Legacy of Secrecy (28 page)

of Tippit’s police-officer friends for more than an hour. According to

Hurt, this officer had been “working privately as a guard at an Oak Cliff

home when Tippit was murdered nearby.”45 Perhaps when Tippit was

killed before he was able to silence Oswald, Ruby tried to get another

officer to eliminate Oswald.

As for Tippit’s slaying, the evidence and witnesses are so inconsis-

tent that there are at least four possible explanations for his murder:

1. Oswald shot Tippit, just as the Warren Commission said he did, in the

manner depicted in Rosselli’s movie; 2. Someone with Oswald might

have shot Tippit; 3. While Tippit was talking to Oswald, the officer

might have been shot by someone nearby who was unconnected with

Oswald; 4. Oswald might have already been in the Texas Theater at the

time of Tippit’s death, and Tippit might have been shot by an unknown

person.

The physical evidence is troublesome, to say the least. As Griffith

noted, “the offending firearm was initially—and firmly—identified as

an automatic pistol, based on a shell that was found at the scene.”46

Oswald was carrying a revolver when he was arrested. Shells were

found at the murder scene, and numerous experts have pointed out how

odd it would have been for someone who had just killed a policeman to

take the time to open his revolver and remove the shells, conveniently

leaving incriminating evidence at the scene of the crime. Casting further

doubt on the Warren Commission version, three of the shells were Win-

chester and one was a Remington. But the bullets removed from Tippit’s

body were two Winchesters and two Remingtons—clearly, something

didn’t match up.47 The chain of evidence regarding the shells, and three

of the bullets, has also been called into question.

As documented in numerous books over the past forty years (we’ve

listed a few of the best in this endnote48), witnesses were inconsistent

in their description of the shooter, the number of people involved, and

how they fled. For example, witness Acquilla Clemmons said the killer

was “kind of short” and “kind of heavy,” and was with another man.

(The day Oswald was shot, a Dallas policeman told Clemmons that she

might get hurt if she told anyone what she saw.) Even the Dallas assis-

tant district attorney at the time said later that “Oswald’s movements

did not add up then and they do not add up now. . . . Certainly, he may

have had accomplices.”49 While most witnesses said the shooter fled on

foot, another saw him speed away in a gray car.

Witnesses also said different things at different times, possibly because

they were intimidated or threatened. Witness Warren Reynolds first told

the FBI he couldn’t identify Oswald as Tippit’s killer. Two days later,

Reynolds was shot in the head. (A suspect was arrested, but released

after one of Ruby’s former strippers gave him an alibi. According to the

FBI, two days later she “hung herself.”)50 After Reynolds recovered, he

decided that he could identify Oswald as the killer after all. The wit-

ness closest to the Tippit slaying, Domingo Benevides, said he couldn’t

identify Tippit’s killer as Oswald, even after seeing pictures of Oswald

on TV and in newspapers. That left as the Warren Commission’s star

witness a woman so inconsistent (she claimed to have talked to Tippit

after he was dead) that she was later described by one of the Commis-

sion attorneys who dealt with her as “an utter screwball.”51

The Texas Theater was not the first place police converged on in an

attempt to apprehend Tippit’s killer. Instead, police radio calls went out,

saying, “A witness reports that he [Tippit’s killer] was last seen in the

Abundant Life Temple. . . . We are fixing to go in and shake it down.”

Another patrolman said, “Send me another squad [car] to check out

this church basement.” The Abundant Life Temple is a huge building,

three stories tall (counting a large daylight basement), just one block

from the Tippit slaying site. But even as several policemen were getting

ready to enter the Temple, another call came in, erroneously reporting

that Tippit’s slayer was at a library several blocks away. All of the police

left, and the Temple was never searched.52 Later, it was alleged that the

Temple had been the site of Cuban exile activity.

The Warren Commission’s version of how and when Oswald got

into the Texas Theater has been challenged by numerous authors and

witnesses. But Oswald’s documented actions inside the theater seem

inconsistent with those of someone fleeing a murder scene. According

to theater patron Jack Davis, Oswald sat next to him for a few minutes

before Oswald got up and moved to sit next to another person for several

minutes. Then Oswald stood up and walked to the lobby, as if looking

for someone, before eventually returning to the auditorium. At the time,

Oswald had half of a torn box top in his pocket, and was perhaps looking

for someone with the other half. (Dollar bills torn in half were later found

in his rooming house, indicating Oswald had used that technique before.

The CIA file of Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime confirms that the CIA

also used this technique for Artime during AMWORLD in 1963.)53

Oddly, once the police arrived, they mirrored Oswald’s unusual

behavior by going to two people before going to Oswald. It was almost

as if one or more of the policemen wanted to give Oswald a chance to

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flee; if Oswald had been shot trying to run from the theater, things would

have been much simpler for Jack Ruby and his Mafia bosses. Oswald

was arrested after a scuffle, though Henry Hurt and other journalists

have noted “conflicting testimony among arresting officers about just

what happened during the arrest,” and “most of the dozen or so patrons

. . . were never canvassed and questioned in any inclusive fashion by

the FBI or the Warren Commission.”54 Mob associate John Martino later

told his wife that when police “went to the theater and got Oswald, they

blew it . . . there was a Cuban in there. They let him come out . . . they

let the guy go, the other trigger.”55

Questions have also arisen about the fake ID card Oswald had in his

wallet, with the name of “Alek Hidell,” the same alias he had apparently

used to obtain his mail-order weapons nine months earlier. The rifle had

been found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository just thirty minutes

before Oswald’s arrest, and the alias on the fake ID would let the FBI

quickly trace the guns to Oswald’s post office box. As with many other

details in the case, writers have debated whether the rifle the FBI found

really was Oswald’s, since each factory that produced the Mannlicher-

Carcano used its own set of serial numbers, meaning several rifles could

have the same serial number.56

Later, at the home where Marina was staying and where Oswald had

spent the night, Marina told police that Oswald had kept his mail-order

rifle wrapped in a blanket. She had last seen the wrapped rifle two weeks

earlier, but at the time of her interview, the blanket was empty. When

Oswald’s rooming house was searched, police found a miniature Minox

spy camera, three other cameras, and several rolls of exposed Minox

film.57 (A November 27, 1963, memo shows that David Morales’s Miami

CIA station used Minox cameras.)58

One theater patron placed Jack Ruby at the theater at the time of

Oswald’s arrest, though Ruby’s known movements would have made

the timing for that appearance very tight.59 But shortly after that, Jack

Ruby was seen at his bank with a large sum of money. According to jour-

nalist Seth Kantor, “Bill Cox, the loan officer at [Ruby’s bank], vividly

remembers Ruby standing in line at a teller’s cage on the afternoon of

November 22, after President Kennedy was slain. ‘Jack was standing

there crying, and he had about $7,000 in cash on him the day of the

assassination. . . . I warned him that he’d be knocked in the head one

day, carrying all that cash on him.’”60

Perhaps Ruby was crying because he knew the risk he was going

to have to take himself, now that Tippit was dead. Bank records show

that Ruby didn’t deposit the money; he may have gotten it from, or put

it into, a safety deposit box, or switched out the bills to make it harder

to trace. Seven thousand dollars was the amount Ruby had received

from a Hoffa associate in Chicago just before JFK’s planned motorcade

in that city, the one canceled because of an assassination threat. Two

other Marcello associates involved in JFK’s assassination, David Ferrie

and Joseph Milteer, had received similar amounts. Perhaps $7,000 was

either the down payment, or the expense money, for helping to kill the

President.

PART TWO

Chapter Eleven

The initial reactions of Bobby Kennedy and Richard Helms to the unfold-

ing events in Dallas would impact not just the immediate investigation,

but also lives, political careers, and US foreign policy for years to come.

The decisions they and other key officials made—including the infor-

mation they decided to release or withhold—would both generate and

impede government investigations for the next four decades. Bobby’s

goal, beginning that afternoon and continuing until his death, was to

find out what had happened to his brother without revealing informa-

tion that could trigger World War III or cost the lives of Almeida and

his allies. Helms shared some of Bobby’s concerns, but he also decided

to protect his own reputation and that of the CIA, while maintaining

a capability to assassinate Castro. The actions of Bobby and Helms on

and after November 22, 1963, are why “well over a million CIA records”

related to JFK’s assassination remain classified today, more than sixteen

years after Congress unanimously passed a law requiring their release.1

Among these files are more than one thousand identified in a lawsuit

seeking the release of documents about a CIA-backed Cuban exile group

linked to Oswald, a lawsuit that the CIA has been fighting for years.

Fifteen minutes after the gunfire in Dealey Plaza, Bobby received a call

from J. Edgar Hoover informing him that his brother had been shot in

Dallas. Bobby was still eating lunch by the pool behind his Hickory Hill

mansion with his wife, Ethel, New York’s US Attorney Robert Morgen-

thau, and another guest when he got the news. Hoover, in a flat tone,

told Bobby that he thought it was serious and that he’d call back when

he found out more. According to William Manchester, after Bobby hung

up he turned toward his guests: His “jaw sagged . . . it seemed that every

muscle was contorted with horror. ‘Jack’s been shot,’ he said, gagging,

and clapped his hand over his face.”2

At that point, neither Hoover nor Bobby knew that the President was

essentially dead, so Bobby’s first thought was to fly to Dallas, an idea

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he soon abandoned. He made a flurry of calls to people like Secretary

of Defense McNamara (who was getting his information from General

Carroll’s DIA), as well as to Parkland Hospital in Dallas and to CIA

Director John McCone, who was only five minutes away at the Agency’s

headquarters in Langley, Virginia.3

McCone was dining in a small private room beside his office when his

assistant came in with the news that JFK had been shot. Eating with

McCone were CIA Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick, Richard

Helms, and three other CIA officials. Helms’s own account of that day in

his autobiography is self-serving and incomplete at best, glossing over

most of his activity. He perpetuates the myth that there was nationwide

TV coverage of JFK’s Dallas trip, writing that “one of McCone’s aides

who had been following the President’s trip to Texas on live TV in a

nearby office brought the news of the shooting in Dallas.” It’s important

to stress that there was no live TV coverage of JFK’s motorcade in Dallas,

let alone in the rest of the country, which is why so many facts about the

shooting are still in dispute. Presidential motorcades were simply too

common in those days to be of national interest. Only one radio station

in Dallas provided live coverage of the motorcade, but the reporter’s

commentary wasn’t recorded; thus, a potential audio record of the event

was lost. The clip of a Dallas radio announcer that’s often used in docu-

mentaries, saying, “There has been a shooting in the motorcade,” was a

later re-creation by the original announcer. However, Helms’s version

avoids potentially troubling questions about how and when CIA head-

quarters was first informed of JFK’s shooting.4

Though Helms’s usually cool outward demeanor probably didn’t

show it, he must have been shocked upon hearing the news, and for

reasons beyond those of the others present. The stunning news had

additional resonance for Helms even aside from the JFK-Almeida coup

plan, which was known to at least several in the room. Of all those pres-