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                 1979:  The House Select Committee (1)

                               Chapter 16
                           1984 Here We Come

George Orwell undoubtedly did not realize how accurate his 1984 scenario
would  be by the year 1979.  As 1978 drew to a close, events in  America
made Orwell's descriptions of such concepts as Newspeak and a supposedly
open  but actually closed society, very close to reality.  By 1984,  now
only  five short years away, Orwell's scenario will apparently be  right
on the nose.

Any doubts about who is in charge of America and how effective they have
become  in creating our actual version of Newspeak, disappeared  as  the
Carter administration, congress, the courts, and the media, all combined
their  coordinated efforts to cover up and distort our current  history.
The hopes of thousands of Americans that their only true representatives
in government, the members of the House, would expose the fabric of lies
about  our recent history and the Power Control Group's activities  were
dashed to smithereens by the House of Representative's Select  Committee
on  Assassinations.  The hopes that Carter might be on our  side,  faded
away in 1978 and the intentions of the executive branch were made  quite
clear by the new directors of the FBI and the CIA.

The  murder incorporated group within the Power Control Group  continued
to   murder  people  in  1978,  with  efficiency  and   dispatch.    The
presidential race in 1980 has been foreclosed to Ted Kennedy for a  long
time,  but  the chances that any candidate, not willing  to  extend  the
assassination  cover-ups, could be nominated and elected, are  close  to
zero.

The American people, by and large, do not understand or appreciate  very
much of this.  The Select Committee teamed with the media and by holding
public hearings with almost no live coverage they convinced the majority
of Americans that there was no conspiracy in the JFK case and that James
Earl  Ray shot Martin Luther King although he might have had  help  from
his  brothers.   The  public has never heard of most of  the  eight  men
assassinated  in  1977 and 1978 by the PCG, nor do they  appreciate  the
fact that future assassinations will be carried off by the same bunch.

How the hell did the PCG control Congress and the Select Committee?   It
wasn't easy and they very nearly didn't.

There  may also be another explanation about the committee's actions  in
which  the  word "control" is too strong.   Influence,  intimidation  by
throwing  out  implied  warnings or threats, or  just  plain  making  it
obvious  that personal danger could be involved, might have  been  used.
The process was very involved and it made use of a number of  techniques
and approaches, including some we can only guess at in 1979.  However, a
number of the PCG's methods are known and will be described herein.

The executive branch control by the PCG was exposed even before Carter's
election  by  those whose eyes were open wide enough to  see  it.   This
author  frankly  admits  to  partially  closed  eyes  until  1978.   The
significance of the Bilderberg Society and the Trilateral Commission was
not obvious until Carter had been in office for a couple of years.  Now,
it  is very obvious that he is under the complete domination of the  men
who really run the U.S.A., and that he will never do anything to  expose
the truth about the political assassinations or their cover-ups.

The latest indication of where the Carter administration stands was  the
testimony  given  by  FBI  director William H.  Webster  to  the  Select
Committee  on December 11, 1978.  He said that the FBI would freeze  the
scene and take full immediate control of the investigation of any future
presidential assassination or that of any other elected U.S. leader.

In case anyone has any doubt about what he meant by "freeze the  scene",
Webster  went on to say, "One purpose of the FBI investigation would  be
to  lay  to  rest untrue conspiratorial questions that  have  a  way  of
rising,  and avoid the sort of mistakes that followed the  assassination
of  President  Kennedy."[1]  In other words, the FBI  will  suppress  or
destroy any evidence of conspiracy even if they were not involved in the
assassination itself.  One such "mistake" in the Dallas murder  surfaced
in  December  1978 when Earl Golz of the "Dallas Morning News"  found  a
movie  that  the FBI failed to "freeze".  It was taken by  a  man  named
Bronson and it shows two men, not one, in the sixth floor window of  the
TSBD  just five minutes before the shots were fired.  One of the men  is
wearing a red shirt.  That filmed evidence matches the still photo taken
by  an  unknown photographer earlier that morning, and  developed  at  a
Dallas photo lab by Ed Foley, the lab owner.  The author found the photo
and  obtained  a  print of it in 1967.  The Foley photo,  as  it  became
known,  shows two men in the sixth floor window, one with a black  shirt
and one with a bright red shirt.  Mr. red shirt matches the  description
of  the man in the Bronson film.  He is not Lee Harvey Oswald.   Neither
is  the  man  in  the black shirt.  He was  most  probably  Buel  Wesley
Frazier,  the  man who drove Oswald to work on November 22,  1963.   The
facial  profile and black shirt match photos of Frazier and another  man
entitled  to  be  on that sixth floor, were there around 10  AM  and  at
12:25,  five  minutes before the shots were fired.  Mr. Webster  has  in
mind  rounding up all such evidence and destroying it right away in  the
next assassination.

The  evidence  discussed  in earlier chapters of  this  book,  also  not
"frozen" by the FBI, proves that the "snipers nest" was no snipers  nest
at all, but just an area where workers on that floor were piling cartons
to allow the floor laying crew at the west end of that floor to do their
job.

Webster  would  like the FBI to grab such evidence the  next  time,  and
destroy  it before "conspiracy rumors" get started.  The FBI  came  much
closer  to  doing  this in Memphis, but after all,  they  were  involved
directly in the planning and execution of the assassination of Dr. King.
They had a much greater incentive for cover-up in that murder.   William
Sullivan's Division Five, at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover, carried  out
the King assassination using Raoul and Jack Youngblood plus others.

Returning to the Select Committee, I must switch over to a more personal
tone because of my direct involvement with the group from its inception.
I  helped  Henry Gonzalez in the early days of 1975 and  1976  when  the
committee was just a wild dream for most people.  I made a  presentation
to  Thomas  Downing's staff members who eventually became  part  of  the
Select Committee staff.  Mark Lane arranged that in the summer of  1976.
The  photographic  evidence  of  conspiracy  in  the  JFK  case  was  as
overwhelming to them and to Henry as it was to anyone who has taken  the
five  or  six hours or so to look at it.  I then became  an  advisor  to
Richard  A. Sprague and Bob Tanenbaum when the committee was formed  and
spent  the months from November 1976 to July 1977 helping them with  the
photographic  evidence and with evidence collected by the  Committee  to
Investigate Assassinations including Jim Garrison's evidence.

If  Henry Gonzalez or Richard A. Sprague, or Thomas Downing  had  stayed
with the committee their work would not have been controlled.  Sprague's
loyal deputy counsels, Bob Tanenbaum, in charge of the JFK investigation
and  Bob Lehner in charge of the MLK investigation had already begun  to
get  at  the real evidence of the Power Control Group and  the  FBI  and
CIA's involvement in the two cases and in the cover-ups.  The  committee
members  were  already  becoming very suspicious of  the  two  agencies.
Walter Fauntroy, chairman of the MLK sub-committee, even dared to  speak
out  about  the CIA's influence.  He was beaten into the ground  by  the
PCG's members in the House.

So Gonzalez, Sprague, Tanenbaum, Lehner and others who dared take on the
intelligence  portions of the PCG, had to go.  They were forced  out  by
one of the ancient techniques employed by the Romans known as divide and
conquer.   Once Henry Gonzalez became convinced that Richard A.  Sprague
was  working  for  the CIA and the PCG, he  attacked  Sprague  bitterly.
Henry knew there was a PCG and he knew who had murdered John Kennedy and
why.   Henry  had to go.  He was made to look like a paranoid  fool  and
forced  out by the key PCG members of the House.  Two PCG agents, Mr.  Z
and Harry Livingstone, helped convince him that Sprague was a CIA man.

Mr.  Z was brought in by Henry as a lawyer for his committee and  worked
on  Henry's  beliefs  about  Richard A. Sprague.   Over  some  weeks  he
convinced  Henry  that Richard A. Sprague was a CIA operative.   He  was
supported  in this activity by Harry Livingstone (later author of  "High
Treason").  Harry Livingstone engaged in various plagiaristic activities
and  scams,  and  over  quite a period of time he  worked  on  Henry  to
convince  him that Richard A. Sprague was a CIA operative.  At the  same
time  Henry  was developing his beliefs with the help of Mr. Z  and  Mr.
Livingstone, Richard A. Sprague and his staff were developing skepticism
about Henry's integrity.  The net result was both men resigned.  In  the
next year, 1978, the author appeared with Richard A. Sprague on a  cable
television  broadcast  hosted by Ted Gandolfo in New  York  City,  named
"Assassionation  USA," and the three of them had a  detailed  discussion
about  Sprague's  reasons  for resigning from the  Committee.   To  some
extent  his  thinking  was  influenced by  his  skepticism  about  Henry
Gonzalez's integrity.

Once  Louis Stokes took over as chairman, Sprague's men  were  gradually
calmed  down, and the so-called search for the right chief  counsel  was
underway.   It  is  difficult to detect what was going  on  during  that
spring of 1977.  Suffice it to say that the PCG was undoubtedly  pulling
out every stop to get their own chief counsel into the committee and  to
build  up the case for getting rid of Tanenbaum, Lehner,  Donovan  Gaye,
and  others who knew too much or who had the gall to go up  against  the
agencies.

The result of all this hard work by the PCG was the installation in July
1977  of Dr. Robert Blakey as chief counsel.  Tanenbaum resigned  almost
immediately,  making Blakey's job a little easier, but Lehner  and  Gaye
had  to be fired by Blakey.  Many others were also weeded out.   We  may
never  know  exactly  what they all knew or how they  were  forced  out,
because  of the use of one of the PCG's cleverest techniques and one  of
the most insidious.

Each  committee staff member, each consultant and each committee  member
was  required  to  sign,  as a condition  of  continuing  employment  or
membership   on   the  committee,  a  nondisclosure   agreement.    Now,
nondisclosure  agreements  are  nothing new,  especially  in  classified
situations  or  in  sensitive or patent or  copyright  situations.   The
committee's  nondisclosure  agreement was however, very  unusual.   Many
well-known attorneys have pronounced it illegal.  Richard A. Sprague saw
it  and said he would absolutely never have required the staff  to  sign
anything like it.  He said it was illegal and unenforcable in several of
its  clauses.   The worst thing about it, or the best  thing,  from  the
viewpoint  of  the  PCG,  are the paragraphs  giving  control  over  the
committee to the FBI and the CIA.[2]

The committee, under Sprague, planned to investigate the FBI and the CIA
in  regard to both assassinations and the cover-ups.  In  fact,  Sprague
had  put both agencies on notice to that effect.  Subpoenas  were  being
prepared   for   access   to  all   of   their   withheld   information.
Investigations  of  the  CIA's  role in the  Mexico  City  part  of  the
assassination  conspiracy,  as well as Oswald's and  Ruby's  connections
with both agencies were under way.

The  Blakey agreement automatically put a stop to all of that.  Here  is
one excerpt from the agreement.

   "I  (the staff member, committee member, or consultant) hereby  agree
   never to divulge, publish or reveal by words, conduct or otherwise, .
   .  any information pertaining to intelligence sources or  methods  as
   designated   by  the  Director  of  Central  Intelligence,   or   any
   confidential information that is received by the Select Committee  or
   that  comes  into  my possession by virtue of my  position  with  the
   Select Committee, to any person not a member of the Select Committee,
   or,  after the Select Committee's termination, by such manner as  the
   House  of  Representatives  may determine or, in  the  absence  of  a
   determination  by  the  House,  in  such  manner  as  the  Agency  or
   Department from which the information originated may determine."

In  other  words if the committee or an individual staff  member,  or  a
consultant  discovered that the CIA or part of it, was involved  in  the
assassination  of John Kennedy, or that the FBI was in part or in  whole
responsible  for the death of Martin Luther King, or that either  agency
was  guilty of covering up the conspiracies in both cases, the  CIA  and
the  FBI  would  have the right to prevent  these  findings  from  being
revealed  to anyone outside the committee.  Furthermore, those  agencies
are still in existence today while the Select Committee is not, so  that
the nondisclosure agreement which goes on in perpetuity, gives both  the
FBI and CIA continuing complete control over the individuals who  signed
it.

Another excerpt reads as follows:

   "The Chairman of the Select Committee shall consult with the Director
   of   Central   Intelligence  for  the  purpose  of   the   Chairman's
   determination  as  to  whether  or not  the  material  (any  material
   obtained by the signer of the agreement) contains information that  I
   pledge not to disclose."

If  that sounds like Catch-22, it is.  The interpretation that could  be
placed  on  that  clause is that the CIA has the right  to  decide  what
evidence in the JFK and MLK assassinations should be withheld on grounds
that the CIA itself determines.

How  could the committee possibly have investigated the CIA under  those
terms and conditions?  The answer is, they could not and did not.

Can anyone doubt that the PCG prepared the agreement, implanted  Blakey,
and  coerced or blackmailed or threatened the Chairman and the  rest  of
the committee until they agreed to have everyone sign it!

The  most  insidious part of the agreement is the clause that  could  be
described as the threat, or blackmail clause.  It is perhaps this clause
that has closed the mouths and pens of all the ex-staff members who knew
what  was going on, but who signed the agreement.  That clause reads  as
follows:

   "In addition to any rights for criminal prosecution or for injunctive
   relief  the United Stated Government may have for violation  of  this
   agreement,  the United States Government may file a civil suit in  an
   appropriate  court for damages as a consequence of a breach  of  this
   agreement.  The costs of any civil suit brought by the United  States
   for  breach of this agreement, including court  costs,  investigative
   expenses,  and  reasonable  attorney  fees, shall  be  borne  by  any
   defendant  who  loses such suit." . . . "I hereby agree that  in  any
   suit  by  the  United States Government for  injunctive  or  monetary
   relief pursuant to the terms of this agreement, personal jurisdiction
   shall obtain and venue shall lie in the United States District  Court
   for  the  District of Columbia, or in any  other  appropriate  United
   States  District Court in which the United States may elect to  bring
   suit.  I further agree that the law of the District of Columbia shall
   govern the interpretation and construction of this agreement."

Those  readers who have followed the performance of the U.S.  courts  in
the  JFK  and MLK cases through the years, will recognize  the  trap  in
those  last  two  sentences.  Any ex-staffer or consultant,  or  even  a
Congressman  would have about as much chance against a  CIA/FBI-directed
suit  in  a court of their choice, as the man in the moon.   The  United
States  Government, in this clause, is not your government or mine.   It
is  the  Power  Control Group.  You can bet they would  select  a  court
already  programmed for decision.  The clause is incredible on the  face
of it.

This was a mighty powerful weapon and the committee used it to a maximum
extent in carrying out a masterful job of continuing the two  cover-ups.
It was masterful in the sense that they were not as bold and bald  about
it as the Warren Commission or the Rockefeller Commission or the Justice
Department and the courts have been in the MLK case.  Their  conclusions
are  inconclusive;  sort of.  They say that to determine whether or  not
there  really were conspiracies in the two cases was beyond their  means
and the time they had available.  Nevertheless, the preponderant  weight
of the public testimony before the committee was toward no conspiracy in
the  JFK  case  and  a, "Ray shot him,  but  might  have  been  helped,"
conclusion in the King case.  But the hold they exercised over the staff
and  consultants in directing their investigations away from  conspiracy
was very smoothly done, with the nondisclosure agreement always  lurking
in the background as a possible threat.

The agreement was used as an excuse by the committee to avoid  answering
questions.  For example, I wrote to Louis Stokes on April 5, October 30,
and  November 24, 1978 asking why the committee had not  called  several
important  witnesses  in the JFK case, including  Richard  Case  Nagell.
Stokes  had  told  me  in a letter written on May  15,  1978,  that  the
suggestion  that Nagell be called was being followed and that the  staff
was being alerted about him.  Blakey took no action and did not  contact
Nagell or Richard Russell, the only person who knew where Nagell was  to
be found.[3]

Stokes  sent  me  this  reply to my inquiries  about  the  witnesses  on
December 4,1978.

   "Dear Mr. Sprague:

   Thank  you for your letter of November 24, 1978.  I am aware  of  the
   amount  of  time  you  have  spent  analyzing  the  assassination  of
   President John F. Kennedy and your interest in the work of the Select
   Committee  on Assassinations since its inception.  However, I  regret
   that  *under our Rules*, it is impossible for us to respond  to  your
   letter  in a manner which would reveal the substance or procedure  of
   our  investigation, or the names of those persons who will be  called
   to  testify  before  the committee.  The  committee  is,  of  course,
   grateful  for your suggestions and those of the many other  concerned
   citizens who have taken the time to write." (Underlining for emphasis
   is the author's)
                                       Sincerely,
                                       Louis Stokes
                                       Chairman

"The Rules" Stokes refers to include the nondisclosure agreement.   This
letter implies that subsequent to December 4, 1978, the committee  might
be  calling more JFK witnesses.  Of course, that didn't happen.   Except
for  some high level FBI, Secret Service and other government  officials
testifying   about   Presidential  safety   and   future   assassination
investigations, the committee's show was already over, and Louis  Stokes
was  well  aware of that.  I'm sure Louis Stokes had  his  own  personal
reasons, not necessarily sinister, for making that reply.

The  committee had no intention of risking the appearance of any of  the
more knowledgeable or involved witnesses whose names I had given them in
October 1978 as well as in May 1978 and November 1978.  A list of  these
names appears later in this chapter.

The  Warren  Commission  proved  how  easy it  is  to  avoid  finding  a
conspiracy if you don't look for one, even one that seems to jump up and
smack  you in the face.  The Select Committee did this in  spades.   The
procedure  was orchestrated by Robert Blakey by various means.   One  of
his  methods  was to split up the hard core Dealey  Plaza  evidence  and
investigations  into sections.  He formed an advisory panel  of  outside
"experts",  for  each section;  one on  medical  evidence,  photographic
evidence,  ballistics evidence, trajectory evidence, etc.  Then he  made
sure there was almost no coordination, cross talk, or feedback among the
panels or even among the staff members assigned to each section,  except
at his level.

There  was a great amount of internal complaining about this, but to  no
avail.    Again,  the  nondisclosure  agreement  worked   wonders.    An
investigating  team, in New Orleans and Dallas, headed by the  JFK  task
force leader Cliff Fenton, was never allowed to surface either  publicly
or  internally to other staff people or the committee.   Their  findings
alone  would have blown Dr. Blakey and his CIA/FBI friends right out  of
the water.  They spent a lot of time with Jim Garrison, and with many of
the witnesses and the assassination participants described in Chapter  5
of this book.  The public does not even know who these staffers are, and
undoubtedly  will  not hear or see what they discovered  either  in  the
committee's final report or in the public hearings.

The separation of assignments worked wonders in explaining away much  of
the hard evidence of conspiracy.  Some of it during the public  hearings
was  like  watching a magic show, for  knowledgeable  researchers.   For
example, the medical panel and staff members determined that the path of
bullet  399 through JFK's body rear to front was slightly upward,  given
that  he  was  sitting  erect.  But since  the  medical  panel  and  the
photographic panel were never permitted coordination, the medical  panel
never  realized  that  JFK  was sitting erect at  the  time  bullet  399
supposedly  struck.  Neither panel was allowed to communicate  with  the
trajectory panel, so that their representative Thomas Canning  testified
that  bullet 399's trajectory backward from JFK's body,  passed  through
the  TSBD  sixth  floor window.  That erudite  gentleman,  a  government
employee  from  NASA, was forced to make up his  own  medical  evidence,
which  he  proceeded  to do.  He merely moved the exit  wound  in  JFK's
throat  down  somewhat and the back of the neck wound up  somewhat  from
where  Dr. Baden of the medical panel had placed them.  He  then  tilted
JFK forward at about 17 or 18 degrees based on his personal  observation
of one photograph, rather than on the photographic panel's  conclusions.
Presto;   the  trajectory  tilted upward and  leftward  enough  to  pass
through the sixth floor window.

Another  bit  of magic was presented by Canning to  support  the  single
bullet theory.  He drew a straight line between governor Connally's back
entry wound position and JFK's back entry wound position and found  that
the  line  also passed through the sixth floor window.  To  do  this  he
moved Connally on the seat to his left and JFK to his right, and  lifted
JFK  up a bit on the rear seat.  Again he did this without  consultation
with the photographic panel.

Some hard evidence was not dealt with at all and other hard evidence  of
conspiracy  was presented without identifying it as such and  then  just
left  dangling.   An example of the former is all  of  the  photographic
evidence cited earlier in this book and in my "Computers and Automation"
magazine  articles,  showing that the sniper's nest was not  a  sniper's
nest,  that no one was in the window, and that no one could  have  fired
shots  from that position that day.  I showed pictures of the nest  from
the  inside and the window from the outside to the JFK sub-committee  in
July 1977 and I reviewed them at length for their evidenciary value with
the  JFK staff, notably Ken Klein, Cliff Fenton, Bob  Tanenbaum,  Jackie
Hess, Donovan Gaye, Pat Orr, Chellie Mason, and Richard A. Sprague.

So the Committee cannot claim they didn't know about these photos.  They
saw the Foley photo over a long period of time, and were no doubt  quite
embarrassed  by the unexpected appearance of the Bronson film.  Not  one
word about the sixth floor window, the cartons, the planted shells,  the
planted  rifle,  and the extra rifle found on the roof,  the  impossible
shot, no one in the window when the shots were fired;  not one word  was
mentioned  in the public hearings about the photos and  other  evidence.
Where was the photographic panel?  Asleep?  Frightened by the  agreement
they signed?

An  example  of evidence of conspiracy left dangling was  the  testimony
given by the photographic panel spokesman, Calvin S. McCamy.  The  panel
examined  all  of the photos of JFK during the early part  of  the  shot
sequence,  and took a vote on when the first shot struck the  President.
It came out as around Z189 to Z196.  Perfect.  That matches.  But no one
asked  the trajectory panel or the ballistics spokesman how  Oswald  was
able to fire bullet 399 right through the center of that big oak tree at
Z189-Z196.   Not  even  the Warren Commission  would  make  that  claim,
preferring  to put the timing at Z210 or later after JFK came  out  from
behind the tree.

There  were some anxious moments for the Select Committee, even as  well
orchestrated  as  the whole farce was.  Dr. Cyril Wecht  was  his  usual
grand  self.   He blasted the committee.  They said he was part  of  the
medical panel and therefore was asked to present a minority view.  Cyril
said  they weren't planning to call him until he demanded to be  allowed
to  testify.   They tried to bamboozle him, to discredit  him  (a  tough
assignment), to attack him and to knock down his testimony.  Lawyer Gary
Cornwell  was  particularly obnoxious in his questioning of  Dr.  Wecht.
Favorable  witnesses testifying to no conspiracy were handled  with  kid
gloves  and treated politely or dragged through an  obviously  rehearsed
series  of  questions.   It was the Warren  Commission  revisited.   Two
witnesses they couldn't mistreat were Governor and Mrs. Connally.   They
politely and calmly presented believable testimony destroying the single
bullet  theory.   That  didn't bother the committee  any  more  than  it
bothered the Warren Commission.  They resurrected the theory a few  days
later when the trajectory panel testified.

Dr.  Barger  of Bolt Baranek & Newman shook them up a  little  with  his
acoustical analysis of the police radio tape that reveals the sounds  of
four,  not three, shots.  If Dr. Barger had been given all of the  facts
initially,  he  probably could have helped prove where  the  shots  came
from.   Except  for the grassy knoll position behind the fence  and  the
sixth floor TSBD window, he was not told about any other possible firing
points.   For example, he knew nothing about the Dal Tex  building,  the
west  end  roof  or high floor of the TSBD, or other  positions  on  the
grassy  knoll.   In  fact,  Barger did not  know  the  location  of  the
motorcycle where the microphone had been left open, picking up the sound
of  the  shots.  His assignment included a determination  of  where  the
motorcycle was, from the sounds on the tape and sounds made during a re-
enactment of the firing in Dealey Plaza.  The only test shots Barger had
fired  were from the TSBD sixth floor window and from behind the  grassy
knoll  fence.   The net result was that he decided  the  motorcycle  was
trailing  the  Presidential  limousine  by 120  feet.   No  one  on  the
committee  or  the  photographic panel ever showed  Barger  the  Altgens
photo,  the  Hughes  film,  the Martin, Nix,  Couch,  Weigman,  Bell  or
Muchmore  films  or any other pictures showing there was  no  motorcycle
anywhere  near 120 feet behind the limousine.[4]  Again, Blakey  divided
and conquered.  Barger told me that if he had known about the motorcycle
trailing the limousine by a few feet, driven by policeman D.L.  Jackson,
who  disappeared  completely  after the  assassination,  he  could  have
altered  his analysis completely.  The sounds of the last two shots  may
well have been from the knoll behind the wall, and from the TSBD roof or
the  Dal Tex second floor.  Barger's analysis shows that the  last  shot
sound,  made  by a rifle occurred just a faction of a second  after  the
next to the last shot, possibly made by pistol.  This would fit a pistol
shot from behind the fence fired almost simultaneously with a rifle shot
from  either  the  TSBD west end or Dal Tex.  The  delay  of  the  sound
traveling  from  Dal Tex is about right so that the Dal Tex  shot  would
strike  at Z312 and the pistol or rifle shot from the right front  would
strike  at  Z313.  Prof. Mark Weiss of Queens College  and  Barger  were
called into an executive session on December 20 after the hearings  were
finished.   They testified that there were definitely four shots  fired,
at least one of which was from the knoll.

This new analysis was conducted by Weiss independently from the one done
by  Bolt Baranek and Newman.  Weiss said that his work proved to  a  95%
certainty  that the third shot was a rifle shot from a position  on  the
knoll.   He  said the data pinpointed the position to within  two  feet.
The  position was behind the fence, which eliminates man number  two  at
the  corner  of  the wall and also eliminates a  pistol.   However,  the
photos  show man number two did make a puff of smoke, whether or not  he
fired a shot.

Congressman Sawyer broke the news about Weiss' testimony during a  radio
broadcast  in  Michigan,  his home state.  A  furor  broke  loose.   The
committee  went into an executive session Friday December 22 to  discuss
what  to  do since there were only nine days left to the  end  of  their
existence.  The radio tape and the Bronson film seemed to shake them  up
considerably.   Or  was  it all rehearsed and planned this  way  by  the
committee.   It  seems incredible that the 12 members of  the  committee
would be shaken by the sounds from a tape when they weren't bothered  at
all  by photos of the Oswald window showing that no one was  there  when
the shots were fired.  The committee members could see those photos with
their  own eyes.  They had to take the word of experts about the  sounds
on the tape, which cannot be heard because of the noise of the engine of
the policeman's cycle where the microphone was stuck open.[4]  This  was
the  most blatantly dishonest stunt pulled by the Committee  during  the
Blakey  period.   Yet, the research community cannot complain  too  much
because it did produce a conspiracy conclusion.

The  committee's  distortions and omission respecting  the  hard  Dealey
Plaza  evidence is overshadowed by the key witnesses that the  committee
did not call.  None of the players listed in Chapter 5 were called,  nor
ever mentioned.  One key witness, James Hosty, insisted that he  testify
about  Oswald's  FBI involvement, but was turned down.  Hosty  told  the
"Dallas Morning News," "They don't want to hear what I have to say."

He  might have told them the same story he told the author,  through  an
intermediary in 1971.  Namely, that Oswald was reporting to Hosty on the
assassination  plans of the CIA group based in Mexico City.   FBI  agent
witness, Regis Kennedy might have given private interview evidence,  but
he was killed the day before he was to meet with the committee.

Gordon Novel, Ronald Augustinovich, Richard Case Nagell, Mary Hope,  Guy
Gabaldin,  Manuel  Garcia  Gonzalez, William  Seymour,  Emilio  Santana,
Victor Marchetti, Jack Lawrence, Major L.M. Bloomfield, Frenchy,  Sergio
Arcacha  Smith,  Harry Williams, James Hicks, Sylvia Odio,  Jim  Braden,
James  Hosty,  Warren  Du Brueys, Louis Ivon, E.  Howard  Hunt  and  Jim
Garrison  were  not called and no interest was shown in having  them  as
witnesses.   Some  key  witnesses who were called  were  not  asked  any
important questions, or cross examined at all.  Marina Oswald Porter was
one of these.  Another was Gerald Ford.  Richard Helms told his standard
lies,  and  no one asked him about Victor  Marchetti's  statement  about
Helms protecting Clay Shaw, or about E. Howard Hunt and Guy Gabaldin  in
Mexico  City in October, 1963, or about Harry William's  statement  that
he, Helms, Hunt, and Lyman Kirkpatrick were reconsidering another  Cuban
invasion  at  the  moment  JFK was shot,  in  a  Washington,  D.C.,  CIA
location.

With  respect  to  the assassination of Dr.  King,  the  committee  also
performed  admirably  for  the PCG, in this case, the  FBI  wing.   They
failed to deal with the important evidence of conspiracy, failed to call
the  prime witnesses, and distorted or omitted evidence.  They  spent  a
great  amount of time trying to prove, rather unsuccessfully except  for
media accounts, that James Earl Ray was guilty and that he had help from
his family and was possibly financed by some wealthy sountherners.

Briefly, here is the evidence they did not cover.  The witnesses who saw
a man in the rooming house--all of whom said it was not James Earl Ray--
were  not called.  Charles Stephens, who was bribed and coerced  by  the
FBI  into  identifying the man as Ray, but who was dead drunk,  and  saw
nothing,  was not put on the stand with his common law wife Grace and  a
cab driver who saw how drunk he was.  Confronting his testimony by cross
examination and by using counter witnesses should have been done.

The  three  bar  maids in Montreal and Atlanta who  saw  Ray  and  Raoul
together were not called.  William Bradford Huie found them and Ray knew
where they were.  The committee didn't look for them.  Huie and  Foreman
were  not put on the stand and asked all of the key questions about  why
Huie changed his entire approach toward Ray as soon as I showed him  the
Raoul-Frenchy  photos.  Foreman's role was never explored  under  fierce
cross  examination  as it would be if Mark Lane were able to get  a  new
trial  for  Ray.  He should have been asked why he told Ray he  got  the
Frenchy photos from the FBI when he actually got them from me!

The  Frenchy-Raoul sketch comparison, made by Bill Turner and I  in  the
summer  of 1968, should have been produced and shown to  Foreman,  Huie,
Ray and other witnesses.

The  complete list of witnesses who saw Ray and Raoul together, as  well
as  the complete list who saw Ray at the gasoline station a  few  blocks
away  from  the crime at the time the shot was fired, were  not  called.
The committee adopted the stance that it was up to Mark Lane and Ray  to
produce those witnesses, as though the investigation of the King killing
was a trial instead.  The committee, not Ray, had the responsibility  of
investigating  and  locating those witnesses.  Bob Lehner wanted  to  do
that, but he was fired.

The  evidence about the rooming house bathroom window as  an  impossible
firing  point,  presented so well in Harold Weisberg's  book  "Frame-Up:
The  Martin  Luther  King/James Earl Ray Case," was  either  ignored  or
distorted.  The evidence about the trajectory of the shot was completely
distorted.  The ballistics, medical and trajectory panels discussed  the
vertical angle of difference between the "grassy knoll" firing point and
bathroom window firing point trajectories to the Lorraine Motel balcony.
They stated that the differential angle between the two trajectories was
too small to determine, from the medical evidence, whether the shot came
from the window or the knoll.

But,  they failed to discuss the horizontal differential  angle  between
the  two trajectories which was much larger, large enough  to  determine
the firing point.

They  also  failed to present a number of witnesses who saw  the  actual
assassin,  Jack  Youngblood,  both before and after he  fired  from  the
knoll.   Wayne  Chastain should also have been called to  testify  about
this evidence and those witnesses.

The  evidence  concerning who Jack Youngblood and  Frenchy-Raoul  worked
for,  and their involvement, was not dealt with at all.   The  committee
should  have  presented  the photographic  evidence  showing  Raoul  was
Frenchy,  and should have asked Ray and the witnesses who saw  Raoul  to
identify  him  from  the Frenchy photos.   Jeff  Paley  actually  showed
Frenchy's photo to witnesses in 1968 while Raoul's face was still  fresh
in  their minds.  They recognized the face. They certainly  should  have
since  the  sketch  of Raoul was made from  their  recollections.   They
should have called Frenchy as a witness in both JFK & MLK cases.  I know
from an inside source on the committee that they found Frenchy alive  in
1978.  They certainly knew about Jack Youngblood because they read Wayne
Chastain's series of articles in "Computers and People."

In summary, the Select Committee performed reasonably well on behalf  of
the  PCG.   There are no public outcrys over what they did  because  the
media  wouldn't air them.  Mark Lane held a number of press  conferences
during the committee's life span, and no media organization reported  on
any  of them.  The media, of course, were quite willing servants of  the
PCG,  as they always have been since 1963.  The combination of the  PCG,
the CIA, the FBI, the Select Committee, the House spokesmen for the  PCG
and the cooperative media is really nearly unbeatable.

Some  researchers  hoped against hope that the Select  Committee,  under
Stokes,  Blakey, Preyer and Fauntroy, would still unveil the  truth,  as
the  public hearings began in August.  The hopes disappeared during  the
first  week of hearings on the King case as the  committee  demonstrated
quite clearly that they were going to continue the cover-ups and to  get
James Earl Ray and Mark Lane in the bargain.  Still, the hopes would not
quite  die.   The letters I wrote to Louis Stokes in the fall  of  1978,
expressed  the  last  ditch thought that maybe they  were  conducting  a
charade  designed  to  fool the FBI, CIA and the rest of  the  PCG  into
believing  they were going to cover-up the truth.  It turned out be  for
real, no charade.

The  eight people assassinated by the PCG in 1977-78 during  the  Select
Committee's life span are probably the best proof of who is in charge of
the U.S. and what their intentions are.  The murders are all part of the
cover-up  efforts  and  were  all successfully carried  out,  a  la  The
Parallax  View,  with  very few suspicions raised on  the  part  of  the
American  media  or the public.  They included William  Sullivan,  Regis
Kennedy, George de Mohrenschildt, Sam Giancana,[5] John Roselli,  Carlos
Prio Socarras, Thomas Karamessines, Rolando Masferrer, and an attempt on
the life of Larry Flynt.

Each of these murders was carried out with great success and for varying
reasons.   One common thread connects them all.  Each man knew too  much
about the assassinations of President Kennedy or Martin Luther King  and
the  subsequent cover-up conspiracies.  All but Flynt were witnesses  to
be  called  by  the  Select  Committee  or  ones  that  had  given  some
information  and  were  scheduled  to give more.   Of  the  nine  people
including Flynt, the two most important were William Sullivan and  Regis
Kennedy.

Regis  Kennedy  was  one of two FBI agents in New  Orleans  assigned  as
contact  men  for Lee Harvey Oswald in his role as  FBI  informer.   The
other agent was Warren du Brueys.  James Hosty was his contact agent  in
Dallas.   Kennedy knew a lot, but was under strict orders from  the  FBI
not  to  reveal any of it.  He was called as a witness at the  trial  of
Clay Shaw and asked by Jim Garrison whether he hadn't been searching for
Clay  Shaw under the name Clay Bertrand, before it was known  that  Clay
Bertrand  wanted to hire a lawyer for Lee Harvey Oswald.   Kennedy  took
executive  privilege,  a  popular  dodge at that  time  with  the  Nixon
administration.   When the judge pressed him, he said he would  have  to
check  with  the  FBI  and  the  attorney  general,  John  Mitchell,  in
Washington,  D.C.   Word  came through that he  could  answer  that  one
question, so he said yes it was true.  He went no further however.   The
significance  is that the FBI knew all about Clay Shaw's involvement  in
the  assassination because Oswald was reporting back to them as  a  paid
infiltrator  of  Shaw's  team.  There is  a  distinct  possibility  that
Kennedy was sent by Hoover and Sullivan to Dallas immediately after  the
assassination, to help coordinate the FBI/CIA cover-up.  Beverly Oliver,
the Babushka lady, whose film was confiscated by three government agents
on  Sunday  November 24, 1963 at the Carousel Club owned by  Jack  Ruby,
made a tentative identification of Regis Kennedy from his photograph  as
one of those three agents.  The film has never surfaced.  It should show
the  assassins on the grassy knoll quite clearly since Beverly was  much
closer  than  either Orville Nix or Marie Muchmore and  had  her  camera
trained on JFK all the way down Elm Street.

Kennedy  died of a supposed heart attack the day before he was  to  meet
with the Select Committee staff.  Heart attacks, as most Americans  know
by  now  from  watching the Church Committee hearings,  and  seeing  the
Parallax View, are easily induced by a CIA-developed pill, which  leaves
no trace in the autopsy, if there is one.

William Sullivan was eliminated by a clever, but simple technique.   The
PCG agents who killed him knew about his hunting haunts in New  England.
They  also  knew about a teenage son of a state  policeman  living  near
Sullivan's  country  place who liked to hunt in the same area.   Two  of
them intercepted Sullivan early one morning as he set out for a walk  in
the woods.  They shot him with a deer rifle and took his body to a  spot
in  the  woods where they knew the boy would be.  They carried  a  decoy
inflated  to  the shape resembling a deer and probably acted  like  one.
The  boy  shot  at him and thought he hit a deer.   The  agents  dropped
Sullivan's body at that spot and left.  They accidentally left the  pair
of gloves one of them was wearing.  The boy went over to the spot in the
early  morning semi-darkness, found Sullivan's body, and thought he  had
killed him by mistake.  He still thinks so.  There was no  investigation
and no questions asked.

Why  was Sullivan killed?  As mentioned before, William Sullivan was  J.
Edgar  Hoovers'  right hand man in charge of Division  Five,  the  FBI's
clandestine  domestic  operation that included an  assassination  squad.
Every likelihood exists that Hoover ordered Sullivan's division to  kill
King and that Sullivan used Frenchy/Raoul and Jack Youngblood to do  the
job.   Sullivan was also due to meet with the Select Committee within  a
day  or two after the day he was shot.  Whether he would have talked  or
not probably makes little difference.  The PCG couldn't take the chance.

Thomas Karamessines died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 61 on
September 4, 1978 at his vacation home in Grand Lake, Quebec.  He headed
the  covert operations part of the CIA after Richard Helms was  promoted
from  that position to head of the CIA.  David Phillips, the  CIA  dirty
tricks  operative  who is making public speeches supporting  the  Deputy
Director of Plans (dirty tricks) function, worked for Karamessines.  His
knowledge  of  the  JFK assassination and the CIA's  cover-up  role  was
undoubtedly complete since he inherited the whole thing from Helms.

The other dead people were bumped off figuratively, on the very doorstep
of  the  committee.   Roselli  was killed and  dumped  into  Miami  Bay.
Giancana  was  shot  full  of  holes  in  his  Chicago  residence.    De
Mohrenschildt was shot with a shotgun in his daughter's friends house in
Florida.  All three were scheduled to meet with the committee.  Socarras
was killed in a garage in Florida.  Masferrer was blown up in his car in
Florida.  Flynt was shot on the street in Georgia.

Florida.   Why does it keep popping up in these cases?  Bay of Pigs,  No
Name  Key  Group,  anti-Castro forces, Mafia operations;   it  all  fits
together  somehow.  Jim Garrison's first real breakthrough came when  he
found Masferrer in Florida through Manuel Garcia Gonzalez.  That led him
and  the District Attorney in Dade County, Florida, to William  Seymour,
Emilio Santana, Howard, Hall, Hemming and Frenchy, all part of Socarras'
and  Banister's Florida-based, No Name Key anti-Castro  operations.   It
figured  that  some  of them would die in their own  backyard  when  the
committee was getting too close.  Gaeton Fonzi can personally vouch  for
that.  He was the committee's Florida investigator.

Why  wouldn't  men like Fonzi, Fenton, Fauntroy, Stokes, Preyer,  and  a
woman like Yvonne Burke, tell us the truth.  I spent a lot of time  with
all of them and got to know some of them very well.  They all  impressed
me as being very honest and dedicated people.

There  may  be another explanation, as I mentioned in the  beginning  of
this  last chapter.  A committee, is, after all, made up of a  bunch  of
individuals.   So  is a staff.  Now, except for Cliff Fenton,  Ed  Evans
(MLK  investigator)  and  one  or two  others,  these  people  were  not
professionals in the investigations and certainly none of them had  been
involved in the really big game of espionage and clandestine operations.
They were, and still are, ordinary mortals, like you and me, with  fears
and  cautionary attitudes toward personal safety and danger.  They  also
have families.

Not even Cliff Fenton had ever been involved with the kind of  monstrous
game played by the spooks of the world.  It is a game for keeps, of life
and  death, mostly death.  Let's look at it from the viewpoint of  Louis
Stokes,  just to take an example.  He took over the chairmanship of  the
committee with the following knowledge.

He suspected there was a conspiracy in the JFK case and at least  wanted
to find out whether the CIA and FBI were involved in covering it up.  He
may not have known all of the details, but he was aware of the fact that
many  people  had  died.  He knew that Henry Gonzalez  had  nearly  been
killed by a rifleman while driving through a Texas desert with his wife.
This  occurred  just after Henry made public statements about  all  four
political  assassinations  being related and the  intelligence  agencies
possibly  being  involved.  Stokes saw how the PCG  swung  their  weight
around  in  the Rules Committee and on the floor of the House  when  the
Select  Committee in January and February 1977, asked for a  new  budget
and  a  reconstituted  authority to subpoena records  and  continue  the
investigation.   He  also knew that something strange  had  happened  to
Henry  Gonzalez.  He told me so in a luncheon meeting on May  10,  1977.
He  said  Henry  had  cut off all  communications  with  him  and  other
committee members just as he had with me.  I told Louis that I  believed
Henry  had purposefully been fed information by the PCG that I,  Richard
A. Sprague, and some of the committee members were working for the  CIA.
Otherwise, why would he have instructed the CIA and FBI to close  access
to  their files to the committee staff, just after he had won the  fight
he fought so hard to get the subpoena power back.

Stokes  agreed it must have been something like that.  Stokes also  must
have  had  a  frightened reaction during 1977 and 1978  to  these  eight
bodies  dumped on his doorstep.  As in the scene in "The Godfather",  it
only takes one horse's head in your bed to get the idea you should  keep
your mouth closed and play it cool.

Given  all  of this, each committee member may have reached his  or  her
decision  that this game was not for congressmen.  In April 1977  it  is
possible  that all of those executive sessions the committee  held  were
partially devoted to a discussion of the personal safety of each member,
each  staffer,  and  all  of their  families.   They  may  have  reached
unanimous  agreement  that  the only safe approach  would  be  to  avoid
sensitive  areas,  and not to attack the CIA or FBI,  and  certainly  to
avoid going after any of the dangerous guys in both assassination cases.

Yet,  to keep an honest approach going they would have to listen to  any
credible  hard evidence of conspiracy, comment on it, but  refrain  from
taking  a  stronger course than just listening.  As Dr. Blakey  told  me
more than once, "I'm just going to let the facts speak for  themselves."
This  is  somewhat  like the position the Warren  Commission  took  when
Richard Russell, Hale Boggs and John Sherman Cooper refused to sign  the
draft  of the Warren Report until a qualifying statement  was  inserted.
The statement read, "Because of the difficulty of proving negatives to a
certainty the possibility of others being involved with either Oswald or
Ruby  cannot  be  established categorically but if  there  is  any  such
evidence it has been beyond the reach of all the investigative  agencies
and resources of the United States and has not come to the attention  of
this Commission."

The  committee has, in its final report, taken a stronger position  than
that by saying, in effect, that new evidence of conspiracy has  surfaced
and that the Congress should turn the job of pursuing that evidence  and
a   continuing  investigation  over  to  the  executive   branch.    The
recommendation  is  for  the Justice  Department  to  determine  whether
further investigations are warranted.  Thus the Committee members  would
be  off the hook and, more importantly, still alive and safe.  They  can
claim  that  the funds they had and the time they had were  not  enough.
Whose fault was that?  Certainly not the committee's, they can claim.

This  scenario, if true, is really the only hope, though very slim,  any
of us have left.  All other avenues have been closed.
____________________
[1] "New York Daily News" -- Tuesday, December 12, 1979.

[2] See  the  letters in the Appendix for a copy  of  the  nondisclosure
    agreement  itself as well as correspondence between the  author  and
    Louis Stokes.

[3] See copies of this correspondence in the Appendix.

[4] Following  the  December 22 executive session a public  hearing  was
    held on December 29, the last weekday of the Committee's  existence.
    Weiss  and  Barger presented the acoustical  evidence  proving  four
    shots, one from the knoll, thereby causing the Committee to conclude
    there was a probable conspiracy.

    But, the fact that the Couch and Weigman films prove the  acoustical
    analysis  was incorrect because there is no motorcycle  where  there
    was  supposed to be one, was completely covered-up by the  Committee
    staff.   Why?  The answer obviously is that the Committee wanted  to
    close shop with a conspiracy conclusion but one that wouldn't  shake
    up the intelligence community and the PCG too much.  If the  correct
    acoustical analysis had been presented, with the motorcycle directly
    behind  the presidential limousine, the net result would  have  been
    the elimination of that 6th floor window as the source of the shots.
    Eliminate that window and you eliminate Oswald and open up a can  of
    worms  with a completely different kind of conspiracy.  One  with  a
    patsy and intelligence ramifications, written all over it.

    So Cornwell and Blakey, and perhaps the entire Committee decided  to
    prove by implication that the motorcycle was 120 feet behind the JFK
    car  at the time of the shot from the knoll.  They  showed  publicly
    frames from the Hughes film which shows the motorcycle they  fudged,
    somewhat  more  than 120 feet behind the limousine. But  the  Hughes
    film  ends with the cycle on Houston Street.  The cycle can be  seen
    in the Hughes film trailing Couch's camera car.  Couch took film all
    the way down Houston and around the turn onto Elm Street.  The  limo
    can  be seen in all of this footage.  The cycle can not.  The  cycle
    finally catches up to Couch and passes him after the limo is  beyond
    the  triple overpass.  Couch is, at all times including the time  of
    the knoll shot, more than 200 feet behind the limousine.  Ergo,  the
    cycle is more than 200 feet behind at the critical point.

    Cornwell  presented  the cop driving the Houston  Street  cycle  and
    attempted  to elicit testimony from him that it was  his  microphone
    that was open.

[5] Giancana  actually died in 1975 before testifying to the  Schweicker
    JFK assassination subcommittee of the Church Committee.

                          *  *  *  *  *  *  *