JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (119 page)

[
202
]. Mercer Statement, January 16, 1968.

[
203
]. Ibid.

[
204
]. Ibid.

[
205
]. Garrison,
On the Trail of the Assassins
, p. 253.

[
206
]. Mercer Statement, January 16, 1968.

[
207
]. Garrison,
On the Trail of the Assassins
, p. 253.

[
208
].
WCH
, vol. 19, Decker Exhibit No. 5323, p. 483.

[
209
]. Julia Ann Mercer’s written comment to Jim Garrison on the bottom of CD-205, the 11/23/63 FBI Report. From the National Archives, Garrison Papers, Special Collection, Box 9, Folder: Mercer, J.A.

[
210
]. Investigation by Special Agents Henry J. Oliver and Louis M. Kelley, November 27, 1963. From the National Archives, Garrison Papers, Special Collection, Box 9, Folder: Mercer, J.A.

[
211
]. Garrison,
On the Trail of the Assassins
, p. 253.

[
212
]. Mercer Statement, January 16, 1968.

[
213
]. Garrison,
On the Trail of the Assassins
, p. 253.

[
214
]. Ibid., p. 255.

[
215
]. Ibid. Cf.
Appendix to HSCA Hearings,
vol. 12, p. 16.

[
216
]. Author’s March 27, 2005, phone conversation with Julia Ann Mercer’s stepdaughter.

[
217
]. Hurt,
Reasonable Doubt
, pp. 114-16.

[
218
]. Mercer Statement, January 16, 1968.

In an FBI document, Dallas Police Officer Joe Murphy, who was stationed on the triple underpass the morning of November 22, 1963, offered a rebuttal to Julia Ann Mercer’s testimony. He said there was a stalled truck in Dealey Plaza at that time, but claimed it belonged to a construction company (whose name he was unable to recall). The truck, he said, had three men in it.

“Murphy further stated it was probable that one of these men had taken something from the rear of this truck in an effort to start it.”

According to Murphy, “these persons were under observation all during the period they were stalled on Elm Street,” and “it would have been impossible for any of them to have had anything to do with the assassination of President Kennedy.” Statement of Dallas Police Officer Joe Murphy to the FBI, December 9, 1963, CD 205. Also from the National Archives, Garrison Papers.

However, if these persons were under observation all that time, why doesn’t Murphy know in fact whether or not one of them took something from the rear of the truck?

How does he know, on the other hand, that it would have been impossible for men from an anonymous construction company to have had anything to do with the assassination of President Kennedy? Cf. Millicent Cranor, “The Other Side of
Six Seconds in Dallas
,”
Probe
(September-October 1999), p. 7.

If Officer Joe Murphy is vague in providing critical details, even more so is a key Secret Service agent in giving testimony on the same incident before the Warren Commission.

Forrest Sorrels, the Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Secret Service office, had been in the lead car of the motorcade. He returned to Dealey Plaza about twenty minutes after the assassination in order to gather evidence. He told the Warren Commission that during his investigation that afternoon, he came across a man whose name he couldn’t recall who “saw a truck down there—this is before the parade ever got there—that apparently had stalled down there on Elm Street. And I later checked on that, and found out that the car had gone dead, apparently belonged to some construction company, and that a police officer had come down there, and they had gone to the construction company and gotten somebody to come down and get the car out of the way.

“Apparently it was just a car stalled down there.

“But this lady said she thought she saw somebody that looked like they had a guncase. But then I didn’t pursue that any further—because then I had gotten the information that the rifle had been found in the building and shells and so forth.”
WCH
, vol. 7, pp. 351-52.

As a Secret Service investigator at the crime scene within an hour of the president’s assassination, Forrest Sorrels is less than precise in his testimony about the “apparently stalled” truck or car that “apparently belonged to some construction company.” He does not even explain to the Commission the connection between the truck or car and the lady. In any case, the head of the Dallas Secret Service office knew already, on the afternoon of the assassination, not to “pursue any further” Julia Ann Mercer’s having observed “somebody that looked like they had a guncase.” The government had already solved the president’s murder a few minutes after it occurred, since “the rifle had been found in the building and shells and so forth.” Ibid.

[
219
].
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Volume XXIII: Southeast Asia
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), p. 695.

[
220
]. President Sukarno, cited by U.S. ambassador Howard Jones in telegram to the Department of State, November 4, 1963.
FRUS, 1961-1963,
vol. XXIII, p. 694.

[
221
]. “Memorandum From the Deputy Director for Plans, Central Intelligence Agency (Bissell) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),” March 27, 1961.
FRUS, 1961-1963,
vol. XXIII, p. 329 (emphasis added).

[
222
]. Richard Bissell, cited in Evan Thomas,
Very Best Men,
pp. 232-33.

[
223
]. Ibid., p. 233.

[
224
]. Frank Wisner, the CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans, to Al Ulmer, CIA Far East division chief; cited by Joseph B. Smith,
Portrait of a Cold Warrior
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1976), p. 197.

[
225
]. Ibid., pp. 216-41. Audrey R. and George McT. Kahin,
Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia
(New York: New Press, 1995).

[
226
]. Smith,
Portrait of a Cold Warrior,
p. 240. Kahin and Kahin,
Subversion as Foreign Policy,
p. 179.

[
227
].
FRUS, 1961-1963,
vol. XXIII, p. 331.

[
228
]. Roger Hilsman,
To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Dell, 1964), p. 363.

[
229
]. Ibid.

[
230
]. National Security Action Memorandum No. 179, August 16, 1962.
FRUS, 1961-1963,
vol. XXIII, p. 627.

[
231
]. Hilsman,
To Move a Nation,
p. 382.

[
232
]. Forbes Wilson, a U.S. mining executive whose company had been poised to take over a mountain of copper ore in West Irian with Dutch cooperation, condemned the consequences of Kennedy’s turn toward Sukarno:

“Not long after Indonesia obtained control over Western New Guinea in 1963, then-President Sukarno, who had consolidated his executive power, made a series of moves which would have discouraged even the most eager prospective Western investor. He expropriated nearly all foreign investments in Indonesia. He ordered American agencies, including the Agency for International Development [a CIA front], to leave the country. He cultivated close ties with Communist China and with Indonesia’s Communist Party, known as the PKI.” Forbes Wilson, Freeport Sulphur Director, cited by Lisa Pease in her article “Indonesia, President Kennedy & Freeport Sulphur,”
Probe
(May-June, 1996), p. 21.

[
233
]. Ambassador Howard Jones, Telegram from the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, November 4, 1963.
FRUS, 1961-1963,
vol. XXIII, p. 692.

[
234
]. Ibid.

[
235
].
Warren Report
, p. 52. Warren Commission critic Sylvia Meagher agrees in this case with the Commission. Using their documents, she extends their conclusion to cover all the Secret Service agents in the Dallas field office as well as the traveling members of the White House detail. Meagher,
Accessories after the
Fact,
p. 25. All the evidence points to the conclusion that there were no genuine Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza immediately after the assassination, only imposters bearing Secret Service credentials.

[
236
]. Interviews of Joe Marshall Smith by Anthony Summers; cited by Summers,
Conspiracy
, p. 29.

[
237
].
WCH
, vol. 7, p. 535.

[
238
]. Ibid. Warren Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler, who was questioning Officer Joe Marshall Smith, knew from other witnesses and documents that there were no Secret Service agents who could be accounted for in Dealey Plaza at that time. Yet he avoided asking Smith any follow-up questions about precisely how the man showed Smith that he was a Secret Service agent. That would have raised for the Warren Commission the critical issue of Secret Service credentials being used by an imposter at the crime scene.