Collection of Assorted Newspaper and Magazine Clippings: Jfk Assassination, Conspiracy Theories, Etc

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

Through the lens of another than the first picture was taken from the side away the two hearts are visible and somewhat under the pictures are faces, raised to incriminate Oswald in the investigation or Oswald managed to grow the hair a foot in the few minutes between the taking of the first and the second pictures.

Against this evidence is the testimony of Marina Oswald, who told the commission she took the pictures. In this and other matters Mrs. Oswald proved most cooperative; indeed, nearly three quarters of the evidence against her husband comes from her testimony. Except when it conflicted with its own sequence of events, the commission accepted Mrs. Oswald's testimony at face value, despite numerous warnings from commission lawyers such as Norman Redlich that "Marina has repeatedly lied to the Secret Service, the FBI and this commission on matters which are of vital concern."

The commission's tolerance toward Marina is undemandable. There were few other witnesses who could put Oswald at the scene of either murder, and those who could, for one reason or another, were less than wholly credible. Only two witnesses, for instance, claimed to have seen Oswald on the sixth floor shortly before the shots were fired. One was Howard Brennan, a 45-year-old steam fitter who was standing directly across the street from the Book Depository. Minutes before the shooting, Brennan claimed he glanced up and saw Oswald standing in a window on the sixth floor, gun in hand. Later, however, Brennan was unable to pick Oswald out of a police lineup, and the commission itself downplayed the significance of his testimony. The other witness was Charles Givens, one of Oswald's co-workers. Shortly after the assassination, Givens told the FBI that he had seen Oswald on the first floor 40 minutes before the assassination. For the next six months, Givens stuck to that story through several interrogations. Not until commission lawyer David Belin interviewed him on April 8, 1964, did Givens suddenly recall that he had forgotten his cigarettes on the sixth floor and, when he went to retrieve them shortly before noon, spotted Oswald and exchanged a few words with Belin, the lawyer who elected Givens' sudden switch in testimony, recently went to work as chief counsel on the Rockefeller Commission investigating the CIA.

Oswald himself claimed that

According to the commissioner should be held to have been re-arrested the shield of Nova Scotia and the window, may be opened off the murder weapon, because the ransom down four lukes of cash and bought a bottle of Coke - and within 80 seconds.

In 1909 Jesse Curry, who had been chief of the Dallas Police Department at the time of the assassination, said "We don't have any proof that should fired the rifle. No one has been able to put him in that building with the gun in his hand." No one. Curry should have said except the Warren Commission.

## Secret Agent Man

Almost from the moment of Oswald's arrest, rumors waited through Dallas and Washington that the accused assassin was an agent for one or more intelligence agencies. The rumors were fed by the fact that the notebook Oswald was carrying with him at the time of his arrest carried the name, license and telephone number of James Hosty, a Dallas-based FBI man who had visited Oswald's household several times. There was no question about the visits. Hosty himself confirmed them, explaining that they were a routine part of keeping track of known subversives. What was more troubling to the commission was the suggestion that Oswald was not only under the surveillance of the FBI but in its employ.

The rumors became literal allegations when Waggoner Carr, the Texas attorney general, passed them on to the Warren Commission. Carr, who said he had gotten his information from reliable informants (they turned out to be on the stall of the Dallas D.A.I. said that Oswald collected $200 every month from the FBI as an informer and that his Bureau identification number was 179.

Carr's information sent shock waves through the commission. Just how seriously the members of the commission viewed the story is shown in a "TOP SECRET" transcript of a closed commission meeting. The recently disclassified transcript quotes an alarmed J. Lee Rankin, chief counsel for the commission, saying, "We do have a dirty rumor that is very bad for the Commission . . . and it is very damaging for the agencies that are involved . . . and it must be wiped out insular as it is possible to do so by this Commission." The problem, as commission member and learner

think under any circumstances. Mr. Hower would certainly say he don't have anything to do with it. If he [Hower] says not, I will have anything to do with it, you can prove what the facts are. When Daines is our commissioners ask him whether he would be even under oath, if he were put in the same spot. Daines bluntly tells them yes, as would any official in the CIA.

First, there is the matter of Oswald's Marine record. One of his duty stations overseas was Attugi, Japan, where he worked as a radar operator and learned Russian, or so it is said, in his spare time. According to those familiar with the workings of the agency, Attugi is one of the largest CIA bases in the world. In the past, it has been the launching pad for covert operators dropped into Communist China, as well as a base for the agency's U-2s. If Oswald worked at Attugi, the argument goes, he was almost surely an agency man.

For whatever it is worth then, Hoover and the CIA both carefully denied that Oswald had ever been their agent. All that remains to contradict them is a series of unlikely events, which depending on how they are construed, make a powerful case for conspiracy.

Then, there is the manner of Oswald's leave-taking from the Marine Corps. In September 1939 Oswald applied for a hardship discharge on the ground that his mother had been injured. (A box dropped on her face at work; she was back at work a few days later.) The discharge was granted three days later—a record time, according to Marine Corps officers. According to the critics, it was the CIA who set the record.

Once home, Oswald spent three days with his mother before leaving for New Orleans, the first stop on a begira to the Soviet Union. According to the Warren Commission, Oswald paid $1,500 plus for his passage from money saved from the Marine Corps. But Oswald's bank account showed a balance of exactly 5203. The question is where the rest came from.

Oswald supposedly took a ship to England and made the next leg of his journey—London to Helsinki—by plane. Sylvia Meagher, who matched up the entry date stamped on Oswald's passport in London with the time his commercial flight was said to have departed for Helsinki, found that the plane left a day before Oswald arrived in England. The