Jan
10
The Malcolm Blunt Archives Update
CIA / Cuba / Dallas Police Department / FBI / HSCA / Jack Ruby / JFK Assassination / LBJ / Lee Harvey Oswald / Photography & Film / Prayer Man / Secret Service / Warren Commission / Washington
The Malcolm Blunt Archives Update.
Greetings and happy new year. Hope you have had, under these difficult circumstances, a somewhat decent X-Mas break. I know I have not posted that much and the reason for that is that the Malcolm Blunt Archives have kept me occupied for quite some time now. And especially the second half of 2020 has been a very busy period scanning tens of thousands of pages in. I have been working on this project for more than two years now.
Harry Livingstone’s Files April 2019. Click pic to enlarge.
Starting with Harry Livingstone’s material which then slowly transcended into scanning Malcolm’s files, little did I know how much there was, yet at the same time has proven to be an absolute goldmine filled with rare and never before published documents, audio & video recordings.
Documents, tapes and videos. Click pic to enlarge.
Early Dec 2020, while there was a gap in Covid 19 travel restrictions, Peter Antill and I made our way to Malcolm to see what we could get our hands on to take back with us. Peter and I offloaded the 14 bags we had brought with us, yet I managed to bring ten bags back with me and that was only with 90 minutes left to do so. Two bags fill a drawer of a filing cabinet and contain anything between 2-3,000 pages. If you are wondering what type of content there is, well…..almost anything.
This is by far one of the best document collections when it comes to the JFK Assassination, but also for Dallas matters, anti-Castro, CIA, New Orleans, the ARRB, HSCA and a handful of other commissions investigating. At this point I have created roughly 10,000 PDFs. Scanning will continue for most part of this year trying to complete the digitisation of Malcolm Blunt’s entire archive.
For the first time in 18 months I managed to get access to the files I had worked on in the first half of 2019 while in Tetbury. These files have been kept at a storage site and I was very happy being able to regain access to them. The files in here are much more within my remit.
Click to enlarge.
The coloured boxes are of course Harry Livingstone’s files. Malcolm’s materials in here refer a lot to Dallas Police and FBI. Due to some finds of great documents I am preparing a handful of articles which I will start working on more this month when I am taking a break from scanning.
Click to enlarge.
While the Covid 19 restrictions are in place I will not be able to regain access until some time in March this year. But I have plenty to get on with for now and I reckon I will be working on this archive for the rest of the year. Expect a few cool articles to come in the next six months. And of course The Papers I have been working on these past few years and which are being crammed full with not before seen material, so plenty to look out for.
Jul
08
Nicholas Katzenbach Was Working Hard On Crucifying Lee Oswald.
Upda
Updated Jan 25 2021.
Nicholas Katzenbach. Photo: Boston Globe.
Nicholas Katzenbach was a Deputy Attorney General appointed by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 and worked directly under Robert Kennedy. After the assassination of President Kennedy Katzenbach continued to serve with the Johnson administration until February 11th, 1965.
The first time I came across his name was in the documentary Beyond ‘JFK’: The Question of Conspiracy in which a document from Nov 25th 1963 was brought up. This document states: “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial. Discussions followed on forums and newsgroups. How could Katzenbach do this at such short notice, and doesn’t this show how biased he was? Eh…..yeah!
Katzenbach Memo Nov 25 1964. Click to enlarge.
When the first batch of previously withheld documents were released in 2017 I found this document, that must have been an ‘inspiration’ for Katzenbach’s document. I just went through the released FBI files and noticed that the sentence used on page 3 was very similar to the Nov 25th doc. I had to dig out that document to make sure that I was not mixing things up. The document below is from Nov 24th. Compare both docs and you see that Hoover and Katzenbach were in cahoots on this matter of issuing something that would convince the public of Oswald’s guilt.
Hoover document Nov 24 1963. Click to enlarge.
With that find back then I thought ‘cool I found a link between the two documents.
But there is more. Never thought I would come across this piece while going through the Malcolm Blunt Archives Two pages which are a shocking read from a timing perspective. Bear in mind that Oswald was arrested at about 13:50 hrs and Katzenbach wants to nail Oswald to the cross by 18:15 Dallas time. Lee Harvey Oswald at that time is being interrogated for the second time. and is less than one hour away from being charged for the Tippit murder.
This all puts the whole Dallas investigation into perspective as in who is calling the shots and wants ‘this thing’ over and done with.
Nicholas Katzenbach. Crick to enlarge.
Nicholas Katzenbach Click to enlarge.
Mar
29
Important to Hold That Man by Jerry D. Rose May 1986
Once in a blue moon you come across a great article. From The Third Decade; a magazine that has published some of the finest articles in JFK Assassination research. This article below by publisher Jerry D. Rose is no exception. And the reason for me to bring this up is because it falls nicely inside my remit but it is also a great way to compare it with my own work. And Rose does a terrific job. The parts where Truly had stated to the WC he had not seen Oswald after the assassination which of course makes no sense when the second floor lunch room encounter allegedly happened within 90 seconds after the shots had been fired. Rose’s remarks following up on Bill Shelley stating to Roy Truly that he did not see Lee Oswald are simply priceless.
Fritz’s movements and actions from the T.S.B.D. and to the D.P.D. are thoroughly questioned, but his pit stop at Bill Decker’s office is sadly missing from those paragraphs. All this makes Will Fritz look even more suspicious
Oswald being paraded past his fellow employees had more of an effect than Rose describes. He notes discrepancies from a procedural p.o.v. But add on that those fellow employees were told that Oswald had killed a cop at that time which of course meant that these people were distancing themselves from Oswald as much as they possibly could.
A perfect example of someone being too close is Buell Frazier who got it in the neck from early evening onwards from the D.P.D. that day. Joe Molina a worthy second.
The yellow marker (grey on these pages) and pen annotations are from Harry Livingstone whose archive I have been digitising this past year and a bit.
Do read!
Click to enlarge.
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Jan
03
There were ten women on the fourth floor when it went down.
From my up and coming paper Anatomy of the T.S.B.D.
Updated with a new title, a little text and some pictures on Jan 5th 2020.
Updated with the addition of a gallery of 4th floor drawings on March 12th 2022.
I knew that Victoria Adams’ descent down the back stairs of the T.S.B.D. was one key to the assassination puzzle especially when Oswald was supposedly to go down those same steps “escaping” from the building at about the same time. The ladies had watched among other fourth floor employees the motorcade turn the corner in front of the building on to Elm St. Then they heard the shots fired at the limousine. Adams and Styles almost immediately left the window to go down the back stairs, make their way towards the railroad yard, and upon arrival they were told to go back where they came from, which they did thru the front doors of the T.S.B.D.
The first one who drew my attention to this was Oliver Stone, who brought this segment up during the Garrison trial in the movie JFK.
Actors representing Victoria Adams’ and Sandra Styles’ descent in a re-enactment for the film J.F.K. Click to enlarge.
If there is anyone who researched Victoria Adams’ and Sandra Styles’ descent from the fourth floor to the railroad yard and back into the front of the T.S.B.D. better than anyone else it is Barry Ernest.
His book The Girl On The Stairs: The Search for a Missing Witness to the JFK Assassination led me to focus more on the T.S.B.D. and its employees.
From his research we know that.
- Victoria Adams did go through her W.C. statement and applied corrections even though the document ends with her stating she waivers her signature. The ‘corrected’ statement is being held much longer under lock and key than the first version without any corrections.
- She accused the W.C. of inserting the Lovelady & Shelley encounter in her testimony. She described the person she encountered after arriving on the first floor as a tall black man. This was independently corroborated by Sandra Styles who knew Shelley and Lovelady and was sure it wasn’t them who they met. The so called Adams & Styles – Lovelady & Shelley encounter on the first floor is a fugezi to undermine the timing of the ladies’ descent. It shows Jim “I don’t recall” Leavelle of the D.P.D. the maker of this report as a fabricator, who placed the misleading statement inside that report from Feb 1964. Obviously Leavelle is responsible but the decision to do this comes from higher up obviously.
- The Martha J. Stroud document Ernest found at the archives in Washington in 1999 confirms Adams’ corrections to her statement, and also states that Dorothy Garner saw the girls leave before the police officer came up to the fourth floor. Garner’s real statement or anything besides the Stroud letter leading to it has disappeared.
- The W.C. discredited Adams’ story. by disbelieving her, nor did it really investigate further. But the W.C. did more to discredit Victoria Adams and it did that by minimising any attention towards the fourth floor.
While reading up about the other T.S.B.D. employees present on the fourth and fifth floors something else becomes apparent. The fourth floor was filled with ladies looking out through the south side windows.
Victoria Adams. Source: Barry Ernest.
Sandra Styles-Baylor Uni, Waco-1962
Elsie Dorman. Source: Life Magazine.
Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.
Judyth Louise McCully.
Avery Davis. Source E-Yearbook.com.
Mary Hollies. Source: E-Yearbook.com. Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.
Ruth Nelson. Source Ancestry Family Tree. Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.
Yola Hopson 1945. Source E-Yearbook.com. Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.
Betty Alice Foster. Source E-Yearbook.com. Thanks to Linda Giovanna Zambanini.
Think about it. Ten people on the fourth floor when it all went down. Some of them could have easily confirmed when Adams and Styles left. But that is something the Warren Commission, D.P.D., F.B.I. and the Secret Service, by the looks of it, did not bother much with.
Weaver Polaroid. Click to enlarge.
Even though Avery Davis claimed to be on the front steps, she is not recognised in either the Wiegman and Darnell films nor did any other person name her. Davis named Judyth McCully as the person she was on the steps with. McCully’s initial F.B.I. statement states that she was on the fourth floor while it all went down which then got changed to the front steps. Judyth McCully’s daughter told me that this was done at the behest of the F.B.I.
So if I do not know any better then efforts were made to look the fourth floor as a non event as much as possible with moving some witnesses away so original witness statements could not be corroborated.
Some more food for thought are the diagrams of the fourth floor. There were just three large rooms so people were close on each other.
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- WR 4th floor diagram 1964. From Mary Ferrell.
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- Fourth floor TSBD staff diagram. From Mary Ferrell.
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- Fourth floor TSBD staff diagram. From Mary Ferrell.
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- Fourth floor TSBD staff diagram. From Mary Ferrell.
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- FBI Diagram 1963. Thanks to Gary Murr
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- FBI Diagram 1963. Thanks to Gary Murr
Think about it, there were 10 people on the fourth floor. Some of them stood a few meters away from each other. Adams’ and Styles descent was the kryptonite to the Oswald ‘escape’.
Then there are the men from the 5th floor and especially Jarman, Norman and Williams. I have made a spreadsheet with all three workers’ answers from every statement they have given and that are available. Download it from HERE.
From left to right: James Earl Jarman, Bonnie Ray Williams and Harold Norman in the Tom Dillard photo. Click to enlarge.
The fourth floor stop is in some statements not to be found, but in the W.C. testimony from Bonnie Ray Williams he states: They paused for one minute on the 4th floor as there were all these women looking out. Then there is James Jarman who during his W.C. testimony disowns the fourth floor stop even after asked about it by John J McCloy by saying I believe we went all the way.
The fourth floor was a direct threat to Oswald’s so called escape, so they thought. Until of course the Prayer Man surfaced and it has transpired Oswald was nowhere near the 6th floor when the shots were fired…
Nov
11
I had the pleasure to talk with Rob Clark on his Lone Gunman Podcast for two hours no less on Lee Oswald’s interrogations, it flew by as I had such fun.
Thank you Rob.
Ep. 157 ~ Explosive New Evidence and Timeline Tweaks About The Interrogations.
In case the audio volume is too low for you I have uploaded the file HERE (150 MB to d/l) which sounds a lot better than the Spreaker upload.
Nov
08
Howard Roffman to Richard Bernabei 1970
Howard Roffman wrote extensively with Harold Weisberg, but also with Richard Bernabei. I have managed to gotten hold of quite a bit of material myself after contacting his archive in Kingston and I also know that Denis Morissette went there and he sent me quite a few pages as well. I still have to go through all this. While browsing through the folder I came across this letter from 1970 that I gotten hold off in 2016.
It basically discusses the Couch film and Marrion Baker. Roffman did extensive research in the relation between the Couch film and Marrion Baker’s run almost 50 years ago. He also brings Gloria Calvery, Joe Molina and other T.S.B.D. employees’ statements in the fold and uses his common sense as most of his observations still stand today. Cool read.
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- Howard Roffman to Richard Bernabei – 1
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- Howard Roffman to Richard Bernabei – 2
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- Howard Roffman to Richard Bernabei – 3
Sep
08
Nat Pinkston and the snack room encounter
Nat Pinkston from the F.B.I. took a statement of Roy Truly on Nov 22nd 1963. Pinkston can be seen as the co-creator of the Second Floor Lunch Room Encounter fakery.
In this document it shows that Pinkston is aware of Oswald’s statement that the only rifles he saw in the building were two days prior when Warren Caster popped round and showed the two rifles to Roy Truly and others. This matter was discussed during the first interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald.
What was also discussed is that Oswald got a coke for his lunch, and not after, but that got twisted somehow with the fairy tale below.
In my opinion the first and real attempt on making Oswald look guilty.
Nat Pinkston Nov 22 1963 FBI Report. Click to enlarge.
This and Roy Truly’s statement dictated on the 22nd and typed up on the 23rd are the first official statements attesting to an encounter in the snack room.
Roy Truly FBI Report Nov 22-23 1963. Click to enlarge.
There are a few more bits on Nat Pinkston at his page.
Thanks to Malcolm Blunt for the Pinkston document.
Roy Truly document from NARA.
Jul
09
Oswald in the corridor Nov 22nd, after his Tippit arraignment which was at 7:10 PM.
A week ago I posted a silent version of this video , I then found this one with audio attached to it from a Canadian TV program. And since hearing the audio now, I can safely say that this is the same moment as in the video posted below this one, but all the way from the other side. Kinda cool. This is where it pays of looking and comparing at the film material of those happenings inside that corridor. There was a lot made that day and the weekend after, but so little has been released in decent quality.
This is after Oswald’s arraignment inside Fritz’s office for the Tippit murder.
This door leads to the jail elevator.
Third floor plan Dallas City Hall. Click pic. to enlarge.
And then from that very same door Oswald emerges at about 19:50 hrs, the Patsy sequence. Again requesting legal representation and exclaiming his innocence of shooting The President.
Think about it in a time frame of roughly 40 minutes Lee Oswald, twice mentioned the hearing without legal representation. Not allowing him to have any, and steadfastly denying he shot anyone.
