Bill Simpich – 9 September, 2025
Look how the S-179 story got under Hoover’s skin! He explains a lot about symbol informants – a recurring area of fascination and where I hope we can turn the Congressional discussion.
An analysis by Dan Dwyer (maybe the best government attorney studying the assassination) – writing to Paul Wallach, – going through the various versions of the Oswald as S-172/S-179 story and Lonnie Hudkins’ different versions of why he and/or Alexander and Aynesworth made up the yarn.
The basic research from months ago is under my signature – here’s a quick update…
Dated 1/25/64, I found an additional page that shows the division the phony allegation that Oswald was FBI informant S-179 had caused (in the real world, such a security informant would be labeled 179-S). See Hoover’s handwritten marginalia:
“Yes. This is putting slimy tactics upon part of Warren and Rankin.”
That same week, on 1/28/64, the FBI made it clear they weren’t going to accept any more leads on the part of Joe Goulden who had massaged both the FBI informant story and a story that tried to poison the research of others suggesting that Ruby had mingled with cameramen to get access to the basement when he shot Oswald – the FBI thought Goulden was feeding them disinformation and would take “no further action” regarding his leads.
I have much more on it – but these three pages offer the simple version that reporter Lonnie Hudkins told the FBI in Feb 6, 1964 that he heard the 179 story from District Attorney Bill Alexander, and that Alexander was “vigorously” questioned by the FBI and he said that he didn’t know which reporter he heard the story from.
Amusingly, Hudkins refused to talk about Alexander to another FBI official on Feb. 8, and told the FBI on that occasion that his source “might” have been Philadelphia reporter Joseph Goulden (if still alive, the estate holder for David Phillips!)
In 1976, Esquire interviewed Hugh Aynesworth, and he said that he made the story up with Hudkins and Alexander, claiming they were trying to find out if the FBI was tapping their phone. (I don’t believe that either.)
As you remember, Alexander tried to plant the “Oswald-Russia-conspiracy” charge the night of 11/22, until Cliff Carter stopped him. Joe Goulden was a former army counterintelligence officer according to Bill Kelly.
Joseph C. Goulden
For the longer version:
He was army counterintelligence back in the day before entering journalism. Bill Kelly writes about Goulden here – https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/search?q=goulden
He was at the absolute center of events on 11/22 and the days thereafter, doing some of the heaviest lifting armed with the reporter’s privilege of not being subpoenaed to not having to reveal his sources.
Bill Kelly claims Goulden was the one who goaded the DA Bill Alexander to prepare a charge that Oswald was part of a communist conspiracy …
https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/search?q=goulden, until Cliff Carter weighed in to tell the DA not to charge it that way.
Goulden also wrote that a Dallas law enforcement officer provided him information that Ruby gained access to the basement by posing as the helper of a cameraman.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57008&relPageId=127&search=goulden
He claimed he couldn’t reach this officer …
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57005&relPageId=46&search=goulden>
again, and then used the same story about it being “handled through proper channels” – I think Goulden did his best to spread this red herring story to diffuse the guilty parties in the Ruby case.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57008&relPageId=127&search=goulden>
Goulden then did another fancy piece of cover-up.
Goulden reported on December 8, 1963 that Oswald was an informant of the FBI.
<https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57026&relPageId=82&search=%22joseph_goulden%22
This then was brought into the scheme of Bill Alexander …
<https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=61490&relPageId=258&search=%22joseph_goulden%22
and Hugh Aynesworth to spread a deliberately made-up story about LHO being Agent S-172 (they went back and forth between 172 and 179).
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1462&relPageId=58&search=S-179
Lonnie Hudkins printed the story in the Houston Post on Jan. 1, 1964.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=97798&search=goulden#relPageId=3&tab=page>.
In March 1975, Hudkins admitted the story was made up by him, Alexander, and Aynesworth to see if their phone was bugged.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1462&relPageId=58&search=S-179
In Esquire, Feb. 1976 <http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKSoswald.htm Aynesworth admitted he and Alexander made it up to draw out the FBI on the issue. (James Hosty repeated this story in Assignment: Oswald.)
But back in Feb. 1964, Hudkins claimed he got the original story that Oswald was a “symbol number informant” from Goulden.
The events with Aynesworth and Alexander came later, after Goulden had planted the seed.
Goulden denied it, claiming he got it from a “Dallas law enforcement officer.”https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=58987&relPageId=103&search=gouldenBranigan told Bill Sullivan that he considered Goulden’s story “scurrilous.”https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=58987&relPageId=103&search=goulden
Goulden said he would try to get permission, and called back and said he couldn’t reach him.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10629&relPageId=3&search=goulden
He told the FBI later that the officer assured him it was being “handled through proper channels.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=97798&relPageId=4&search=goulden>
Was Goulden prosecuted for lying to the FBI and this campaign of disinformation? Nope. He didn’t *have* to say anything – but once he did, that’s obstruction of justice under 18 USC 1001 then and now.
I think all this subterfuge was done to lay down a thick cloud of smoke and hide the very real relationship Oswald had with New Orleans FBI agent Warren de Brueys – who worked the Cuba beat – as reported for more than fifty years by FBI informant Orestes Pena.
On the role of Hudkins
Here’s my thinking on the role of Hudkins – he may have been pre-disposed because of prior activities with H.L. Hunt and the CIA, but the salient point is that Hudkins was completely captured by Joe Goulden – and probably Bill Alexander too
Joseph Goulden is a Cold Warrior and an ideologue – he was army counterintelligence back in the day before entering journalism as a long-standing reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer. Goulden went on to join the ultra-right staff of Reed Irvine’s Accuracy in Media in 1989 as their “media critic”. He is still alive at 91.
Joan Mellen reported that Joseph Goulden was the executor to the will of David Phillips (Farewell to Justice, p. 454).
I am of the school that believes David Phillips was surprised by the assassination, but dove into the coverup to protect his agency and his family from disgrace and ruin. Phillips was a disinformation artist. I think he worked with Goulden – but even if he didn’t, Goulden got it done just fine by himself.
Goulden reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 12/8/63 that Oswald was an informant and that cameramen led Ruby into police HQ on 11/24/63. Both stories were red herrings designed to waste time and have investigators run in circles. The FBI considered both stories to be important leads.
Lonnie Hudkins
Hudkins’ original story on 12/17/63 was that he got the Oswald-is-informant tip from Chief of the Criminal Division Allen Sweatt.
When Sweatt was asked in January 1964 about his source, Sweatt said Hudkins said that he got it from Alexander.
In a 2/13/64 FBI memo, Hudkins claimed he got the original story that Oswald was a “symbol number informant” from Goulden, and that he based his story on “information he received” from Bill Alexander, but refused to give up “his other source.”
Since Hudkins had previously named Sweatt – who was now revealed as a second-hand source – the only person left for Hudkins to protect was Aynesworth. A second FBI memo, also dated 2/13/64, illustrates Hudkins’ willingness to bring down Alexander, naming him alone and not naming Goulden.
Why the discrepancies in these two memos? Hudkins knew his fellow newsman Aynesworth would never forgive him if he blew him as a source – on their hand, the FBI wanted to erase Goulden from the story.
The FBI leaned hard on Alexander, but he claimed he had only heard rumors and no hard facts. He denied providing the Oswald-as-informant tip to anyone. He was reported as being very nervous.
Alexander was a bully and a trial attorney with the DA’s office – not easily intimidated, he specialized in intimidating others.
The Dallas FBI wrote that Mrs. Alexander told them that Alexander pistol-whipped their small son, threatened to kill her, and proved his seriousness by shooting their dog in the head. (The FBI later named Alexander as the one who stole Oswald’s diary from the evidence locker and providing it to Aynesworth, who published it before the Warren Commission report came out.)
I believe Hudkins was a victim of Goulden. Once Goulden planted it in his head, Aynesworth signed on. Whether he was a fellow perp of Goulden or just an opportunist would be speculation.
A decade later, to stop the constant inquiries, Hudkins made up a yarn saying that he, Aynesworth and Alexander made up the symbol numbers S-179 and S-172 and talked about them on the phone for a half an hour, in an exercise to see if the FBI was tapping their phones. When the FBI arrived and quizzed them about the numbers, now they knew they were tapped. No proof for this story!
By the late 70s, Hudkins had come around to the view that LHO was a “stoolie” for the FBI or CIA and went on to become the greatest double agent of all time. Whether or not this is true, it indicates that Hudkins at that point was a chastened man and had a better grip on what had happened.
On the roles of Goulden and Alexander
Goulden told the FBI that his source was a “law enforcement officer in Dallas”, but refused to name him. He let them believe that his source was Bill Alexander. Alexander may have been working directly with Goulden prior to December 8, but I have no hard proof.
Alexander was clearly part of the cover-up, and maybe more. He went to great lengths in drafting an indictment against Oswald for participating in a communist conspiracy the evening of Nov. 22. Alexander went so far as to call Goulden that night ot his intention to file a conspiracy indictment. (Posner, Case Closed, 348n, citing his interview with Alexander on 3/6/92) It took LBJ’s man Cliff Carter to persuade Henry Wade to get that language out of the indictment that night.
District Attorney Bill Alexander holds an affidavit charging Lee Harvey Oswald with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)
Bill Alexander saw many FBI documents in the course of his work; he had to know that FBI informants are given symbols with digits and a letter suffix, not the other way around. Henry Wade, a former FBI agent, told the Warren Commission that the identification was not done based on FBI protocol. Hudkins was identifying Oswald as S-179, rather than the conventional 179-S. I believe Hudkins was told that fiction by Alexander to emphasize to anyone in the FBI or familiar with FBI practices that he had been given “bad dope”.
I think it is obvious that LHO was a source of the FBI, but not a formal informant. An informant is a very defined term in FBI parlance, and the FBI played that card every step of the way.
It’s obvious Oswald was a source by the way he got himself arrested in New Orleans after predicting it in writing in his letter to VT Lee days in advance, and then summoning the FBI to come to the jail to interview him – which they did for hours. There are a number of good stories, but that one says it all. The legacy media has ignored this story, right up to today.
Remember the link in my previous post about how Hoover jumped up and down claiming that Oswald was not an FBI informant and he had solid gold proof? Hoover successfully distracted the Warren Commission by using misdirection. Oswald was an FBI source, plain and simple.
Goulden and Alexander aided that effort by lying to the FBI about never furnishing any information to the FBI that Hudkins was an informant.
Goulden and Alexander had protection of some kind – it is well known that anyone who lies to the FBI can be criminally charged. They didn’t have to talk to them at all, but they elected to talk and to lie.
Goulden and Alexander knew what they were doing – it was an exercise of catch and kill. They were getting the story about Oswald-as-informant to the Warren Commission, so the FBI could deny it and move on from any discussion of Oswald as a source.
Bill
