Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?

According to researcher Joe McBride,Ferrell was a disinfo agent.Here is an excerpt from his book "Into The Nightmare".

THE GATEKEEPER

After it became clear to me that the introduction into evidence of the audiotape on which the HSCA
based its halfhearted conclusion of conspiracy was designed to discredit the whole investigation, I
became keenly interested in tracing the provenance of the tape to see how this could have happened.

According to Fort Worth researcher Jack D. White, the tape was first brought forward by Gary
Mack, who took it to Mary Ferrell, the supposedly self-appointed den mother of assassination researchers in Dallas (Dallas Tippit researcher Greg Lowrey called her “The Gatekeeper”). But according to Mack, who worked with Penn Jones on The Continuing Inquiry, Jones gave him the original clue and a copy of the tape. Mack, a former Fort Worth NBC-TV announcer who changed his name from Larry Dunkel while working as a disk jockey, eventually turned into a lone-nut theorist after he became the curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at the former Texas School Book Depository
in Dealey Plaza, which exists primarily to debunk conspiracy theories while misleading and distracting tourists at the site of the murder. Its raison d’être seems to be to protect the image of Dallas by attempting to perpetuate the Warren Commission’s version of events.

Mack’s ally Ferrell supplied favored researchers with documents from her ample files (since her death in 2004, available
online at maryferrell.org), and she has been hailed by many researchers for her supposedly selfeffacing generosity toward the cause of history. In an article on the acoustics evidence, Dale K. Myers discusses the provenance of the tape and cites Mack’s 1979 report that Jones originally suggested they look into the question of a stuck microphone on a police motorcycle that blocked a radio channel during the motorcade. “Penn was of the opinion that the communications were jammed on purpose,” Mack wrote. Mack thought such a police radio tape might contain sounds of shots. Jones provided a tape that was of insufficient quality to work with, but Ferrell came up with a better one. Ferrell, White said, tracked down a first-generation copy of the tape made from a police Dictabelt and presented it to
the HSCA.

As I later found after making contact with Mary Ferrell myself, she actually had deep connections with U.S. intelligence. She was a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), founded by CIA agent David Atlee Phillips, who many researchers believe helped organize the Kennedy assassination plot and the framing of Oswald in particular. Ferrell’s excuse for being a member, that she was infiltrating the organization to learn more about U.S. intelligence, seems laughably transparent. “We know Mary Ferrell has many contacts with the FBI and other government agencies,” Lowrey told me. “I’m also suspicious of her association with Hugh Aynesworth,” the
Dallas reporter who covered the case from the first day and has long been an opponent of conspiracy theorists, as well as serving as an FBI informant during the Garrison case. “You can start in any direction,” said Lowrey, “and ultimately it will lead you to [Ferrell]. You will come back to her.”

Ferrell was a legal secretary for the Socony Mobil Oil Company in Dallas at the time of the assassination. As well as putting her in the circle of big oil in Dallas, the Mobil association gives Ferrell at least a tangential link to some key Kennedy assassination characters, including people involved in oil, the White Russian community, and U.S. intelligence. Volkmar Schmidt, a Germanborn Dallas petroleum geologist who claimed he tried to turn Oswald against General Walker and therefore felt “a terrible responsibility” for the Walker assassination attempt and the Kennedy assassination, told researcher William E. Kelly in a 1995 interview that in 1963 he worked for a Dallas branch of Mobil, the Field Research Laboratory of the Magnolia Petroleum Company. Schmidt said he met George de Mohrenschildt and Ruth Paine, the Oswalds’ CIA handlers, and Paine’s husband, Michael, “through the circle of young professionals at the Magnolia labs.”

It was at a February 22,1963, party arranged by Everett D. Glover, a chemist with the labs, at a house he shared with Schmidt,that Schmidt had a long talk (“about two solid hours”) with Oswald about Walker and other political
topics, including Kennedy and Cuba (Schmidt claimed Oswald was “hateful” toward Kennedy, and that he tried to turn that feeling against Walker, telling Oswald the general was a racist and “kind of a Nazi”). At the same party the Oswalds were introduced to Ruth Paine; Glover told the Warren Commission that Ruth spent most of her time that night speaking with Marina in Russian. As well as by George de Mohrenschildt and his wife, Jeanne, the party was attended by others from the Magnolia labs and by George’s oil industry friend Samuel Ballen. Armstrong writes in Harvey & Lee, “There is little doubt the purpose of this social gathering was to provide CIA operative George DeMohrenschildt the opportunity to introduce Lee Harvey Oswald and Marina to CIA operative Ruth Paine. During the next 10 months, until November 22, 1963, Oswald’s activities were closely monitored by either DeMohrenschildt or Mrs. Paine” .

Mary Ferrell was a lifelong Republican who disliked Kennedy (Lowrey put it more strongly: “She hated John Kennedy; it was no secret”), and she admitted in 2000, “I didn’t even care enough to go down on Elm Street to watch the motorcade.” A feature on Ferrell in the Dallas Morning News on the twentieth anniversary of the assassination in 1983 mentions that she was downtown that day “but didn’t bother interrupting her lunch” to see Kennedy. The writer, Brad Bailey, hinted at the strangeness of this paradox in her career: “Mrs. Ferrell didn’t particularly like Kennedy as a president or as a fellow Catholic. . . . So she has a hard time explaining the fireproof library building in her Oak Lawn backyard with floor-to-ceiling shelves containing virtually every document ever published on the assassination. Nor can she easily explain the additional 25,000 pages of FBI documents spread across her living room floor or the clippings and papers that fill another room.”

The most I could get from Ferrell when I asked about her motivation, a question that seemed to momentarily take her aback in our last conversation in December 1992, was the vague response, “I just didn’t think they went to Oak Cliff and picked up the man who did it in a darkened theater.Somehow it just didn’t make sense.” Ferrell was surprisingly equivocal on some of the most-discussed topics surrounding the assassination. She said she refused to see Oliver Stone’s JFK because when reporters called her, “I was really glad I didn’t have to lie and say I didn’t like it or I did like it.” As for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison himself, she told me, “I loved Jim Garrison -- I wavered between thinking he’s insane and thinking he’s a genius.” And as for Oswald, she said that if people “come to me and say, ‘I think Oswald acted alone, and do you have documentation?,’ I just politely say, ‘Go somewhere else.’ Everything I do is based on Oswald did not act alone. Not that he didn’t act. I don’t know.” And the Morning News reported in 1983 that despite all her research, she had “given up hope of deciding what really happened that day in Dallas. ‘We have now had about four major investigations, and I consider that the truth is still hidden from us,’ she says.”

Some of the explanation for what that newspaper described as Ferrell’s “compulsion” to serve as a repository and clearing house for assassination research can be found in another paradox about Ferrell. Her obituary in the Morning News referred to how she “worked more than thirty years as a legal secretary for a law firm and also in the Governor’s office in Austin.” She was a conservative who kept close to the power center of that era in Texas by working for Democrats, including Governor Dolph Briscoe in 1973-74, and she was “a close personal friend” of John Connally, Lowrey noted.

Ferrell was even closely connected to those who determined the route of the Dallas motorcade. It was in 1964, soon after the assassination, according to Lowrey, that Ferrell became a legal secretary in downtown Dallas to Eugene M. Locke, who headed the law firm of Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney and Neely and was also the head of the State Democratic Executive Committee of Texas. (Ferrell claimed on various occasions that she did not start working for Locke until 1967 or 1970. Locke died in 1972.)

In addition to heading a major law firm and having oil, land, and construction interests, Locke in his official position with the state party helped plan the presidential trip to Dallas. A crucial meeting that helped decide on the route of the motorcade -- violating Secret Service regulations by causing it to make a sharp turn from Houston onto Elm Street, past the Texas School Book Depository, slowing the motorcade to eleven miles an hour in the kill zone -- was held in Locke’s office, although Kennedy aide Kenneth O’Donnell apparently was responsible for the final decision that determined the route.(See more on Locke and that meeting in Chapters 15 and 16.) Lowrey suggested, though without
having proof, that Ferrell could have helped her soon-to-be-employer Locke with those arrangements.

That seems more of an educated guess when one considers that her husband, Hubert (Buck) Ferrell, who worked for Eagle Lincoln-Mercury in Dallas at the time of the assassination, supplied some of the cars for the motorcade, and that Mary Ferrell said her own car was used in the motorcade when “They quickly ran out of cars.” According to assassination researcher Todd Wayne Vaughan, who interviewed both Ferrells, Mary supplied her own recently purchased 1964 Ford Mercury Colony Park station wagon for the motorcade, and it was used as one of the “VIP” cars.


My dealings with Mary Ferrell in 1985-86 were what made me aware of her duplicity. I first called her to ask her confidential advice about a previously unknown FBI document I had found that seriously undermined the Warren Commission’s lone-gunman theory, and she betrayed my trust (see Chapter 15). After being thus alerted to her dishonest modus operandi, I began delving into her dubious background and concluded that after the assassination she set up shop with the backing of the federal government to serve as a clearing house and watchdog in Dallas, doling out favors while actually going about her main business of keeping tabs on what researchers were doing and selectively, subtly feeding them disinformation. As a result of her clever application of spycraft and her faux-motherly act, many researchers naively regarded her as a guru with a disinterested dedication to the truth. When I called her again in 1992 to request an in-person interview about her background and involvement in the case, she pressed me hard to find out what aspects of the assassination I was researching, and when I carefully gave her only general answers, saying that my areas of interest included the roles played by researchers, she refused to meet with me and said she didn’t want to be interviewed about her own background. Lowrey said, “Mary stays in the shadows. Her agenda is subtle and devious: ‘What are you going to do with it?’” Penn Jones gave me some good advice: “Stay away from her.”

Ferrell’s production to the HSCA of the tape allegedly containing audio impulses demonstrating that four shots were fired in Dealey Plaza seemed suspiciously timely to me. It seemed to buttress the notion of conspiracy but more likely was cleverly orchestrated by Ferrell to discredit it in due course, like a planted mine sure to go off and destroy everything that surrounded it. Anomalies and ambiguities surrounding the tape itself made the HSCA’s belated “discovery” and endorsement of four shots dubious. That was probably seen by Blakey and others on his staff as a convenient late-arriving fig leaf with which to cover themselves by suggesting a conspiracy while not investigating its
participants fully and honestly. The problems surrounding the tape were manifold, including debatable photographic evidence of the police motorcycle with a stuck microphone that supposedly recorded the sounds, claims by some skeptics that the tape actually was recorded about a minute after the assassination, and above all the inherent difficulties of interpreting the sound impulses allegedly found on the tape and synching those impulses with films of the assassination (including the altered Zapruder film). These problems would keep various experts, conspiracy theorists, and lone-nutters alike busy for years of debate, sometimes switching sides back and forth to add to the confusion.

That may have been the point of the whole exercise initiated by Mary Ferrell with the collusion of Gary Mack (on the dubious advice of Penn Jones). In the process, many studies were made, and much ink was consumed, but the subject only became more intractable, as, indeed, it seemed to me almost from the beginning, given the near-impossibility of reconstructing credible gunshots from a belatedly produced Dictabelt recording made in part with a police microphone of uncertain location.



By so badly muddying the waters, the claim by the HSCA about shots being recorded on the tape most probably was intended to distract attention from the actual likelihood that more than four shots were fired in Dealey Plaza. This was among the more sophisticated and effective disinformation ploys launched against the finding of the truth of what happened in November 1963, but just one of the many obfuscatory maneuvers that began the first day and continue to the present. “All this stuff that went to the HSCA from the nucleus of people revolving around Mary Ferrell probably was concocted by mixing it with half-truths,” Lowrey noted. “Their MO is propping up a story and then shooting it
down -- damn effective.”

The HSCA Report, while saying that there were two gunmen, nevertheless claims that a single shot from the Grassy Knoll, the closer of the two alleged firing locations, missed, and accuses Oswald of killing Kennedy. Researcher Jack White, who continued to believe that “shots are recorded on the tape,” nevertheless aptly called the HSCA Report “a half-horse, half-zebra, halfassed kind of report.”

The HSCA, in my view, largely succeeded in disproving the (naive) notion that this case could be investigated fairly by a government up to its eyes in direct involvement in the planning, execution, and coverup of the crimes themselves. Like the Warren Commission investigation before it, the HSCA investigation also turned up a wealth of evidence and fresh leads that, ironically, cast doubt on its own conclusions. A further problem was that some of the HSCA’s work product, including reports of witness interviews, did not reach the public until the 1990s, delaying both its utility and its ability to cast doubt on the HSCA’s own conclusions. The material was sealed until after the film JFK helped provide the impetus for the establishment of the ARRB, which helped free so much of the previously classified material in U.S. government files. That material has proven invaluable in filling in some of the important gaps in our information about the case and in calling attention to previously hidden aspects of these events.

Fascinating stuff to be sure.

Over time, I have begun to think the same of many of the early "greats" of the research community. Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Penn Jones, and more.

About the only one I am certain is NOT a disinfo agent is me - but then, you cannot trust me saying that, either.

(maybe I am a disinfo agent and don't even know it... could be. Maybe I was kidnapped, mindswiped and programmed and just don't remember... I do live near Ft. Detrick after all.)

I can't fathom the point made about the Dictabelt tape and the acoustics study carried out for the HSCA.

This work swung the HSCA towards concluding that a conspiracy had been involved in the assassination of Kennedy. I suspect Robert Blakey did not welcome the results.

If this 'planted mine' had been an attempt to 'discredit' the HSCA then it could scarcely be deemed a success.

The acoustics study itself did not conclude that only four shots had been fired in Dealey Plaza - this was the HSCA's interpretation. There was strong evidence in support of a fifth and, albeit with lower probabilities, contestably more shots.

It strikes me that it is Joseph McBride who is 'muddying the waters' by regurgitating the various claims made to discredit the acoustics analysis without attempting to justify them. Don Thomas has done a fine job in dealing with these.

The issue of whether Mary Ferrell was a 'disinformation agent' has surely got nothing to do with the Dictabelt tape.

JFK Student wrote:According to researcher Joe McBride,Ferrell was a disinfo agent.Here is an excerpt from his book "Into The Nightmare".

What did you think of McBride's book? Just curious.

Redfern wrote:I can't fathom the point made about the Dictabelt tape and the acoustics study carried out for the HSCA.

This work swung the HSCA towards concluding that a conspiracy had been involved in the assassination of Kennedy. I suspect Robert Blakey did not welcome the results.

If this 'planted mine' had been an attempt to 'discredit' the HSCA then it could scarcely be deemed a success.

The acoustics study itself did not conclude that only four shots had been fired in Dealey Plaza - this was the HSCA's interpretation. There was strong evidence in support of a fifth and, albeit with lower probabilities, contestably more shots.

It strikes me that it is Joseph McBride who is 'muddying the waters' by regurgitating the various claims made to discredit the acoustics analysis without attempting to justify them. Don Thomas has done a fine job in dealing with these.

The issue of whether Mary Ferrell was a 'disinformation agent' has surely got nothing to do with the Dictabelt tape.

Redfern,

I haven't read Into the Nightmare, though I understand it's been well received.

I just want to make a few observations after skimming through a thread on the book at DeepFooFoo.

While attacking Ferrell, McBride supports Jones, White, Lifton and Horne.

Let's go through those names.

Jones may have been well-intentioned, but he was easily the most error-ridden of the early critics.

White is the creator of a Frankenstein Oswald which is now used all over the internet in support of one of the more ludicrous theories out there. He was also a friend of a late-arriving witness in support of that same ludicrous theory - and the hunch of a very astute researcher is that the whole theory was commissioned through White's PR firm by a client company associated with either Edwin Ekdahl or Fred Korth.

Lifton is... Lifton... what more need be said?

Horne is closely aligned with Lifton. Among his more egregious claims is that RFK instigated the cover-up.  

McBride's main gripes about MF seem to be that she was a lifelong Republican and that she at some stage became a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Agents.

The former reason is just plain petty. There are quite a few decent and honest researchers who happen to be Republicans. I'm equally certain there are some complete fuckheads among researchers who identify as Democrats. As for the latter... as Allen Lowe patiently explained to McBride: 

membership requirements in the AFIO:

"Associate Members - U.S. citizens in private, civil, academic or corporate pursuits, as well as, Americans currently in non-intelligence government employment (at any level) or other military service, may become Associate Members."


is there any documentation of her being asked how and why she joined? If she was involved in doing the kind of research that we know she did, it would not be a stretch to say that it was a reasonable thing for her to do. Does the AFIO offer its members certain resources? Introductions to particular people? Look, David Von Pein might join the Mary Ferrell Foundation to do research.

not every member of the CIA was involved in the assassination - and not every member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers was involved, either, I would suggest.

I agree with Greg's assessment. While I would not state it is impossible, it is highly improbable someone offering many hard to locate files and compiling them to aid in research over years is not the usual mold of disinformation agent. 

Without her legal knowledge and files much easily accessed information would not exist for our review in my view. I do not portray her as saint of course because I never met her. 

Ferrell unlike many who claimed to have evidence actually produced it. She inspired the current database and that in my view is a beneficial thing.  

Additionally,Harold Weisberg was a former official, yet I would not attempt to discredit his substantial contributions due to his prior association. Without that association he never would have possessed the ability or knowledge to gather the classified or suppressed evidence and compile it for future use.   

Official does not always equate to nefarious in my view.

Moral of the story (for me) goes to comments made by Terry earlier in "The Autumn of the Patriarch" thread: there is no such thing as "all black" or "all white." There are many shades of gray in between. Just because somebody fails a person's checklist item or two, doesn't necessarily make them an enemy and invalidate all their work and everything thing they say. And vice versa.

“In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” ― Bertrand Russell

I do believe this is the kind of thing that has hurt the JFK research community; and I will add that McBride puts Kenneth O'Donnell as part of the conspiracy: a man who was one of JFK's closest friends and who, in his misery and mourning,  drank himself to death in the years that followed. For that alone I would characterize McBride's book as beneath contempt.

AllenLowe wrote:I do believe this is the kind of thing that has hurt the JFK research community; and I will add that McBride puts Kenneth O'Donnell as part of the conspiracy: a man who was one of JFK's closest friends and who, in his misery and mourning,  drank himself to death in the years that followed. For that alone I would characterize McBride's book as beneath contempt.

You're probably right, Allen.

And we should really be paying more attention to the data than the personalities anyway. If the data checks out all right and fits with what we already know, use it.

Trying to navigate between egos is counter-productive.

Greg, and those who agree with his posted opinion?
I cannot recognize what motivated Mary in the first place, or what kept her going. Was she not disinterested in JFK?

The lore is that upon hearing the news of the shooting of JFK, Mary thought the case would be difficult to solve. This opinion made the announcement of Oswald's arrest all the more surprising. Then, allegedly, she mobilized her family, all in the space of an afternoon....ordering her husband, Buck to send their three sons to the loading docks of three major news publishers for the purpose of collecting every edition as they were loaded into delivery trucks.

Curious....if true, who, outside of strategists or intelligence types, thinks or acts with such immediacy, deliberation, and organization, especially in reaction to a subject Mary obviously had no former favorable enthusiasm for?

Considering Penn Jones....what discouraged potential persons who thought they knew things relevant to the investigation from coming forward, more..... Jones's poorly researched and greatly embellished and promoted death list, or the circumstances of the deaths themselves intended as intimidation?

http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/The_critics/Ferrell/Ferrell_bio.html

Biography of Mary Ferrell

The ASK Answer Lady, Mary Ferrell
by Jerry McCarthy
NameBase NewsLine, No. 4, January-March 1994:
....."I've never given a speech in my life," she told me, and agreed to the interview on the grounds that we focus on her database of assassination information which she is only now readying for distribution in a comprehensive, electronic format......

.....Her information will be available sometime this coming summer, if things work out. In her role as consultant to PBS's "Frontline" program on Oswald, Mary was able to gain access to their work in updating her own files and has promised not to publish hers until a book by the program's principal investigators is published.
    And then, consistent with her work for 30 years, Mary will not ask a penny for the information above the cost of reproducing and sending it. She does not, however, judge others who make their living writing books about the assassination. In fact, Mary has nursed many writers along through their darkest periods as they prepared their material for publication. She is proud of the writers she has helped, and speaks of their upcoming work with almost a mother's pride.......
http://www.ctka.net/russo.html
......

[size=undefined]Russo and the Anniversary[/size]

It was 1993 that proved an important year for Russo. It was the 30th anniversary of the murder and there were plenty of books, articles, and even television shows being prepared in anticipation of that event. Russo somehow had heard of a new author on the scene, a man named Gerald Posner. To some people he was actually praising the man and touting some of the new "revelations" to be unsheathed in his upcoming book. Russo had just come off of working for Oliver Stone on JFK: The Book of the Film, which had turned out fairly well. Jane Rusconi, Stone's chief research assistant at the time, seemed to like him. Russo had also secured another plum assignment right after this: he was serving as one of the lead reporters on the PBS Frontline special "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?"......
......

[size=undefined]Russo's Fateful Meeting[/size]

The next time I heard of him was in the late summer of 1994. Rumors were circulating, later verified, that Russo had lunch with two CIA heavies: former Director Bill Colby and former Miami station chief Ted Shackley. Apparently the subject under discussion was the upcoming conference of the fledgling Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA). Some very interesting things had already begun flowing out from the Review Board. Already, the understanding was that a prime goal was getting everything out about Oswald's mysterious trip to Mexico City in September of 1963. If this was done, it would greatly illuminate the role of David Phillips since the HSCA had discovered that he played a prime role in delivering the tapes to CIA HQ and making comments about what was on them to the press. When John Newman found out about this meeting, he called Colby and asked him what the problem was. Colby admitted that they were worried about what COPA had in mind for Phillips, who they felt had gotten a bum rap from the HSCA. Newman told Colby that, if that is what they were worried about, they should come after him and not COPA.
In retrospect, the timing of this meeting, and the attendees, are quite interesting. Later, Russo's pal, Bob Artwohl also admitted to being there. Artwohl, for a brief time, was Russo's authority on the medical evidence. From Artwohl, CTKA learned that a fifth person at the meeting was writer Joe Goulden, partner with Reed Irvine in that extreme rightwing, unabashedly pro-CIA journalist group Accuracy in Media (AIM). One of the reasons for Goulden's presence was to discuss whether or not the CIA should use one of its friendly media assets to attack COPA. (An attack did come, but not until the next year in Washington's City Paper.) This meeting is endlessly fascinating and literally dozens of questions could be posed about it. For instance: How did it originate and who proposed it? Why on earth did Shackley, notorious for his low profile, decide to talk to Russo? Another important point to press is: Why was Russo there at all? The PBS special was completed. After the 1993 ASK debacle, Russo knew he would not be a prime force at any conventions. He writes in the opening of his book that he never contemplated writing a volume on the case. (We will later see that this is probably disingenuous, but for sake of argument, let it stand.) In other words, Russo was at a crossroads. He was now firmly in the Warren Commission camp, having cut his ties to the critics. He had at least collected a salary for the Frontline show. And now he shows up at a meeting with Colby and Shackley at a time when one of the things they are contemplating is a possible discrediting of COPA......

I think the reason American politics, and national politics in all the major English speaking societies, for that matter, are almost completely closed to the influence of political advocacy further to the left than center-right is because of what Stan voiced, (but this is not directed at Stan, himself) an inability to identify the sincere from the hypocrites. A lack of commitment to at least ardently attempting to know them by their deeds is a lack of commitment to act in our own best interests, unlike those engaged in influencing us not to care enough.

it is intriguing to think how quickly Mary Ferrell went into action - but she may simply have realized, in a way that others realized but with a different sense of documentation - how momentous an event this was - and while I was tempted by your logic, I thought - if these were the actions of an intelligence op, would we ever have learned about them from the op herself?  I doubt it.

Allen, consider what is reported in this 1988 article:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1320&dat=19881122&id=-j9WAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IuoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6914,2532941

Mary and Buck had four children. I suspect they helped spread the details of being enlisted into rotating, round the clock "coverage" of the loading docks. Also, if you delivered newpapers in the 1960's you would know firsthand the newspapers are bundled and it was not easy to pull one out of the tied bundle on the fly. I also doubt that individual newspaper copies were sold retail on loading docks or that bundles were accomodatingly cut open and nickle coins collected as a courtesy to "Mary's boys." More likely they were firmly instructed to leave the areas of the loading docks. The article linked above infers dock coverage by at least one of Mary's sons in later morning or early afternoon, 24 November. A family on high alert on a late Sunday morning with an immediate dispatch capability, already at it for 42 hours....... The description of the guard dogs was special.....again, who does these things?

---

In reply to an earlier post on http://www.amazon.com/review/RWKKPDXQXFKPD/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8&asin=1616087080&cdForum=Fx2Q8BKW5DGAUQN&cdMsgID=Mx1COL7D3TK6WFD&cdMsgNo=7&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx14ZEHFT1CILJ7&store=books#Mx1COL7D3TK6WFD
Douglas says

.... Who the hell else would know these things? What ordinary reader would have the ability to look up and find the citations you so conveniently found?......

the same kind of person who compiles 40,000 cards all cross-indexed by name on the assassination. The same kind of person who is apparently as aware as she was, so quickly, that something was rotten in Dallas. Yes, I agree, it is strange, but I have known many collectors with similar and persistent obsessions. And yes, it is strange; but would an intelligence op leave the kind of voluminous loads of info that would allow succeeding generations to question nearly every aspect of the official story? Yes, there is some strangeness to her activities, but there are some things I do which might raise questions about other things, and I'm sure few people could pass such scrutiny. In my line of business (I work for an insurance company) we have occasion to look at surveillance tapes, and one thing I noticed immediately is that everyone on surveillance looks guilty - it's just the way life looks when it is under a microscope. But it's not enough to look guilty, and I strongly believe in the presumption of innocence - and everything I read about Mary Ferrell that theorizes about suspicious activity lacks significant and detailed corroboration.

Tom Scully wrote:Greg, and those who agree with his posted opinion?
I cannot recognize what motivated Mary in the first place, or what kept her going. Was she not disinterested in JFK?

Tom,


my point was not to suggest Mary was or wasn't a "disinformation" agent. It was to suggest McBride's reasons for that belief are entirely inadequate to maintain such a claim. I further hinted about people in glass houses, given his own spurious beliefs and the people he chooses to credit as being monuments to research credibility.

Stan Dane wrote:

JFK Student wrote:According to researcher Joe McBride,Ferrell was a disinfo agent.Here is an excerpt from his book "Into The Nightmare".

What did you think of McBride's book? Just curious.

Hi Stan

 I found it fairly interesting,but some of his conclusions were quite hard to accept. For example he claims that Officer Tippit was most probably the Grassy Knoll Shooter,the one who fired the fatal headshot and the so called "badgeman" allegedly seen in the Moorman photo.

 He also claims that Tippit was assigned to hunt down Oswald and kill him.Also there is the stuff about Ferrell,Kenny "O'Donnell etc.

So all in all his book was a mixed bag.

JFK Student wrote:

Stan Dane wrote:

JFK Student wrote:According to researcher Joe McBride,Ferrell was a disinfo agent.Here is an excerpt from his book "Into The Nightmare".

What did you think of McBride's book? Just curious.

Hi Stan

 I found it fairly interesting,but some of his conclusions were quite hard to accept. For example he claims that Officer Tippit was most probably the Grassy Knoll Shooter,the one who fired the fatal headshot and the so called "badgeman" allegedly seen in the Moorman photo.

 He also claims that Tippit was assigned to hunt down Oswald and kill him.Also there is the stuff about Ferrell,Kenny "O'Donnell etc.

So all in all his book was a mixed bag.

Thanks. That pretty well sums up my thoughts too. I bought the book a year ago when it came out and only just recently finished it. I found the pace to be rather plodding, often finding myself dozing off while reading. It didn't keep my attention very well, but that might just be me, not the book necessarily.
 
Not having the in-depth knowledge of the JFK assassination that so many have here, I've been interested in what others thought of it.

I think it's laughable when someone like McBride happily quotes someone as saying “We know Mary Ferrell has many contacts with the FBI and other government agencies” and then, with nothing at all to substantiate the allegation, concludes that "after the assassination she set up shop with the backing of the federal government to serve as a clearing house and watchdog in Dallas, doling out favors while actually going about her main business of keeping tabs on what researchers were doing and selectively, subtly feeding them disinformation."

Give me a break. How about some actual evidence to buttress this crap? Is that too much to ask? I guess hearsay and innuendo are much easier to come by so why bother looking for proof, right?

This bollocks about how the dictabelt recording "seemed to buttress the notion of conspiracy but more likely was cleverly orchestrated by Ferrell to discredit it in due course" simply proves that McBride doesn't understand the acoustics evidence. At all.

BBN found five impulses on the tape that are 1.7, 1.1, 4.8, and 0.7 seconds apart. These were matched to test shots fired in Dealey Plaza and recorded at microphones placed along Houston and Elm Streets. If the impulses were random static then the matches could have fallen in any one of 125 different sequences but they didn't. They fell in the correct 1-2-3-4-5 topographic order thus validating the hypothesis that they were recorded by a motorbike travelling along Houston and Elm.

The distance from the first matching mic to the last was 143 feet and the elapsed time between the first and last impulse on the tape was 8.3 seconds. For the bike to cover that distance in the given time it would need to be travelling at 11 mph - the very speed the motorcade was travelling on Elm.

On top of this, the dictabelt synchronizes perfectly with the Zapruder film. Obviously Kennedy's head explodes at frame 313. Before this we see Connally's white Stetson hat flipping up and down between frames 225 and 230,  the apparent result of a bullet passing through his wrist. When we align the fourth shot on the dictabelt (the knoll shot) with frame 313, the third shot falls precisely as expected at frame 225. Therefore, the exact same 4.8 second gap between shots is found on both the audio and visual evidence.

Now if McBride or anyone else wants to believe that some random burst of static or whatever created five separate impulses that just happened to precisely mimic the echo patterns of rifle shots fired from the depository and the knoll if recorded by a microphone travelling north on Houston and west on Elm at 11 mph when the air temperature was 65 degrees Fahrenheit then so be it. Some people believe in little green men, bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster and I guess everyone has a right to believe whatever idiotic crap they wish.

But I'm not wearing a tin foil hat for anyone.

yes yes yes yes and yes, Martin. With McBride I have tended to focus on the O'Donnell crap, but there's lots more silliness.

I can't judge the book as a whole because I've not read it. Based on what I'd heard about the O'Donnell crap and the fact that McBride believes in Zapruder film and body alteration I knew it was book I'd never get on with. Even more so since even the Kindle edition is way over priced.

I've been told that it's not without merit. Apparently he managed to track down and interview T.F. Bowley? Can anyone share the details of that interview?

Martin Hay wrote:I can't judge the book as a whole because I've not read it. Based on what I'd heard about the O'Donnell crap and the fact that McBride believes in Zapruder film and body alteration I knew it was book I'd never get on with. Even more so since even the Kindle edition is way over priced.

I've been told that it's not without merit. Apparently he managed to track down and interview T.F. Bowley? Can anyone share the details of that interview

Working on it...give me a little time as I still can't type as well as I did before my accident...check back in an hour or so...

I'll do this in a few installments over the next few hours.

From pages 246-251 (first part)
 
Bowley told me on November 22, 1963 he had just turned west onto East Tenth Street  approaching the scene of Tippit shooting after having picked up his 12 year old daughter Kathryn at school, they were headed toward nearby telephone company office where his wife worked. He was driving to pick her up for a family vacation in San Antonio. He said he stopped his station wagon several houses down when he saw the officer lying in the street "because I didn't want my little girl to see all of it." Kathryn Bowley Miles recalled in 2013 that she did see a part of the crime scene and seemed to indicate that there car was closer to Tippit than her dad remembered: "It was disturbing for a young girl to see a man lying in the street. As we pulled up to the police car I remember my daddy saying to me "Stay in the car.' I did stay but we had pulled up just in front of the police car so I was witness to this event and it has stay with me all these years. My father NEVER talked about it and when asked about it his answers then (and even now) were terse".
 
T.F. Bowley was familiar with first aid from working as an installer of business systems for telephone companies (he was an employee of Western Electric at the time), so he went to see if he could help the officer. He gathered that he had arrived "just momentarily" after the shooting but said that Tippit "was laying there when I turned the corner, so he may have been there five minutes, for all I know. I didn't see him fall. People had already gathered, so some amount of time had elapsed. Now how much is anybody's guess—a couple of minutes at least. And then it took me a little bit of time to walk up there.
 
"I didn't see the guy [the gunman] or hear any shots or anything. I just noticed the [squad] car was parked and [Tippit] was laying beside it, and some other people had already got there before I did. I know [Tippit] hadn't been here long, because people were still millin' around like a bunch of startled goats. They said they'd seen the guy run down the street." Asked in which direction he was told the man had run, Bowley said "There were quite a few people saying different things at the time. All I remember was that it seemed like they said he had a tan jacket on and he run down the street thataway [i.e., going west down East Tenth]. I don't recall any conversation other than that one guy had run." Bowley remembered ten or twelve people being at the scene, including ones who fit the descriptions of two other important witnesses, Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides.
 
Bowley said "At the time, of course, there was no association with what was going on downtown in my mind; it didn't occur to me. The officer was lying by the left front wheel of his car. He was lying face down. We [he and another unidentified man] turned him over." The other people "looked like they were all scared to touch him. In the excitement, I didn't really notice wounds. I don't recall seeing any wounds or blood. His eyes were open." But Bowley could see that Tippit (who had been shot in the head and chest) was "beyond help" and appeared to be dead.  He and other witnesses found Tippit's service revolver lying under him, out of his holster, which made Bowley think "It looked like he had attempted to draw it." Greg Lowrey, who talked with numerous witnesses, disputed the claim that Tippit had pulled his gun out of his holster, and pointed out that if the officer had not drawn his gun, it could indicate he was not wary of his killer when he left the car to talk with him.

Bowley told me it was he who put Tippit's gun on the hood of the car and then moved it to the car seat. Another witness, Ted Callaway, a used-car salesman who was at his lot a little more than a block away when the shooting occurred, arrived after Bowley and also claimed to have removed the gun from under Tippit's body and put it on the hood of the car. Callaway's subsequent actions are, to say the least, questionable. According to a written statement Callaway signed for the police, he took the gun, commandeering a cab to go off in an unsuccessful pursuit of the gunman, thus breaking the chain of official custody on Tippit's revolver. This is an incident Bowley did not remember witnessing; he expressed surprise when I showed him his police affidavit with his account of that incident with Callaway. Also differing from Bowley's later recollection of picking up Tippit's pistol and placing it on and then inside the car, the affidavit states "As we picked the officer up, I noticed his pistol laying on the ground under him. Someone picked the pistol up and laid it on the hood of the squad car. When the ambulance left, I took the gun and put it inside the squad car. A man took the pistol and said 'Let's catch him.' He opened the cylinder and I saw that no rounds in it had been fired. This man then took the pistol with him and got into a cab and drove off." After reading the affidavit, Bowley told me "I don't remember that part about the pistol, I really don't. But he also told HSCA investigators in 1977 that he had picked up the pistol: "Recognizing the [dead] man as being a police officer Bowley stated he found the officer's revolver on the ground under him. The weapon was out of its holster and near the officer's right hand. Bowley picked the weapon up and placed it on the front seat of the scout [sic] car." The report of that interview does not mention Callaway or his taking off with the gun, as Callaway himself admitted doing.

From pages 246-251 (second part)
 
Bowley told the police on December 2, 1963, that he checked his watch when he left his car to go to the scene and that the watch read 1:10. The affidavit begins,
 
On Friday November 22, 1963, I picked up my daughter at the R. L. Thornton School in Singing Hills at about 12:55 pm. I then left the school to pick up my wife who was at work at the Telephone Company at Ninth Street and Zangs Street. I was headed north on Marsalis and turned west on 10th Street. I traveled about a block and noticed A Dallas police squad car stopped in the traffic lane headed east on 10^th Street. I saw a police officer lying next to the left front wheel. I stopped my car and got out to go to the scene. I looked at my watch and it said 1:10 pm.
 
In our interview, Bowley reiterated that he looked at his watch upon arriving at the scene of the shooting and saw that it read 1:10. But he was less certain about when he had looked at his watch. After reading what his affidavit said about the watch, he said "I don't recall that part of it, but I'm sure I did, if that's what the statement said, because I gave that when it was fresh in my mind." As for why he checked his watch, "Only reason I did that," he told me with a laugh, "I was supposed to pick up my wife at a certain time, and I wondered if I was late." He thought he had been expected to pick her up at about 1 pm but added, "It seemed like I was supposed to pick her up at 1 o'clock, but then maybe it wasn't. Shortly after 1 would have been right in the ballpark."
 
After attending to the officer, Bowley found Domingo Benavides—the closest witness to the actual shooting, who saw it from his pickup truck stopped across the street, fifteen feet from Tippit's squad car—trying to call in a report of the shooting on the radio in Tippit's squad car. Benavides, an auto mechanic, was having difficulty doing so, and since Bowley had a professional familiarity with radios, he took charge. His report was recorded on the police radio at 1:16 pm: "Hello, police operator... We've had a shooting out here. On Tenth Street. Between Marsalis and Beckley. It's a police officer. Somebody shot him...what's this? 404 Tenth Street." Bowley estimated that he stayed at the shooting scene for no more than ten minutes, although that estimate appears to be a few minutes short. He said that he was there when the ambulance arrived (at 1:19) from the Dudley M. Hughes Funeral Home at 400 East Jefferson Boulevard, only two and a half blocks from the scene of the crime, to pick up Tippit to take him to Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The first police unit reached the Tippit murder scene at 1:22; Bowley said he stayed and talked with officers for a few minutes before leaving to pick up his wife.
 
Alterations appear in the records of Tippit's official time of death, further complicating the question of the time of his shooting. At 3 pm on November 22, DPD Officer R.A. Davenport and Captain George M. Doughty signed a receipt for a slug a uniform button removed from Tippit at the hospital at the department's request; the slug and the button (which had been impacted by a that bullet) were given to Davenport as evidence and transferred by him to Doughty. The document has a handwritten notation reading "Dr. Paul Moellenhoff /Removed at 130/PM/Methodist Emergency/ Dr. Richard Ligouri  Pronounced DOA @ 115/PM." The "AUTHORIZED PERMIT FOR AUTOPSY" signed by Justice of the Peace Joe B. Brown, Jr., at 3 pm also lists Tippit as having been DOA at Methodist at 1:15. But the DPD Homicide Report against Oswald in the Tippit shooting typed at 5 pm on November 22 has the time the officer was pronounced DOA bt Dr. Ligouri as 1:30. An undated "Supplementary Offence Report" by Officers Davenport and W. R. Bardin seems to show the time of the Tippit being pronounced dead by Dr. Ligouri as 1:00 or 1:06 but with the time being typed over to look like 1:16; none of those times appear plausible, given the other records. A November 29, 1963 FBI report of an interview with Dr. Ligouri by Special Agent Robert C. Lish has Tippit being pronounced dead at 1:25, but the "2" is higher than the other numbers and appears to have been typed in separately. (This was one of numerous such alterations that appear in significant documents pertaining to the events involving Tippit, Oswald and Kennedy. The Tippit Homicide Report has the "Time Reported" listed as "1:18pm" but appearing to be typed over a time of "1:28pm," apparently to conform with that document's listing of the time of the event [supposedly] occurred, 1:18.)   

When Dallas Morning News Reporter Earl Golz interviewed Lottie Thompson, an emergency room nurse at Methodist Hospital who was present when Tippit was pronounced DOA, she said the FBI had contacted Dr. Moellenhoff repeatedly about the discrepancy in the report of the time of the pronouncement. Thompson claimed that the large clock in the emergency room, which she said was used to mark the time Tippit was DOA, was fifteen minutes slow, and the hospital maintenance department had not gotten around to fixing it While it is possible that the clock may have been off, a fifteen-minute discrepancy sounds suspiciously extreme and suggests that the hospital personnel may well have been pressured to change the time (much as the doctors at Parkland were pressured to change their initial report of Kennedy's throat would being a wound of entrance).

Thanks for taking the time to do this Stan.

greg parker wrote:

Tom Scully wrote:Greg, and those who agree with his posted opinion?
I cannot recognize what motivated Mary in the first place, or what kept her going. Was she not disinterested in JFK?

Tom,


my point was not to suggest Mary was or wasn't a "disinformation" agent. It was to suggest McBride's reasons for that belief are entirely inadequate to maintain such a claim. I further hinted about people in glass houses, given his own spurious beliefs and the people he chooses to credit as being monuments to research credibility.

Amen. There is a nasty spiteful undercurrent in a lot of "research", that looks like it seems more to discredit entities and people associated with the US government, than it does to solve any assassination questions.

"Just because" someone has worked for the CIA, or maintained a contact with someone who did, or "might have come across some such person sometime during his or her lifetime", is not at all an adequate reason to heap scorn and discredit on the person and/or the organization.

That should be lesson #1 from a quick study of the JFK landscape - EVERYONE's a CIA agent! There isn't even anyone in this story who isn't! And, there are good ones, and there are bad ones. There are people who simply "do their jobs" (however nasty those jobs may become), and then there are people who do "more" than their jobs, and take orders from people "other than" those in their direct chain of command.

You speak of AFIO - has anyone taken a very careful look at the housecleaning that Adm. Stansfield Turner attempted during the Carter administration?

That list of names, should be interesting, shouldn't it?