge Joe Brown's eccentric courtroom behavior.
This odd behavior included being spotted commisserating with the accused assassin's mother in the courtroom, allowing a celebrity reporter to interview the defendant in his judges' chambers for a forthcoming book on the assassination and repeatedly refusing to pronounce Melvin Bellis' last name correctly, the flamboyant San Francisco defense attorney hired by the Ruby family. The correct pronounciation was "Bell-EYE" but Judge Joe Brown continued at Bellis' frustrated objection to pronounce it "Bell-Y" in a mock sense of derision to the sauve, sophisticant from San Francisco who dared come into his Texas courtroom with his panache, debonair and stylish looks.

All true.

Ruby's defense initially put forth by his other local attorney Tom Howard was that he killed Oswald because he was protecting the honor of Jacqueline Kennedy to save her a trip to Dallas for the Oswald trial.

However, later after realizing that flimsy alibi wouldn't past muster with the jury of his peers, Howard and Belli had Ruby declared insane and sought his acquittal.

So the fact that Ruby's initial alibi was replaced with an insanity plea cast further doubt on his veracity for the Oswald murder and opened the door for further skepticism of his involvement.

Warren Commission Testimony

Secondly, shortly after his trial had ended with his guilty verdict and life imprisonment sentence, Ruby was finally interviewed by the Warren Commission in his Dallas jail cell.

And interviewed by none other than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and Warren Commission chairman Earl Warren himself and Warren Commission member and future President of the United States Gerald Ford.

Ruby begged Warren and Ford to take him back to Washington for questioning so he could tell his real story behind the Oswald murder and the JFK assassination.

It seems Ruby had come to a realization in prison that perhaps there was more to his involvement and others were behind the Presidents assassination that he felt unsafe in jail to tell Warren and Ford the truth.

Warren told Ruby he didn't have the jurisdiction to bring him back to Washington and that he was safe to tell him what he knew in his jail cell.

Ruby refused and obviously didn't feel safe telling Warren anything in Dallas. He only had himself to blame for his lack of jail security due to his actions six months earlier!

So whether the ramblings of an insane man or a truth finally coming out, we'll never know; however, the whole episode and Ruby's request to Warren and his later jail cell writings show a man struggling to understand the truth and casts doubt on his real alibi and motives in the murder.

Jailhouse Interviews & Writings

Jack Ruby languished in isolation inside his Dallas County Jail cell for 2-1/2 years.

It was during this time that the cold-hard reality of his stark situation finally hit him.

Whatever his motivations, instead of being celebrated as a patriot and national hero for cutting down the assassin who had murdered his president, he was now just another prisoner doing his time behind bars with no hope for parole.

Now with the passage of time and solitude thinking, he started to rethink his actions against the larger backdrop.

Knowing only what he knew regarding his motivation for killing Oswald, Ruby began to tell anyone who listened that his role was part of a larger conspiracy to change the government.

He alo began slipping handwritten notes to his jailhouse guards including Dallas County Deputy Sherriff Al Maddox who told a reporter that one of the notes said:

"It was a conspiracy and his motive was to silence Oswald."

Ruby was obviously wrestling with his own demons inside to determine what if any role his actions played in a larger plot to kill Kennedy.

He obviously now believed someone above him was calling the shots in Dallas that weekend.

Whatever the truth was with Ruby we'll never know. He took the real motivation for his actions to his grave.

He told his attorney Elmer Gertz this on his deathbed at Parkland Hospital as featured in Gertz book, "Moment of Madness: The People vs. Jack Ruby," 1968:

"Yeah, I did like I said, a flash came to me from the point at the bottom of the ramp at the time that I was grappling with the police officers for the gun. Actually, what had happened I don't know at the time."

Retrial & Sudden Death

After wallowing in jail contemplating his actions for nearly 2-1/2 years, suddenly in October of 1966 Jack Ruby was granted a new trial.

And, Voila' he was finally going to get his change of venue to Wichita Falls and another chance to tell his story.

But Ruby was suddenly stricken with a virulent form of cancer in December and died a month later.

So the man who ensured that Oswald would never talk now was silenced himself.

They say dead men can't talk.

However, future government investigations and a trail of paperwork told no lies about Jack Ruby but rather revealed his true associations with questionable co-conspirators.

H.S.C.A. Investigation

The House Select Committee on Assassinations convened in 1976 to further investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as a follow up to the official government report issued in 1964, The Warren Commission Report.

G. Robert Blakey was the Chief Counsel who directed the investigative effort. Here is what he has said in recent years about Jack Ruby and his involvement in the assassination:

"To understand who killed President Kennedy and did he have help, I think you have to understand what happened to the assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. I see Jack Ruby's assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald as a mob hit."

I happen to be one of the 61% of Americans who believe there was a conspiracy in President Kennedy's assassination.

I also agree with G. Robert Blakey on his assessment of Jack Ruby.

I also agree with Blakey's recent assessment of the Warren Report:

"The Warren Commission was a political body, not a scientific or even historical commission. The single shooter was a political judgement. It is not necessarily what happened."

The H.S.C.A. concluded in its' official report the following final analysis of the Warren Commission Report:

"In conclusion, the committee found that the Warren Commission's investigation was conducted in good faith, competently, and with high integrity, but that the Warren Report was not, in some respects, an accurate presentation of all the evidence available to the Commission or a true reflection of the scope of the Commission's work, particularly on the issue of possible conspiracy in the assassination. It is a reality to be regretted that the Commission failed to live up to its promise."

So just what did the H.S.C.A. investigation find was an accurate presentation of all the evidence available pertaining to Jack Ruby?

Bill Kelly's blog, jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com, is probably the best source to read about the H.S.C.A.'s Ruby findings unless you want to read the entire commission report.

Kelly wrote a blog on January 15, 2013 titled "Oswald and Ruby Phone Records--RFK, Jr. Got It Right" that recapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s appearance in Dallas in January where RFK, Jr. said publicly for the first time that neither he nor his father believed his uncle was killed by a single shooter, i.e., "Oswald."

Pretty heady stuff for the so-called wacko-conspiracy theorists to chew on and a direct slap in the face of the Warren Commission-apologists the past 50 years.

RFK, Jr. went on to say that his own father's investigators' had determined that both Ruby and Oswald's phone records indicated a high volume of calls to members of the underworld who the Attorney General had been investigating and wiretapping in his ongoing investigation of the Mafia.

Specifically, Kelly reported that, "Jack Ruby's extensive telephone records that clearly show in the weeks leading up to the assassination he had telephone conversations with a number of mobsters who were being actively investigated by Robert F. Kennedy's Justice Department."

Kelly went on to include the following from the H.S.C.A.'s own findings:

"Many of these calls were to or received from known mobsters and union racketeers, some of whom were being investigated by RFK's Justice Department, including Barney Barker, Dusty Miller, Lenny Patrick, Dave Yaras, Lewis McWillie, Irwin S. Weiner and Nofio Pecora."

Who were these men?

Kelly goes on to describe Barney Barker as a "boxer, ex-convict and one of Jimmy Hoffa's best known associates during the McClelland Committee when RFK was the chief counsel to that committee which "detailed Barker's role as Hoffa's personal liaison to various Mafia figures."

Dusty Miller was another Hoffa assistant and head of the Teamster's southern conference while Lennny Patrick was "one of the Chicago Mafia's leading assassins..."

What about Dave Yaras? He like Patrick was a childhood friend of Jack Ruby from his Chicago days. And, Lewis McWillie? He moved from Dallas to Havana in 1958 to work in the Havana gambling casinos owned by Meyer Lanksy and Santos Trafficante. Ruby himself admitted to not only knowing McWillie but to travelling to Cuba to visit McWillie in his deathbed interview with his own attorney!

And what of Nofio Pecora? Kelly reports that Pecora was a Carlos Marcello associate whose friend Emile Bruneau bailed Oswald out of jail when he was arrested protesting against the Anti-Castro Cubans on the streets in New Orleans in September of 1963.

Pretty incriminating evidence that Ruby and Oswald both had underworld associates and were actively involved with them in the months and weeks leading up to the assassination.

It was based upon this evidence and that of acoustics analysis of a Dallas Police dictabelt recording of the assassination that the H.S.C.A. concluded in its' final report that JFK was "assassinated by a probable conspiracy."

Further Mob Associates

But don't just take the H.S.C.A. report.

Further statements by Mob-related associates were reported that led to hints of a broader conspiracy involving Jack Ruby and his Mafia-connections.

The most infamous of these statements came from longtime mob associate Johnny Roselli during his Senate Church Committee testimony in 1975. Roselli went missing right before he was scheduled to testify for the second time before the Senate Church Committee in 1976.

Roselli was an influential mob hit man for the Chicago mafia and was also involved with the C.I.A. plot to kill Fidel Castro in the early 1960's.

Roselli was quoted as saying Jacky Ruby was "one of our boys." in his previous testimony and shortly before his second scheduled testimony, Roselli's badily mutilated and chopped up body was found floating in an oil barrel in Key Biscayne Bay.

Further statements came from a book titled "I Heard You Paint Houses" Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa," in 2004 by Charles Brandt a former Chief Deputy Attorney General for the State of Delaware.

In the book, a biography of sorts from Sheeran who was Jimmy Hoffa's muscle and admitted killer, Sheeran details how he lured Hoffa to a phony meeting with mob associates in suburban Detroit and shot him in the back of the head. He also drops snippets of JFK-assassination-related information.
Specifically, Sheeran tells Brandt the following:

1. He was ordered by Hoffa in 1963 to deliver a duffel bag of 3 rifles from Brooklyn, New York to Baltimore to David Ferrie, Carlos Marcello's pilot who was questioned the weekend of the assassination and investigated by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in 1967 for his links to the JFK assassination.

2. On October 18, 1974, at a dinner for his loyal service to the Teamsters Union, Sheeran claims mob boss Russell Buffalino told Hoffa, "There are people higher up than me that feel that you are demonstrating a failure to show appreciation for Dallas."

3. Buffalino that same night told Sheeran to talk to "your friend. Tell him what it is." implying Hoffa would be killed if he did not cooperate with his requests that Hoffa not run for Teamsters President. Sheeran replied, "Jimmy's pretty high up too himself." At which, Buffalino said, "You're dreaming my friend. If they could take out the president, they could take out the president of the Teamsters."

4. Sheeran told Hoffa of Buffalino's warning and Hoffa said the following to Sheeran:

"That's just the tip of the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg. Let me tell you--Dallas, did you hear that word tonight? Remember that package you took to Baltimore? I didn't know it then, but it turns out it was high-powered rifles for the Kennedy hit in Dallas. Those stupid bastards lost their own rifles in the trunk of a Thunderbird that crashed when their driver got drunk. That pilot for Carlos was involved in delivering the replacements that you brought down. Those fuckers used both of us on that deal. We were patsies. What do you think of that? They had fake cops and real cops involved in it.

Jack Ruby's cops were supposed to take care of Oswald, but Ruby bungled it. That's why he had to go in and finish the job on Oswald. If he didn't take care of Oswald, what do you think they would have done to him--put Ruby on a meat hook. Don't kid yourself. Santo and Carlos and Giancana and some of their element, they were all in on Kennedy. Every single one of the same cast of characters that were in on the Bay of Pigs. They even had a plot to kill Castro with Momo (Giancana) and Roselli. I've got enough to hang everybody. And every last bit of it comes out if anything unnatural happens to me. They will all pay. All those who fucked me will pay."

According to Sheeran, he shot and killed Jimmy Hoffa on July 30, 1975.

New Orleans

We now know from not only the H.S.C.A. investigation and the Garrison trial of 1967 that New Orleans was a hotbed of right-wing, anti-Castro Cuban activity involving Carlos Marcello's pilot and investigator David Ferrie and his associate Guy Bannister, a former F.B.I. agent.

Oliver Stone did a masterful job of portaying their characters played by Joe Pesci and Ed Asner.

We also now know from investigators such as Bill Kelly, that phone calls from Marcello attorney G. Wray Gill's office in New Orleans were linked to a man named Lawrence Meyers in Chicago through his girlfriend Jean Aase. Lawrence and Aase flew to Dallas on November 21 and had dinner with Jack Ruby at the infamous Campisi's Egyptian Restaurant on Mockingbird Avenue in Dallas.
Kelly traces phone records provided by the H.S.C.A. from Gill's New Orleans office to Aase's rooming house in Chicago as a tie to Meyers. It is widely known that David Ferrie worked out of Gill's office throughout the summer and fall of 1963 and was with Carlos Marcello on Friday, November 22, 1963 when Marcello's Federal case against him was dropped.

Conspiracy in Dallas

We now know thru evidence reported by the H.S.C.A. and the Dallas Police Department, that Jack Ruby was in the Dallas Jail on Friday night of the assassination.

We have news camera footage of Jack Ruby in the back of the room standing on a table in sunglasses and fedora hat and footage where Ruby corrected District Attorney Henry Wade when he said Oswald was part of the "Free Cuba Committee."

It was Ruby who shouted out, "That's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Henry."

The importance in that correction is that the Free Play for Cuba Committee was a Anti-Castro organization while the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a Pro-Castro committee.

Don't you think it is a bit suspicious that the two-bit Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby would just happen to be in the police station at the midnight press conference for the accused Presidential assassin correcting the Dallas District attorney on the origins of the committee Lee Harvey Oswald belonged?

Julia Ann Mercer testified to the Warren Commission she saw a man unloading rifles from a pickup truck hours before the assassination on the grassy knoll. She identified Jack Ruby as this man. They told her she must be mistaken.

Dallas newspaper reporter Seth Cantor testified and wrote a book about his encounter with Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital following the assassination, ("Who Was Jack Ruby?," 1978.) Cantor was in the press bus during the JFK motorcade. The bus immediately went to Parkland following the assassination. It was in the hallways of the hospital that Cantor saw Ruby, shook his hand and exchanged greetings. Ruby said, "Isn't this a terrible thing." and asked Cantor if he should close his clubs.

Cantor had known Ruby for years and had actually received information from Ruby on associates Cantor had been investigating for his newspaper stories for the Dallas Times Herald.

There was no mistaking Ruby for someone else on his encounter at Parkland Hospital. Seth Cantor knew Jack Ruby.

However, Jack Ruby told the Warren Commission that Cantor was mistaken because he never set foot in Parkland that day.

Despite Cantor's Warren Commission testimony to the contrary, his long-standing relationship with Ruby and his credentials as a credible newspaper reporter in Dallas, the Warren Commission chose to believe Jack Ruby and not Seth Cantor.

Summary

You can believe what you want regarding the Kennedy Assassination but the facts show a clear and consistent pattern of conspiracy in almost all areas of the investigation.

Many government officials and local leaders pooh-pooh and discount conspiracy theorists as misguided souls with nothing better to do with their lives and no evidence to back up their assessments of conspiracy.

Their points are understandable. They want to maintain order and history regardless of the facts pointing the other way.

I have met many of these officials associated with the Kennedy Assassination. Jim Leavelle. Murphy Martin. Hugh Aynesworth.

I have also met many others associated with the assassination who do feel there was a conspiracy. Malcolm Summers. Al Maddox.

I find it odd that the local authorities had already convicted Oswald in the court of public opinion by their statements to the press on the day of the assassination. Police Chief Jesse Curry. Police Detective Will Fritz. Even J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson exchanged phone calls that exclaim their opinion that the American public must be convinced of Oswald's guilt.

Even right now as I write this article I am watching "Remembering JFK: 50 Years After Dallas" on American History TV on C-SPAN. Richard Stolley, an editor with LIFE magazine who travelled to Dallas on the day of the assassination and discovered the Zapruder film, is being interviewed. He negotiated the purchase of the film that day from Zapruder for $150,000. Stolley told the C-SPAN reporter that upon hearing the news of the assassination and immediately flying to Dallas, he was surprised to learn upon arrival that the Dallas police had already judged and convicted Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder and determined he alone was guilty as a lone gunman without any help from anyone.

Stolley described the scene in Dallas as "so peculiar and weird. The government was in total disarray. The streets were empty."

I share Stolley's disbelief in the Dallas Police's and our government's rush to judgement on Oswald.

I have done my best to portray as accurate an advocacy for conspiracy as I can in this posting about Jack Ruby and his linkage to known associates who link him to a broader conspiracy to the JFK assassination.

What do you think?

JFK 50th: Honoring the Memory of President John F. Kennedy

My 11-year old daughter Lucy and I were privileged to have been one of the 1,000 invited guests to attend the first ceremony in 50 years by the city of Dallas honoring the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The official ceremony took place on Main Street in historic Dealey Plaza just a few hundred feet from the spot where bullets cut down the 35th president of the United States in front of the infamous "grassy knoll."

A gaggle of over 600 press credentials were issued from around the world for this historic occasion. Media from Japan, Europe and Asia were here to broadcast the historic ceremony around the world.

The city of Dallas had been organizing this event for over the past year. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings spoke today and read excerpts from the speech President Kennedy had in his pocket and was to have read at his luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart had he not been assassinated in Dealey Plaza.

The ceremony featured author and presidential historian David McCullough reading excerpts from some of President Kennedy's speeches he made during his brief 1,000 days in office.

The United States Naval Academy Men's Glee Club sang "America the Beautiful" and "Battle Hym of the Republic" like they had never been sung before in a setting that seemed appropriate for the occasion: cold, rainy and dreery skies.

One of the most poignant and moving movements occurred at the beginning when the nation's colors were presented by a Dallas Police Color Guard. As the color guard moved past us just a few feet away, the sound of bagpipes echoed throughout Dealey Plaza but out of our sight.

As the colors were presented in place in front of the stage the sound of the bagpipes continued to echo away from us but still unseen. Finally, we all turned behind us to see the Dallas Metro Police Pipes and Drums Procession filing up the grassy knoll in place behind the newly unveiled JFK monument.

As the 8-member bagpipe troupe and one drummer stood at attention in front of the pergola that so many have become familiar with behind the grassy knoll, the mood of the forthcoming ceremony was cast in stone: solemnity.

This event was Dallas' only official ceremony commemorating the assassination in 50 years.

Incredible.

After all the notoriety and controversy surrounding the JFK assassination, the city of Dallas had never commemorated the event until today's commemoration honoring President Kennedy's life today in Dealey Plaza.

Too much pain had been placed on the heart and soul of Dallas the past 50 years.

The "city of hate" reverberated throughout the world describing Dallas as if somehow the city itself and its citizens were responsible for those volley of shots that took the life of our president.

It is true Dallas was a hotbed of right-wing zealotry in 1963. Just one month before the President's visit, United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was spat upon and hit with a plaquard after a speech in downtown Dallas.

Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry listed the following groups who were under surveillance prior to President Kennedy's arrival in Dallas: The Klu Klux Klan; Indignant White Citizen's Council; National States Rights Party; John Birch Society; Dallas White Citizen's Council; The General Edwin A. Walker Group; Texas White Citizen's Council and the Dallas Committe for Full Citizenship just to name 8 of the 13 groups.

Dallas was ground-zero to the John Birch Society. One of the most virulent, anti-establishment, anti-communism, radical right-wing organizations in the country.

In fact it was a Bircher, former General Edwin A. Walker, who had returned home to Dallas and received a heroes welcome upon his dismissal from his service by President Kennedy for indoctrinating his troops with right-wing philosophy.

Dallas' mood for right-wing zealotry was so widespread that the morning of his assassination President Kennedy showed Jacqueline Kennedy a black-bordered, full page ad in The Dallas Morning News. The ad featured a headline that said, "Welcome To Dallas Mr. President," and went on to list numerous questions for the president and demanded answers "Now!"

President Kennedy turned to Jackie and said, "Now we're heading into nut country."

A flyer was distributed by some of these same right-wing groups throughout the presidential motorcade that featured a mugshot profile of President Kennedy with a headline that said, "Wanted for Treason" and proceeded to list the reasons why!

But Dallas has changed the past 50 years.

The vitriolic right-wing chatter has been replaced by an entrepreneurial, can-do spirit. Dallas is a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city with all of the accoutrements you would associate with the nation's 9th largest city in the United States.

Today, Dallas' politics are as much brown and black as they are white as they predominately were in Kennedy's 1963 when everything was run by the old white, male bastion--the Dallas Citizens Council.

Today, as we snaked through empty downtown streets in our 20-bus caravan with our police escort, I couldn't help but notice one of the streets we rode down was Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

Today's ceremony was a public and private collaboration by the City of Dallas and the President John F. Kennedy Commemorative Foundation honoring the life, leadership and legacy of President John F. Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of his death.

The entire leadership of the city of Dallas joined forces to pull off this momentous occasion.

A who's-who of movers and shakers came together and organized, planned and raised the money to make this solemn event happen.

Led by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, Chairman Ruth Collins Altshuler put together a list of Dallas citizens who said yes when asked to donate to this worthwhile event.

Looking out over the VIP seating today I saw some familiar faces.

The most recognizable to many were Ross Perot and his wife Margot and former Dallas Cowboys Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach.

More familiar to me were Dan Novakov and Brad Cheves, fellow board members on the SMU Athletic Forum and City Councilman Scott Griggs and my host for the day, Dallas Mayor Pro Tempore Dwaine Carraway and his wife Barbara.

Across Elm and Commerce street were some of the 5,000 lucky people who were fortunate enough to have won a ticket to the event through the public lottery system.

Our place was at the front right of the main stage on the grassy median across from the grassy knoll just a few feet away from where my friend Malcolm Summers had witnessed the reason we were all here today 50 years ago this afternoon.

As the bells tolled in unison exactly at 12:30 p.m. when the assassins bullets took the life of our president, I couldn't help but think back to my friend Malcolm and how proud he would be that Lucy and I were in attendance today honoring not the death that he witnessed that day across the street but rather the life of President John F. Kennedy.

Dallas shone bright today under the dreeriest of conditions.

The 50th ceremony honoring the memory of President John F. Kennedy was just as historic and symbolic of an occasion as the man's life we were honoring today deserved.

I am proud that Lucy and myself were in attendance.

Perhaps she will bring her children to the 100th anniversary and carry on the legacy of the life of President John F. Kennedy.

The JFK Conundrum: Major General Edwin Walker

I like Alan Peppard.

I really do.

We both love horseracing and had hoped Orb would win the Triple Crown this year.

I just don't agree with his asssessment of history in the JFK Assassination case.

As evidenced by his front page article on Edwin Walker in the Sunday May 12 issue of The Dallas Morning News, he obviously believes the Warren Commission hook, line and sinker.

I believe the Warren Commission is a fraud or as House Select Committee on Assassinations Lead Counsel Robert E. Blakey recently described it more politically-correct:

"The Warren Commission was a political body, not a scientific or even historical commission. The single shooter was a political judgment. It is not necessarily what happened!"

Exacta-mundo!

And therein lies the rub with today's journalists who try and just copy and paste the history books fast forward even when the history books have been proven wrong in the past 50 years of this wired and freedom of information world.

This isn't just wacko-conspiracy, nut-job nonsense as all of the esteemed members of the mainstream media try to paint anyone who espouses a different opinion of the JFK case.

Blakey has been widely quoted as saying that he was duped into believing the C.I.A. was fully cooperating with his H.S.C.A. investigation after it was learned that George Joannides, the main liaison from the Agency to the Committee was in fact the C.I.A. head of the D.R.E. anti-Castro student revolutionaries in 1963. It was members of this group who Lee Harvey Oswald was associated with prior to the assassination. And, as he testified in his Warren Commission deposition to Wesley Liebeler, Edwin Walker also met D.R.E. representatives and spoke at a D.R.E. meeting in Dallas in the fall of 1963.  Blakey says now had he known of Joannides background, he would have demanded his removal from the investigation. He now discredits basically everything Joannides and the C.I.A. provided to him and believes they seriously deflected the investigation into Oswald's D.R.E. activities to hide their involvement in the conspiracy.

Here is another gem from H.S.C.A.'s Blakey recently about The Warren Commission:

"The evidence is complex, difficult to put together, and it points in more than one direction, particularly if you are troubled by what happened in the Plaza. The single shooter was one theory, but hardly the only one."

The problem with The Warren Commission is just exactly what Blakey described above. They took a predisposition of Oswald's guilt as a hypothesis put forth by F.B.I. Director J.Edgar Hoover, the very day of the assassination that was also instantaneously spread around the world by a willing media, and pointed all of its discovery resources (provided by Hoover's F.B.I.) to find and support that declaration. This is what I and early assassination researcher Harold Weisberg in his 1965 book call a "Whitewash!"

"The thing that I am most concerned about...is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."

F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover in a telephone conversation with President Lyndon Johnson on November 24, 1963 just hours after Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on national television.

Lee Harvey Oswald did not get his day in court because he was cut down in cold blood two days after the assassination in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters in downtown Dallas in front of worldwide media by a two-bit nightclub owner named Jack Ruby.

Incredibly, The Warren Commission not only put forth the "lone nut theory" about Oswald killing Kennedy but also believed the nonsense that another "lone nut" named Jack Ruby decided to spontaneously kill Oswald on Sunday morning because he didn't want to put Jackie Kennedy through a trial. Incredulous. But this is exactly what The Warren Commmission said.

Here's what Blakey had to say about Jack Ruby and his role in the assassination:

"To understand who killed President Kennedy and did he have help, I think you have to understand what happened to the assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. I see Jack Ruby's assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald as a mob hit."

Here is what Peppard's subject Edwin Walker said about the Oswald murder to The Warren Commission that supported Ruby's killing of Oswald as further evidence of a conspiracy,

"I think the fact that Rubenstein shot Oswald suggests plenty. I am convinced he couldn't have shot him except for one basic reason, and maybe many others, but to keep him quiet. That is what shooting people does. I think the whole city of Dallas is very interested."

And if Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby as a mob hit as Blakey says and to keep him quiet as Walker says, then this case screams conspiracy and casts a different light on The Dallas Morning News article recounting the Edwin Walker episode as factual history.

Ironically, as Edwin Walker's Warren Commission testimony that was conveniently overlooked by Peppard says, Robert Blakey was not the only person interested in the association between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/walker_e.htm

The Case of Edwin Walker

I am not going to repeat the Edwin Walker story that was put forth in The Dallas Morning News. You can read The Dallas Morning News version yourself here:

Edwin Walker Story

No, I prefer to tell a different story. A story of the whole truth of Edwin Walker's background, his activities prior to the  JFK assassination and a story from his own mouth that he told to Wesley Liebeler when giving his deposition to The Warren Commission in June of 1964 also intermixed with other evidence that point to conspiracy and cover-up.

Here are the main points of my disagreement with Alan Peppards' version of history:

1. Oswald was never tied to the rifle the Warren Commission says he used to shoot at Walker and kill President Kennedy by anyone other than his wife Marina and Ruth Paine whose home the Oswalds' lived in in Irving.

Wesley Frazier, who drove Oswald to work on the day of the assassination, and his sister told the authorities Lee Harvey Oswald carried a long package in a brown paper wrap the day of the assassination that Oswald told him were curtain rods for his apartment.

However, in fact, both Frazier and his sister testified that this package wasn't long enough to carry the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle even when disassembled testifying it was only 27" long. The rifle was 34"  dissassembled. The Warren Commission dismissed Frazier and his sisters testimony as they must have been mistaken.

Although Oswald rented a Post Office Box and supposedly ordered a rifle thru a mail order catalog, there is no evidence he ever received this rifle from the post office. Even in 1963, you had to go to the Post Office and sign for a rifle that you ordered through the mail. The U.S. Post Office has no evidence that Oswald ever picked up this rifle from the Post Office. Wouldn't The Warren Commission want this type of documentation?

Two eyewitnesses from below on Houston Street who described Oswald as the man they saw standing in the southeastern corner window of the Texas Book Depository holding a rifle on the day of the assassination described a man wearing a white t-shirt. Oswald was wearing a dark colored, striped windowpane work shirt. Oswald also gave the Dallas Police an alibi that he was eating his lunch in the second floor lunchroom at the time of the assassination, an alibi that was backed up by his description of two other workers who walked thru the room at the time Oswald said he was in the lunch room. Other eyewitnesses working in the Texas Book Depository told the Dallas Police they were on the upper floors by the back staircase and never saw anyone come down after the shots rang out. The Warren Commission dismissed this testimony by saying the witnesses were mistaken about the time.

And, none other than Warren Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler had this to say in an unpublished, internal document questioning some of the statements the Commission was trying to pass off as fact in its final report:

"The conclusion is even worse when it states that "the rifle was kept among Oswalds' possession from the time of its purchase until the day of the assassination." I do not think the record provides any real evidence to support that broad statement. The fact is that not one person alive today ever saw that rifle in the Paine garage in such a way that it could be identified as that rifle."

HSCA JFK Exhibit 36
"Memorandum re: Gallery Proofs of Chapter IV of The Report
From: Wesley J. Liebeler
Date:  September 6, 1964

2. Oswald's fingerprints were never found on this rifle after the assassination. Although, the Warren Commission said Oswald's palm print was found on the underside of the rifle stock, its' credibility is questionable. The rifle was checked for fingerprints immediately by Dallas Police before it was whisked away by the F.B.I. to Washington, D.C. on the day of the assassination. A search in Washington over the weekend by the F.B.I. revealed no such palm print. It was only 4 days later, on November 26 that the Dallas Police notified the F.B.I. that they had lifted the palm print with tape and forgot to tell the F.B.I. Sounds suspicious? It is.
3. Oswald passed a parrafin test administered by the Dallas Police the day of the assassination which proved he never fired a rifle that day. He did test positive for having deposits on his hand consistent with firing or holding a revolver but the test on his face cheeks which would have indicated firing a rifle were negative. The positive tests were also consistent for someone who had been handling ink which is something Oswald certainly did in his job at the Texas Book Depository.

4. The only incriminating evidence that links Lee Harvey Oswald to the Walker incident and his rifle were provided by his wife Marina and Ruth Paine, the mysterious Quaker woman the Oswalds lived with in Irving. An undated, unsigned to-do list written in his own Russian handwriting supposedly in case he was captured, was turned over to the authorities by Ruth Paine after the assassination (2 of 3 H.S.C.A. handwriting experts said it was not Oswald's handwriting.) The note was buried in a Russian book Ms. Paine took to Marina while she was being held by the Secret Service. The problem with Ms. Paine's discovery is that the Dallas Police and F.B.I. had already conducted a thorough search of the Paine household immediately following Oswald's arrest. This search included the police going through books in the Paine's house page by page looking for evidence. It was only after observing this search that Ruth Paine took the Russian book to Marina days later in custody knowing full well it would be similarly searched. The authenticity of photographs Marina gave the authorities showing Oswald holding the rifle and a pistol carrying Marxist and Communist propaganda magazines has been challenged by photographic experts as well as Oswald himself. Photos of General Walker's house apparently taken by Oswald were also found in Marina's possessions.

5. Lee Harvey Oswald did not drive but according to Marina's account he carried the Walker rifle to and from the scene of the crime in scouting missions and even took photographs of the scene of the crime that were conveniently provided to the Dallas police by Marina after the assassination. Incredibly, Marina told the investigators that her husband also kept a photo album of the Walker house in a diary he kept about his intentions but he burned it following the attempted shooting. Really? Why didn't he burn the handwritten note as well? Apparently, the bus driver or anyone else on the Dallas public busses Oswald supposedly took to the Walker house, did not notice anything suspicious about Oswald carrying a rifle on the bus! Marina told The Warren Commission that Oswald wasn't concerned about being caught or seen after the shooting of Walker because he took the time to bury the rifle in a grassy area behind Walker's house only to go back and retrieve it again later. Incredible.
6. Marina Oswald's veracity in recounting these tales to the Secret Service and Warren Commission have been questioned and debunked by none other than The Warren Commission. Because, after initially denying any knowledge of the note investigators found in the book Ruth Paine gave them, Marina suddenly opened up and told the tall tale that the note was left by her husband after his attempted shooting of Walker eight months prior. Warren Commission exhibit CE 1785, dated 12/5/1963 outlines Secret Service Agent Leon Gopadze's contradictory statements from Marina Oswald:

To further support the Warren Commission doubts about Marina's veracity in the Walker case and other testimony one only has to review a memo from Commission attorney Norman Redlich to J. Lee Rankin, Lead Counsel dated February 28, 1964 titled JFK Exhibition No. 13:

"SUBJECT: Questioning of James H. Martin and Others Concerning Marina Oswald's Character"

"Neither you nor I have any desire to smear the reputation of any individual. We cannot ignore, however, that Marina Oswald has repeatedly lied to the Service, the F.B.I. and this Commission on matters which are of vital concern to the people of this country and the world."

7. Also, if Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly wrote this undated, unsigned letter and left it in his possessions for his wife to find if he was captured for shooting Walker, don't you think the F.B.I. and Dallas police would have found not only Lee Harvey's fingerprints on the letter but Marina's fingerprints as well? But according to the F.B.I. memo below, no latent fingerprints were found on the letter that matched either Oswalds' fingerprints:

8. To understand Marina's mindset, one simply has to understand her surroundings. Her husband has just been arrested for assassinating the President of the United States and the murder of a Dallas police officer. She doesn't speak English, has two young daughters, one she is still nursing, and she finds herself in a whirlwind of media coverage and sequestered in a hotel in Arlington, Texas surrounded by men in suits who are questioning her about her involvement in the murders. F.B.I., Secret Service and Dallas police detectives can be very persuasive when you have a young mother who doesn't speak English. Especially, when you threaten her with deportation if she doesn't cooperate and is sent packing back to Minsk. So Marina told the investigators what they wanted to hear to save her life and her children's life. She has admitted to such to Jesse Ventura in an off-camera interview in 2010.
9. General Walker himself told the Dallas police and the Warren Commission that he saw a car leaving the church parking lot behind his house immediately after the shooting attempt on his life and immediately assumed that this was a getaway car as the bullet came from the general direction of the church parking lot. Lee Harvey Oswald did not drive.
10. Two days before the attempt on his life, an aide to General Walker spotted two suspicious men behind the Walker home in the church parking lot looking around as if casing the area. General Walker himself called police and reported these two people two days prior to the shooting and questioned their involvement afterwards to no avail.

11. A 14-year old neighbor who lived next door to Walker named Kirk Coleman told Dallas police he heard a gunshot between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. on April 10, 1963 and ran to his window and saw two men putting something in a trunk of a car in the church parking lot located behind Walker's house. The same direction Walker and the police said the bullet was fired from. Both men then got into separate cars and drove off in different directions. The descriptions of the men that Colemen gave police was not a description of Lee Harvey Oswald.
12. General Walker inserted himself further into the investigation in 1979 when after watching the H.S.C.A. televised hearings he questioned whether the bullet The Warren Commission said was recovered from the wall in his house in 1963 wasn't the one he dug out of the plaster:

13. Maybe General Walker was on to something because the following memo was found in The Warren Commission documents casting further doubt that the Walker bullet was the same type of bullet Oswald supposedly fired at JFK, something that was integral to The Warren Commission assertion that Oswald shot at Walker and JFK:



14. In his Warren Commission testimony, General Walker told Wesley J. Liebeler that he thought two people were involved in his shooting. He even named one of them William Duff, a young man he had befriended and taken into his home as a general handyman in the months prior to the shooting. According to Walker, he had never met Duff until he walked in his house late one evening looking for a job and a place to sleep. Apparently, this was normal behavior in the Walker household. Walker told Liebeler that he hired two detectives from Oklahoma to investigate whether Duff was in fact the man who shot at him. Apparently, Walker had the resources to hire his own private detectives rather than use the Dallas police department.
16. Walker even told Liebeler that he immediately suspected Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby were acquaintances and told Liebeler his sources had told him Oswald had shown up at a local hotel garage prior to the assassination and retrieved Jack Ruby's car from the garage. How strange? Why would General Walker, an avowed Kennedy hater, volunteer such incriminating evidence linking the accused Presidential assassin with Jack Ruby? What was his motive? Was he trying to distance himself from some sort of association with Oswald prior to the assassination? Walker told Liebeler this,

"The indications seem to be not only mine, but all over the country that Rubenstein and Oswald had some association."

When asked if if he had any knowledge that would indicate Oswald was involved in any conspiracy to kill JFK, Walker said this,

"I think he designated his own conspiracy when he said he was a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. That to me is a definite recognition of a conspiracy...I would say as a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, it could not be segregated from being involved in it when one of its members does it, who thinks like they do."

15. Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused Presidential assassin, who supposedly killed President Kennedy and seriously wounded Texas Governor John Connally with three shots in six seconds at a distance of over 250' who were both riding in a vehicle which was moving away from him, missed sitting duck Edwin Walker in his home from a distance of only 120' in a shot described by Dallas police as "can't miss."
16. Far from tying Oswald to the JFK assassination as evidence by guilt by association as The Warren Commission claimed, i.e., "if he shot at Walker, it proves he was capable of shooting JFK," I say the Edwin Walker shooting was just one more piece of the puzzle that points to conspiracy implicating the Lee Harvey Oswald legend as lone nut communist sympathizer. Whether Walker was indeed involved in this conspiracy or simply trying to insert himself into the limelight is unknown. However, let's take a deeper look at Walker's background.



17. Edwin Walker was anti-JFK, was fired or forced to resign by JFK in April 1961 over his actions in West Germany indoctrinating his troops with a far-right, John Birch Society lunatic fringe ideology, the same Walker who organized the violent protests to JFK's integration into the University of Mississippi of James Meredith in September 1962 that resulted in the death of two reporters, injured 160 U.S. Marshals and wounded 40 U.S. soldiers and National Guardsemen, the man who instigated a near-riot over U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson's visit to Dallas in October 1963 by organizing hecklers who eventually spat on and hit Stevenson over the head with a campaign placard. He also tried unsuccessfully to defeat Texas Governor John Connally in the 1962 Gubernatorial election because he wanted to prevent JFK from being reelected in 1964. Despite financial support from powerful Texas oil money provided by right wing supporters, he lost. Is this a coincidence that this man who hated Kennedy and tried to beat Connally for Governor is linked to the accused Presidential assassin who killed Kennedy and almost killed Connally in the motorcade? Was someone trying to use Walker's right wing ideology to justify blaming Oswald as a lone-nut Communist sympathizer? Is this association what deeply bothered Walker to make him hire his own investigators into his shooting? Or was Walker's shooting just another plank in the conspiratorial game plan to move attention away from the right wing element who otherwise were associated with other elements of the JFK conspiracy?
18. This is the same Edwin Walker who Robert F. Kennedy had involuntary placed in an insane-asylum following his involvement with the two reporters deaths in 1962 in Mississippi and charged him with seditious conspiracy, insurrection and rebellion. Wouldn't that fact alone provide Walker with enough animosity toward the Kennedy brothers to warrant further investigation into his role in JFK's murder?
19. This same Edwin Walker organized and paid for the infamous "Welcome to Dallas Mr. President" ad that appeared in The Dallas Morning News on November 22, 1963 listing President Kennedy's failed policies, an ad that The Dallas Morning News reporter Hugh Aynesworth described as the "worst ad of any kind he had ever seen in a Dallas paper," and whose proxies distributed the infamous "Treason" handbills throughout the motorcade route describing President Kennedy's treasonous polices and calling for his removal from office.
20. And, it was this same Edwin Walker who counseled Tippit murder witness Warren Reynolds to recant his description of the man he saw running from the Tippit murder scene as someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald to Warren Commission testimony implicating the Presidential assassin.
21. In fact, Walker admitted to Liebeler in his Warren Commission testimony, actually volunteered the information, that it was he who called Reynolds following Reynolds' being shot through the head two days after he told the F.B.I. that he could not positively identify Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he saw leaving the scene of the Tippit murder. Walker told Liebeler he thought Reynolds' shooting was meant to shut him up or have him change his mind about fingering Oswald because,

"people would like to shut up anybody that knows anything about this case. People right here in Dallas. And, I don't think anybody knows or would have known at the time after November 22 how much or how little Warren Reynolds knew...he would be a very good example, regardless of what he knew, to let everybody know that they better keep their mouths shut."

Walker continued,

"It would seem significant to me from Reynolds' story that he was only checked by the law enforcement agencies 2 days before he was shot, that somebody was watching what was going on...to attempt the assassination of Warren who had seen Oswald, makes this quite unusual."

22. The people who supposedly put the Walker assassination attempt into Oswald's head at a party in Irving in February of 1963 were none other than Michael Paine, Ruth Paine's husband, George DeMohrenschildt, Oswald's White Russian C.I.A. handler, and Volkmar Schmidt, a German geologist with Magnolia Oil Company whose past included being the roommate of Dr. Wilhelm Kuetemeyer, a professor of psychosomatic medicine and religious philosophy at the University of Heidelberg who was involved in the Hitler assassination attempt. Certainly an odd bunch associated with the accused Presidential assassin to link him to the main piece of evidence showing a predisposition for political murder. Don't you think? You can read more about these connections at the following jfklancer.com link.

http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=3&topic_id=95517&mesg_id=95556

23. Walker was also incriminated by an article that appeared on November 29, 1963 in the Deutsche Nationalzeitung und Soldatenzeitung, a Munich, Germany, newspaper. The article was titled "The Strange Case of Oswald", and purports to tell a story they obtained from none other than Edwin Walker who implicated Lee Harvey Oswald as his shooter in the April 10 attempt on his life. Liebeler asked Walker about this story in his Warren Commission deposition. Walker denied he was the source for the story; however, he did admit to talking to the reporter on the morning following the JFK assassination but said his comments were taken out of context from another article he did discuss with the paper that also appeared in that issue. Walker had this to say to Liebeler,

"I didn't give him all the information--I think the portion you are referring to, I didn't give him, because I had no way of knowing that Oswald attacked me. I still don't. And I am not very prone to say in fact he did. In fact, I have always claimed he did not, until we can get into the case or somebody tells us differently that he did." 

Whichever version you choose to believe, the newspaper or Walker's, doesn't it seem incriminating that General Walker always seems to pop up in the JFK assassination at key moments in the investigation? I mean, how convenient for him to all of a sudden be talking to a West German newspaper on the day after the assassination and his name is tied to an article linking Lee Harvey Oswald as the person who also shot at him in April? Was Walker part of the post-assassination dissemination of false information linking Lee Harvey Oswald to his shooting as proof he also had the predisposition to kill JFK? Ironically, it was only days after this article appeared that Ruth Paine just happened to provide the mysterious Russian book that had the ominous handwritten note linking Oswald to the Walker shooting. Coincidence or conspiracy?
24. Edwin Walker himself told Wesley Liebeler that The Warren Commission should investigate Oswald's ties to George DeMohrenschildt as a link to a conspiracy to kill JFK. Seems odd that General Walker knew a little bit about all of Oswald's prior associations even the police were not aware of?
25. According to Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, The Edwin A. Walker Group was one of a dozen subversive groups the Dallas Police had under surveillance as threats to President Kennedy prior to his arrival in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Another was the John Birch Society and another one was the Indignant White Citizens Council. Guess who was a member of all three organizations and who spoke at a rally of the Indignant White Citizens Council shortly prior to the assassination? Yep, Edwin Walker. Guess whose name was not on this list? Lee Harvey Oswald.
26. Edwin Walker also admitted to Wesley Liebeler in his Warren Commission testimony that he had also recenly spoken to a group called the D.R.E., the violent, anti-Castro student revolutionary group who Lee Harvey Oswald was linked and who George Joannides, the H.S.C.A. C.I.A. liaison oversaw, prior to the assassination. Walker denied seeing or knowing Lee Harvey Oswald through his speaking engagement at the D.R.E. event when asked by Liebeler in his Warren Commission testimony.
27. Walker was fervently anti-Communist and anti-Castro and was quoted as saying that the worst mistake the United States had ever made in foreign policy was allowing a Communist base in Cuba.
28. An active part of his work in his later years surrounded the JFK Assassination. He actually wrote a letter to the Church Committee, the U.S. Senate committee convened in the late 1970's in response to the Watergate investigation and C.I.A. abuses of power, that claimed he still believed two men had shot at him in 1963 and asked if the committee had any evidence that the C.I.A. was involved.



29. Edwin Walker was a subversive who actively confronted President Kennedy with newspaper ads and "treasonous" fliers upon his arrival in Dallas who also tried to tie the accused Presidential assassin with his own killer Jack Ruby with apparent intentions of linking them together in a conspiracy to assassinate the President.

Summary

I think Edwin Walker has more to do with the JFK assassination than what The Warren Commission says and certainly what my friend Alan Peppard recants in The Dallas Morning News.

He appears before the assassination as a far-right, lunatic fringe, deposed career military officer who despises President Kennedy for his policies, and his firing, tried to embarrass the President by creating a riot over the James Meredith enrollment at the University of Mississippi, an involvement which led the President's brother to have Walker involuntarily committed to an insane asylum, tried to defeat John Connally as Texas Governor backed by right wing Texas oil money and who is not only linked to the accused Presidential assassin before the assassination by his alleged shooting but also afterwards by his involvement with Tippit murder scene witness Warren Reynolds. It was only after coercing by Walker that Reynolds changed his testimony and fingered Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he saw leaving the murder scene.

Walker even volunteered to Wesley Liebeler in his Warren Commission testimony that he was involved with anti-Kennedy groups prior to the assassination, i.e. John Birch Society and Indignant White Citizens'  Council. And, one of these groups, the D.R.E., was the same violent, anti-Castro student revolutionary group associated with Lee Harvey Oswald and which Walker admitted to participating in a speaking engagement at an official D.R.E. rally prior to the assassination.

Incredulously, Walker even volunteered information to Liebeler that he had sources who had told him Oswald and Ruby were acquaintances prior to the assassination and that Oswald had checked out Ruby's car from a Dallas hotel garage in the weeks preceding the assassination. Why would Walker volunteer this information to the Warren Commission? Why would Walker even be concerned about investigating this information or in fact inserting himself into the Warren Reynolds situation? What was going on inside Edwin Walker's head that occupied his time and resources by investigating these key sources in the JFK murder? Is it all just a coincidence of history or were these just the wild ramblings of a crazy man just as Attorney General Robert Kennedy thought when he placed him in a insane asylym in 1962?

No, just like other factoids in the JFK assassination case, what is white is black and what is black is white. Edwin Walker isn't who The Warren Commission says he is, anymore than Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby have been proven over the past 50 years of evidence that they aren't who The Warren Commission says they are either. The case is full of contradictions: Oswald worked for the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee and was arrested in a New Orleans street altercation with members of an anti-Castro group, the D.R.E., which just happened to be televised by a local station; however, Oswald was also seen in the company of anti-Castro members of the D.R.E. several times in Dallas and even supposedly attended the same D.R.E. speech in October of 1963 where Edwin A. Walker was a guest speaker; Oswald, an avowed Marxist/Leninist supposedly shot at right-wing zealot Edwin Walker but also assassinated left-leaning John F. Kennedy, one of Edwin Walkers' most hated enemies;  As the evidence clearly shows, General Edwin Walker was more involved in the background of the JFK conspiracy than history gives him credit.

The problem with the JFK Assassination is not in determining if a conspiracy existed to kill the President. That has already been proven by Blakey's H.S.C.A. investigation. The problem is trying to determine who was involved and how. Edwin Walker's role certainly plays large on several fronts. Trying to determine if he was being used as a scapegoat in the Oswald case by the real conspirators to throw investigators off of the trail of the real power behing the assassination or was more involved in the conspiracy is yet to be determined. His actions prior to the assassination certainly put him at ground zero of the anti-Kennedy movement which did much to create the atmosphere of right wing hatred toward the President.

His actions immediately after the shooting, following the assassination and in his later life reveal a man who was painstakingly trying to find the answers or plant disinformation:

1) Immediately following his shooting, he did not believe Lee Harvey Oswald was one of the two men who took a shot at him on April 10, 1963, as evidenced by his lack of naming Oswald, his identification of a car leaving the scene (Oswald did not drive) and his implication of his handyman William Duff.
2) Immediately after the assassination, his name was linked to a report published in a West German publication on November 29, that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed the person who shot at him. This story has been verified by the publication as coming from its reporters interview with Edwin Walker. Walker was asked about this article in his Warren Commission questioning. He denied being the source of the allegation and said the reporter got him confused with another source.
3) After the assassination in his Warren Commission testimony and in his later life, he was trying to implicate a broader conspiracy in the JFK case that involved Oswald and Ruby as co-conspirators, that Ruby's murder of Oswald and the Warren Reynolds' shooting were linked and that the C.I.A. was behind his shooting.

I personally don't believe that based upon an objective view of the available evidence that the Walker shooting implicated Lee Harvey Oswald as the eventual shooter of JFK anymore than I think Oswald killed JFK as The Warren Commission determined: a lone-nut, Communist sympathizer. I think the evidence shows that Oswald was being framed as the Walker shooter to further build his false legend as the JFK assassin. I believe the evidence shows that Oswald was being duped into believing he was helping his handlers uncover a conspiracy to kill JFK when in fact he was the person they were going to target as the assassin. I believe the evidence shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was just what he said he was, a "Patsy!"

Edwin Walker and John F. Kennedy were at opposite ends of the political spectrum. It makes no sense for one man to attempt to shoot one and kill the other as being tied together. Edwin Walker despised John F. Kennedy for his appeasement towards Russia following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and began a series of lectures, actions and demonstrations to undermine JFK's policies. In fact, his actions in Dallas in 1963 at the Adlai Stevenson speech, his treasonous fliers distributed during the motorcade and his ad in The Dallas Morning News on the day of the assassination did more to inflame the far-right, lunatic fringe message of hatred toward the President than any other person.

Walker infamously flew his American flags in his front yard of his house on Turtle Creek Drive in Dallas upside down on the day of the assassination. This act is widely known as an act of treason against the U.S. Government. Ironically, Walker reversed the flags direction and flew them the correct manner after JFK's assassination.

Mine and Edwin Walker's opinions about the role of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby involved in the conspiracy of JFK are not some far-flung, wacko opinion by looney conspiracy theorists, but rather a verdict the House Select Committee on Assassinations rendered by vote of a bi-partisan commission that President Kennedy was "probably" killed as the result of a conspiracy based upon their review of the evidence.

Here is what the H.S.C.A. concluded in its final analysis of The Warren Commission's performance:

"In conclusion, the committee found that the Warren Commission's investigation was conducted in good faith, competently, and with high integrity, but that the Warren Report was not, in some respects, an accurate presentation of all the evidence available to the Commission or a true reflection of the scope of the Commission's work, particularly on the issue of possible conspiracy in the assassination. It is a reality to be regretted that the Comission failed to live up to is promise.

After viewing the facts put forth in this story, which judgement of history do you believe?

SOURCES:

1. The Warren Commission Testimony of Major General Edwin A. Walker, July 23, 1964. The Warren Commission.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/walker_e.htm
2. Bill Kelly's JFK Blog (www.jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com)
3. Real Answers: The True Story told by Gary Cornwell, Deputy Chief Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassination, in charge of the investigation of the John F. Kennedy Assassination, 1998.
4.22 November 1963.org (http://22november1963.org.uk/did-lee-oswald-shoot-general-edwin-walker)
5. Mary Ferrell Foundation Website (www.maryferrell.com)
6. Spartacus.com (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/mobile/JFKwalker.htm)
7. Retired Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry Reveals His Personal JFK Assassination File Limited Edition--Jesse Curry.