Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination (41 page)

Veciana claimed that in August 1963, he saw Lee Harvey Oswald in the company of Maurice Bishop. Veciana met Bishop in the lobby of a large downtown office building that House Select Committee investigator Gaeton Fonzi believed was the Southland Center, a forty-two-story office complex built in Dallas in the late 1950s. Veciana noticed a young man with Bishop that day. After seeing the news photographs and television coverage portraying Lee Harvey Oswald as the long-gun shooter of JFK, Veciana told Fonzi he was certain the man with Bishop that day had been Oswald. “Well, you know, Bishop himself taught me how to remember faces, how to remember characteristics,” Veciana explained to Fonzi. “I am sure it was Oswald. If it wasn’t Oswald, it was someone who looked exactly like him.
Exacto. Exacto
.”
⁵⁹⁴

After investigating thoroughly, Fonzi was convinced Veciana’s story was true. “Maurice Bishop was David Atlee Phillips,” Fonzi wrote in his book,
The Last Investigation
. “I state that unequivocally.”
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Fonzi continued to state he was convinced David Atlee Phillips played a key role in the JFK assassination. “I don’t embrace the assumption that Phillip’s relationship to Oswald may have been extraneous to any conspiratorial role. If there was one most meaningful revelation that emerged from further digging into Phillips’s background after the Assassinations Committee probe, it was the fact that David Phillips, the consummate actor, maintained a personal and even familial façade that was in direct contrast to the political realities of his professional life.”
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Fonzi believed what motivated Philips was his deep ideological commitment to getting rid of Castro in Cuba. Fonzi also believed Philips rose to be CIA chief of the Western Hemisphere Division not by accident, but because key CIA field operatives shared his view that JFK’s “deal” with Khrushchev that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis was treasonous because JFK promised that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviet Union withdrew nuclear
weapons from the island. Fonzi was convinced anti-Castroism was the unifying theme within the CIA that served as the trigger to the CIA’s decision to participate in the JFK assassination. He was skeptical that Oswald actually made his controversial trip to Mexico, believing instead that the CIA staged the entire sequence of events in Mexico by using a CIA operative who was instructed to assume the Oswald identity. Phillips was CIA station chief in Mexico City at the time of Oswald’s visit. Commenting about his certainty David Atlee Phillips was the man who assumed the Maurice Bishop persona. Fonzi wrote, “It is no coincidence that the man who emerges as the Maurice Bishop who planned Alpha 66 attempts to sink Russian ships in Havana harbor with the aim of embarrassing Kennedy and sabotaging his negotiations with Khrushchev, was the same man responsible for staging the entire Mexico City scenario designed to link Lee Harvey Oswald to Fidel Castro.”
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Fonzi stressed that Phillips had a tight working association with some of the CIA’s most lethal anti-Castro operatives, including E. Howard Hunt and William Harvey.

In September 1979 Veciana was ambushed on his way home from work in an apparent assassination attempt. Four shots were fired, one of which hit him in the left temple. Veciana survived, but after the attack he refused to discuss his work with Alpha 66. He was convinced a Castro agent made the attempt on his life.
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Reflecting on Veciana, Fonzi wrote there is “a preponderance of evidence that indicates Lee Harvey Oswald had an association with a U.S. Government agency, perhaps more than one, but undoubtedly with the Central Intelligence Agency.”
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In
chapter 5
, we saw that Roscoe White was named by Sam Giancana as a suspect in the murder of Dallas Policeman J. D. Tippit, and was also suspected of having been a shooter in the JFK assassination. White’s history is intertwined with that of Lee Harvey Oswald. White also served in the same marine platoon with Oswald in Japan and later in the Philippines. Both Roscoe White and Lee Harvey Oswald were candidates for having been recruited into the CIA when they were marines. As discussed in
chapter 2
, Former marine sniper Craig Roberts argued that Roscoe
White was recruited by William Harvey to participate in ZR/RIFLE under the codename Mandarin. In his 1994 book,
Kill Zone
, Roberts noted that Roscoe White had access to a Dallas police uniform and badge on November 22, 1963.
⁶⁰⁰

Long-time assassination researcher Jones Harris linked Roscoe White with a strange incident involving an old Edsel automobile tied to Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop, a well-known Dallas fixture at 2524 Elm Street owned by Rubin Goldstein, a Dallas resident since 1931. The address is approximately ten blocks to the east of Dealey Plaza on Elm Street. The distinctive Edsel automobile, customized as an advertising vehicle, featured on its hood an oversized mock fifty-caliber machine gun. There is ample testimony in the Warren Commission hearings, typically ignored by the Warren Commission in its final report, that the Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop vehicle was parked behind the concrete monument on the Elm Street spur in front of the Texas School Book Depository on the day of the shooting. In an extreme blow-up of a frame from the film taken by Orville Nix on November 22, 1963, Harris identified Roscoe White as the shooter crouching on top of the Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop vehicle, firing at JFK.
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From the vantage point of having jumped on top of the car, White may have been the shooter who hit JFK’s neck.

There is ample testimony in the Warren Commission hearings about the Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop vehicle being driven in the motorcade route the day of the assassination. Jean Hill and Mary Moorman, two assassination witnesses who were on Elm Street directly across from the concrete monument when JFK was shot, both reported observing the Honest Joe’s vehicle. In an interview with the FBI conducted on March 13, 1964, Jean Hill described how she and Mary Moorman walked around the parkway area near the Texas School Book Depository looking for the best vantage point from which to take photographs of the president. Hill recalled talking to a uniformed policeman of the Dallas Police Department on the sidewalk near the main entrance to the Depository building. “While conversing with the policeman, Mrs. Hill noticed an automobile circling the area,” the FBI report of her interview noted. “The windows of the vehicle were covered with cardboard and the name ‘Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop’ was painted on the side of the car. Mrs. Hill made a remark about the automobile and the policeman told her the driver had permission to
drive in the area.”
⁶⁰²
Hill jokingly said to Moorman, “Do you suppose there are murderers in the van?”
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Assassination witness A. J. Millican gave testimony to the Dallas County Sheriff’s office that he was standing on the north side of Elm Street about halfway between Houston Street and the triple underpass. “About five or ten minutes before the President’s car came by I observed a truck from Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop parked by the Book Depository store,” he stated in a signed statement. Millican contradicted Jean Hill in claiming the Honest Joe’s vehicle drove off five or ten minutes before the JFK motorcade came by.
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Secret Service Agent Forest V. Sorrels questioned Jack Ruby about Honest Joe in the first minutes after Ruby shot Oswald. Sorrels interviewed Ruby on the fifth floor of the Dallas Police Department in the city jail for about five to seven minutes, while Ruby was standing there dressed only in his shorts with a Dallas Police officer on either side of him. “[Ruby] appeared to be considering whether or not he was going to answer my questions, and I told him that I had just come from the third floor and had been looking out the window, and that I had seen Honest Joe, who is a Jewish merchant there, who operates a second-hand pawn loan shop, so to speak, specializing in tools on Elm Street, and who is more or less known in the area because of the fact that he takes advantage of any opportunity to get free advertising,” Sorrels testified to the Warren Commission. “He at that time had an Edsel car, which is somewhat a rarity now, all painted up with ‘Honest Joe’ on there. He wears jackets with ‘Honest Joe’ on the back. He gets write-ups in the paper, free advertising about different things he loans money on, like artificial limbs and things like that. And I had noticed Honest Joe across the street when I was looking out of Chief Batchelor’s office.”

Evidently, Sorrels thought mentioning Honest Joe to Ruby would break the ice because Ruby was also Jewish. It worked. “So I remarked to Jack Ruby, I said, ‘I just saw Honest Joe across the street over there, and I know a number of Jewish merchants here that you know.’” Sorrels continued in his testimony. “And Ruby said, ‘That’s good enough for me. What is it that you want to know?’ And I said these two words, ‘Jack, why?’” This is where Ruby explained to Sorrels he had been emotionally upset by the JFK assassination, and he did not want Jackie Kennedy to
have to go through the ordeal of Lee Harvey Oswald’s trial.
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Sorrels repeated the story in a signed report he filed on February 3, 1964, with the Secret Service office in Washington.
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Dallas Police Department Sergeant Patrick Trevore Dean, the officer who brought Sorrels to interview Ruby after he shot Oswald, in his testimony before the Warren Commission validated that Sorrels had talked to Ruby about Honest Joe.
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An FBI report filed in the Warren Commission documents identified Honest Joe as Rubin Goldstein. The report indicated:

GOLDSTEIN advised on the morning of November 22, 1963, he was driving an old Edsel sedan in the vicinity of the Texas School Book Depository. He stated the car was brightly painted and carried slogans advertising his pawnshop. GOLDSTEIN said the police permitted him to drive on the route used by President JOHN F. KENNEDY’s Motorcade. He stated, however, that he was parked on Pacific Avenue, one block from the parade route, when President KENNEDY was shot.
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The FBI report further stated that while Rubin Goldstein claimed not to know Lee Harvey Oswald, Goldstein admitted that he knew Jack Ruby. Goldstein told the FBI that Ruby purchased some equipment from him several years prior to the JFK assassination. Goldstein insisted he was not a personal friend of Jack Ruby and that he had no other business dealings with Ruby since Ruby bought the equipment from him.

Almost immediately after the assassination, Sorrels had suspected Goldstein and his Honest Joe vehicle were involved. Assassination researcher Jones Harris had the relevant frame from the Nix film enlarged. It shows the Honest Joe’s vehicle parked on Pacific Avenue, the spur running directly behind the Texas School Book Depository parallel to the Elm Street spur that runs in front of the Texas School Book Depository as a short extension of Elm Street west past Houston Street. Startlingly there appears to be a man standing on the running board of the Honest Joe vehicle, with a weapon in his hands, shooting at JFK as the limo passes on Elm Street. Harris interviewed Sorrels shortly after the assassination, and Sorrels admitted he had visited Honest Joe’s store on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. Harris believes Sorrels was well along the way to solving almost single-handedly the JFK assassination. Harris is convinced Sorrels was in the process of implicating both Goldstein and Roscoe
White, the shooter Harris insists fired from the running-board of the Honest Joe vehicle visible in the early versions of the Nix film. Sorrels was largely taken off the case after the FBI began assuming jurisdiction over the investigation. By Sunday morning, when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, there was no possible way Washington would allow Sorrels to continue his investigation in Dallas, even though Sorrels was the special agent in charge of the Dallas district of the US Secret Service. If Sorrels had been given enough time, he would have located James P. Hosty Jr., the FBI agent in charge of Oswald’s case in Dallas, so as to begin probing Oswald’s relationship to the FBI prior to the assassination.

Beverly Oliver was a performer in Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club who also turned out to be the long-unidentified “Babushka Lady,” and an eyewitness to the JFK assassination. Taking photographs of the JFK limo as it traveled along Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, she positively identified Roscoe White on the grassy knoll in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Oliver is the witness that was cited in
chapter 3
as having been introduced to Lee Harvey Oswald in the Carousel Club by Jack Ruby who described Oswald as a CIA agent. In her book,
Nightmare in Dallas
, Oliver describes running across Elm Street to join the people running up the grassy knoll as JFK’s limousine sped under the triple underpass. As she ran up the steps heading to the concrete pergola monument, she felt scared. Her heart was pounding, her hands were perspiring, and her stomach was in knots. That’s when she describes encountering the man she knew as “Geneva [White’s] husband” walking across the steps in front of her.
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“He was wearing part of his policeman’s uniform but not all of it. He was wearing his shirt, his badge, his trousers, but he was not wearing a hat, nor was he carrying a gun.”
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Oliver says she caught White’s attention, and she was sure he recognized her even though she was wearing a wig because White had seen her in wigs before. Oliver reported that Jack Ruby had hired Geneva White to be a hostess at the Carousel Club and Geneva relied on her husband to pick her up after work.
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The officer seen in the Hughes film in the railroad yard behind the fence on the grassy knoll is wearing a Dallas Police Department uniform, but he is conspicuously seen not wearing a Dallas Police Department cap and not carrying a gun. Viewing the Hughes film, Oliver identified Roscoe White as the Dallas Police officer seen in the Hughes film standing
in the railroad yard behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll in the moments following the assassination.
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The officer in the railroad yard in the Hughes film bears a striking physical resemblance to Roscoe White.