“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” –Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, who also died on 11/22/63
In December, 1966, when New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began his confidential investigation into Lee Harvey Oswald and the John F. Kennedy assassination, one of his first interests was a series of reports which placed Lee Oswald in the company of not only intelligence agencies, but also with a group of Cubans in New Orleans. In pursuit of that lead Garrison sent his investigators to Miami. After certain initial police contacts, the investigators were referred to Bernardo De Torres (a strong opponent of Fidel Castro who was Chief of Intelligence for Brigade 2506 during the Bay of Pigs Operation). Garrison's interest did reach De Torres, who then volunteered his services directly to Garrison, becoming a paid investigator for him in January, 1967. It may well have been coincidence that De Torres' awareness of the Garrison inquiry coincided almost perfectly with the timing of Chicago mobster John Roselli's outreach to principals in Washington DC (Earl Warren, the FBI, the Secret Service, columnist Jack Anderson and ultimately President Johnson), in which Roselli affirmed his awareness of a conspiracy to kill JFK. Roselli offered details on the conspiracy, which raised concerns in Washington, including President Johnson. Roselli certainly was also aware of Jack Ruby, telling reporter Jack Anderson that Ruby was one of his boys.
One of the less known and significant indications that certain officers within the DPD were aware of more information than they ever acknowledged in public is revealed in a lead discovered by an HSCA staff member. During an interview with Starvis Ellis (a close friend of Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz, chief of the Homicide and Robbery Division), he made notes about Ellis' comments in regard to his having observed a bullet (unaccounted for in the official shooting scenario) hitting the street behind the president's limousine. In itself, Ellis's observation of the bullet strike would suggest multiple shooters, but more intriguingly the official interview summary contains an unexplained handwritten note on the official interview summary –"John Martino hired the shooter, ask Captain Fritz." Former Cuban prisoner and anti-Castro activist John Martino accurately predicted that the president Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas on 11/22/63. Martino was directly connected not just to the anti-Castro movement (Felipe Vidal, Gerry Patrick Hemming, Eddie Bayo, Frank Sturgis, David Morales, Rip Robertson, etc.) but to two of Jack Ruby’s close associates, R.D. Matthews and Louis McWillie. The DPD's knowledge relating to John Martino was not gathered by the HSCA - although it eventually obtained information from two of Martino's close friends that he had indeed been involved in the JFK conspiracy.
Controversy and debate over Oswald's employment at the Texas School Depository, and its implication for the conspiracy have been continual and will remain ongoing. Points that do have to be considered are the fact that Marina Oswald was living with Ruth Paine, next door neighbor to the Frazier family, whose son Buell worked at the TSBD. In addition, reports out of Dallas following the assassination relate an individual either using the name Oswald or having a close physical match for Lee Oswald inquiring about employment at various places along Main Street prior to Oswald's actual employment at the TSBD. Oswald himself had made it clear that he was not pleased with his work at the TSBD and was looking for another job. Marina Oswald and others commented on his interest in finding other work. More specifically, based on documents now available, we know that the FBI itself was aware that Oswald had applied for work at the DeVilbiss Company. While Oswald appears to have been first referred to that company in October (and according to the FBI interviewed then), an independent inquiry at the company by a local news outlet found that Oswald himself had followed up on the initial application in person some two weeks prior to the assassination, while employed at the TSBD. The DeVilbiss Company was not located in downtown Dallas, but rather in the vicinity of the Trade Mart.
I do believe rogue elements of the CIA were indeed behind the assassination. No, not the CIA as an agency; not Director John McCone and company; not a gaggle of then-current agents and officers. We are talking of former Director Allen Dulles, fired by JFK over the Bay of Pigs debacle and in Dallas in November 1963 about three weeks before the assassination; David Atlee Phillips from Fort Worth; Cord Meyer, who hated JFK; James Angleton; David Sanchez Morales; William Harvey, who was in Dallas in November 1963; E. Howard Hunt, accused of being in Dallas on 11/22/63, leading the CIA to construct an alibi for him (later of Watergate fame); and former Deputy Director Charles Cabell, brother of the Mayor of Dallas, Earle Cabell. Cabell, who also hated JFK and even called him a traitor, was also, like Dulles, fired by Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Cord Meyer may have had an extra incentive: his wife Mary Pinchot Meyer was having a torrid affair with President Kennedy. Also, one cannot underestimate the importance of the connections between the CIA and the Secret Service, as demonstrated in my book The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy, where I depict friendly correspondence between JFK Secret Service Chiefs U.E. Baughman and James Rowley with Allen Dulles and Charles Cabell. Cabell, Deputy Director of CIA under Allen Dulles, was forced by President Kennedy to resign, on January 31, 1962, following the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. At the very least, I believe some of these men, if not actual participants, had foreknowledge of the fatal event. When Cord Meyer was asked who was behind the murder of his ex-wife Mary Pinchot, he responded: “The same sons of bitches who killed John F. Kennedy.” As mentioned earlier, CIA officers David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt stated before their deaths that a conspiracy took the life of JFK. Phillips stated: “My final take on the assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers.”
According to American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family by RFK, Jr., his father Robert Kennedy initially believed that the CIA was responsible for his brother’s murder. JFK Jr. also showed suspicions of the same modus operandi when his cousin JFK Jr. died in a sudden plane crash in Martha's Vineyard. I think we can prove there was a conspiracy and we have a good idea of who did it, but we can’t actually prove who were the masterminders, just as we will never prove who the shooters were. Whatever his role or motives, Lee Harvey Oswald was not a sharp shooter. His rifle might have been a guilty participant but he was probably not the shooter. Without the death of President Kennedy, we would not have LBJ, maybe not even Reagan or the Bushes, Clinton, Obama and Trump. No Vietnam War as an escalated war, no Watergate; the list goes on. We lost a lot when we lost JFK. We must never forget that. I doubt most of us ever will. -Honest Answers about the Murder of President John F. Kennedy: A New Look at the JFK Assassination (2021) by Vincent Michael Palamara
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