Opinions on rifle shipment

Before I dug into the P.O. Box stuff I about gave myself an aneurism trying to come up with an explanation for the affidavit of Louis Feldsott that didn't require a massive amount of fabricated evidence. My working theory right now is very non-conspiratorial, but the rifle investigation is such a cluster%*!$ that it could really go either way and I could use an opinion. The facts, as simplified as possible, are this:

Feldsott's July '64 affidavit says he found a record on 11/22 of the rifle being shipped to Klein's on 6/18/62.

The official shipment date is 2/7/63, supported by documentation supposedly provided by Feldsott himself, but the discovery of that documentation is problematic.

The first report suggesting a Crescent to Klein's sales record had been located isn't until 2:25 a.m. (all times in CST) on November 24th:



There is no date or invoice number mentioned, even though the invoice number had been discovered by William Waldman at 2:30 p.m. on the 23rd and reported to New York a bit over an hour later. 

Corroboration of the date and invoice number isn't reported from New York until after Oswald's death at 5:40 p.m. on the 24th. 



On the night of the assassination, New York reports at 9:41 p.m. that Crescent found a sales record for a rifle with serial number N2766 dated 6/18/62.




At 12:45 a.m. New York reports that Crescent never sold the alleged assassination rifle.



Both New York teletypes were sent by agent Paul Brana. The initial communication from Dallas regarding H.L. Green company that kicked off the Crescent investigation, sent at 4:50 p.m., contains a direction to New York to "sutel within hour". Brana did send a teletype at 6:35 p.m., and another at 7:57 p.m., but I can't find either one and I'm pretty sure they don't exist.


 

I'm thinking Feldsott initially reported to the FBI exactly what's in his affidavit, Brana reported it via the missing teletype(s), then it was corrected to that rifle being N2766 once agents got to Crescent and verified the records. Feldsott then turned over all his records to the FBI, and agent Martin Greely found the correct record, Invoice 3178, on his own over twenty-four hours later. There are some serious problems with this theory however:

1. The report that says unequivocally that Crescent didn't sell the rifle.

2. The obscene amount of time it allegedly took to find Invoice 3178, sixteen hours of an "exhaustive search" and another ten hours after getting the invoice number

3. The lack of clarification in Feldsott's affidavit and the 11/30/63 Gemberling report that says the same thing regarding the 6/18/62 shipment.

Problems aside, the alternative is a stupid amount of faked evidence, false reports from New York, and a cover-up beginning way too early to really make any sense. I initially thought the June '62 shipment was legitimate, but am now leaning towards this more mundane explanation but am far from being convinced. Any information/opinions would be appreciated.

All great stuff JFK_FNG, keep going on this if you can. I can't offer an opinion as I'm not up to speed on the Rifle and the provenance of the sales orders etc side of things - but I've done a fair bit of work with the BYP's. The connection here is extremely important IMO.

Thanks Mick. I have a ton of information, most of it already in essay form, but I've been sitting on it for months since I don't really know what to think about a lot of the evidence. Just as an example, to go along with what I already posted, here's the Crescent Firearms "original sales order" that is oft cited as evidence of a cover-up since it is missing a check mark above the carton containing.rifle C2766 (carton number 3376).




It's been said that this is evidence of that carton never being shipped, but here's an alternate explanation. Imagine you have a massive pile of sales records to flip through. Each one of these "sales orders" is stapled with copies of shipping slips showing the serial numbers of the rifles in each carton:



How do you keep track of what you've gone through already? Maybe after going through each shipping slip and verifying the serial number in question was absent, you make a check mark next to the corresponding carton number on the sales order? Could that be the totally innocent reason why there's no check mark next to carton 3376? 

On the flip-side, imagine you are FBI agent Martin Greely and have had all of the Crescent sales records for, let's say, 1962 and 1963 in your possession since around 8pm on November 22rd, and after five hours of searching with your brother and fellow FBI agent Frank along with the President of Crescent Firearms, are confident enough to report to your field office that Crescent never sold a rifle with serial number C2766. You take all the records back to the office with you and start another "exhaustive search", and still don't find anything for over twenty-four hours. You even get the invoice number mid-day on the 23rd and it still takes you another ten hours to find the damn thing. 

What the hell took so long? We don't know for sure how many rifles Crescent sold, but we can venture a guess from the shipping book of Fred Rupp. 





This shows around 70 cartons shipped over two months, December and February, with only one small order in January. We'll ignore January and round up to 100 cartons which gives us 500 rifles per month. Stretch it over two years that's 12000 rifles. It may seem like a lot, but in flipping through sales orders and shipping slips that's basically reading 12000 words. 

Sure it would be slower than normal reading, especially if you were making check marks on the sales orders, but would it really take twenty-eight hours? Worse is that at most it looks like about 20 unique invoices per month, with invoice numbers that increase incrementally with time. How reasonable is it really that it takes ten hours to find the damn sales record after getting the invoice number? 

It's hard to argue for an innocent/mundane explanation when you can't even think of one, and that's basically where I'm at with this timing issue.

If correct this is Thomas Grealy owner of GREALY ARMS in New Jersey

His brothers would be
Martin R. Grealy FBI agent
Francis P. Grealy FBI agent
Joseph L. Grealy FBI agent

These are New York field office Agents Bronx Yonkers BRONXVILLE
Martin and Francis 'Frank' are involved in the weapons trace.






Amazing family and coincidences all went to FORDHAM.

Dang it .... GREELEY ARMS... freaking FBI

Great finds, Ed.

Vinny wrote:Great finds, Ed.

Seriously. The two FBI agents assigned to trace the rifle in New York were part of a family that owned a gun store that sold rifles? Fantastic stuff Ed. 

A potentially interesting angle with this, is that when it was reported that Crescent “records fail to reflect sale of rifle with reported serial number” at 1:45 a.m. EST on the 23rd, Lou Feldsott (“Crescent officials”, maybe Lou and his brother Irving?) allegedly gave the Greelys the names of InterArmCo in VA and JJ Edleson in New York as possible suppliers of the rifle. 

InterArmCo getting mentioned that night set off the entire Century Arms saga that ended up costing the FBI a hell of a lot of time and resources, especially after the WC told them to reinvestigate the “2766” rifle in Feb ‘64 (which was never tracked down). 

JJ Edleson however was in New York City, but even though the 1:45 a.m. teletype specifically said that the New York Field Office would contact them and investigate, it never happened. Instead, the Greely brothers took all of the Crescent sales records with them, and began a second and alleged “exhaustive” search that finally culminated in them figuring out, over twenty-four hours later, that Crescent did in fact import the rifle from Italy and sell it to Klein’s Sporting Goods. 

You think the gun shop affiliated Greely brothers were aware of their competitor JJ Edleson? Did they know something that made them decide to not follow their own investigative lead? What’s crazy about this is that William Waldman doesn’t allegedly find a sales record from Crescent until 4 p.m., and Martin Greely, who decided to go home for some reason (did he give up?) doesn’t find out until 5 p.m. when he gets a phone call from Joseph Chapman. Greely gets the invoice number 3178 from Chapman and it still takes him ten hours to find and report on a sales record. (Chapman did send a teletype to Dallas at 10:02 p.m., but I have looked everywhere and I can’t even find a reference to it. That said, five hours to find the records after getting the invoice number isn’t much better, assuming the teletype was even about the rifle). 

Nobody allegedly has any idea where the rifle came from, and the Greelys get a golden lead in their own backyard, choose to ignore it, and instead spend an entire day digging through records that they had already reported were useless to the entire FBI.

You think some familiarity with the gun business would help them search through sales records? Hell, you think it might help them create sales records? 

If Ed or anyone else can find some information on JJ Edleson I’ll bet it’ll be pretty interesting.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Shots%20Placement/Item%2006.pdf

The above link pretty much sums up the discrepancy of the rifle situation. Also, if Oswald spent $21.45 for the rifle, that's $200 in today's money.

Thanks Bart and JFK_Case. That’s a good summary article from Probe. There’s just a lot of missing pieces to the rifle investigation, and I’ve been working on trying to fill in a few. From the article:

“Remember that Louis Feldsott of Crescent told the FBI that C 2766 was sold to Klein's on June 18, 1962, yet Waldman at Klein's did not order the rifles until January 24, 1963. To my knowledge, no one has explained this difference”

This is basically what I’ve been working on. I have the circumstances of how the 6/18/62 date ended up in Feldsott’s affidavit (which was pre-written for him to sign) pretty nailed down. Feldsott told the FBI on 4/7/64 basically exactly what’s in his affidavit; and the FBI has literally removed that report from the National Archives for “otherwise restricted information”.

The FBI’s internal communications say that a sales record from Crescent was not discovered until the early morning hours of Nov. 24th. That’s the “official” 2/7/63 sale Feldsott allegedly corroborated according to his 11/27/63 FD-302 report by the Greely brothers. Feldsott’s FD-302 was the ONLY report from a rifle witness that was never transmitted to Dallas, so it never ends up in any of Robert Gemberling’s summary reports.

J. Lee Rankin requests all original documents on the rifle on 2/21/64. On 3/4/64, Dallas orders all field offices to comply with Rankin’s request, but specifically orders New York to provide a separate investigation report (since they never received a FD-302 on Crescent Firearms.)

SA Eugene O’Neill gets assigned to do this, and submits Feldsott’s FD-302 on 3/26/64. On 4/7/64, Feldsott talks to the FBI and tells the affidavit story. That exact same day, the FBI flips out and sends an airtel to New York ordering them to revise Feldsott’s FD-302. New York removes the 2/7/63 sale date from the report, along with a ton of other critical info. The revised report (with no shipment date) goes to the WC, the original is buried until the ARRB.

One of the best things I found in the Blunt archive is a second FD-302 report for Feldsott from an interview on 11/26 where he allegedly told Martin Greely about his import records from Italy. New York was assigned on 3/4/64 to provide a report on the results of ALL “previous investigation conducted with respect to tracing assassination rifle”, but O’Neil didn’t think the 11/26 report, which was sitting right there in the NY 89-75 file, was relevant to that.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real mystery is why Feldsott would flip-flop, and what really went down in New York on the night of the assassination. I have an essay in progress but it’s on hold pending receipt of a bunch of documents from NARA that are not online - mostly from field office files.

Great work by all. Thanks guys.

ENG,

Additional info about the rifle. Read at your own risk of course since it's on the Armstrong Harvey and Lee site.

http://www.harveyandlee.net/Mail_Order_Rifle/Mail_Order_Rifle.html

Is it really John Armstrong or a tall heavyset Hungarian with acne named Armstrong Harvey... we may never know (or care).
John's information is always welcomed, if it's from John, and not that Amrstrong Harvey doppelganger of his.

Thomas Greeley of Greeley arms is a distant cousin of the FBI Grealy's.
There's a genealogy site that shows them all mixed with Greelys in the 1800s.
Wish it was a smoking gun... no pun intended.

JFK_Case wrote:ENG,

Additional info about the rifle. Read at your own risk of course since it's on the Armstrong Harvey and Lee site.

http://www.harveyandlee.net/Mail_Order_Rifle/Mail_Order_Rifle.html

Armstrong’s best stuff on the rifle is the documents he scanned in his Baylor archive. Part of the reason I’m working on this is that both Armstrong’s essay and Armstrong protege David Josephs’ essay are useful as compilations of information, but a lot of the stuff they wrote is incorrect, and worse IMO is that they missed the most interesting stuff by far. 

Just as an example, scroll up in this thread and you’ll see the 1:45 a.m. EST New York teletype where it was reported unequivocally that Crescent Firearms never sold the rifle. Neither Armstrong nor Josephs used that even though it’s easily findable online at MFF if you know what you’re looking for. 

Worse I think is that neither of them used the single most important communication of the rifle investigation: the initial teletype from Chicago reporting on the discovery of the Hidell microfilm sales record. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62266#relPageId=33

They both used Joseph Chapman’s memos, but if they’d read the above teletype they’d know Chapman made a mistake in reporting that Klein’s records confirmed receipt of rifles C2746 and N2766. Chapman’s source for his memo was the above Chicago teletype, and the paragraph he’s referencing is a verbatim transcription of a 10:41 p.m. teletype sent from New York referring to Crescent Firearms shipment records, that both Armstrong and Josephs used. Chicago clearly stated that the search for records of N2766 and C2746 was abandoned after they found the Hidell sales record. 

These are just two examples of mistakes by the H&L team on the rifle investigation. What’s even more mind boggling is that Armstrong knew the 4/7/64 report on Feldsott had been removed from NARA by the FBI, but didn’t think that was worth mentioning: 

https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/rifle-info-june-18-1962/717277?item=717295

For some more detailed debunking of some of their theories: 

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2455-david-josephs-is-wrong-about-waldman-exhibit-4

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2468-on-the-trail-of-the-klein-s-microfilm

For what it's worth, ENG, I'm REALLY glad you're doing diligent work on this and finding errors in their work. I don't know if you know it or not, but Josephs has written some really crazy shit over on the UNeducation Forum. In my opinion, it's OK if a researcher makes an error and fesses up to it later. But when someone writes so much outlandish shit, it really compromises that person's integrity with everything else they do, correct or not.

For example, I know in my gut (and that's not saying much) that LHO was never in Mexico before 11/22. LHO himself said he wasn't so that's pretty good for me. But Josephs has written on that as well. I want to believe what he has written but because he's written crazy shit, it's very hard for me to believe anything he has written.

Wanted to post this from KAK. I know you're focused more on the order of the rifle, but all of this shit is joined together, like pieces of a puzzle.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/walker-oswald-and-the-dog-that-didn-t-bark

Mick_Purdy wrote:Armstrong’s best stuff on the rifle is the documents he scanned in his Baylor archive.


Yes, absolutely. Some of the archival material is excellent. Let that not detract from his completely delusional stupid, silly theory of the doppelganger apocalypse though. 

Oh definitely. I just don't get how you write an essay where the thesis is that there was a coverup in the rifle investigation and you don't use the documents in your own archive that are most indicative of a coverup. You'd think the FBI violating the JFK Act and snatching documents from NARA that are listed as "open in full" would be something worth writing about... 

A lot of the stuff alleged by Armstrong and Josephs could have been cleared up in 10 minutes of searching MFF. While we're on the topic I'll throw in another example. Josephs has a section in his essay titled "Was it Waldman or Feldsott who provided these slips" where he argues that since the FBI reported that both men turned over 10 shipping slips on different dates, and only one set is in evidence, the FBI lied and buried the slips turned over by Feldsott. What Josephs could have figured out with minimal effort is that even though Feldsott's slips were not used by the WC, the FBI put copies of the slips, Exhibit D-173, in the JFK HQ file:



Feldsott's slips say "office copy" while Waldman's say "customers invoice". The "office copies" are such shit that you can't even read the serial number C2766. If the slips actually looked like that and it's not just an artifact of copying it might be an innocent explanation for why Martin Greely couldn't find the correct records until after he got the invoice number. 

The real problem with the provenance of the slips is that Grealy had all the Crescent records on the night of the assassination, and actually entered the slips into evidence on Nov. 27 when he wrote up the Feldsott FD-302 with his brother. The evidence sheet (another one of the best things on the rifle in the Malcolm Blunt archive, thanks Bart) has a box checked for "to be returned", but did he really give them back to Feldsott?



The NY field office claimed that Feldsott turned over all his original records to Eugene O'Neill on 3/13/64, but, O'Neill is the ONLY FBI agent who didn't provide any information on this alleged March re-interview with a rifle witness, and the only agent who didn't write up a separate interview report besides the Philadelphia field office re-interviews of Fred Rupp and Arthur Anders. Philly did however provide separate information obtained during those interviews in the airtel inventory sheets used to send the documents to the FBI Lab. O'Neill on the other hand spelled Feldsott's name wrong. 



The worst part about this is that New York was the ONLY field office ordered to provide a separate report on the rifle investigation, with the specific goal of clarifying the contradictory teletypes of Nov. 23 and 24, which first said that Crescent never sold the rifle, then said they sold it to Klein's. O'Neill was the guy assigned to write this report:



You'd think O'Neill would take the opportunity of interviewing Feldsott on 3/13/64 to find out what happened and write his own report. Instead, O'Neill submits the 11/27 FD-302 by the Grealy brothers on 3/26/64; someone gets ahold of Feldsott on 4/7/64, probably to verify it, Feldsott disowns it, the report gets butchered and the shipment date removed, and the rest is history.