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From: Brian Redman (bigxc@prairienet.org)
Date: Sun Aug 06 1995 - 15:38:21 PDT
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
A Formal Debate
Fall 1993 -- Virtual Radio Network
Peter Dale Scott vs. Gerald Posner
==========================================
RESOLVED: President Kennedy was killed as the result of a
conspiracy.
ANNOUNCER: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Formal Debate.
The proposal for this debate will be: President Kennedy was
killed as the result of a conspiracy.
Taking the "pro" position will be Peter Dale Scott. Peter Dale
Scott has called for a new investigation of President Kennedy's
assassination. His hypothesis, that United States' Vietnam policy
escalated with the assassination, was dramatized by Oliver Stone
in the movie "JFK."
Peter Dale Scott has written many books and articles
investigating U.S. involvement in Central America and Southeast
Asia, including *Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in
Central America*. He is also a poet. He is a former Canadian
diplomat and is currently a professor of English at the
University of California. Peter Dale Scott's latest book is
called *Deep Politics and the Death of JFK*, published by
University of California Press.
Taking the "con" position will be Gerald Posner. Gerald Posner's
new book is the best-selling *Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and
the Assassination of JFK*, published by Random House. The book,
and Gerald Posner's appearances on "20/20," "Today," and "The ABC
Evening News" with Peter Jennings, have dramatically turned the
spotlight away from the many assassination theories back onto the
"lone assassin theory."
Gerald Posner is a former Wall Street lawyer, and co-author of
*[unclear]: The Complete Story*. He wrote an expose' of the
heroin trade, *Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies -- The
New Mafia*. He has authored a novel and a collection of
interviews with children of Nazi officials called, *Hitler's
Children*. Gerald Posner's latest book is *Case Closed: Lee
Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK*.
And now, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Formal Debate;
moderated by David Mendelson(sp?).
DAVID MENDELSON: Welcome to Mr. Scott, Mr. Posner, and our
listeners across the country. A *formal* debate was chosen
because it best reflects the seriousness of the subject. The two
participants are among the most knowledgeable in this field. And
their willingness to engage in a formal debate speaks well for
them.
Before we begin, however, a brief introduction may be useful for
those who are unfamiliar with the work of the authors.
Mr. Scott, speaking *for* the proposition, examines the "deep
politics" of the early 1960s, both internationally and
domestically. By "deep politics" he means the links of mutual
interest between Hoover and the FBI, organized crime, big
business, and the intelligence community that *he* believes led
to McCarthyism, Watergate, Iran-Contra, as well as the JFK
assassination.
Mr. Posner, speaking *against* the proposition, believes that new
information he has gained through interviews with Marina Oswald,
Dallas policemen and FBI agents at the assassination site, and
KGB defector Yuri Nosenko(sp?) and others, as well as studies of
new computer and laser enhancements of the Zapruder film,
definitively and finally prove that Oswald *was* the lone
assassin.
The format of the debate will be 8 minutes each for opening
arguments, 6 minutes each for rebuttal, followed by 2 questions
by each participant, and finally, 6 minutes each to close.
We begin the debate with Mr. Scott. You will have 8 minutes to
present your case.
PETER DALE SCOTT: I can't really present, in 8 minutes, the case
for a conspiracy because it is so huge; it lies in every
direction. I've been studying the case for 20 years. And if I've
learned anything it is that the more you study, the more you know
that you *don't* know -- but you know things have gone wrong.
We know that Oswald's career was much more than appeared on the
surface: both in his defection to the Soviet Union and, more
specifically (as I'll get back to later), in his brief flurry of
appearances on the media, in New Orleans, in August 1963.
We know that Jack Ruby, presented as a "loner," in fact had very
extensive connections with organized crime -- as was revealed in
over 1,000 pages of documentation presented by the House Select
Committee on Assassinations.
And most disturbing of all, we know that in both the FBI files on
Oswald and the very extensive CIA files on Oswald there were
extraordinary anomalies in the way they were treating Oswald --
which escalated significantly, and I would say sinisterly, in the
5 weeks preceding the assassination.
So that's a little airy and wide-reaching for our listeners. So
I'd like to begin a bit closer to the events in Dallas.
I'm sure Mr. Posner would agree that if there was a conspiracy to
kill Oswald in the Dallas Police basement, that it makes no sense
at all to argue that Oswald was a "lone nut" trying to kill the
President. And I think it's reasonably clear, and the House
committee stumbled on this, that there was, in fact (as they
suggested in their report), collusion between [Jack] Ruby and the
Dallas Police to get into the police basement where he shot
Oswald. If you don't believe this, you have to be what I would
call a "coincidence theorist." One of the "coincidences" is that,
despite the prior warning that Oswald *would* be killed and the
resultant flood of security for Oswald, there was a door into the
police basement that was left unlocked. Mr. Posner says, in his
book, that it was not clear if it was left locked or not. But I
can assure him, it is quite clear, it is not an issue, the Dallas
Police have admitted to me personally, that door was left
unlocked. And I heard that from the sergeant who was in charge of
the security there.
But that's the least of it! Much more sinisterly, there were 2
policemen guarding that door until about 10 minutes before Lee
Harvey Oswald was brought down into the basement. Suddenly those
2 policemen -- the policemen guarding the *unlocked* door, mind
you -- the policemen guarding the *unlocked* door were re-
deployed, told to go outside and direct traffic.
Well, if that doesn't suggest a conspiracy, I don't know what
would. Mr. Posner wonders how Ruby would have known when Lee
Harvey Oswald was brought down into the basement. Well the very
easy answer is he would have known when these 2 policemen, who
had been guarding the door, emerged out in the street. And that
might have been all the signal that he needed.
Now, having been aware for some time of this collusion on the
spot between Ruby and the Dallas Police, that leads to the
question of "What *was* Ruby's relation to the Dallas Police?"
And we have a *number* of sources that suggest it was intimate
and it was, in a sense, "functional." Note there are 2 narcotics
detectives (one of whom is a very major figure in this case) who
have both admitted that they used Ruby as an informant on
narcotics matters. I'm sure he *was* a narcotics informant for
them.
And if I had time, I would argue he was a narcotics informant on
the federal level as well. And this would explain why one of the
very few pre-assassination FBI reports on Ruby says that he was
the man who gave the O.K. for a major international narcotics
deal coming through Dallas from Mexico. And if there's time later
on, I will talk about the involvement in narcotics of the Mexican
Security Police, who conducted an investigation -- a very, I
would say, malevolent investigation -- of the assassination right
after it occurred. Mr. Posner says it wasn't like that at all, it
was just a friendly relation. His source is a local Assistant
District Attorney called Wade Alexander. But Wade Alexander...
*in his book*, Posner admits, is an admitted liar. Alexander
tells Posner how he had lied at the time. And much more
importantly, Mr. Alexander also told Posner how he had told the
press that he was going to indict Oswald as a part of an
international communist conspiracy. That, to me, is more
important than the fact that he lied. Because the second area of
proof of conspiracy are the cables -- I have to say the falsified
cables -- that started to pile up in CIA files about Oswald
immediately before the assassination -- starting on October the
8th, which is only 5 weeks earlier -- suggesting plausibly (but I
would say falsely) that Oswald had met with a KGB agent in Mexico
City by the name of Kostakoff(sp?), who was certainly a KGB
agent. But much more importantly [Kostakoff] had been identified
by the CIA about that time as a specialist in assassinations. Mr.
Posner says in his book, "a specialist in sabotage," but it is
extremely relevant and absolutely *clear* in the CIA files that
it is consistently "sabotage and assassinations." Worth
mentioning.
So you had a situation, when Oswald was identified as the killer:
Here was all this apparent evidence in CIA files that he had been
plotting with a KGB assassination expert.
And most of our listeners may not know, but the United States
went on a red nuclear alert after that assassination. We were
facing the risk of a nuclear war. And Earl Warren, in his
memoirs, has said that the reason he took the job he did not want
of being head of the Warren Commission was because Johnson
persuaded him that the rumors that were around presented the risk
of nuclear war. If the rumors had just been lying around "in the
streets," they would not have presented any risk at all. The
problem was that these rumors were being energetically supported
and almost forced on the U.S. government by senior U.S. officials
at the heart of the government. You could not have done that if
Oswald was a "lone nut" pushing books around in the school book
depository and nothing more.
And I may say I have just seen a set of the new declassified
documents that have been released this year [1993]. And the more
we see of this matter, we see how many, literally, *tens* of
people were looking at every single Oswald document in the CIA
and were magnifying, rather than diminishing, the idea that he
might be part of an international communist plot.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Scott. Mr. Posner, you have 8 minutes.
GERALD POSNER: What I think Mr. Scott does in his well-written
book *Deep Politics* is commit a sin that many conspiracy
theorists do in the Kennedy assassination, which is, they look
far beyond what is credible evidence. They go beyond the record.
They go into areas of speculation, of trying to find people that
may be able to provide linkages in what they *think* happened in
the case as opposed to what actually happened.
And I would say that a review of the credible evidence in this
case, the evidence that is both primary documents and eyewitness
testimony, shows not only in the life of Lee Harvey Oswald...
which is the overlooked part of this case in book after book,
because people don't want to look at the life of Oswald. This is
a disjointed life of somebody who is a sociopath... has troubles
from the earliest days. As a matter of fact, I have half... 300
pages of my book focusses just on Oswald. It's very interesting
that, even as a child, you have him pulling a butcher knife and
chasing his brother; pulling a knife on his sister-in-law;
punching his mother in the face.
A psychiatrist gives us the first professional look at young Lee
Harvey Oswald at the age of 13: Bernadis Hartog(?). But I look in
Mr. Scott's book, in the index, and I don't find the name Hartog.
It's not even listed. Because he [Mr. Scott] doesn't disclose to
you that this individual is *already* somebody whose life is
firing out of control even as a youngster.
You go into his marine corps existence (where he thinks he's gonna
change his entire life) and he's court-martialed twice. It's a
disaster for him. His fellow marines think he's homosexual. They
throw him in the shower and they call him "Mrs. Oswald." They
call him "Bugs." They abuse him constantly.
Perry Thornby(?), one of his marine colleagues, talks in detail
about the fact that he was a committed communist at this point
who was considered very eccentric. I look in Mr. Scott's book for
Thornby, but I don't find the name. It's not listed there because
the testimony that he gives is very, very damaging.
If you go through Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union, there's
something that we have today that we didn't have before just a
year ago, which is information, now, from the KGB files. The
largest single archive on Oswald that's existed in the world. It
provides not only surveillance on Oswald for nearly a two year
period... Although they thought he was crazy, they said, "Ah! He
looks crazy, but maybe he's an American 'sleeper agent'." And
while they follow him for two years, in terms of the electronic
surveillance, video surveillance, having agents go and talk to
him, planting informants around him at work and in his personal
life -- what do they come to the conclusion of? Not what Mr.
Scott would have you believe, that Lee Harvey Oswald was, in
fact, part of American intelligence; but that, in fact, he is the
eccentric sociopath he appeared to be when he first defected to
the Soviet Union in 1959.
At one point, his radio breaks. And he's getting Voice of America
(it's not being jammed at the time). And he attempts to fix it.
He can't. And a friend comes in and fixes a plate in the back and
adjusts it. It literally doesn't take anything more than moving
the screw. The radio's working. And the KGB agents go out (this
is in the file). They laugh hysterically about this because it
indicates that Oswald didn't even have what I call "Spy 101." He
didn't know the basics of radio communications.
And by the time he returns to the United States with Marina, in a
very abusive relationship where he's beating her so badly that by
the end of 1962 she attempts suicide. And he catches her fumbling
with the rope and he pummels her again.
He [Oswald] has, by the beginning of 1963 (when he orders both a
rifle and a pistol), settled in his own form of leftist politics
combined with a heavy dose of anarchism. He's writing in his own
book, in his own handwriting, he ruminates about what it might be
like if, in fact, all of society was ripped down and we could
start from scratch -- start without having any of the structure
of society around. He settles on political assassination as his
focus. This is his goal.
The goal, the target that he picks, is General Edwin Walker, a
retired army general in Dallas who has been removed by President
Kennedy for his right-wing activities in NATO. So I go to Mr.
Scott's book and I look for General Walker. And I find him
mentioned a couple of times. But I never find out that, in fact,
Lee Harvey Oswald in April of '63 had attempted to shoot General
Walker and that the only reason the assassination failed is
because a bullet deflected on a window frame and just missed
Walker's head. You'd never know by reading *Deep Politics* that,
in fact, Marina [Oswald's wife] recounts in great detail the fact
that Lee had left a note for her that said, "If I'm arrested or
I'm in jail, it's the jail across the river. You know where it
is. Contact the Soviet embassy if there's any problems."
That he [Oswald] came home in great excitement and thought that
he'd killed Walker. That it was *Marina* who then had him moved
to New Orleans because of her fear that he would continue to
stalk Walker.
And it is in New Orleans where Oswald, attempting to start the
"Fair Play for Cuba" committee, passes out thousands of leaflets
and fails to get a single convert to his new cause.
Although he has a picture over his sofa of Fidel Castro, although
he argues with Marina about naming his second child "Fidel,"
although he *practices* (something else you won't find in *Deep
Politics*) the thought of hijacking a plane to Cuba -- truly in a
revolutionary manner, by running around the apartment and trying
to strengthen his legs. Marina eventually saying to their
daughter [unclear], "I think our papa's out of his mind."
And instead, he abandons his hijacking plans, goes down to
Cuba -- to the embassy -- (And I'll mention this in just a
second.) He's rejected when he finally goes down to the Cuban
embassy. He lay's out his entire life's work (he's a Marxist) and
says, "Here I am. Please accept me." And the Cubans say, in so
many words, "Get lost."
And he goes over to the Soviet embassy -- and this is very
important. Mr. Scott, in his opening remarks, talks about
Kostakoff, a KGB agent who was responsible for assassinations in
the western hemisphere. That wasn't the only agent that Oswald
met with. As a matter of fact, he met with Kostakoff, [unclear]
Nechaburenko(?), and Yatskoff(?), 3 KGB agents. They thought he
could be working for Russian intelligence -- he showed up, he
spoke somewhat rudimentary Russian, he said he had lived there
for 2-and-a-half years, he had a Russian wife. They *cabled* the
KGB in Moscow. (It's in the KGB files.) Guess what the KGB in
Moscow said? "Give that nut a turnaway." (a diplomatic turnaway)
"Send him away. We don't want anything to do with him."
One of the individuals, Nechaburenko, has written a book (it's
currently out) together with the help of Katskoff and Yatskoff,
that... they have used their documents from 1963. Oswald actually
was considered by them unstable. They knew he was irrational. He
pulled out a pistol and started to wave it around inside the
Soviet embassy, saying that the FBI was trying to kill him. This
is the man who returns in October of 1963, with his life
spiraling out of control.
Now there's something very important on this. We can talk later
about whether, in fact, there was collusion at the Dallas jail
when Jack Ruby came in. There absolutely was not. If you ever
have a case of happenstance... If Lee Harvey Oswald had not
changed his sweater -- requested to change his sweater -- so that
the television cameras would see him in a different set of
clothes, he would have left 10 minutes before Jack Ruby (who was
down the block) had even left the Western Union office.
But more importantly is that there's a fundamental difference
here tonight between my view of the assassination (which is
really found in Lee Harvey Oswald's life) and the view that Mr.
Scott has (which is a larger view of American politics in
general). I, I look in his own book and in the end, the *number*
of people that he says are involved in the Kennedy assassination.
I will just briefly give you: He not only has Trujillo -- and
this is according to page 221-222 -- Hoffa's teamsters, the
Somoza, Nicaragua, the Texas rich, the CIA, Castro, Nixon, the
Mob. We have Mexican security police, Nicaragua, the United Fruit
Company, Standard Fruit Company... Democratic party represented
by Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover. In part of the cover-up we
have Edward Bennett Williams, Thomas Corcoran, James Rowe, Eugene
Wyman, Morris Shenker, Dean Acheson, Clark Clifford, Fred Black,
Robert Thompson and Thomas Webb. We also have (it's very
interesting) the Secret Service and the FBI -- again he goes back
to Hoover -- but he says that "this does not mean that the
killers themselves are necessarily to be found in this specific
coalition because I haven't mentioned yet the anti-Castro Cubans
or the defense contractors."
In the end, the *real* title of Mr. Scott's book should be "Who
*Didn't* Kill JFK." In this vast conspiracy of a secret
government of thousands of conspirators, I do not think it would
have survived for 30 days, much less for 30 years.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Posner. Mr. Scott, you have 6 minutes
for rebuttal.
PETER DALE SCOTT: Our audience has just heard the kind of people
that Mr. Posner believes in: The KGB and (I'll come back to this
later) Marina Oswald.
Marina Oswald, for whom, by the way, I have great compassion at
that time, was being so obviously coerced by the very people who
were interviewing her at that time, that she changed her stories
repeatedly at that time. It was quite obvious she was trying to
tell what the government wanted her to tell in order to avoid
being deported. The Warren Commission knew this, and wrote a memo
in February of 1964 saying, "Marina has repeatedly lied on
matters of serious concern to this commission." And it's very
revealing, I think, that when they knew this in February, when
they came to write their report in June and July, they had such
trouble linking Oswald to the gun and to the act of shooting
*anyone* -- let alone General Walker -- that they had to rely on
the testimony of a liar. And uh so, unfortunately, does Mr.
Posner.
Mr. Posner believes in the KGB. Let me tell you, the readers,
that he believes even more in the CIA. And, in fact, [he] tells
us that he got certain things from the CIA. He says, for example,
Mr. George De Mohrenschildt (a friend of Oswald's with obvious
intelligence background -- although he had other aspects to his
background as well), he says, "had no intelligence connection to
the CIA." How do we know? Mr. Posner says, "Because the CIA has
told us so."
But if Mr. Posner would do what I do, which is to look at the
documents, he would see that despite what he [De Mohrenschildt]
told people, when he left Dallas in '63, he went to Washington.
He took part in a meeting with CIA agents and more importantly,
Army Intelligence agents, before going to Haiti as a business...
whatever it was... but certainly *about* Haiti. Since then, a CIA
contract agent has said it was about the overthrow of the
government in Haiti. And this is the sort of thing you won't find
in Mr. Posner's book.
I object very much to that long quote from my book, which was
about how many *enemies* Kennedy had in 1963. I certainly did not
say that they all killed the President. I said on the contrary
that... You know, so many people think that I'm saying the
President was killed because of his Vietnam policy. And I was
trying, on the contrary, to "open it out," to say that there were
many coalitions that were angry with Kennedy in 1963 -- the joint
chiefs and the military being an important one. But organized
crime, the teamsters, (and you've heard the list) also... But I'm
certainly not saying that they all killed the President. I'm
saying don't *misread* me to think that I have named the killers.
And I said, in fact, at the beginning of the book, Mr. Posner (if
you'd started on page 1), that I do *not* in this book try to say
who the killers are!
So now, finally, General Walker... I have written about General
Walker in all of my preceding books. And the bullets that you and
I have both talked about -- which were too mangled to be
identified in April when it was shot at General Walker, but
somehow has become identifiable in November of 1963 and was
identified as having been shot from Lee Harvey Oswald's
Mannlicher-Carcano [Italian rifle]. You didn't mention, Mr.
Posner, that (I hope I get this the right way around), that in
April it had been identified as copper-jacketed but by the time
it was November it was now steel-jacketed. So that that bullet is
just one example of the kind of things that "happened" to
evidence that were kept in the hands of the Dallas police or
later, in the FBI, and which are, for me, a major part of the
case that this was a conspiracy involving people both outside the
government shooting the President, and also people inside the
government guaranteeing an absolutely sure-fire case. That the
truth would be so explosive and the "phase 1" stories, as I call
them, of communist conspiracy would be so threatening for an
unnecessary war, that all kinds of people would be coerced to
accept what I call the "phase 2" story -- that Oswald acted
alone. A story equally false, but not as likely to lead to the
death, unnecessary death, of thousands of lives.
So, it is true that you focus on the life of Oswald. I believe if
you were to write a book about the murder of Trotsky, you would
probably write a whole book about the character and the
personality defects of the gunman who killed Trotsky! But surely
it's important to go *back* from the case and look at the links
between that gunman and Stalin back in Moscow.
And I'm not, I think by nature, someone who begins with a
conspiracy theory. But having looked for so long at the Kennedy
assassination -- and particularly at the anomalies in the
relationship between Oswald and the FBI, between Ruby and the
Dallas police, and then the concerted effort to say that these
people were "loners" when if we know *anything*, that's exactly
what they weren't. That we absolutely are forced to look beyond
the personality of Oswald in this case, and try to fit
together... And it's more than a conspiracy. It isn't a lot of
people who could have been identified, it's a...
[Moderator interrupts and tells Mr. Scott that his 6 minutes have
expired.]
MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Scott. Mr. Posner, you have 6 minutes
for your rebuttal.
GERALD POSNER: The... Some of the points that Mr. Scott mentions
I think are absolutely critical because it's [a] fundamental
difference between the two of us. And it deals, again, with the
evidence and an analysis of what is the credible evidence.
In the instance of the Walker shooting: Did Lee Harvey Oswald in
fact shoot Edwin Walker? Which to me is a key point because
nobody has ever satisfactorily explained to me why the CIA or the
mafia or the KGB or the anti-Castro Cubans wanted Walker dead.
But here's Oswald shooting at Walker in April of '63.
Mr. Scott says a moment ago (It's in April), the bullet is
described as fully copper-jacketed. That's correct. That's the
ammunition that Oswald used, is copper-jacketed bullets. Matter
of fact, we have something better than just what was described by
the Dallas police: there's the bullet. You can go to the National
Archives. You can examine it. I've been down to the National
Archives. It *is* a copper-jacketed bullet.
But more importantly, I'm willing, with Mr. Scott, to throw out
all the testimony from 1963. That bullet is too mangled to
determine ballistically if it matches Oswald's rifle. But
*science* intervened. In 1978, Dr. Vincent Guinn, the nation's
leading expert in neutron activation, a scientific test which
compares the base element of metals, came in for the House Select
Committee on Assassinations, took the mangled bullet and did
neutron activation tests. Now he could have proven that that
bullet had nothing to do with the ammunition that Oswald used
later in the Kennedy assassination. But guess what? Lo and
behold, it turns out that that bullet comes from the same batch
of Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mm shells, made by the Western
Cartridge Company, used in the Kennedy assassination. So there's
no question anymore where the bullet comes from. It's very
interesting. The questions could have existed in '63, but they've
been solved by science since.
One thing that we do agree on. Mr. Scott says, "Look at Oswald's
links." I think that's key. I don't just give a biography of Lee
Harvey Oswald. What am I doing through the entire time? I'm
looking to see if, in fact, there's a trail of money, if there
are telephone calls, if there are acquaintances. And what's the
key period? The key period is October and November of 1963.
Oswald has just returned from being rejected by the Cubans. His
life is literally spinning out of control. His wife is separated
from him. He can't hold a job. Um, he's been turned down by the
Cubans. He's been turned down by the Soviet Union. And the FBI's
harassing him. He's a time bomb ready to explode. On September
26, when he was on the bus on the way down to Mexico, the White
House announced that Jack Kennedy was visiting Dallas. Everything
that happened in Lee Harvey Oswald's life before September 26th
took place *before* anybody knew that Kennedy was coming to
Dallas in November.
So the key period is what happens in October and November of '63.
Where's the conspiratorial contact between Oswald and the
plotters at that point? And this is key: He's not living on his
own. We know what he's doing. He's staying in a rooming house at
1026 North Beckley and he has a whole host of rooming house
members and partners there with him; other people in the house,
including a housekeeper. And what do they say he did? Every night
he's home by 5 or 6 o'clock and he never left a single night --
except on Fridays when he would disappear for the weekend. Sounds
interesting, until you find out he was in Irving, Texas, visiting
his wife, Marina.
He never received a single telephone call, except for one, the
weekend before the assassination. Check the telephone records. It
comes from... it comes from his wife's house. He *made* a
telephone call, one a day, in a foreign language. That turns out
to be to his wife, Marina. He never received a single visitor.
Where's the opportunity for the conspiratorial contact at a time
that the plotters supposedly know that Kennedy's coming to
Dallas. It doesn't exist.
What happens is, what Mr. Scott does (and other conspiracy
theorists) is they have very good evidence to show you that
people hated Jack Kennedy. I agree with that and that there may
even have been a plot brewing. I wouldn't be surprised if
Marcello and Trafficante sat around the table and said, "Let's
kill that no-good President." What I'm saying in my book, the
challenge that I'm essentially making to conspiracy theorists, is
to show me the credible evidence that brings Lee Harvey Oswald
into the plotters. That's what doesn't exist. If there was a plot
to kill Jack Kennedy and it was afoot in '62, it didn't involve
Oswald. And that's the key point. At the critical junction when
Oswald would have had to be part of it, he's just not.
And when you look at Jack Ruby (and I think this is very
important), Mr. Scott talks about the fact that Jack Ruby knew a
lot of police, and he knew a whole host of gangsters, and he was
"dirty" "up to his eyeballs." Guess what? I agree with most of
that. There's no doubt about that. It just has nothing to do with
why he killed [...tape runs out...]
[...tape continues...] Oswald. And that's the point. People take
one existence of facts about Ruby's connections and they say,
"Therefore, he killed Oswald and they must be related." And
that's where the story falls down.
Two final points: In terms of Mr. Scott's view of this case, he
also says in his book something I fundamentally have to disagree
with: that McCarthyism and the assassination in Dallas and
Watergate and Contra-gate are all connected, with some of the
same people involved. He says he doesn't have a conspiratorial
view of the world, but I have to disagree.
And I think that what's important in this: he has a very unusual
way of proving some of the elements that he makes in his case --
sort of linking people up by who knew who, by who knew who -- but
also something he calls the "negative template," which is, if you
look at a piece of paper that has lists of names, and one of the
names you think should be there is *not* actually there, that
indicates maybe it had been removed as part of a cover-up or
conspiracy. The "negative template" means, in *my* view, that you
can prove anything you wanted to. If I was looking for a piece of
paper that said Oswald had been employed by the CIA and I took a
CIA document and Oswald's name wasn't there, it must mean that
they had *removed* his name because, in fact, he'd been an agent.
The "negative template" does not, in fact, prove what he says.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Posner.
ANNOUNCER: You're listening to "The Assassination of John F.
Kennedy, A Formal Debate," from the Virtual Radio Network. The
proposal is that President Kennedy was killed as the result of a
conspiracy. Taking the "pro" position is Peter Dale Scott, author
of *Deep Politics and the Death of JFK*. Taking the "con"
position is Gerald Posner, author of *Case Closed: Lee Harvey
Oswald and the Assassination of JFK*. Your moderator is David
Mendelson.
MODERATOR: You are listening to "The Assassination of John F.
Kennedy, A Formal Debate," with Gerald Posner and Peter Dale
Scott.
Each of you will now ask alternating questions of the other
participant. Mr. Scott, you have one minute to ask a question.
PETER DALE SCOTT: Mr. Posner has dug out of Warren Commission
archives an Oswald chronology that is in part faked, and at times
faked by Oswald himself. In August, 1963, there was a raid on an
arms cache on Lake Pontchartrain. Now Mr. Posner says that news
stories talked about an armed training camp, but it's important
that this was never mentioned in the news stories. And *yet*,
Oswald went to a man called Carlos Bringuier of the DRE
[Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil(?)] -- it had been a DRE
training camp whose arms cache was raided. But there was nothing
about this in the press. And Oswald asked... offered to be a
trainer. Bringuier said, "He [Oswald] must have been an agent,
because no one else knew." And not only that, Oswald asked about
organized crime, about La Cosa Nostra. It took us 12 years for
the rest of us to find that they were involved.
How did Oswald know these things?
MODERATOR: Mr. Posner, you have 2 minutes to respond.
GERALD POSNER: I'm surprised at that, Mr. Scott. Because, in
fact, there *had* been extensive newspaper coverage (as you know)
of the raid across the river. [Mr. Scott says something, off
microphone. Inaudible.] Absolutely. There had been extensive
coverage in the *Times-Picayune*.
*And*... very important point: Although I'm not here to defend
Carlos Bringuier, one of the things that you *do* have in your
book (as I'm sure you have issues with statements that I've
made)... In your book you have him [Bringuier] as a member of the
DRE, this anti-Castro group. I just spoke to Bringuier again the
other night on this very issue. It's absolutely not true that he
was a member of the DRE. And he takes great offense at that,
because he was not. It's stated in the book a number of times
that he is. But that is not the organization that he was
associated with.
And Oswald, at the time that he went in to see Carlos Bringuier,
in August of '63, in Dallas, was playing what I call, "the poor
man's intelligence agent." What does Marina tell us? (Although I
know you don't like to *hear* Marina, because you say she's a
liar.) She tells us, in fact, that even at the time he was in the
Soviet Union he said, "I'd love the life of a spy." The Russians,
the White Russians [anti-communist] who were near him in Dallas,
remember a book that said, "How To Be a Spy." He was, as Warren
DeBrueys tells me (one of the FBI agents in New Orleans),
somebody he had seen many times, who had this tendency to want to
be, as he said, "a poor man's intelligence..." He thought he was
intervening in actually being able to get inside his great foes
at this time, the anti-Castro Cubans. His love of Castro was
running high. He was committed to the cause. And by getting
inside Bringuier's group he would enhance his credentials when
eventually he wanted to go to Cuba. By August of '63, Oswald was
committed to going to Cuba because it had been, for him, the "new
nirvana." The Soviet Union was [his dream] when he was 19. And he
left in '59 to find happiness. And the Russians told him,
"Leave," before he killed himself -- something else, of course, I
didn't see in the book [Scott's book] -- but when he tried to
slash his wrists.
He now is ready to go to Cuba to find happiness. But the
difference is that he *doesn't*. He's not able to get into
Bringuier's group; he's arrested a few days later. *It's all on
the record*. And I must tell you that it's very clearly on the
record. So that I find very little question about what happened
in the summer of '63.
MODERATOR: Mr. Posner, *you* now have one minute to ask Mr. Scott
a question.
POSNER: The... Uh, in Mr. Scott's book, it seems to me that the
"deep politics" that he talks about, what in essence is (and
he'll correct me if I'm using not the right terminology)... but
what I view as almost the second government. This secret
government that essentially runs, with a combination of
government officials and intelligence organizations and drug
traffickers and a host of others, um, is almost so powerful that
it's able to do things like the Kennedy assassination and
maintain it as a massive cover-up -- no matter how many people
are involved.
Uh, you say it's not conspiratorially minded, you aren't, when
you approach these subjects. But what I wonder is, is there *any*
assassination, or attempted assassination, that you think was
really done by a lone assassin, in recent American history? Uh,
Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, George Wallace, Huey Long...
Would those all be conspiracies, in your view, or were any of
those lone assassins?
MODERATOR: Mr. Scott, you have 2 minutes to respond.
SCOTT: Well very quickly, let me say that I haven't studied those
other assassinations as much as this one. My mind is *open* to
it, on the basis of what I *have* learned. But I really haven't
any idea.
Uh, I'd like to clarify... because you didn't quite get what I
meant by "deep politics." I actually had a section in which I
said, "No. It is *not* the same as 'invisible government' or
'secret team.'" It is the constant, everyday interaction between
the constitutionally elected government and forces of violence,
forces of crime, which appear to be the enemies of that
government. But in fact, on a workaday basis -- whether it's City
Hall in a city, or the CIA and the Mafia plotting against Castro
-- are, in fact, part of the governance of this society.
And I *agree* that an external conspiracy, whether it was Cubans
or Nazis or even organized crime itself, could *never* have
killed the President and gotten away with it.
But we have ongoing, working relationships between, for example,
organized crime and the police in Chicago. Which meant in a 30-
year period there was not a single organized crime murder [that]
was solved in that city. And I'm saying that this sort of thing,
which people know about and really accept, locally, should be
seen as part of the way in which our country works: that our
country uses violence, and the forces in power use violence. And
although it is a very rare event for people inside the
bureaucracy to use violence against their own president, that is
what I *do* believe happened in 1963. And the reason that it
was -- they got away with it -- is that they have shared so many
other crimes that they got away, with part of the ongoing system.
MODERATOR: Mr. Scott, I have to caution you to try and use your
time better. But, you have one minute to ask Mr. Posner a
question.
PETER DALE SCOTT: Um... there was... When Oswald went into the
Soviet embassy in Mexico City, a tape was made of the
conversation. The CIA has lied and lied and lied and lied about
that tape. They said it was destroyed -- 2 weeks later, it
wasn't. Then they said it was destroyed right after the
assassination. But Mr. Slossen(?) of the Warren Commission
staff... And Mr. Posner *believes* in the Warren Commission; he'd
better believe Mr. Slossen when he says he heard the tape in
April of 1964. Members of [Winston] Scott's fam... and the chief
of station have said that [Winston] Scott and his wife listened
to the tape later. James Angleton came down to Mexico City in
1971 [and] took the tape away.
Now on that tape, the man identified himself as Lee Oswald. And
yet, as you say, he was not Oswald. How do you explain this?
MODERATOR: You have 2 minutes.
GERALD POSNER: Ah. But there's, there's a key difference. Uh,
Slossen says he hears a tape. And [Winston] Scott talks about it
later. But *nobody* says -- and this is absolutely key -- there's
not a transcript of it. The man identifies himself as Lee Oswald.
Years later, people say that.
Here's what's important: The CIA... and I'm not here to defend
the CIA. I must tell you. One of the things, one of the things
that Mr. Scott does and others who have criticized the book do,
they say, "Ah. Posner believes everything the CIA does. And since
he supports the Warren Commission's conclusion, he must agree
with that." Absolutely false. I take the CIA at issue for a whole
host of things, including the fact that they distorted evidence
and lied to the Warren Commission, and they were trying to kill
Fidel Castro and they didn't disclose it. And I take them to task
for all the bungling efforts that they do in Mexico City.
*But*. Very importantly (and you know this): They had a picture
of a man in Mexico City that was the wrong person. They thought
they had identified Lee Harvey Oswald. He was about 35 years old,
10 years older than Oswald, husky. He's much taller. It's not
Oswald. It led to *20 years* of speculation, almost, [that] there
was an "imposter Oswald" in Mexico City. That issue has been
dropped recently, now that the Soviets have come out and said,
"Guess what? The Oswald we met with in our embassy is the same
person who was, in fact, in Dallas and arrested in November of
'63." What it *says*, the very real possibility that I raised in
the book, which is that the CIA had not only identified the wrong
person as Oswald (because they didn't have a picture of him), but
they were also having surveillance *recording* the wrong Oswald,
the very same person who was inside the embassy. And that remains
a real possibility to this day.
*But*. I agree with you that one of the last great areas of real
interest here -- when new information has to come out -- is all
the shenanigans in Mexico City. And when I say "shenanigans,"
what I'm talking about is not a plot to kill the President --
that's key -- but the CIA's and the KGB's desperate efforts to
cover up their own sources of information: their informants, the
contacts inside the Mexican embassy, whether they had double-
agents inside the Cuban embassy, how they obtained video
surveillance at the time, and this overwhelming desire of the
intelligence agencies to *protect*... That type of history is
what exactly leads to the type of speculation you have in this
case, that you have sort of looked at and then said, "I see a
conspiracy of murder."
MODERATOR: Mr. Posner, you have one minute to ask a question.
POSNER: O.K. And in my minute I'm just gonna take 30 seconds, the
first 30, to say, Mr. Scott, that he didn't make a conclusion on
the other assassinations. But in his *own book* he says, on page
97, "Behind the deep politics of the Kennedy assassination lie
those of the [Huey] Long assassination." And on page 307 he talks
about the comparisons between Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey
Oswald. So for somebody who hasn't made up his mind, he has some
very interesting statements in the book.
But Mr. Scott, what I really would wonder is (since I don't see
it discussed in this book and I know you have discussed it
before): Why do you feel, *if* Oswald shot at General Walker in
April of '63, (a) you believe the evidence that he shot at
Walker, and (b) why would he have shot at Walker? And the second
part of the question is, Do you believe the evidence that Oswald
shot a Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit, *after* the assassination?
And if so, why do you believe he killed Tippit?
MODERATOR: Mr. Scott, 2 minutes.
SCOTT: ...General Walker, who... *Somebody* shot at General
Walker. Eyewitnesses said it was *2* people. And if it was 2
people, then Oswald -- if it was Oswald -- then Oswald was not a
"loner."
Whoever shot at General Walker, from about 15 feet away, did not
shoot to kill him. I think they shot to help make him more of a
martyr than he already was. The bullet in question, I will remind
you, it *changed jacket*. It may have been copper-jacketed in
November, but the bullet was originally identified, then, as
being steel-jacketed. And I do believe that the bullets were
changed, because I think it is not hard *at all* to find other
cases of the falsification of evidence in that and other matters.
Now the killing of Tippit: Um, again, I believe there's
falsification. The bullet thing is difficult to go into, but I
think they rather botched the planting of bullets at the scene.
Um, you believe the eyewitnesses like Helen Markum(?) and Warren
Reynolds. Let me just say, Warren Reynolds was asked if he could
recognize Oswald. He said that he was unable to do so. *And then
somebody shot him through the head*. And then the Warren
Commission had the gall to ask him again. And he said, "Oh yes! I
remember now. It was Lee Harvey Oswald."
Well if you're going to rely on witnesses that have been coerced
in that way, I think you're prepared to grasp at almost any straw
in really conceding that there was no case.
MODERATOR: You will now each have 6 minutes to close. Mr. Scott,
you have 6 minutes.
PETER DALE SCOTT: The Warren Commission, and again, now, Mr.
Posner, tell us that Ruby and Oswald each were people who acted
alone. What I've learned in my years is that each of these two
individuals take us to very important institutional secrets that
are part of what I call the "deep politics" of this country.
To start with Jack Ruby: He came out of Chicago, in the 24th ward
of Jake Arvey, which was a signal point of corruption in the
Democratic party in Chicago and in the nation. A man called James
Ragen was killed in 1946. Oswald {1} knew the two assassins
intimately. One of them was used by the Chicago FBI to make the
case that Oswald {2} is not mob connected. They said that this
man Dave Yaras... They sent this memo out and it was sent on to
the Warren Commission: "Dave Yaras says that Oswald was not mob
connected." They granted that Dave Yaras knew Oswald, but [what]
they didn't say was that Dave Yaras was a *top* syndicate killer
and that the killing of Ragen in 1946 (which he was guilty of)
was one which [J. Edgar] Hoover was personally involved in. And
we have it from one of Mr. Posner's own sources in the FBI that
it was Hoover himself who dropped the investigation when Mr.
Ragen was investigated. I have a [unclear] of that case, because
it is a signal event in the evolution of organized crime in this
country.
Lee Harvey Oswald, in 1963, was involved with the *most*
conspiratorial Cuban anti-Castro group (such as Alpha-66), whose
main target by then was not so much Castro as Kennedy. Their...
most of their raids were against Soviet ships in order to
embarrass Kennedy's policy of detente with Kruschev. And the kind
of story that Mr. Posner will *not* tell you is that a Dallas
sheriff had said that Oswald had been seen with anti-Castro
Cubans at a Harlandale(?) address in Texas which -- in Dallas --
which he says nothing more about, but which the FBI files show us
was the Dallas headquarters of the Alpha-66 in Dallas and that
they had been buying guns. And at least one of their milieu was
an Oswald look-alike.
It is a symptom that the investigation was mishandled; that this
rather significant lead which corroborates the leads in New
Orleans of Oswald and anti-Castro Cubans, all of whom were arms
trafficking. That is probably the key to why Oswald himself
ordered guns. Because I believe that he *was* working part of the
government's campaign against arms sales.
Now you tell me, Mr. Posner, that Bringuier denies his DRE
connections. Mr. Bringuier has also denied his connections to the
Cuban Revolutionary Council [CRC]. (And I can't remember if that's
in your book, but it's certainly in the Warren Commission.) And
yet I found a Cuban "Who's Who" of Cuban exiles, and it's
*listed* in Mr. Bringuier's biography, in print, that he was the
propaganda secretary for the CRC -- as I report in my book. (And
I hope you have a refutation of it.)
If we had more time, I would respond to what you said about my
book. But yes, all of these things are part of the deep politics.
But they could also have been lone assassins. You're drawing
conclusions that cannot be drawn.
What I have been trying to say and say is that the more we look
into the, this case, pressure has forced the FBI to "cough up"
files. The... forced just recently, the CIA to force up files.
And the more documents we get, the less and less and less Oswald
looks like a loner. If he was a loner, why did every single junky
FBI report on him go over to CIA and get read in at least 10
sections of the CIA? Why are there references that are still
blacked out? Why are so many of the crucial documents suppressed?
We have a record here which we have to get to the bottom of. And,
uh, I am open-minded about this. I don't quite know how you prove
someone is a loner after you have already established that
there's such intense and continuous government interest in him --
including documents we've been denied which are only one and two
days before the assassination.
But I can tell you one thing: When the CIA called him Lee Henry
Oswald it wasn't from a clumsy accident, as you suggest. Because
they had been doing it consistently for 3 years in a file which
had been... treated him as a *secret* case, when other defectors
were treated as unclassified ones. He was a very special
"defector" among those defectors. And the CIA falsified not only
his name [but] the name of his wife, the name of the city in
which he was born. The conclusion is unmistakable that he was
part of some kind of operation that was being kept secret even in
CIA files. And if you're going to prove me wrong, Mr. Posner,
you're going to have to join with me in getting the rest of the
files declassified.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Scott. Mr. Posner, you have 6 minutes.
GERALD POSNER: The last statement Mr. Scott makes is one that,
uh, one of the few things tonight that we can agree on and agree
on wholeheartedly, which is, getting the files.
I happen to think that one of the things that's happened in this
case is the government is its own worst enemy. They're holding
onto material for 30 years, in instances, because there *is* a
cover-up in the Kennedy assassination. I say this in so many
words in my book. There's a cover-up of the government
incompetence that took place in both the FBI and the CIA. There's
a covering of *behinds*, in essence, of these bureaucrats who are
running for cover. And the FBI, because they were so petrified
that J. Edgar Hoover would be coming down to Dallas and saying,
"What? You had an open file on Lee Harvey Oswald? You were
interrogating his wife and you didn't know he was a 'lone nut'
capable of killing the President?" And of course, Hoover *did*
censure 17 agents and discipline them for that very thing that
the agents feared. They destroyed evidence. They lied about what
happened. And that's what, largely, those files are gonna show.
They will show the *extent* of that cover-up. The difference is
in the interpretation that we have as to whether, in fact, it was
the cover-up of a *murder* (which I don't view it as that), or
what I typically view in this case, from the... my alma mater
where you are now a professor, at Berkeley, from my work in the
early '70s as a political scientist, that, in fact, government is
primarily inefficient and bungling. And this is exactly what you
expect in a case of this magnitude, where people *do* run.
The... some of the things that are mentioned... I think it comes
down again to this very, very fundamental look at "What is the
evidence?" And I think that Mr. Scott says 2 things in his last 6
minutes segment that really shows you the basis of what happens
in conspiracy theory. If there isn't an answer for it, what you
do is you speculate and say, "Here's what might have happened."
And this is what Oliver Stone does very effectively in his film,
"JFK."
On the Walker shooting, Mr. Scott says, "Well I think that the
bullet was swapped. It's not the same bullet that existed in
'63." The problem is that there's no evidence that it was
swapped. So his point is, what *might* have been swapped. We
can't prove that it wasn't. And of course, you can never prove
that... the negative, that the bullet wasn't swapped. But what I
ask for always, as an investigator, as an attorney, is -- just
show me a piece of credible evidence to indicate that that
happened. And that's what, what he can't produce.
He talks about the Tippit shooting. And he says that he thinks
that the police actually botched the planting of the bullets at
the scene. But again: it's strictly speculation. There isn't any
evidence. There's no testimony. There's nothing to indicate that
in fact the police had *planted* the bullets at the scene. And
this is where we go from hard evidence off to what I call
speculation. The Tippit case is a perfect example.
And I must tell you that, as an attorney, it's one of the most
"open and shut" cases I've ever seen. *Thirteen* eyewitnesses --
not just the two that he wants to talk about with Helen Markum(?)
and Warren Reynolds (and each of those I could respond to) --
thirteen eyewitnesses see Oswald either do the shooting [of
Tippit] or escaping from the scene. Six people pick him out of a
lineup that night. He's discovered a few blocks away, with the
pistol. It is tied ballistically into the murder of Tippit, to
the exclusion of any other gun in the world. How he ends up in
*that* theater, with the pistol that just killed Tippit, where 13
people just saw him running away, is hard for me to imagine. Is
it an imposter Oswald? Has somebody coerced all 13 people? Did
they put the pistol on him and he didn't know it? You know, the
answer is, in fact (although I see Mr. Scott nodding "yes"),
it's too much to imagine. He, in fact, *did* kill J.D. Tippit.
He, in fact, *did* shoot at General Walker. And he *was* the only
person in Dallas, November 22nd, 1963, on the 6th floor, in the
southeast corner of the Texas school book depository -- not only
with the motive to kill Jack Kennedy (to place himself in the
history books; to throw this "monkey wrench" into the system) but
with the capability of doing it. With his *own* rifle which was
found up there. That he used to sit on a porch, according to
Marina, and for hours at a time practice "dry runs," what experts
call "dry runs." Operating the bolt action so that he was
proficient with it. *And* with the capability. In the marines,
having been both a sharpshooter and a marksman. Meaning that he
was capable of hitting a 10-inch target at a distance of 200
yards, 8 times out of 10, without the benefit of a telescopic
sight.
And in Dallas, the assassination targets are less than *half* of
that distance. His longest shot is some 90 yards, and he has the
benefit of a 4-power scope. It becomes for Oswald an easy
sequence of shots. And even then, only one of them actually does
the trick and ends up killing Kennedy.
The... One of the very important points, I think, in this, is
when we come down to the question of association with these
individuals, uh, I believe that as the American people have a
right to demand, after 30 years of looking at this case, we have
a right to demand of anybody, "What's your evidence to support
your conclusions?" I lay out a scenario of what I think happened
in the assassination. I presented the evidence: some 80 pages of
source notes, the evidence that I rely on. What I think we have
to ask conspiracy theorists in this case -- whether they have Mr.
Scott's view or whether they have a different view of what
happened -- is, "What do you rely on?" "What's your proof?"
"What's your documentation?" This case has been examined more
extensively, by more researchers, than any other case I know of.
And after 30 years of thousands of people looking at the evidence
and talking to witnesses, we still don't have an iota of credible
evidence to show us, in fact, there was a conspiracy to kill Jack
Kennedy. I say that it's time to "close the book" on this case in
the sense that we still have more *historical* work to do, but we
can come to the overall conclusion that, in Dallas, as we
approach the 30th anniversary of this death, the man responsible
for it was one man, alone: Lee Harvey Oswald.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Posner.
Mr. Scott, Mr. Posner, on behalf of our listeners across the
country, thank you very much.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
---------------------------<< Notes >>--------------------------
{1} Mr. Scott *says* "Oswald" here. He may *mean* "Ruby". Due to
pressure of allowed time, Mr. Scott may have inadvertantly mixed
the names.
{2} Again (see note #1, above), Mr. Scott *says* Oswald, but may
have meant to say "Ruby."
Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"
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