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Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
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Hasan Yusuf
dwdunn(akaDan)
Martin Hay
AllenLowe
greg_parker
StanDane
Redfern
TerryWMartin
Vinny
13 posters
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Vinny- Posts : 3359
Join date : 2013-08-27
Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Fri 25 Jul 2014, 1:34 am
First topic message reminder :
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” .
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” .
- GuestGuest
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 8:58 am
Cheers, Stan.
I was hoping he asked Bowley about his association with Ruby.
I was hoping he asked Bowley about his association with Ruby.
StanDane- Posts : 3644
Join date : 2013-09-03
Age : 71 
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 9:07 am
From pages 246-251 (third part)
The time recorded by the police dispatcher when Bowley called in the report of the Tippit shooting (1:16) makes a later time that 1:15 for Tippit being DOA likely, but Bowley's call and the time of the ambulance arrival and its quick departure from the scene suggest the officer was pronounced DOA closer to 1:25 than 1:30. According to Myers book, Mary (Mrs. Frank) Wright, who lived on the block where Tippit was shot, also called in a report of the shooting by telephone to the DPD at 1:18, which was relayed to the Dudley Hughes Funeral Home. The ambulance attendants (Jasper Clayton Butler and William [Eddie] Kinsley) who picked up Tippit reported on the police radio that they arrived on East Tenth Street at 1:19, only about thirty seconds after the call was recorded. But the trip ticket at the funeral home, with a time stamp reportedly showing the call at 1:18, has disappeared. Butler, who drove the ambulance, said in a 1977 interview with HSCA investigators that the last time the ticket was seen was in about 1965, and that in 1964, he had copied it for representatives of Life magazine. Butler said "I was on the scene one minute or less. From the time we received the call in our dispatch office until Officer Tippit was pronounced dead at Methodist Hospital was approximately four minutes." That would make the time he was pronounced DOA about 1:22 or perhaps within a couple of minutes later.
On the police radio at 1:26, an officer says, "NBC News is reporting DOA," to which the dispatcher replies "That's correct." In the midst of some confusion, when the dispatcher is asked to clarify whether that NBC report meant Tippit or Kennedy was DOA, he replies "J. D. Tippit." Kennedy's death, although widely rumored for some minutes on network radio reports, was not officially announced until 1:33 by White House Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff at Parkland Hospital and was given as "approximately one o'clock," although he probably had dies ten minutes before that. It strains credibility that NBC could have learned that Tippit was DOA within only one minute of the officer being pronounced dead, so that also makes a time earlier than 1:25 more likely for when the doctor at Methodist Hospital pronounced him DOA.
After Bowley said in our interview that he looked at his watch upon arriving at the scene of the Tippit shooting and saw the time as 1:10, he seemed to reconsider the sequence of that memory, saying he might have checked the watch a few minutes after his arrival, which would make the time of the shooting even earlier than 1:10, as another witness originally reported. Bowley said he may have looked at the watch "I guess when I radioed in...because I was really concerned, you know, because I had to pick up my wife. That's how the time got involved, because I was supposed to pick her up. I may have looked at it when I stopped my car. I just honestly don't remember. Well, you know you don't place much importance on things like that."
Asked if his watch was reliable, Bowley laughed and said "Best I remember. I usually had pretty good watches." But he conceded that "it could have been five minutes off." When I told him that his observation of his watch was important because there is a dispute about the time of the shooting, he admitted, "I had never heard there was. As a matter of fact, I never heard the time mentioned before."
Despite Bowley's honest confusion after the passage of twenty-nine years about when he had checked his watch, it seems likely that his account given in December 1963, that he did so shortly after leaving his car, is the most reliable version. Bowley's concern about meeting his wife would have made it natural for him to check his watch when he experienced the initial delay caused by seeing the officer lying in the street. If he checked his watch at 1:10, and the officer had just been shot, that would be in approximate range with another eyewitness report of the time of the shooting as being around 1:06 or 1:07 (probably a couple of minutes too early; see below) as well as with the last reported transmissions by Tippit from his squad car shortly after that. The delay of several minutes between Bowley checking his watch and calling in the report at 1:16 is consistent with Bowley's explanation of how he had to come to the aid of Domingo Benavides. Benavides told the Warren Commission that he had "set there for just a few minutes" in his pickup truck after the shooting because he was afraid the gunman might come back and "might start shooting again." After he left his truck, Benavides had trouble trying to operate the radio in Tippit's squad car, so Bowley made the transmission.
-------------------------------------------
This is what I was able to find concerning Bowley. If I find anything else, I'll note it. Also, if you see anything funny looking or questionable, let me know and I'll recheck/fix it. I do make errors and my typing is still rather clumsy.
The time recorded by the police dispatcher when Bowley called in the report of the Tippit shooting (1:16) makes a later time that 1:15 for Tippit being DOA likely, but Bowley's call and the time of the ambulance arrival and its quick departure from the scene suggest the officer was pronounced DOA closer to 1:25 than 1:30. According to Myers book, Mary (Mrs. Frank) Wright, who lived on the block where Tippit was shot, also called in a report of the shooting by telephone to the DPD at 1:18, which was relayed to the Dudley Hughes Funeral Home. The ambulance attendants (Jasper Clayton Butler and William [Eddie] Kinsley) who picked up Tippit reported on the police radio that they arrived on East Tenth Street at 1:19, only about thirty seconds after the call was recorded. But the trip ticket at the funeral home, with a time stamp reportedly showing the call at 1:18, has disappeared. Butler, who drove the ambulance, said in a 1977 interview with HSCA investigators that the last time the ticket was seen was in about 1965, and that in 1964, he had copied it for representatives of Life magazine. Butler said "I was on the scene one minute or less. From the time we received the call in our dispatch office until Officer Tippit was pronounced dead at Methodist Hospital was approximately four minutes." That would make the time he was pronounced DOA about 1:22 or perhaps within a couple of minutes later.
On the police radio at 1:26, an officer says, "NBC News is reporting DOA," to which the dispatcher replies "That's correct." In the midst of some confusion, when the dispatcher is asked to clarify whether that NBC report meant Tippit or Kennedy was DOA, he replies "J. D. Tippit." Kennedy's death, although widely rumored for some minutes on network radio reports, was not officially announced until 1:33 by White House Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff at Parkland Hospital and was given as "approximately one o'clock," although he probably had dies ten minutes before that. It strains credibility that NBC could have learned that Tippit was DOA within only one minute of the officer being pronounced dead, so that also makes a time earlier than 1:25 more likely for when the doctor at Methodist Hospital pronounced him DOA.
After Bowley said in our interview that he looked at his watch upon arriving at the scene of the Tippit shooting and saw the time as 1:10, he seemed to reconsider the sequence of that memory, saying he might have checked the watch a few minutes after his arrival, which would make the time of the shooting even earlier than 1:10, as another witness originally reported. Bowley said he may have looked at the watch "I guess when I radioed in...because I was really concerned, you know, because I had to pick up my wife. That's how the time got involved, because I was supposed to pick her up. I may have looked at it when I stopped my car. I just honestly don't remember. Well, you know you don't place much importance on things like that."
Asked if his watch was reliable, Bowley laughed and said "Best I remember. I usually had pretty good watches." But he conceded that "it could have been five minutes off." When I told him that his observation of his watch was important because there is a dispute about the time of the shooting, he admitted, "I had never heard there was. As a matter of fact, I never heard the time mentioned before."
Despite Bowley's honest confusion after the passage of twenty-nine years about when he had checked his watch, it seems likely that his account given in December 1963, that he did so shortly after leaving his car, is the most reliable version. Bowley's concern about meeting his wife would have made it natural for him to check his watch when he experienced the initial delay caused by seeing the officer lying in the street. If he checked his watch at 1:10, and the officer had just been shot, that would be in approximate range with another eyewitness report of the time of the shooting as being around 1:06 or 1:07 (probably a couple of minutes too early; see below) as well as with the last reported transmissions by Tippit from his squad car shortly after that. The delay of several minutes between Bowley checking his watch and calling in the report at 1:16 is consistent with Bowley's explanation of how he had to come to the aid of Domingo Benavides. Benavides told the Warren Commission that he had "set there for just a few minutes" in his pickup truck after the shooting because he was afraid the gunman might come back and "might start shooting again." After he left his truck, Benavides had trouble trying to operate the radio in Tippit's squad car, so Bowley made the transmission.
-------------------------------------------
This is what I was able to find concerning Bowley. If I find anything else, I'll note it. Also, if you see anything funny looking or questionable, let me know and I'll recheck/fix it. I do make errors and my typing is still rather clumsy.
- GuestGuest
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 9:13 am
Indeed many of each side of the debate are more concerned with being correct and not revealing evidence. Unfortunately the many contentious debates have not been very productive but often instead end in personal attacks. One of my favorite things about this forum is the informational and relaxed fashion we usually have.
Additionally, many in each camp seem to forget we can all be and are wrong at times. Some can admit it, some double down on speculation despite the evidence. That is perhaps the worst problem.
Ideas without substantial evidence claimed as the truth have poisoned many conspiracy advocate contentions and utter denial in the face of evidence has destroyed many critical arguments.
I hope some of us can bridge the gap in time with reasonable people who disagree but are willing to refine their views in the face of evidence. However, if not at least we tried, and when, not if, when most evidence emerges unreasonable critics and advocates are going to feel like a bunch of charlies.
Additionally, many in each camp seem to forget we can all be and are wrong at times. Some can admit it, some double down on speculation despite the evidence. That is perhaps the worst problem.
Ideas without substantial evidence claimed as the truth have poisoned many conspiracy advocate contentions and utter denial in the face of evidence has destroyed many critical arguments.
I hope some of us can bridge the gap in time with reasonable people who disagree but are willing to refine their views in the face of evidence. However, if not at least we tried, and when, not if, when most evidence emerges unreasonable critics and advocates are going to feel like a bunch of charlies.
- GuestGuest
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 9:19 am
The MMF documents are there for all to peruse. They have been collected and sorted from all the originating sources. Unless someone can prove Mary Ferrell created or altered any of them, how the fuck can she be accused of being a disinfo agent.
- StanDane
- Posts : 3644
Join date : 2013-09-03
Age : 71
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 9:28 am
Ah, I found some blurbage on Bowley and Ruby. Stand by...Paul Klein wrote:Cheers, Stan.
I was hoping he asked Bowley about his association with Ruby.
- StanDane
- Posts : 3644
Join date : 2013-09-03
Age : 71
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 9:57 am
From page 486
T. F. Bowley told me he had been in Ruby's clubs when he was younger, which didn't seem unusual for a young man in Dallas during those years, but he didn't volunteer the information that he'd actually worked for several years as a "doorman" (a euphemism for bouncer?) for Ruby. That revealing piece of news emerged in the media only in 2010, when it was announced that the 82-year old Bowley would be honored by the Dallas police for his action in alerting the department in the Tippit shooting. The local CBS affiliate reported, "Bowley also spent several years in the 1950s moonlighting as a doorman for Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby." Bowley had earlier told the HSCA that he worked for Ruby from 1951 to 1958 and that his wife knew Ruby and Ruby's bookkeeper. Bowley asserted to the Dallas Morning News in 2010 that he couldn't recall how long or during which years he had worked for Ruby at the Silver Spur club on South Ervay Street. "I knew Jack well, but half the people in Dallas knew Jack," Bowley said. "He was a tough little cookie, but he would give you the shirt off his back."
The paper added that "ever since No. 22, 1963, [Bowley] has worried that the connection [with Ruby] somehow might cast suspicion on him. 'It crossed my mind, yes,' he said." That could be one reason Bowley kept a relatively low profile for many years. His daughter Kathryn Bowley Miles, who recalled in 2013 that "My father NEVER talked about it," also said of him, "He didn't even want to talk to his friends about it."
T. F. Bowley told me he had been in Ruby's clubs when he was younger, which didn't seem unusual for a young man in Dallas during those years, but he didn't volunteer the information that he'd actually worked for several years as a "doorman" (a euphemism for bouncer?) for Ruby. That revealing piece of news emerged in the media only in 2010, when it was announced that the 82-year old Bowley would be honored by the Dallas police for his action in alerting the department in the Tippit shooting. The local CBS affiliate reported, "Bowley also spent several years in the 1950s moonlighting as a doorman for Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby." Bowley had earlier told the HSCA that he worked for Ruby from 1951 to 1958 and that his wife knew Ruby and Ruby's bookkeeper. Bowley asserted to the Dallas Morning News in 2010 that he couldn't recall how long or during which years he had worked for Ruby at the Silver Spur club on South Ervay Street. "I knew Jack well, but half the people in Dallas knew Jack," Bowley said. "He was a tough little cookie, but he would give you the shirt off his back."
The paper added that "ever since No. 22, 1963, [Bowley] has worried that the connection [with Ruby] somehow might cast suspicion on him. 'It crossed my mind, yes,' he said." That could be one reason Bowley kept a relatively low profile for many years. His daughter Kathryn Bowley Miles, who recalled in 2013 that "My father NEVER talked about it," also said of him, "He didn't even want to talk to his friends about it."
- GuestGuest
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 10:23 am
Thanks, Stan.
The coincidences in this case never cease to amaze me but its probably no coincidence the WC never called him up. They, like Bowley, were probably also worried about the connection to Ruby.
I remember Colin Crow bringing this very thing up on another forum once upon a time.
The coincidences in this case never cease to amaze me but its probably no coincidence the WC never called him up. They, like Bowley, were probably also worried about the connection to Ruby.
I remember Colin Crow bringing this very thing up on another forum once upon a time.
dwdunn(akaDan)- Posts : 304
Join date : 2013-06-22
Age : 60
Location : among the hills of southern Indiana, USA
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 2:04 pm
Above and beyond, Stan. Your work on that is appreciated. Thank you.
I'd point out that it's much easier to copy & paste from an e-book pdf when you feel like sharing large passages of information, but then some of us never do things the easy way. So I guess it's true what everybody's been saying: you're not just another pretty face.
================
Allen Lowe,
Re the Kenny O'Donnell business, it reminded me of allegations made against Bill Barry and even Frank Mankiewicz years ago in relation to Robert Kennedy's murder. Back then I thought that stuff was too obviously ridiculous; nowadays I feel the same as you mention: it's beneath contempt. (And at least those allegations weren't in a large book taken seriously by many, what with C. David Heymann being safely dead now)
================
Alan Dixon,
You're free to get pissed off and cancel your membership as often as you like, but I'm afraid you're one of us now. And if I couldn't figure out how to cancel mine 3 months ago, I don't think it should be so easy for you.
My opinion is that these things are mostly a distraction and intended that way. It goes with the territory of these forums: the best way to keep people from getting anywhere is to keep them fighting and wondering and worrying. It's the easiest thing in the world to pose a question or make an allegation and then sit back and watch everybody jump into what often turns into a clusterfuck. That's what made me suspicious (eventually) of the photo interpretation debates that went on (forever) at the EF -- it was like they were intentionally meant to be a distraction, not just because the fights were always hot but because the subject (films, photographs) was of more interest to more people than -- oh I don't know -- something like a paragraph explaining simply and concisely the details of the dictabelt recording and its importance.
Please bear that kind of thing in mind, Alan. This shit is frustrating at times, too many times, but very often that's because the real goal is to discourage people from being involved.
Take care of yourself and be well, my friend
I'd point out that it's much easier to copy & paste from an e-book pdf when you feel like sharing large passages of information, but then some of us never do things the easy way. So I guess it's true what everybody's been saying: you're not just another pretty face.
================
Allen Lowe,
Re the Kenny O'Donnell business, it reminded me of allegations made against Bill Barry and even Frank Mankiewicz years ago in relation to Robert Kennedy's murder. Back then I thought that stuff was too obviously ridiculous; nowadays I feel the same as you mention: it's beneath contempt. (And at least those allegations weren't in a large book taken seriously by many, what with C. David Heymann being safely dead now)
================
Alan Dixon,
You're free to get pissed off and cancel your membership as often as you like, but I'm afraid you're one of us now. And if I couldn't figure out how to cancel mine 3 months ago, I don't think it should be so easy for you.
My opinion is that these things are mostly a distraction and intended that way. It goes with the territory of these forums: the best way to keep people from getting anywhere is to keep them fighting and wondering and worrying. It's the easiest thing in the world to pose a question or make an allegation and then sit back and watch everybody jump into what often turns into a clusterfuck. That's what made me suspicious (eventually) of the photo interpretation debates that went on (forever) at the EF -- it was like they were intentionally meant to be a distraction, not just because the fights were always hot but because the subject (films, photographs) was of more interest to more people than -- oh I don't know -- something like a paragraph explaining simply and concisely the details of the dictabelt recording and its importance.
Please bear that kind of thing in mind, Alan. This shit is frustrating at times, too many times, but very often that's because the real goal is to discourage people from being involved.
Take care of yourself and be well, my friend
_________________
"While his argument seems to lead that way, Master Reggie didn't explicitly say it was the CIA that was running the Conspiracy Research Community. He may have meant the CIA has been built up as a bogey-man, as in the theodicy of the right-wing extremist fringe; thus, it may be the latter who are in charge of the apparent research effort. That would help explain the degree of bigotry and psychopathology one finds there." (from "Master Jasper's Commentary on Master Reggie's Commentary on the Pogo koan" in Rappin' wit' Master Jasper, 1972, p. 14, all rights reversed)
- StanDane
- Posts : 3644
Join date : 2013-09-03
Age : 71
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 3:01 pm
Thanks Dan.dwdunn(akaDan) wrote:Above and beyond, Stan. Your work on that is appreciated. Thank you.
I'd point out that it's much easier to copy & paste from an e-book pdf when you feel like sharing large passages of information, but then some of us never do things the easy way. So I guess it's true what everybody's been saying: you're not just another pretty face.
================
Allen Lowe,
Re the Kenny O'Donnell business, it reminded me of allegations made against Bill Barry and even Frank Mankiewicz years ago in relation to Robert Kennedy's murder. Back then I thought that stuff was too obviously ridiculous; nowadays I feel the same as you mention: it's beneath contempt. (And at least those allegations weren't in a large book taken seriously by many, what with C. David Heymann being safely dead now)
================
Alan Dixon,
You're free to get pissed off and cancel your membership as often as you like, but I'm afraid you're one of us now. And if I couldn't figure out how to cancel mine 3 months ago, I don't think it should be so easy for you.
My opinion is that these things are mostly a distraction and intended that way. It goes with the territory of these forums: the best way to keep people from getting anywhere is to keep them fighting and wondering and worrying. It's the easiest thing in the world to pose a question or make an allegation and then sit back and watch everybody jump into what often turns into a clusterfuck. That's what made me suspicious (eventually) of the photo interpretation debates that went on (forever) at the EF -- it was like they were intentionally meant to be a distraction, not just because the fights were always hot but because the subject (films, photographs) was of more interest to more people than -- oh I don't know -- something like a paragraph explaining simply and concisely the details of the dictabelt recording and its importance.
Please bear that kind of thing in mind, Alan. This shit is frustrating at times, too many times, but very often that's because the real goal is to discourage people from being involved.
Take care of yourself and be well, my friend
It's one thing to clown around and have fun, but when I feel I can help somebody doing real research, then I consider it a privilege to try to give something back to the forum once and awhile. I only had a physical copy of the book, so I had to do things the old-fashioned way, and even though I'm still typing like R2D2, it was time well spent if it helps others.
And Alan...
Please don't stay away too long. As Dan said, you're one of us.
Martin Hay- Posts : 217
Join date : 2013-06-22
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 5:05 pm
Thank you so much for going to the trouble of typing all that, Stan.
You are very much the gentleman.
I don't think the Jack Ruby "connection" is what stopped the Commission from calling Bowley to testify. It seems obvious to me that they just didn't need somebody telling them that he arrived on the scene at 1:10 pm to find Tippit already dead. Such testimony would have to be dealt with whereas a simple affidavit is easy to bury or ignore. And by not giving Bowley a chance to expound upon his account he could easily be dismissed as mistaken and no one would have to ask him whether or not his watch could have been 5 minutes slow without him knowing - something I find extremely unlikely.
Those commission lawyers sure knew what they were doing. Unfortunately.
You are very much the gentleman.
I don't think the Jack Ruby "connection" is what stopped the Commission from calling Bowley to testify. It seems obvious to me that they just didn't need somebody telling them that he arrived on the scene at 1:10 pm to find Tippit already dead. Such testimony would have to be dealt with whereas a simple affidavit is easy to bury or ignore. And by not giving Bowley a chance to expound upon his account he could easily be dismissed as mistaken and no one would have to ask him whether or not his watch could have been 5 minutes slow without him knowing - something I find extremely unlikely.
Those commission lawyers sure knew what they were doing. Unfortunately.
- StanDane
- Posts : 3644
Join date : 2013-09-03
Age : 71
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 5:19 pm
Thanks Martin.Martin Hay wrote:Thank you so much for going to the trouble of typing all that, Stan.
You are very much the gentleman.
BTW, I thought your Watchman Waketh response was kick ass.
- Martin Hay
- Posts : 217
Join date : 2013-06-22
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 5:36 pm
Thanks, Stan!
I was really hoping to draw Willens back out and make him respond to the stuff about his distortion of the medical evidence.
So far, not a peep.
I was really hoping to draw Willens back out and make him respond to the stuff about his distortion of the medical evidence.
So far, not a peep.
- Vinny
- Posts : 3359
Join date : 2013-08-27
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 10:39 pm
Here is what he says about O'Donnell.
Further support for the presence of a shooter on the knoll came from surprising sources, Kennedy’s close aides Kenneth O’Donnell and Dave Powers, who were riding in the Secret Service followup car and witnessed the assassination at close range. Their once-private recollections were reported in House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O’Neill’s 1987 book, Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O’Neill (with William Novak). After John F. Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952, O’Neill was the man who replaced him in their Massachusetts district of the House of Representatives before going on to become speaker from 1977 through 1987.
O’Neill wrote in his book:I was never one of those people who had doubts or suspicions about the Warren Commission’s report on the president’s death. But five years after Jack died, I was having dinner with Kenny O’Donnell and a few other people at Jimmy’s Harborside Restaurant in Boston, and we got to talking about the assassination.
I was surprised to hear O’Donnell say that he was sure he had heard two shots that came from behind the fence.
“That’s not what you told the Warren Commission,” I said.
“You’re right,” he replied. “I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn’t want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I wouldn’t have done that in a million years. I would have told the truth.”
“Tip, you have to understand. The family -- everybody wanted this thing behind them.”
Dave Powers was with us at dinner that night, and his recollection of the shots was the same as O’Donnell’s. Kenny O’Donnell is no longer alive, but during the writing of this book I checked with Dave Powers [who from 1964 until 1994 was museum curator of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum]. As they say in the news business, he stands by his story.
And so there will always be some skepticism in my mind about the cause of Jack’s death. I used to think that the only people who doubted the conclusions of the Warren Commission were crackpots. Now, however, I’m not so sure.
O’Donnell’s behavior surrounding the assassination, and not only his lie in this critical matter, raised questions in my mind. He had the reputation of being a great Kennedy loyalist, an impression promoted by the intermittently powerful yet somewhat ludicrous 2000 film Thirteen Days. Although it dramatizes the opposition Kennedy faced from General Curtis LeMay in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it blinks on the full implications of that conflict and grossly exaggerates the role of Kennedy’s special assistant/appointments secretary by portraying him as a key presidential confidant in that crisis; JFK’s speechwriter Ted Sorensen mockingly described the film as “Kenny O’Donnell saving the world.” It turned out the film was hardly an unbiased historical account. According to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, it was covertly an O’Donnell family enterprise: “His son Kevin, an internet tycoon, helped bankroll a buyout of Beacon Entertainment, which made the movie, and appears to have been the partial inspiration for promoting his father -- played by Kevin Costner -- to the role of the ‘ordinary Joe’ hero audiences identify with.”
Further support for the presence of a shooter on the knoll came from surprising sources, Kennedy’s close aides Kenneth O’Donnell and Dave Powers, who were riding in the Secret Service followup car and witnessed the assassination at close range. Their once-private recollections were reported in House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O’Neill’s 1987 book, Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O’Neill (with William Novak). After John F. Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952, O’Neill was the man who replaced him in their Massachusetts district of the House of Representatives before going on to become speaker from 1977 through 1987.
O’Neill wrote in his book:I was never one of those people who had doubts or suspicions about the Warren Commission’s report on the president’s death. But five years after Jack died, I was having dinner with Kenny O’Donnell and a few other people at Jimmy’s Harborside Restaurant in Boston, and we got to talking about the assassination.
I was surprised to hear O’Donnell say that he was sure he had heard two shots that came from behind the fence.
“That’s not what you told the Warren Commission,” I said.
“You’re right,” he replied. “I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn’t want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I wouldn’t have done that in a million years. I would have told the truth.”
“Tip, you have to understand. The family -- everybody wanted this thing behind them.”
Dave Powers was with us at dinner that night, and his recollection of the shots was the same as O’Donnell’s. Kenny O’Donnell is no longer alive, but during the writing of this book I checked with Dave Powers [who from 1964 until 1994 was museum curator of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum]. As they say in the news business, he stands by his story.
And so there will always be some skepticism in my mind about the cause of Jack’s death. I used to think that the only people who doubted the conclusions of the Warren Commission were crackpots. Now, however, I’m not so sure.
O’Donnell’s behavior surrounding the assassination, and not only his lie in this critical matter, raised questions in my mind. He had the reputation of being a great Kennedy loyalist, an impression promoted by the intermittently powerful yet somewhat ludicrous 2000 film Thirteen Days. Although it dramatizes the opposition Kennedy faced from General Curtis LeMay in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it blinks on the full implications of that conflict and grossly exaggerates the role of Kennedy’s special assistant/appointments secretary by portraying him as a key presidential confidant in that crisis; JFK’s speechwriter Ted Sorensen mockingly described the film as “Kenny O’Donnell saving the world.” It turned out the film was hardly an unbiased historical account. According to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, it was covertly an O’Donnell family enterprise: “His son Kevin, an internet tycoon, helped bankroll a buyout of Beacon Entertainment, which made the movie, and appears to have been the partial inspiration for promoting his father -- played by Kevin Costner -- to the role of the ‘ordinary Joe’ hero audiences identify with.”
- Vinny
- Posts : 3359
Join date : 2013-08-27
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 10:46 pm
I find it hard to accept Kenneth O’Donnell as a loyal, sympathetic figure because I can’t overlook his role in covering up the truth about the assassination. When asked by Warren Commission assistant counsel Arlen Specter his “reaction as to the source of the shots,” O’Donnell testified cryptically, “My reaction in part is reconstruction -- is that they came from the right rear. That would be my best judgment.” Powers more truthfully told the commission, “My first impression was that the shots came from the right and overhead, but I also had a fleeting impression that the noise appeared to come from the front in the area of the triple overpass. This may have resulted from my feeling, when I looked
forward toward the overpass, that we might have ridden into an ambush.”
The 1972 book by O’Donnell and Powers, with Joe McCarthy, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”:Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is silent on the source of the shots, but it does indicate that Powers, unlike O’Donnell, did not accept the single-bullet theory: “Dave, who was watching the President and Connally carefully during the shooting, still thinks that the first bullet hit Kennedy in the neck, the second struck Connally and the third one ripped open the President’s head.” O’Donnell also admits interfering with a Secret Service man’s attempt to respond to the shots: “A Secret Service agent beside me, probably Tim McIntyre who was standing behind Clint Hill on the left running board, pulled his gun and I reached for it, pushing it down, thinking that if he fired, he might hit somebody in the crowd.”
O’Donnell also was instrumental in the illegal removal of Kennedy’s body from Dallas, which prevented a legitimate autopsy and made the coverup of a conspiracy possible. Furthermore,O’Donnell had played a major role, and probably a decisive one, in choosing the Trade Mart as the venue for JFK’s Dallas speech, evidently in concert with Texas Governor John Connally, who was pressing hard for it. And according to Secret Service expert Vince Palamara, it was O’Donnell who had decided that neither of Kennedy’s military aides, Air Force Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh or Army Major General Chester Clifton, would ride in the presidential limousine, as one usually did, and instead placed them far behind JFK in the motorcade and unable to see the president. The 1964 Ford Mercury station wagon in which they were riding was the sixteenth car in line, just ahead of the first press bus, and, according to researcher Todd Wayne Vaughan, originally was scheduled to carry members of the Washington press corps and was the personal vehicle of assassination “researcher” Mary Ferrell.
The decision by O’Donnell to choose the Trade Mart for the president’s speech, with the additional connivance of the Secret Service, determined that the limousine would pass through Dealey Plaza at a slow pace. The HSCA staff report on the motorcade cites Gerald A. Behn, the Secret Service’s Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail, as stating that O’Donnell made the decision for the Trade Mart, overruling security concerns expressed by Behn and others about that location. O’Donnell testified to the commission, “There was a controversy between the Governor [Connally], and between some of the local Democratic figures, and between our people, as to whether the place finally selected
was the best place for the President to give the address. The Governor felt very strongly on it. And we finally acquiesced to his views. But I would think that came rather late in the game, and it would have altered the route quite dramatically.” According to the HSCA, the principal advance man on the Texas trip, Jerry Bruno, made notes on November 6 indicating that “O’Donnell held and exercised the power to make the final decision and accordingly gave orders to Bruno and Behn to implement the decision.”
But the decision was not finally settled until November 14, the day of the motorcade planning meeting in the office of Dallas attorney Eugene Locke, the head of the State Democratic Executive Committee of Texas; Bruno wrote in his journal, “On this day, Kenny O’Donnell [who was in Washington that day] decided that there was no other way but to go to the mart.”
forward toward the overpass, that we might have ridden into an ambush.”
The 1972 book by O’Donnell and Powers, with Joe McCarthy, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”:Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is silent on the source of the shots, but it does indicate that Powers, unlike O’Donnell, did not accept the single-bullet theory: “Dave, who was watching the President and Connally carefully during the shooting, still thinks that the first bullet hit Kennedy in the neck, the second struck Connally and the third one ripped open the President’s head.” O’Donnell also admits interfering with a Secret Service man’s attempt to respond to the shots: “A Secret Service agent beside me, probably Tim McIntyre who was standing behind Clint Hill on the left running board, pulled his gun and I reached for it, pushing it down, thinking that if he fired, he might hit somebody in the crowd.”
O’Donnell also was instrumental in the illegal removal of Kennedy’s body from Dallas, which prevented a legitimate autopsy and made the coverup of a conspiracy possible. Furthermore,O’Donnell had played a major role, and probably a decisive one, in choosing the Trade Mart as the venue for JFK’s Dallas speech, evidently in concert with Texas Governor John Connally, who was pressing hard for it. And according to Secret Service expert Vince Palamara, it was O’Donnell who had decided that neither of Kennedy’s military aides, Air Force Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh or Army Major General Chester Clifton, would ride in the presidential limousine, as one usually did, and instead placed them far behind JFK in the motorcade and unable to see the president. The 1964 Ford Mercury station wagon in which they were riding was the sixteenth car in line, just ahead of the first press bus, and, according to researcher Todd Wayne Vaughan, originally was scheduled to carry members of the Washington press corps and was the personal vehicle of assassination “researcher” Mary Ferrell.
The decision by O’Donnell to choose the Trade Mart for the president’s speech, with the additional connivance of the Secret Service, determined that the limousine would pass through Dealey Plaza at a slow pace. The HSCA staff report on the motorcade cites Gerald A. Behn, the Secret Service’s Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail, as stating that O’Donnell made the decision for the Trade Mart, overruling security concerns expressed by Behn and others about that location. O’Donnell testified to the commission, “There was a controversy between the Governor [Connally], and between some of the local Democratic figures, and between our people, as to whether the place finally selected
was the best place for the President to give the address. The Governor felt very strongly on it. And we finally acquiesced to his views. But I would think that came rather late in the game, and it would have altered the route quite dramatically.” According to the HSCA, the principal advance man on the Texas trip, Jerry Bruno, made notes on November 6 indicating that “O’Donnell held and exercised the power to make the final decision and accordingly gave orders to Bruno and Behn to implement the decision.”
But the decision was not finally settled until November 14, the day of the motorcade planning meeting in the office of Dallas attorney Eugene Locke, the head of the State Democratic Executive Committee of Texas; Bruno wrote in his journal, “On this day, Kenny O’Donnell [who was in Washington that day] decided that there was no other way but to go to the mart.”
- Vinny
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Join date : 2013-08-27
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 10:53 pm
On November 15, Bruno wrote, “The White House announced that the Trade Mart had been approved. I met with O’Donnell and [Peace Corps deputy director and Texas advance man Bill] Moyers who said that Connally was unbearable and on the verge of cancelling the trip. They decided they had to let the Governor have his way.” November 14 was the day Democratic National Committee representative Jack Puterbaugh, who presumably was working closely with O’Donnell, participated in that final decision in Dallas or perhaps conveyed it from Washington (see further
discussion of the all-important choice of the motorcade route, and the role of Locke as well, in Chapters 6 and 16). As mentioned earlier, when William Manchester interviewed O’Donnell about his and the Secret Service’s heated struggle, with guns being drawn, to remove President Kennedy’s coffin illegally from Parkland Hospital over the objections of the local medical examiner, Dr. Earl Rose, O’Donnell said, “it became physical -- us against them.”
Manchester suggests that Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman made the initial decision to remove the body, but also calls O’Donnell “the leader of Rose’s opposition.” O’Donnell told the commission that it was his decision to remove the coffin so that Mrs. Kennedy would not have to stay in Dallas when an autopsy was being performed: “I in my own mind determined that we had no alternative but to just depart. . . . I notified the Secret Service and General McHugh, and told them to get ready to depart. We went in and took the body out.” Manchester quotes O’Donnell as saying to a Dallas policeman at Parkland, “Get the hell over. We’re getting out of here. We don’t give a damn what these laws say.”
If all these actions by O’Donnell were the actions of a Kennedy loyalist, I wondered what a disloyal aide might have done under the same circumstances. And why was there such an effort in later years to burnish the image of O’Donnell, including not only a 2000 big-budget movie but also a 1998 book by his daughter Helen, A Common Good: The Friendship of Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth P. O’Donnell? I searched for clues about why O’Donnell’s loyalty to JFK might have been compromised.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh provides them in his 1997 book, The Dark Side of Camelot, alleging that O’Donnell was the center of a corruption scandal at the White House that appeared about to explode once the president returned from Dallas. John and Robert Kennedy reportedly were already working to shed Lyndon Johnson from the 1964 ticket, using the spreading Bobby Baker scandal as leverage. Hersh writes: “During his last days in Washington, [President] Kennedy was confronted with a serious allegation against Kenny O’Donnell.” According to Hersh, the allegation came from Kennedy presidential campaign and Democratic National Committee operative Paul Corbin, who was close to Bobby: “In the late spring of 1963, Corbin concluded that he had solid evidence of the skimming of campaign contributions by O’Donnell and two others, and he went to [a close friend of JFK, journalist Charles] Bartlett to have him warn the president.” Although JFK was dismissive of the allegations, Bobby was not. Hersh writes that Corbin returned to his inquiry with renewed determination, Bartlett told me, and, after months of preparation, “brought Bobby the stuff. He had affidavits proving that it was still going on” as of November 1963. “He was a good sleuth,” Bartlett said. “He told me he got it all together, signed statements, with Kenny O’Donnell being the bagman. He took it to Bobby and Bobby went through it and said, ‘This is it.’ He called Jack” in front of Corbin. Evelyn Lincoln told the attorney general that his brother had just left for Texas. “Bobby said,” Corbin told Bartlett, ‘“We’ll do it Monday. First thing.”‘ After the assassination, the distraught attorney general told Corbin to let the issue rest. “Lyndon wouldn’t believe me,” Kennedy said, according to Corbin.
So both O’Donnell and Johnson may have been saved by Dallas from expulsion from the administration or possibly even prison terms. Hersh reports that Bartlett in the summer of 1963 wrote JFK another memorandum revealing that O’Donnell, far from being loyal, actually held his boss in contempt: “O’Donnell, while drinking at a bar in Hyannis Port, had been overheard by a Secret Service agent making derogatory remarks about the president. ‘The purport of O’Donnell’s remarks,’ Bartlett wrote, ‘was that the President was in fact rather stupid and that if it were not for [O’Donnell’s] assistance, he would fall flat on his face. O’Donnell said he had had a great many offers from industry but that he was afraid to leave because he knew that the administration would fall apart.’ Kennedy’s response was to give the note to O’Donnell, who had the Secret Service agent immediately removed from the White House presidential detail, disrupting his career.”
Hersh also quotes from a July 19, 1963, memo Bartlett wrote the president reporting, “An aura of scandal is building up -- someone as remote as John Sherman Cooper [the Republican senator from Kentucky] observed to me the other evening that . . . it would be a terrible thing if your record as President were to be impaired by disloyalty on the part of your associates.” Cooper that November was appointed by President Johnson to the Warren Commission.
After the assassination, O’Donnell began a long slide into alcoholism that led to his premature death in 1977. He worked for LBJ for a while, and then for RFK in his 1968 presidential campaign,and he made two unsuccessful bids to become governor of Massachusetts. His daughter writes that he was always “haunted” by Dallas. Although she makes no mention of the financial scandal that Hersh reports was brewing, and blames Governor Connally for choosing the Trade Mart, she writes that her father blamed himself for choosing the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza: “His decision would haunt Kenny for the remainder of his life.” O’Donnell would tell his wife, “I let him down. I failed. I let him down.” As Mort Sahl put it, President Kennedy “had a strange group of friends. Remarkably absent when he fell.”
discussion of the all-important choice of the motorcade route, and the role of Locke as well, in Chapters 6 and 16). As mentioned earlier, when William Manchester interviewed O’Donnell about his and the Secret Service’s heated struggle, with guns being drawn, to remove President Kennedy’s coffin illegally from Parkland Hospital over the objections of the local medical examiner, Dr. Earl Rose, O’Donnell said, “it became physical -- us against them.”
Manchester suggests that Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman made the initial decision to remove the body, but also calls O’Donnell “the leader of Rose’s opposition.” O’Donnell told the commission that it was his decision to remove the coffin so that Mrs. Kennedy would not have to stay in Dallas when an autopsy was being performed: “I in my own mind determined that we had no alternative but to just depart. . . . I notified the Secret Service and General McHugh, and told them to get ready to depart. We went in and took the body out.” Manchester quotes O’Donnell as saying to a Dallas policeman at Parkland, “Get the hell over. We’re getting out of here. We don’t give a damn what these laws say.”
If all these actions by O’Donnell were the actions of a Kennedy loyalist, I wondered what a disloyal aide might have done under the same circumstances. And why was there such an effort in later years to burnish the image of O’Donnell, including not only a 2000 big-budget movie but also a 1998 book by his daughter Helen, A Common Good: The Friendship of Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth P. O’Donnell? I searched for clues about why O’Donnell’s loyalty to JFK might have been compromised.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh provides them in his 1997 book, The Dark Side of Camelot, alleging that O’Donnell was the center of a corruption scandal at the White House that appeared about to explode once the president returned from Dallas. John and Robert Kennedy reportedly were already working to shed Lyndon Johnson from the 1964 ticket, using the spreading Bobby Baker scandal as leverage. Hersh writes: “During his last days in Washington, [President] Kennedy was confronted with a serious allegation against Kenny O’Donnell.” According to Hersh, the allegation came from Kennedy presidential campaign and Democratic National Committee operative Paul Corbin, who was close to Bobby: “In the late spring of 1963, Corbin concluded that he had solid evidence of the skimming of campaign contributions by O’Donnell and two others, and he went to [a close friend of JFK, journalist Charles] Bartlett to have him warn the president.” Although JFK was dismissive of the allegations, Bobby was not. Hersh writes that Corbin returned to his inquiry with renewed determination, Bartlett told me, and, after months of preparation, “brought Bobby the stuff. He had affidavits proving that it was still going on” as of November 1963. “He was a good sleuth,” Bartlett said. “He told me he got it all together, signed statements, with Kenny O’Donnell being the bagman. He took it to Bobby and Bobby went through it and said, ‘This is it.’ He called Jack” in front of Corbin. Evelyn Lincoln told the attorney general that his brother had just left for Texas. “Bobby said,” Corbin told Bartlett, ‘“We’ll do it Monday. First thing.”‘ After the assassination, the distraught attorney general told Corbin to let the issue rest. “Lyndon wouldn’t believe me,” Kennedy said, according to Corbin.
So both O’Donnell and Johnson may have been saved by Dallas from expulsion from the administration or possibly even prison terms. Hersh reports that Bartlett in the summer of 1963 wrote JFK another memorandum revealing that O’Donnell, far from being loyal, actually held his boss in contempt: “O’Donnell, while drinking at a bar in Hyannis Port, had been overheard by a Secret Service agent making derogatory remarks about the president. ‘The purport of O’Donnell’s remarks,’ Bartlett wrote, ‘was that the President was in fact rather stupid and that if it were not for [O’Donnell’s] assistance, he would fall flat on his face. O’Donnell said he had had a great many offers from industry but that he was afraid to leave because he knew that the administration would fall apart.’ Kennedy’s response was to give the note to O’Donnell, who had the Secret Service agent immediately removed from the White House presidential detail, disrupting his career.”
Hersh also quotes from a July 19, 1963, memo Bartlett wrote the president reporting, “An aura of scandal is building up -- someone as remote as John Sherman Cooper [the Republican senator from Kentucky] observed to me the other evening that . . . it would be a terrible thing if your record as President were to be impaired by disloyalty on the part of your associates.” Cooper that November was appointed by President Johnson to the Warren Commission.
After the assassination, O’Donnell began a long slide into alcoholism that led to his premature death in 1977. He worked for LBJ for a while, and then for RFK in his 1968 presidential campaign,and he made two unsuccessful bids to become governor of Massachusetts. His daughter writes that he was always “haunted” by Dallas. Although she makes no mention of the financial scandal that Hersh reports was brewing, and blames Governor Connally for choosing the Trade Mart, she writes that her father blamed himself for choosing the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza: “His decision would haunt Kenny for the remainder of his life.” O’Donnell would tell his wife, “I let him down. I failed. I let him down.” As Mort Sahl put it, President Kennedy “had a strange group of friends. Remarkably absent when he fell.”
Hasan Yusuf- Posts : 1899
Join date : 2013-03-13
Age : 35
Location : Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 27 Jul 2014, 11:39 pm
Martin Hay wrote:I was really hoping to draw Willens back out and make him respond to the stuff about his distortion of the medical evidence.
So far, not a peep.
Well you probably made him shit his pants, Martin. So can you honestly blame the guy for hiding?
- AllenLowe
- Posts : 84
Join date : 2011-12-15
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Mon 28 Jul 2014, 1:16 am
sure glad Seymour Hersch is now a source on this forum. Kind of proves the opposite of anything cited by him.
- StanDane
- Posts : 3644
Join date : 2013-09-03
Age : 71
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Mon 28 Jul 2014, 2:00 am
Hasan Yusuf wrote:Martin Hay wrote:I was really hoping to draw Willens back out and make him respond to the stuff about his distortion of the medical evidence.
So far, not a peep.
Well you probably made him shit his pants, Martin. So can you honestly blame the guy for hiding?
- Martin Hay
- Posts : 217
Join date : 2013-06-22
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Mon 28 Jul 2014, 2:19 am
Stan Dane wrote:Hasan Yusuf wrote:Martin Hay wrote:I was really hoping to draw Willens back out and make him respond to the stuff about his distortion of the medical evidence.
So far, not a peep.
Well you probably made him shit his pants, Martin. So can you honestly blame the guy for hiding?
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!
Oh my god, I love that! (perhaps not surprisingly)
- beowulf
- Posts : 373
Join date : 2013-04-21
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Wed 30 Jul 2014, 3:32 am
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).
That's just bonkers. If you know a clock is 15 minutes slow (and clearly hospital staff did if maintenance was already asked to fixed it), you just automatically add 15 minutes to whatever the clock shows.
That's just bonkers. If you know a clock is 15 minutes slow (and clearly hospital staff did if maintenance was already asked to fixed it), you just automatically add 15 minutes to whatever the clock shows.
greg_parkerAdmin- Posts : 8331
Join date : 2009-08-21
Age : 66
Location : Orange, NSW, Australia
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Thu 31 Jul 2014, 8:24 am
Unbelievable.beowulf wrote: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).
That's just bonkers. If you know a clock is 15 minutes slow (and clearly hospital staff did if maintenance was already asked to fixed it), you just automatically add 15 minutes to whatever the clock shows.
_________________
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steely_dan- Posts : 2283
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Age : 61
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 03 Aug 2014, 11:31 am
Thank you Dan, your spot on.dwdunn(akaDan) wrote:Above and beyond, Stan. Your work on that is appreciated. Thank you.
I'd point out that it's much easier to copy & paste from an e-book pdf when you feel like sharing large passages of information, but then some of us never do things the easy way. So I guess it's true what everybody's been saying: you're not just another pretty face.
================
Allen Lowe,
Re the Kenny O'Donnell business, it reminded me of allegations made against Bill Barry and even Frank Mankiewicz years ago in relation to Robert Kennedy's murder. Back then I thought that stuff was too obviously ridiculous; nowadays I feel the same as you mention: it's beneath contempt. (And at least those allegations weren't in a large book taken seriously by many, what with C. David Heymann being safely dead now)
================
Alan Dixon,
You're free to get pissed off and cancel your membership as often as you like, but I'm afraid you're one of us now. And if I couldn't figure out how to cancel mine 3 months ago, I don't think it should be so easy for you.
My opinion is that these things are mostly a distraction and intended that way. It goes with the territory of these forums: the best way to keep people from getting anywhere is to keep them fighting and wondering and worrying. It's the easiest thing in the world to pose a question or make an allegation and then sit back and watch everybody jump into what often turns into a clusterfuck. That's what made me suspicious (eventually) of the photo interpretation debates that went on (forever) at the EF -- it was like they were intentionally meant to be a distraction, not just because the fights were always hot but because the subject (films, photographs) was of more interest to more people than -- oh I don't know -- something like a paragraph explaining simply and concisely the details of the dictabelt recording and its importance.
Please bear that kind of thing in mind, Alan. This shit is frustrating at times, too many times, but very often that's because the real goal is to discourage people from being involved.
Take care of yourself and be well, my friend
- dwdunn(akaDan)
- Posts : 304
Join date : 2013-06-22
Age : 60
Location : among the hills of southern Indiana, USA
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 03 Aug 2014, 3:13 pm
You're welcome .......... steely ..... is this another damned name change by CVH, i have n o idea anymore 
_________________
"While his argument seems to lead that way, Master Reggie didn't explicitly say it was the CIA that was running the Conspiracy Research Community. He may have meant the CIA has been built up as a bogey-man, as in the theodicy of the right-wing extremist fringe; thus, it may be the latter who are in charge of the apparent research effort. That would help explain the degree of bigotry and psychopathology one finds there." (from "Master Jasper's Commentary on Master Reggie's Commentary on the Pogo koan" in Rappin' wit' Master Jasper, 1972, p. 14, all rights reversed)
- Vinny
- Posts : 3359
Join date : 2013-08-27
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 03 Aug 2014, 7:42 pm
AllenLowe wrote:sure glad Seymour Hersch is now a source on this forum. Kind of proves the opposite of anything cited by him.
I do not mean to endorse Hersch's claims. I was just quoting from McBrides book which mentions him.
- dwdunn(akaDan)
- Posts : 304
Join date : 2013-06-22
Age : 60
Location : among the hills of southern Indiana, USA
Re: Was Mary Ferrell A Disinfo Agent?
Sun 03 Aug 2014, 7:53 pm
What do you think of Hersch's claims......er, Student?JFK Student wrote:AllenLowe wrote:sure glad Seymour Hersch is now a source on this forum. Kind of proves the opposite of anything cited by him.
I do not mean to endorse Hersch's claims. I was just quoting from McBrides book which mentions him.
_________________
"While his argument seems to lead that way, Master Reggie didn't explicitly say it was the CIA that was running the Conspiracy Research Community. He may have meant the CIA has been built up as a bogey-man, as in the theodicy of the right-wing extremist fringe; thus, it may be the latter who are in charge of the apparent research effort. That would help explain the degree of bigotry and psychopathology one finds there." (from "Master Jasper's Commentary on Master Reggie's Commentary on the Pogo koan" in Rappin' wit' Master Jasper, 1972, p. 14, all rights reversed)
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