JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (122 page)

[
303
]. Palamara,
Third Alternative
, p. 7.

[
304
]. Vincent Palamara interview with Gerald A. Behn, September 27, 1992; cited in Palamara,
Third Alternative,
p. 4 (emphasis in original). Agent Behn “added that newsreel footage from the period will bear him out on this point”—that President Kennedy did not bar Secret Service agents from riding on the back of the limousine. Ibid.

[
305
]. Palamara,
Third Alternative,
p. 8.

[
306
]. Ibid.

[
307
]. Ibid., p. 9. Besides the already cited Secret Service agents, Behn, Lilly, and Boring, those who told Palamara that JFK did not restrict agents from riding on the rear of the limousine included agents Rufus Youngblood, Robert Bouck, Abraham Bolden, Maurice Martineau, advance man Marty Underwood, and JFK aide Dave Powers. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

[
308
].
WCH
, vol. 21, p. 547.

[
309
]. David T. Ratcliffe,
Understanding Special Operations and Their Impact on the Vietnam War Era: 1989 Interview with L. Fletcher Prouty Colonel USAF (Retired)
(Santa Cruz, Calif.: rat haus reality press, 1999), p. 205.

[
310
]. Ratcliffe,
Understanding Special Operations,
p. 206.

[
311
]. Craig,
When They Kill a President
, p. 6.

[
312
]. Ibid., p. 9. Roger Craig’s testimony should be drawn from sources independent of his interview on April 1, 1964, by Warren Commission assistant counsel David W. Belin. Craig was disturbed by Belin’s habit of turning off the tape recorder at key points in the questioning. He was even more disturbed when he read what the Warren Commission claimed he had said.
WCH
, vol. 6, pp. 260-73. Craig said his testimony had been changed in fourteen places, even apart from critical omissions. Several of the changes seemed designed especially to keep Craig’s descriptions of the station wagon and its driver from serving as bases for their identification.
When They Kill a President
, pp. 14-16. Also Edgar F. Tatro, “Roger Craig and 1984,” in unidentified issue of
The Continuing Inquiry
, p. 3. The best sources for Roger Craig’s testimony on what he saw and heard in Dallas on November 22, 1963, are his own unpublished manuscript,
When They Kill a President
, and his filmed interview in April 1974 by Lincoln Carle that is contained in the video Carle made with Mark Lane,
Two Men in Dallas
(Alpa Productions 1976; developed by Lincoln Carle; written by Mark Lane).

[
313
]. Craig,
When They Kill a President
, p. 9.

[
314
]. Ibid.

[
315
]. Ibid., p. 12.

[
316
]. Ibid., pp. 12-13 (emphasis added). Roger Craig’s description of the dialogue with Oswald in his interview in
Two Men in Dallas
. Marrs,
Crossfire
, p. 331.

[
317
]. Jones,
Forgive My Grief III
, p. 31.

[
318
]. After reading the anecdote about Sheriff Decker and Captain Fritz in an earlier draft of this chapter, researcher Steve Jones raised this pertinent question about why Fritz had to interrupt his early, critical questioning of Oswald and drive fifteen blocks across town rather than just talk with Decker on the phone. They apparently had to confer in absolute secrecy, with no possible danger of their being overheard on the phone.

[
319
]. Jones,
Forgive My Grief III
, p. 31.

[
320
]. Carolyn Walther said she saw the man with the rifle on the fourth or fifth floor.
WCH
, vol. 24, p. 522. She may have meant the fifth or sixth floor. As author Gary Shaw has pointed out, the fact that there were no windows on the first floor of the Texas School Book Depository made it easy for observers to overlook it and begin counting at the second floor. J. Gary Shaw with Larry Ray Harris,
Cover-Up: The Governmental Conspiracy to Conceal the Facts about the Public Execution of John Kennedy
(Austin: Thomas Publications, 1992), p. 12.

[
321
]. Commission Exhibit No. 2086,
WCH
, vol. 24, p. 522. The man in the window with the rifle passed up his best shot, when the president was driven directly toward and beneath him on Houston Street. That this man apparently did not open fire until the limousine, driving away from him, neared the grassy knoll, is itself evidence he was not meant to serve primarily as a shooter. His more important role was to draw attention to himself and thereby incriminate the scapegoat who worked in the Texas School Book Depository, Lee Harvey Oswald.

[
322
]. Ibid.

[
323
].
WCH
, vol. 16, p. 959; vol. 2, pp. 193-94, 200.

[
324
]. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 195.

[
325
]. Ibid., vol. 16, p. 959; vol. 2, pp. 195-96. An FBI interview with James Worrell, Jr., claimed Worrell said he “had a profile view” of the running man and “felt” later it had been Lee Harvey Oswald. Robert P. Gemberling Report, November 30, 1963; cited in
WCH,
vol. 2, p. 201. However, Worrell stated flatly to the Warren Commission that he did
not
have a profile view of the running man, and that he “sure didn’t” tell the FBI that he did. Ibid.

After reading Worrell’s story of the running man in a Dallas newspaper, James Elbert Romack challenged it in his own testimony before a Warren Commission attorney. Romack claimed he watched the back of the Depository for four or five minutes after he heard shots fired and saw no one leave the building (
WCH,
vol. 6, p. 282). However, Romack also admitted he did “turn my back to the building” during that time to move a traffic barrier for a news crew parking its truck (ibid., p. 281)—precisely when he could have missed the man in the sport coat whom Worrell saw run out of the Depository.

The Warren Report
tried to back up James Romack’s testimony by that of his co-worker, George “Pop” Rackley, who also said he saw no one leave the back of the Depository. However, Rackley was a more distant witness, unaware of when the presidential motorcade passed, which he could not see. Unlike Worrell and Romack, Rackley did not even hear the shooting, making him a more questionable witness to its aftermath (
WCH,
vol. 6, pp. 275-77).

[
326
]. FBI interview of Richard Randolph Carr by Special Agent Paul L. Scott, February 4, 1964. Reproduced in CD-ROM for
Harvey & Lee
, Nov 22-45.

[
327
]. Ibid.

[
328
]. Ibid.

[
329
]. Ibid. Researcher William Weston has pointed out that Richard Carr gave a different story on the Nash Rambler at the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans, and again to writer Gary Shaw for his book
Cover-Up
(p. 13). According to Carr’s second version, “the Nash Rambler was not parked on Record Street, as stated in 1964, but rather it was parked on Houston, next to the TSBD, facing north. After the shooting, two or three men came out of the Depository and got into the Rambler. The car was last seen speeding north on Houston . . . Unfortunately for Carr’s credibility, the second version contains one significant difficulty: it is impossible to see this part of Houston Street from the new courthouse building, as the old structure would have completely blocked the view.” William Weston, “The Man in the Dark Sportcoat,”
JFK/Deep Politics
Quarterly
(July 1996), p. 17.

What made Carr change his story? An influential factor may have been the repeated threats and attempts on his life. One morning Carr found three sticks of dynamite wired to his car’s ignition. Fifteen days before he testified in the Shaw trial, he was almost shot on the front porch of his home.
Cover-Up
, p. 13.

While recognizing that Carr’s revised story has damaged his credibility, William Weston also makes the point: “. . . it is only fair to consider the severity of assassination-related persecution that he was suffering at the time of the trial . . . Given these circumstances, Carr’s self-destructive credibility becomes more easily understandable as a matter of survival. When seen in this light, his early statements in 1964 actually gain in value—an account so important that the plotters of the assassination could not afford to leave it unsuppressed.” Weston, “Man in the Dark Sportcoat,” p. 17.

[
330
]. Helen Forrest interview by Michael L. Kurtz, May 17, 1974. Michael L. Kurtz,
Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination from a Historian’s Perspective
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993), p. 132.

[
331
]. Forrest cited in ibid.

[
332
]. Ibid., p. 189.

[
333
]. FBI interview of Marvin C. Robinson by Special Agents John V. Almon and J. Calvin Rice, November 23, 1963. Reproduced in CD-ROM for
Harvey & Lee
, Nov 22-47.

[
334
]. FBI Memorandum by Special Agent Earle Haley on Interview of Roy Cooper, November 23, 1963. Reproduced in ibid., Nov 22-48.

[
335
].
Warren Report
, pp. 161, 253.

[
336
]. Ibid., pp. 160-61. When questioned by the Warren Commission about Roger Craig, Captain Will Fritz said at first he had a hard time even remembering the deputy sheriff, in spite of Craig’s having been chosen the Sheriff’s Department Officer of the Year in 1960. With prompting, Fritz eventually acknowledged knowing Craig, but then denied that he ever brought him into his office with Oswald.
WCH
, vol. 4, p. 245.