HERE you will find the collected articles, interviews, and presentations of one of our most respected and prolific JFK researchers, attorney, author, and AARC Board member, Bill Simpich. Bookmark this page for updates.

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BILL SIMPICH: My Summary of the Pepe Letters; DOUG CAMPBELL: Letters From Cuba (Nov. 2020)

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AARC Lecture Series

BILL SIMPICH: November 1959 – November 1963 Kent Biffle and the Fort Worth Press

 

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BILL SIMPICH: The Dallas Journalists & Law Enforcement that Molded the Assassination Coverage

Bill Simpich continues with part 2 of his research into the complicity of journalists in the JFK assassination, the careers that profited from this crime, and what happened to the journalists who tried to take a stand – with a special focus on two Dallas/Fort Worth journalists, Kent Biffle (Part 1) and Thayer Waldo (Part 2), and their relationship with both the case and the Oswald family from 1959 to 1967.  There will also be an emphasis on how a few law enforcement officers like Dallas police officers George Lumpkin, Pat Gannaway, and Jerry Hill, Assistant DA Bill Alexander, and local Secret Service agent Mike Howard succeeded in manipulating the national media into demonizing Lee Oswald as the lone assassin in the first hours after the assassination and afterwards.

 

The Dallas Journalists & Law Enforcement that Molded the Assassination Coverage

By Bill Simpich

You thought that story was wild. Wait till you hear this story.

 

Okay, I’m Bill Simpich and I’m going to offer you the biography of Dallas reporter Thayer Waldo, a story that has never been told properly. I think you’re going to enjoy it and really be thinking hard after you hear it.

Thayer Waldo wrote for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and he claims to have been the last individual to shake hands with President Kennedy at Love Field before his car drove off. And Mr. Waldo is reported in this police report I’ve got here, as being at the Trade Mart waiting for the motorcade to arrive.

“Mr. Waldo, accompanied the captain to the police car. Mr. Waldo stated to me that he heard the first bulletin which came over the Dallas police radio, and it was, ‘Bulletin. The president has been shot. It is feared that others in his party have been wounded. The shots came from a triple overpass in front of the presidential automobile.’”

And for those of you who are geographers, that’s also the same direction as the grassy knoll. The sixth-floor of the Book Depository, conversely, is behind the automobile.

If you take a look at the dispatch, the dispatch says just that. You hear Jesse Curry saying, “Go to the hospital, Parkland Hospital, have them stand by. Get a man up on top of the triple underpass and see what happened up there.”

Then you turn to the newspaper the following day and unlike all the other stories, what you see is Mr. Waldo’s article saying, “Security Question Remains Puzzler.  Behind the tangled web of tragic circumstance surrounding the assassination one unanswered question: How could it have been permitted to happen?”  Nobody else is asking that question. Nobody.

Now, Mr. Waldo had a very interesting background. His wife in the late 1930s was a woman named Grace Clements. She was not only a head of what’s known as the surrealist painter’s movement, she was an artist, but she was also a member of the local communist movement in the Oakland area. So, he saw the communist movement, if you will, firsthand. And he also—it’s kind of like Mr. Oswald, Mr. Waldo had an interesting background, because his father was a business manager at the Stars and Stripes. He was a captain of infantry during the previous war, World War I. And the Stars and Stripes, of course, is a daily newspaper of the United States Armed Forces. He was a president and editor of McClure Newspaper Syndicate. He was well -connected, very tied to the military. And Mr. Waldo is very familiar with the communists.

Now, he went to South America after World War II. And here’s from the FBI reports. “Thayer Waldo reported to Stringer for Drew Pearson.” Remember Drew Pearson, famous journalist for the Washington Post, had the racier stories, more liberal type stories? “In Uruguay in 1948, where he known for inaccurately reporting embassy events, he allegedly friendly with a group of Spanish communists in Uruguay. Reports from Uruguay also disclosed that Waldo derogatory remarks regarding U.S. policy in Latin America and expressed himself as sympathizer in Soviet politics.”

Then it goes on, “Waldo also reportedly served as correspondent to Pearson and Ecuador in Colombia. After being invited to Ecuador by President Galo Plaza, Subject took steps in 1950 to renounce U .S. citizenship…” Like Oswald, sound familiar? “… and obtained Ecuadorian citizenship in order advance official position with latter government. Later decided retain US citizenship…” Again, just like Oswald. “In 1953 was administrator of El Sol, leftist daily in Quito.” That’s Ecuador. “Then he launched the Pacific Post newspaper later that year with a man named Francis Sutherland. That lasted for a small time, only until the two men had a falling out. This falling, the feeling was aggravated when Sutherland charged that Waldo had raped his wife. After the breaking of the partnership, Mrs. Sutherland is reported to have stated that Waldo carried with him his CP (Communist Party) membership card and that he had tried to convert her to communism.”

All this business about the Sutherland’s, I question how much of this is true, whether it is true. So much of this, I think, Waldo and maybe working with Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland, I think all this deserves a lot more investigation to find out why he’s getting painted with this broad brush.

“In June ’53, Waldo deported from Ecuador by the new president. They changed presidents quite a bit for writing derogatory articles concerning the Ecuadorian government.” So, first he’s invited, then he’s kicked out, he’s deported from Uruguay, and we’re gonna see more deportations in his history to come. “January ‘60, Havana Station reported Waldo as American newsman from Mexico City in Havana, who might be offered editorship of the English Language Times in Havana.”

So, he’s, and then late January ‘60, “Mexico station reported subject discussed six-week tour of Cuba with a embassy officials. And then the files show he resided in Mexico City for two years prior to late 1960.”

So, there’s that piece of story, but then here’s another; here’s an FBI or CIA story. This is “1960, Waldo is identified as an overt contact of the Office of Naval Intelligence and he was living in New York City with the BCIU First Avenue, New York City.” The BCIU has lots of guests like the ambassador, George Allen, like the director of the USIA, US Information Agency, Intelligence -oriented, and the executive editor of the Washington Post.

What’s the BCIU? it is the Business Council of the International Americas, and he’s their media consultant. He’s tape recording dozens of interviews with dozens of individuals for Spanish language radio programs where the council will broadcast for medium wave outlets in that area, and the English version is going to be used by the Voice of America. So, you can tell this guy is somehow working both sides of the street.

Here’s the San Francisco Chronicle article saying, “This reporter,” (Waldo reporting to himself about himself) “… spent the first half of 1960 in Cuba. At that time, with the U.S. Embassy, still in operation, fully staffed, eight of its personnel were CIA agents, three worked for the FBI, each of the armed services have from one to five operatives assigned to intelligence work. No special effort was required to learn these facts or to identify the individuals so engaged. Within 30 days of arrival in Havana, their names and agency affiliations were made known to me without solicitation by other correspondents or embassy employees. The latter included one CIA man who volunteered the identities of all three persons accredited to the FBI and a Cuban receptionist, outspokenly pro-Castro, who ticked off the names of three CIA agents with entire accuracy, a later check confirmed. In addition to embassy staffers, the CIA had a number of operatives. I knew 14, but I’m satisfied there were more among the large colony of resident U.S. businessmen.”

He is giving away the company store in the newspaper! In the newspaper. This is highly treacherous material that’s not supposed to be out there.

So, this is really, really, bizarre for him to be putting this in the paper. If he’s putting this in the paper, he’s doing it on purpose to, at the directions of people in intelligence, otherwise they literally wouldn’t be doing it.

Okay, now, from July 1963 to October 1964, Waldo is serving as the feature editor of the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas. And furthermore, I think it’s worth mentioning here that in 1956, while working for the El Paso Herald Post, he became acquainted with a man named John Sutton, who was then a lieutenant in the U.S. Army in Fort Bliss, Texas, assigned to special communications. He did not see Sutton again until Waldo, having spent about a year and a half in the Dominican Republic on a BCIU project, and as correspondent for a number of U.S. papers, accepted that job of feature editor for the Star-Telegram. Again, that’s the middle of 1963. So, he’s got this working relationship with Sutton, which is going to come up soon here.

Now, Waldo, not only does he shake hands with JFK, claims to be the last guy, but he went directly from the Trade Mart to the police headquarters, the afternoon of November 22, within 30 minutes after learning the president was shot. “When I arrived to Dallas police headquarters, I was the first reporter in any medium so far as I know. Certainly, there was no other evidence to reach the third floor of headquarters. No one attempted to stop me or ask for any identification at that time.”

So, but he’s had quite a day there.

And over the next couple of days, his big contact becomes a man named George Butler, who was a lieutenant or captain, as he describes it, in the Dallas Homicide Division. On the day that Oswald is, shot two days later, the 24^th, “Butler came to the Commerce Street end of the ramp, and called out the reporters, “Come in.” Waldo said he and the other reporters entered the ramp at which time a uniformed officer checked their credentials. He said that Butler was an extremely nervous man, so nervous that “when I was standing asking him a question after I’d entered the ramp and gotten down to the basement area,” (and Butler is the head of security according to Waldo) “… just moments before Oswald was brought down, he was standing profile to me and I noticed his lips trembling as he listened and waited for my answer.” Waldo said that when the Dallas detectives escorted Oswald out of the hallway and into the ramp, “it was necessary for them to walk within a few feet of the rear end of the parked police car where Waldo was standing with the ABC man.” Waldo said, as they passed, “the ABC man pushed the microphone out in front of Oswald’s face and asked, ‘Do you have anything to say?’ A man in a hat made one long lunging step from Waldo’s right to the front of Oswald, shoved out his hand, and shot Oswald.”

Now, so Butler, in my mind, is one of the key suspects of this entire plot involving JFK, Oswald, Tippit, you name it.

After a week after the assassination, this man I mentioned, the Army officer in El Paso, John Sutton, who is now living in Fort Worth, he asked Waldo if they could meet at the Dallas Press Club. When they met, Sutton told him he had an informant that had seen Ruby and Tippit and Bernard Weissman together at the Carousel Club.

Remember this story?

This is not the same story, by the way, as the Jarnigan story. This is another story. And he was reluctant to come forward because he had an affair with a stripper that the informant did, and feared he would lose his work and his family if it got out.

Now, as I mentioned earlier when I was talking about Commission Document 1, the FBI report that came out in early December, that report said that Oswald, “a loner all his life, acted by himself.” So, it got leaked to the press. And the question got out pretty quickly, why was the FBI probe leaked to the press?

Very, very good question people were asking that at that time the FBI etc, look pretty sweet with this kind of thing going on. Meanwhile, Sutton and Waldo get together and Sutton introduces him to his informant.

He tells him his informant is Phil Burns, white male late thirties five foot eight, hundred forty-five pounds, chestnut hair glasses, employed at an advertising agency on account of one of Sutton sponsors. Sutton told Waldo a little bit later that he had called the advertising agency and learned Phil Burns’ actual name; his actual name was Paul Bridewell.

Burns said to Waldo that Ruby introduced him to J.D. Tippit and Bernard Weissman. They shook hands. Burns walked away. Heard nothing.

If you want to know my opinion about this whole story about Paul Bridewell, Phil Burns, whether it was made up by Sutton or made up by somebody else. I don’t think Waldo made it, but I’ll tell you this much, I think the whole story about Ruby introducing him to Tippit and Weissman was made up by Burns. It was to get Waldo engaged in red herring type stories.

Waldo said that he was too scared to publish the story and other information that he had about the assassination. He’d been working with Mark Lane at this point. Mark Lane introduces Waldo to Dorothy Kilgallen. Her article about the Tippit, Ruby and Weissman meeting appeared on the front page of the Journal American. And this is like December 8th, two weeks or so, I think, after the assassination.

Around that same time, Marguerite Oswald’s in the paper. She’s going, “I know my son.” And she thinks, as we know, that her son is an agent for American intelligence.

And so, this whole article, December 8th, just attacks Marguerite Oswald up and down the street. And the Journal American picks it up from the AP. The Journal American loves dirt on a variety of subjects. They are really a dangerous outlet in terms of foisting crazy stories.

And you see they’re at the top of the list of press that Hoover watches very carefully. He’s got a little stamp. The stamp has the Washington Post, the Daily News, the Evening Star, the Washington Papers. Then you got the Herald Trib, Journal American, Mirror, Daily News, Post, New York Times. Then you got the communist press, The Worker, The New Leader. Then you got the capitalist press, the Wall Street Journal. You got the popular press, The National Observer, which is nowhere anymore and back to the communist press of People’s World. Those are the 12 people he thought were most important, those papers were the most important on the JFK case.

Can you imagine? It shows you what his agenda is. Meanwhile, more nonsense is getting into the press courtesy of Lonnie Hudkins. Hudkins Advises on December 17th, he’s just returned from a weekend in Dallas where he’s talked to Allan Sweatt from the Chief Criminal Division He’s the Chief, Sheriff’s Office. It’s his opinion Oswald’s being paid $200 by the FBI as an informant in connection with their subversive investigations. He furnished the alleged informant is S-172.

I mean, this is a kind of informant that Jim Hosty worked with all the time. They got paid $200.

Here’s another letter from Hoover to the Warren Commission counsel J. Lee Rankin.

Who’s doing this, spreading this story? Joe Goulden, who’s writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He uses 179. Goulden is the guy, by the way, who handles the documents of the Estate of David Atlee Phillips. Goulden is not the guy who I consider a truth teller. And the other people who work with Hudkins to spread this story was Bill Alexander and Hugh Aynesworth, who said they made it up to try to prove that their phones were being tapped by the FBI. I don’t believe these gentlemen for a single moment about anything for a variety of reasons, most of which I think you already know.

Now, here’s the National Guardian, which is the left-wing newspaper in the United States, a progressive news weekly. Their headline is “A Grave Doubt Plagues the United States” and “Is Oswald Innocent? A Lawyer’s Brief,” and they run Mark Lane’s brief attacking the evidence, where some of this evidence is now getting squirreled right inside Mark Lane’s stuff, which I think actually wound up hurting Mark Lane’s credibility. He’s got a lot of good stuff and the bad stuff, I think, is this kind of nonsense.

Now shortly after Rankin writes Marguerite a letter saying,

“I would like to acknowledge receipt of your telegram requesting your attorney be permitted to cross -examine any witnesses whose testimony is taken by this commission, in particular testimony Marina Oswald, and I enclose a copy of your letter to your attorney, Mark Lane.”

Mark Lane and Marguerite want him to have the right to cross-examine these witnesses.

And here is one of the great, great events of dirt, and it comes right from Marguerite’s testimony to the Warren Commission. She’s going to fly out in early February of ’64 to testify, her and Marina. And so, she told Mr. Mark Lane, “I’m not going in the car with Mr. Mike Howard.” He’s the Secret Service guy. And there was another Mr. Howard, by the way, who came that day, and that was Pat, Mike’s brother. I don’t know whether he was his brother or not. We’ll have to find out.

“Sir, that day I was going to leave for Washington. And I said, ‘Mr. Lane, I’m scared to death.’ He says, ‘Don’t worry. I will call Mr. Walden …’“ That’s Mr. Waldo who is the Star-Telegram reporter, “’… and ask him to accompany you.’ And Mark Lane called Mr. Waldo of the Star-Telegram and asked him to company me and Mr. Walden did accompany me with these two Secret Service men to the airport. And when Mr. Walden entered my home, I told him I’m so glad you were here because I didn’t want to go with this agent by myself.”

And I’ve got a photo here courtesy of, none other than Dale Myers, where he superimposes Waldo’s picture with the headline on the Star-Telegram, “Witness to Assassination Waits to Name Oswald. Negro to Give Details.” Who was that witness? Who was that Negro? Well, here’s Mark Lane quoting from what Mike Howard said to him after he dropped off Marguerite.

Mike says to Mark Lane, “Wait till that old black boy gets up in front of the Warren Commission and tells his story. That will settle everything. Yes, sir. He was right there on the same floor looking out that next window, and after that first shot he looked and saw Oswald and then he ran. I saw him in the Dallas Police Station. He was still the scaredest cat “n” I ever saw him. I never saw him tell the officer, ‘Man, you don’t know how fast and fast is ’cause you didn’t see me run that day.’ He said he ran and hid behind the boxes ’cause he was afraid Oswald would shoot him.” Mike Howard then explained that the Negro witness had been arrested by the Special Services Office of the Dallas Police for gambling. And since he was familiar with that branch of the Dallas Police, he immediately gave himself up to that branch. Mr. Howard alleged that he had visited the Negro witness while he was in custody of the special services in the Dallas jail.

And then what happened was, Thayer Waldo ran that article the next day, not with those exact words, but saying that there was a witness who was in protective custody by the Dallas Police. And it was a six-column piece and it made a lot of headlines that you can imagine and lots of letters and this and that. And then Thayer Waldo wound up writing the declaration after Lane tipped off the paper that– and others, I might add– as to Waldo’s identity.

And Mike Howard was his informant. Mike Howard had really pulled a fast one up on Waldo is what had happened.

Waldo writes a declaration.

Well, the way he told it was, “Well, when that old black boy—(this is coming again from Mike Howard)– well, well, then when that old black boy gets before the Warren Commission and tells what he knows, that will stop them all talking.” Pat Howard turned half around in his seat and gave me an elaborate wink with raised eyebrows as if to say, ‘So here’s what I was telling you about.’ He looked and saw Oswald kneeling at the next window with a rifle aimed at the street. Mike Howard said the Negro later told the Dallas police officers to whom he surrendered, ‘I was scared to death. I thought he would kill me too. I just turned and ran way over to the far side of the room and squeezed me down beyond some empty crates.’”

So yeah, Mark Lane pretty well accurately got what Thayer was told by Mike Howard. And Waldo wrapped up his statement to his editor saying under penalty of perjury, “They slapped a vagrancy charge on him so they could hold it, Mike said. He was still just about the scaredest negro I ever saw, nothing but whites to his eyes.” About as racist as you can get. “They have now transferred him somewhere else, I understand. I don’t know where.”

So, here’s the letter Mike Howard wrote, and we just dug this out of the archives a couple weeks ago. Thank you very much, Chad Nagle, for the hard work. What Mike told Forrest Sorrell’s back in February ’64 was, “He was supposed to have heard the shots just above him and had hidden for fear that he might have been shot also. When the Negro found out someone had shot the president, for fear of getting involved, he allegedly had a record of vagrancy or some other minor violation with the Dallas Police Department. My brother and I were laughing about it, not paying any attention to our passenger till he leaned from the back seat and said, ‘Is this Negro going to testify before the Warren Commission?’ I laughed. I said, I didn’t know; that I had never talked to the man and wasn’t even assigned to the assassination investigation. My brother said, ‘I don’t know the name of the Negro or where he was now.’ My brother said, ‘They’re probably holding him in protective custody on a vagrancy charge.’ We all laughed. And then Mike goes, ‘I did not know Waldo was a reporter at the time, he was riding in my car. I knew him only as a friend of Mark Lane, the lawyer of Oswald and his mother, Marguerite.’”

But Pat Howard testified about many months later to the FBI, and Pat admitted, “Mrs. Oswald identified this individual who was to accompany them as Thayer Waldo, a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.” Period.

So, the Howard’s couldn’t even get their own story straight, but they didn’t think they were going to get in trouble, and you can bet they did not get in trouble.

The Waldo report to the FBI after this happened, after the article ran a couple days later, Waldo told the FBI that after the story was originally written, the source, Mike Howard, called him on the phone, and the only change in the story was the fact that the witness was not on the sixth floor but on the fifth floor.

He had to massage that little bit and that was the part he massaged and told Forrest Sorrels and then he changed it and then he told Thayer that he got that little part wrong. A pretty important part to get wrong, I might add.

“Jack Revill, Special Services Bureau, Dallas Police, advised he knows of no witness was being held in protective custody. He stated that in his opinion with respect to the story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the witness referred to may possibly be Charles Douglas Givens.”

Now, who’s Charles Douglas Givens? I’ll tell you who Charles Douglas Givens is. He was on the sixth floor during the morning filling orders with Lee Oswald on November 22. Lee was standing by the elevator in the building at 11:30 when Givens went to the first floor. When he started down in the elevator, Lee yelled at him to close the gates in the elevator so Lee could have the elevator returned to the sixth floor. On the morning of November 22nd. Givens observed Lee reading a newspaper in the Domino room where the employees eat lunch about 11:50 AM.

So here we are 11:50 AM; Given sees Lee eating lunch, reading the paper.

Now, Givens was only one of four witnesses who stated they saw Oswald on the first floor during lunchtime. William Shelley, supervisor of the floor laying crew said, “I do remember seeing him when I came down to eat lunch about 10 to 12,” as did the building’s janitor, Eddie Piper, who said he saw Oswald just at 12 the clock. Carolyn Arnold saw him at about 12:20. Pat Speer points out that Givens began to change his story within days of Howard’s talking to Waldo.

The February 21st ’64 cover story of Life Magazine, which treated Oswald’s sole guilt as a proven fact, revealed a few minutes after noon as the president and his wife were pulling away from the airport in the open presidential limousine, an employee in the School Book building, Charles Givens, saw Oswald on the sixth floor and said, “Let’s go down and watch the president go by.” “Not now,” Oswald responded. “Just send the elevator back up.”

So, what that means is that now, instead of seeing Oswald in the lunchroom at 11:50, they’re saying, “Oh, right after noontime, Mr. Givens saw Oswald up on the sixth floor and staying on the sixth floor.” That’s pretty serious.

So, here is the exchange between Marguerite and Earl Warren. I want people to understand just how strong Marguerite was during this period of time before we finish the Givens story.

Earl Warren: “It’s not an accusation about your son. It’s an accusation about your son in Texas courts. That’s an entirely different proceeding. We’re here to do justice and be fair to everyone. And it’s our main and only purpose in serving on this commission. None of us cherish this responsibility.”

Mrs. Oswald: “I’m sure, sir.”

Earl Warren: “And the only satisfaction we can derive is to be fair to all concerned. And I assure you that’s our objective.”

Mrs. Oswald again: “I do not imply this commission will not be fair; I know about the men on the commission; they’re all fine men including yourself Chief Justice Warren. But I do state a fact that I do not think that you can come to a true conclusion. I want that for the record.”

And she says, “I implore you, I implore you in the name of justice, to let my son, Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of assassinating the president, I the mother of this man who’s the accused mother, be represented by counsel.”

Chairman: Before you leave Mrs. Oswald, may I say to you first the commission’s not here to prosecute your dead son, it is not here and it was not established to prosecute anyone.”

And Marguerite says, “I’m not in agreement with you. One thing I want to make clear, we do not know the questions you’re asking to myself or Marina or the other witnesses and I contend that you cannot ask him the pertinent questions because you don’t know what I know and what Mr. Lane knows. And so, you will have an analysis in the long run, a conclusion.”

And then Rankin says to Mrs. Oswald, “He was being prepared to become an agent inspired by his recruiting officer?”

Marguerite Oswald: “Yes, sir.”

Rankin: “By what you have told us about reading the Communist literature and this one pamphlet and also the manual of the Marine Corps?”

Marguerite Oswald: “Yes, sir, and then living to when he’s age 17 to join the Marines, which I knew and which he did at age 17 on his birthday.”

Now Rankin goes, “What else do you base your idea that he was ever an agent or became an agent on?”

Mrs. Oswald: “Many many things. We always watched I Led Three Lives, the program about Philbrick, we always watched that, and when Lee returned from the Marines in the service, the three days he was there with me, the program was on and he turned it off. He said, ‘Mother, don’t watch that. That is a lot of propaganda.’”

We’ve heard Robert say he watched it, but that’s Mrs. Oswald. And she also tells us that after he came back from the Marines, he said it’s propaganda, which of course was true.

Mark Lane talks about the Warren Commission’s refusal to appoint him, he said the dead and absent were tried in the courts of Nuremberg as a last resort to prevent embarrassment, they appointed the president of a bar association to conduct the defense of Oswald. And then they forgot all about it.

And Lane added, “It is the first time in history that counsel has been appointed forgetting about the counsel retained by the family.” The guy did nothing. He sat there like a, you know, like a mannequin.

In April, Givens changes his story to the FBI. No longer Oswald’s alibi witness. Givens was now the Warren Commission star witness. He alone, among all the witnesses, is supposed to have seen Oswald on the sixth floor of the Book Depository by 11:55 and never saw him downstairs between 11:30 to 12:30. And this comes from Don Thomas’ essay, Rewriting History, “Hence Givens gave two accounts of Oswald’s whereabouts, one in November that tended to corroborate Oswald’s alibi, and a second in April that tended to incriminate him, yet his statement in November contained no mention of Oswald on the sixth floor, while the statement in April contains a denial that he’d seen Oswald elsewhere.”

So, that’s the Givens wrap up, and that’s the way the Givens story has been told for the last 60 years, as not an alibi, but rather the great accuser.

Now, Waldo, about a month later, in May, he gave a deposition to the Warren Commission and he told the FBI later on that he didn’t get into all these events and the reason why was because he was enjoined before beginning his formal declaration please confine yourself exclusively to the events of November 24th 1963.

Now as damning as it was about George Butler, you don’t read anything else about George Butler anywhere. And Waldo’s statements about all these other events, which were incredibly important, were not allowed to be part of the testimony.

Now, what did Waldo do? He offered an Warren Commissioner interview person, Leon Hubert, a manuscript he wrote with reporter Ed Johnson, called The Dallas Murders. He offered it to him on the record. Hubert didn’t want it. So, who did he work with instead? Dorothy Kilgallen.

That’s who he gave his story to, as I mentioned. And that was published, I had the date wrong. It was actually not published until September the 3rd, 1964.

Who else was he working with? He was working with people like Jim Koethe and Bill Hunter. And Ed Johnson. Koethe was the one focused hardest on the book publicly. Waldo did not want to be publicly associated. He was scared for his life, scared for his family. Koethe’s associates were Waldo, Johnson and Bill Hunter. Koethe, Waldo and Johnson covered the presidential visit for their papers and all three of them covered the assassination and the ruby trial. Koethe’s task for the book was an in -depth study of the leaders in Dallas. Koethe was killed supposedly with a karate chop coming out of his shower later in September 64, days after Kilgallon’s heart attack and then falsely accused of being gay. Bill Hunter, who had been assisting on the book, had been killed five months early, shot while sitting down in a police station by a Long Beach officer who first said he had dropped his revolver and then changed his story and said he was playing quick draw like Quick Draw McGraw with his partner when the gun went off.

Within a week, I’ve done work on grand with around grand jury proceedings and arrest and this is unbelievable what I’m gonna tell you here. Within a week, a 22-year-old ex-con from Alabama named Larry Earl Reno was picked up selling Koethe’s personal effects and held on suspicion of murder.

As opposed to his personal effects he had in his house, the notes of his book. They were never found, just like Dorothy Kilgallen a year later. When the Reno case came before the grand jury, district attorney Henry Wade secretly instructed the jurors not to indict an extraordinary move for a chief prosecuting officer with as strong a case as he had. So, he put on a whole case and then he told the jurors not to indict.

Can you imagine? And the jurors went along with Wade. And then, you know, Dorothy Kilgallen went on to write a column a month later saying, Maybe You Didn’t Know. And she was furious about the whole situation involving the Warren Commission report, which just came out days earlier, days after the Koethe killing.

Kilgallen wrote, “At any rate, the whole thing smells a bit fishy. It’s a might too simple that a chap kills the president of the United States, escapes from that bother, kills a policeman, eventually is apprehended in a movie theater under circumstances that defy every law of police procedure, and subsequently is murdered under extraordinary circumstances.”

Now, as a result of this terrible drama with the article that blew up in his face in May of ’64, Waldo was asked, basically, to depart from his newspaper, and then he was asked to depart, as we’ll see, from Mexico himself in 1967.

How did this series of events occur? Bill Turner was quoted in the Mexico City paper in ’67 telling this story. Waldo explained his resignation from the University of the Americas in Mexico City as resulting from pressures applied to university officials by powerful American business interests following his talk at the Foreign Correspondents Club, debunking the war on reporters. Waldo went on vacation in Los Angeles. In July, Turner said he wired his resignation and then followed up with a letter to the head of the university.

So, he wound up writing for the local paper in Illinois called the Alton Evening Telegraph, a real step down.

From then, Waldo had a pretty tough life. He wound up living in Mexico in the 1980s. I found a good article about reuniting a child he gave up for adoption two years before he died. He died in 1989 under mysterious circumstances in the embassy in Mexico City.

And the question has to be asked, was he one of ours or was he one of theirs?

And by ours, I mean the research community as opposed to theirs, meaning the people who were involved in the cover-up of this assassination, if not worse.

And I am confident in walking through this material that Thayer Waldo was one of ours and the other side spent its time packing the record, or attempting to pack the record through him.

And the last thing I want to say is that Bridwell story, the informant, the fellow who Waldo wound up telling the story to, he was already out of the business and he was a guy in. He said, maybe you can do something with it. And the guy he gave the Bridewell story to was no one else other than Larry Shiller, who wrote all those bogus books with poor Norman Mailer, who was forced to do it because he hadn’t paid his taxes, needed to curry favor with the powers that be. So, he wrote Oswald’s Tale and all those other books.

I love Norman Mailer. I’m not a fan of Larry Shiller for obvious reasons. And Larry worked with the FBI trying to find this guy and they had nothing but bogus leads, like him living in Oregon and this and that. But I found a guy who I think really was Bridwell and which led me to believe that Sutton was probably on the level and Waldo was probably on the level ’cause I found a guy named Paul Bridwell who had Texas connections, had Texas lineage. Although he didn’t grow up there, he had spent time there. And in fact, he left the service in July of 1963 and probably found himself at that advertising agency in Dallas.

The guy’s name, Paul Bridwell.  Well, he was there at Guadalcanal and he was out there in Saipan. And years later, its commanding officer had the duty of protecting the CIA headquarters out there on Saipan.

And so, when they were out there looking for all people, you’re not going to believe this, Amelia Earhart. He gave them some good leads and at the same time, he made their job very difficult. He was security -oriented. I don’t think Bridwell was involved in killing JFK. And I don’t think he probably wasn’t even wittingly involved in the cover. He may have been unwittingly. He may have been wittingly. His job was security. He was a security guy. He made sure people were not able to get to the far side of the island where the CIA facility was. He did give our local reporter a couple of helpful leads on the Earhart story, I believe, I don’t believe they were phoney.

So, there it is. It’s wheels within wheels. I think Waldo was one of ours.

Thank you.

 

NOTABLES:

Jim Koethe – Dallas reporter, murdered Sept 1964 by a karate chop by an unknown assailant in his home.  The notes to his book on the assassination were never found.

Bill Simpich: Civil Rights attorney, author of ground-breaking articles focusing on the hidden intricacies of the CIA, a leading and insightful analyst of the intelligence files associated with Lee Harvey Oswald’s enigmatic episode in Mexico City seven weeks prior to President Kennedy’s assassination. Bill’s eBook, State Secret, was published in 2013 and may be read in its entirety courtesy of Bill and the Mary Ferrell Foundation:  State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald.

The Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend is the story of twelve individuals with intelligence connections who shaped the life and stories around Lee Oswald – who built his “legend.” From Oswald’s sojourn to the Soviet Union to his time as a re-defector in the US South, Bill sifts through the record to uncover surprising truths about the man and his legend.

This series is the backstory of the research that culminated in Bill’s book State Secret. A brand-new preface, epilogue, and the text of each essay – including links to the primary documents in the National Archives – can be read by clicking HERE.

 

 

Copyright © AARC. All rights reserved.

 

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Bill Simpich: Analyzing the New JFK Revelations

 

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JFK RECORDS: Three Congressmen offered a ten-point program we should support. Here it is:

 

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WITH NO SATISFACTORY EXPLANATION

[Editor’s Note: The next time a talking head assures you that there is nothing in the JFK records of any significance, you might want to ask what they can tell you about exactly what’s not in the JFK records. Courtesy of Bill Simpich,  Bill Kelly, and AARC Board member Malcolm Blunt. This new feature is a work in progress.

Bill Simpich

1.  Despite the specific requests of the Assassination Records Review Board, very few assassination-related documents have been provided by NSA. The bulk of them were from their counsel’s office. While the CIA and FBI turned over hundreds of thousands of documents, only a few hundred were provided by NSA.  NSA flatly asserted that none of their intelligence documents contained anything of investigatory significance to the JFK assassination.  This statement is nonsensical, and should be given no weight.

2.  In the same vein, all of the military intelligence agencies provided very few documents in comparison to the CIA and the FBI.   One minor but illustrative example is the failure to find any records for the Director of ONI from 1959-1964.  There are very few records of their handling of anti-Castro assets, agents, and informants.  Their collective response is equally nonsensical to that of the NSA, and should be construed as a non-response.

3.  LIFEAT records (listening posts not the embassies/consulates – generally on the homes and offices of targets) from December 1962-December 3, 1963 are missing. Note from 1977 to “Chris”, presumably Latin American Division chief Chris Hopkins, asks: “What is going on?”   104-10307-10055: FORM: PPD PHOTOGRAPHIC REQUISITION/HANDWRITTEN NOTES RE LIMITED, LIONION, LIFEAT, LIOMEN, LITAINT

4.  At least 18 Staff D dispatches to NSA during autumn 1963 are missing from the files.  On a couple of occasions, including 8/31/78, these specific Staff D documents were requested.   The HSCA was told that the eighteen documents directed to Staff D remained unretrievable, because no “file number” was assigned to them. The logical conclusion is that these dispatches received no “file number” precisely because they involve Staff D.

5.  The daily “resumen” (wiretap summary) provided by the LIENVOY basehouse monitors for the period from 9/15/63 to 10/15/63 has not been provided despite a specific HSCA request – a full response as required by the JFK Act would have demanded all relevant resumen for a much longer period of time.

 

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Publication Spotlight: State Secret: Wiretapping In Mexico City, Double Agents and the Framing of Lee Oswald by Bill Simpich

The Mary Ferrell Foundation is pleased to present the online serialization of this book by Bill Simpich. State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald delves deeply into the strange story of the Oswald Mexico City trip two months before the assassination, and how these events were used as part of the framing of Oswald after 11/22/63. With a focus on the wiretap operation and the curious manipulation of CIA information on Oswald, and based on voluminous research using the MFF’s CIA records, Bill presents a compelling new analysis of this mysterious event.

 “State Secret recounts an oft-told tale in the events leading to the Dallas tragedy: the story of Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City in September and October 1963. Bill Simpich adds revelatory new detail along with minimal theorizing and maximum lucidity about what we don’t know. To put it simply, he lays bare a state secret: the fact pattern of a counterintelligence operation.”  Jefferson Morley, Investigator; Journalist; author of “Our Man In Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA” and “Snow-Storm In August: The Struggle For American Freedom and Washington’s Race Riot of 1835;” Editor In Chief, JFKFacts.org.

“The most important recent development in the JFK research community has been the ability to data-mine thousands of pages of primary material in record time. The ability to find leads, collate and cross reference data, and share information through sites like Mary Ferrell and the AARC is a quantum leap for serious researchers who are willing to put in the effort to run down each angle. No one has illustrated the power of these new tools like Bill Simpich, whose original and thorough examination of the intelligence connections to Lee Harvey Oswald is some of the most important work to be introduced in the past decade. That he has freely provided the fruits of his intense labor is a tribute to his sincerity and a model for other researchers.”  Stuart Wexler, Historian; Researcher; Lecturer; co-author of “The Awful Grace of God” and “Shadow Warfare,” with Larry Hancock, and most recently, “America’s Secret Jihad,” his first solo effort.

“Standard intelligence requires that the identity and activities of virtually everyone associated with both operations and intelligence collection be protected from foreign espionage though the use of cryptograms (crypts), cover names and cover identities – as well as the use of aliases by operational personnel. While necessary for operational security, those practices make the historical study of intelligence documents extremely difficult, even once they are released in full. It requires intense study and comparison of literally thousands of both field and headquarters documents to determine the true names of both individuals and operations – such extreme efforts have been undertaken by no more than a handful of researchers. Simpich is clearly among the leaders in such work. In State Secret, Simpich has taken us beyond spy novels into the real world of intelligence operations – a world far more complex in fact than in fiction.”  Larry Hancock, author of acclaimed volumes on America’s hidden histories: “Someone Would Have Talked,” “Nexus,” co-author with Stuart Wexlar of “The Awful Grace of God” and “Shadow Warfare.” His newest work is “Surprise Attack: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11 to Benghazi,” publication date, September 15, 2015.

State Secret: Wiretapping In Mexico City, Double Agents and the Framing of Lee Oswald

Preface*

This book is about the counterintelligence activity behind the JFK story and its role in the death of President Kennedy. It examines how the existence of tapes of a man in Mexico City, identifying himself as Oswald, were discovered before the Kennedy assassination and hidden after the assassination. On November 23, 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote President Lyndon Johnson and the Secret Service chief, telling both of them that the caller was not Lee Harvey Oswald. These tapes showed that the supposed “lone gunman” had been impersonated just weeks before the killing of JFK, tying him to Cuban and Soviet employees in a manner that would cause great consternation in the halls of power on November 22.

The other aspect of this book is about how the importance of the Mexico City tapes collided with the national security imperative of hiding American abilities in the field of wiretapping. These tapes were created by wiretapping the Soviet consulate. World leaders prize wiretapping because it enables them to find out the true motives of their friends and adversaries. It’s no wonder that Edward Snowden was castigated for daring to reveal the nature of these jewels. Back in 1963, wiretapping was the domain of the CIA’s Staff D, the super-secret division that did the legwork for much of the signals intelligence or ‘sigint’ that was provided to the National Security Agency.

The hiding of the tapes paralyzed any effort to conduct an honest investigation into what happened. Within days of the assassination, the agencies were flooded with phony evidence tying Oswald to a Soviet assassination team and Red Cuban plots. Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy probably knew little about the tapes, but acquiesced to the cover-up rather than run the risk of a war on Cuba which might include the USSR. This story explains why LBJ was so insistent that Chief Justice Earl Warren chair the investigating commission and prevent the possibility of “40 million dead Americans”, and why the Warren Commission was denied access to the investigators, witnesses and documents needed to solve the case.

To win over Warren, LBJ said that “I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City.” The purpose of this book is to bring this state secret into the sunlight. Sunlight on this secret dissipates idle talk of mystery. The more facts we can expose to the cold light of day, the less time is spent feeling our way through the dark. […]

The cover-up of the President’s death is a state secret. The tale of the Mexico City tapes is a state secret. Much of the history of the United States is hidden from us, behind a wall of overclassifications and redactions. By comparison, we know more about the JFK case than I ever thought was possible. Much more of it sits in the National Archives and on the websites of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the Poage Legislative Library at Baylor, the Harold Weisberg Archive at Hood College, the National Security Archive, the presidential libraries, and many more locations, waiting for us to read it, sift through it, and analyze it. The hyperlinks in this story enable the reader to view the original documents and engage in the hunt. Are we interested in serious work, or would we rather argue about it as a form of entertainment?

Preface

Chapter 1: The Double Dangle

Chapter 2: Three Counterintelligence Teams Watched Oswald

Chapter 3: The Cuban Compound In Mexico City Was Ground Zero

Chapter 4: Mexico City Intrigue — The World of Surveillance

Chapter 5: The Mexico City Solution

Chapter 6: The Set-up and the Cover-up

Conclusion: Only Justice Will Stop A Curse

The JFK case is not an insoluble mystery, but more of a steeplechase. What we need is access to our history and a passion for tough-minded analysis. It’s not a lot different than a clear-eyed examination of the roots of war, or what it will take to end world hunger or global warming. Errico Malatesta was a well-known Italian agitator who spoke throughout Europe about his vision for a better world. Malatesta would often suggest that “everything depends on what the people are capable of wanting.”

–Bill Simpich

Read State Secret: Wiretapping In Mexico City, Double Agents and the Framing of Lee Oswald

*The Mary Ferrell Foundation and the Assassination Archives and Research Center have been able to publish 1.5 million documents and provide a variety of research tools because of the financial support of people like yourself.  Rather than charge money for his efforts, Bill Simpich asks you to contribute a donation at the home page of either or both of these invaluable organizations.

 

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Sirhan Denied Parole: It’s a Broken Criminal Justice System

 

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Bobby Kennedy and the Promise of Rebirth

 

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The JFK Case: The Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend

by Bill Simpich © February 11, 2018

 

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A CIA Tutorial: How to Avoid Providing Files

 

Bill Simpich is a Civil Rights attorney and author of State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald.

 

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JFK CONVERSATIONS  with ALAN DALE

Alan Dale speaks with Bill Simpich: Civil Rights attorney, author of ground-breaking articles focusing on the hidden intricacies of the CIA, a leading and insightful analyst of the intelligence files associated with Lee Harvey Oswald’s enigmatic episode in Mexico City seven weeks prior to President Kennedy’s assassination. Bill’s eBook, State Secret, was published in 2013 and may be read in its entirety courtesy of Bill and the Mary Ferrell Foundation:  State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald. Please support important work such as this by making a financial contribution to the Mary Ferrell Foundation.

PART ONE

PART TWO

 

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Bill Simpich – How Captain Westbrook and the Tippit Shooting Provide a Counterpoint Narrative to the Warren Report