The following was an article that was published in the May 1999 Issue of the Fourth Decade.
The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate? No, for in Jean Hill's book, The Last Dissenting Witness, a Dallas motorcycle officer, J. B. Marshall, was quoted as saying, "The Feds are tearing our whole department to pieces . . . they tell 'em, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll take your badge.' . . . they've been especially rough on all the guys who were on motorcade duty that day." [3] Still another victim was Marina Oswald, who was told that if she did not cooperate, she would be forced to leave the country. [4] These examples demonstrate a stern resolve to squash even the mildest of troublemakers. Why then should the FBI meekly tolerate a slap in the face from someone at the Book Depository? Did the warehouse manager have some clout that even Hoover had to respect? If so, it is difficult to understand where this clout came from. The innocence of anyone working in that particular building was far from certain in the eyes of suspicious investigators.
Whatever might be said in the ongoing debate concerning the number of bullets whizzing through Dealey Plaza, it is a fact that the Book Depository was a source location. On the premises was at least one hit team, including a leader, a sniper, a radioman, and two or three watchers to secure the escape route. It was also the staging area of the patsy, who had to be controlled and moved around in such a way that he would be in a credible position to take the blame. To keep the risks of exposure to a minimum, the conspirators had to have complete control over the building. How they managed to accomplish this is a question that remains to be answered.
Six years ago I received from Larry Ray Harris a copy of a letter that sheds some light on this issue. Written by a Mr. Glaze to the Alternative Information Network in Austin, Texas on June 2, 1989, this letter mentioned an earlier letter that was sent to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Recently I was able to get a copy of the earlier letter from the National Archives. Through a comparison of the details in both letters, I have been able to produce the following narrative.
In late 1974, while working as a journalist in Dallas, Glaze met a woman who began working for the Book Depository in 1969 - six years after the assassination. (She was no longer working there at the time she spoke to Glaze.) Her supervisor was William Shelley. The company, she said, had a strange way of introducing new employees to their duties. She and another new employee were approached by two men, who produced I.D. wallets and identified themselves as "government agents." They were taken to an empty room and given questionnaires to fill out. These exams were full of oddly irrelevant questions, calling for opinions on various topics of the day, especially social issues. Obediently the two employees wrote out their answers. When they were done, they gave the sheets back, and in the short pause that followed, one of the examiners bluntly asked: "Have you been recruited by the FBI or the CIA?" The two employees were stunned. As ordinary office workers, they were only doing minor clerical tasks at low wages. Why would anyone think that they came from the FBI or the CIA? While it was true that the Book Depository had acquired the notoriety of being the place where Oswald shot the President, still by 1969 that should have been ancient history. Yet even more disturbing were the next questions that came to mind. If the Book Depository was just an insignificant, little company, why would it be attracting the attention of the two biggest intelligence establishments in the country? Furthermore, what was the intrigue that was spurring these "government agents" to hunt down unwanted infiltrators?
Glaze asked the woman if she and her co-worker were the only ones subjected to this kind of treatment. No, they were not the only ones. Background checks on new employees were done as a routine procedure at the Book Depository. After listening to the woman's account, Glaze decided to check it out. He contacted her former supervisor, William Shelley, and asked to meet with him. Shelley agreed to this request and even allowed the reporter to take notes and use a tape recorder. The meeting took place at the Book Depository warehouse near the intersection of Royal Lane and Interstate 35 on the far northwest side of Dallas. (The company had moved from its old location on 411 Elm Street in 1970.) The information that Glaze was gathering must have been extensive, for the two men had numerous meetings together. Yet only a few disclosures are provided in the letters. The most significant one appears in the 1989 letter: "Mr. Shelley claims to have been an intelligence officer during World War II and thereafter joined the CIA." This extraordinary revelation goes far in explaining the mysteries of the Book Depository, and a discussion of its implications will be given later in this article.
Shelley told Glaze that he had been the supervisor of Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination, the Dallas police placed Shelley under arrest and formally charged him with the murder of the President. (No mention was made by Glaze as to why Shelley had been arrested, nor did he say what connection this arrest had with the arrest of Oswald.) The charges against Shelley were soon dropped, and he was released. Since that day, at various times, journalists representing several newspapers and magazines approached him with offers of huge sums of money for his personal account of the assassination. These offers were all turned down. When Glaze tried to get permission to quote him in his own article, Shelley refused and insisted that even his name was not to be printed.
In spite of this setback, Glaze was not discouraged. He went back to the woman and told her that he was doing a story on the Book Depository. He was going to talk to the FBI and possibly get some more information. When the woman heard this, she was absolutely appalled. The very idea that he was writing an article filled her with terror. She told him that if he persisted in his efforts to publicize this story, she would emphatically deny everything she told him. The prospects for an article irretrievably came to an end, and Glaze had no choice but to go home empty-handed.
It was not long after his departure that he felt obliged to speak to the woman again. What he intended to say is not mentioned in his letters, but perhaps he wanted to make an apology. In any case, it was only a few hours after he last saw her that he decided to see her again.
When he arrived at her apartment, he was surprised to find it totally empty. It looked as if no one had ever lived there. Glaze knew that she had a husband and a child, and they too were gone. The mystified reporter could not understand how three people could have moved away so quickly. The next day he went to the woman's place of employment and found out that she never showed up for work, and no one knew where she was. Later inquiries revealed that she did not even stop by to pick up her final paycheck. In his quest to find them, the most promising lead Glaze had was the fact that the husband had once been a musician in "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band." Yet even this fortuitous bit of information got him nowhere. Not one acquaintance or associate had any idea where they could have gone.
About the same time as he was conducting his search, Glaze went to get his interview notes and tapes and found that they had inexplicably disappeared. Then one day, he heard a commotion outside his apartment. He looked out the window and saw an estimated twenty Dallas policemen pulled up in front. They lingered for nearly an hour, shouting in a highly threatening manner and pointing their pistols at his window. Frightened for his life, he immediately left the city.
On December 12, 1977, while working as a reporter for the Avalanche Journal in Lubbock, Texas, he sent a letter to the HSCA. He wrote that he had some information regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and gave a brief sketch of his investigation of the Book Depository. In the closing paragraphs of his letter, he wrote, "I must admit that my own fear of getting involved in the investigation has prevented me from writing you earlier. I apologize." [5]
Whether or not the HSCA had taken an interest in this matter is not known. The only reply it sent was a form letter, which read: "Dear Ms. Glaze [The HSCA had mistakenly thought he was a woman], Thank you for your letter. It has been directed to the Deputy Chief Counsel in charge of the investigation for his review. Your interest in the work of our Committee is appreciated. Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director." [6]
Eleven years later, Glaze wrote a letter to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network. [7] He also sent them a copy of the reply that he got from Blakey. Somehow a copy of both these letters ended up in the hands of Larry Ray Harris. In his own letter to me, Harris wrote: "I don't recall its origins with clarity, but I think it was given to me by a professor at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas. Regardless, it ended up in my files around the time we opened the JFK Center in 1989. I don't know that anyone has ever looked into it. It could be a hoax, but sounds sincere. It would be easy to verify (1) if a reporter named Glaze has ever worked for the Lubbock newspaper; (2) if a journalist named Glaze was living in Dallas in 1974/1975; and (3) if there is/was an 'Alternative Information Network' in Austin, or if Kellner and Morrow are real persons and remember receiving the letter. If it is true that Shelley was affiliated in some way with CIA or U.S. Intelligence, that would be a disturbing and potentially significant development." [8]
When I first began my inquiry, I was hampered by a minor problem. The signature at the bottom of the letter was blacked out. Fortunately the salutation "Dear Ms. Glaze" on the HSCA letter was not. I thus had a clue that the first name must be some gender neutral type such as Robin or Terry. In January 1993, I called up the Avalanche Journal and asked for Mr. Glaze. No one by that name was currently employed. Neither were there any records of a Glaze in the files of the personnel department. Yet the absence of records did not necessarily mean he never worked there; it was a regular practice to discard the records of former employees after three years. Was there anyone who had been around long enough to remember a journalist named Glaze? The personnel director said that she had been with the paper for about as long as anyone, since 1982, and she never knew anyone by that name.
I next tried to reach either Kellner or Morrow at the Alternative Information Network. Kellner was the one who took my call. I told him who I was and that I had a letter addressed to him and his partner regarding the Kennedy assassination. After I read the contents, Kellner said he never got it. It was odd, he said, that I should have a letter in which he was named as a recipient but he had never seen it. He asked that a copy be sent to his home - not to the business - and after he read it, he would check into it. Two weeks later I made a follow-up phone call and asked Kellner if he found out anything. He said that he showed the letter to Morrow, who said that he vaguely remembered it but could not give any additional information regarding the contents or the author who wrote it.
That was as far as I got in 1993. In February 1999, a researcher named Steve Gaal checked the National Archives web site and found that someone named Glaze had written to the HSCA. That was when I finally had the full name of the reporter: Elzie Dean Glaze. A search of the Internet revealed that a man with this same name has a current e-mail address in Austin, Texas. I sent two messages to that address, but so far I received no response.
The next lead that had to be tracked down was the identity of the man who had been a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The band started out in 1966 as a jug band in Long Beach, California. They became known for their unique blend of country western and rock and roll. Among the original musicians were John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr, Leslie Thompson, and Jimmie Fadden. After appearing in a movie calledPaint Your Wagon, the band went through some hard times. In 1968 a meeting was held in the manager's Hollywood office, and the group decided to dissolve. Les Thompson ended the meeting with a question: "Does that mean we don't hafta practice anymore?" He then went to Texas to enroll in a bulldozer school. A year or two later, the members of the band, with the exception of Kunkel and Barr, decided to try again. A new member from Philadelphia named Jimmie Ibbotson was added on. This time they achieved commercial success, and in 1970 a song called "Mr. Bojangles" became a top ten hit. Sometime prior to 1974, Les Thompson left the band again. In 1977 the group acquired the distinction of being the first American band to tour the Soviet Union. They are still going strong today, having released a new album called Bang! Bang! Bang! in May 1999. [9]
In an attempt to get more information, I sent them a letter, along with copies of the Glaze correspondence. In a follow-up phone call, I spoke with the manager, and he told me that he talked with the two musicians who had been with the band from the beginning. They said that it has been a such long time since they heard from the early members, that they were unable to provide any information as to where they went or what they had been doing. [10]
With nothing else to go, I would say that the musician spoken of by Glaze was probably Leslie Thompson. He was the only one who went to Texas, and he might have stayed there long enough to establish long-term ties with some of the people in that state.
Having gone as far as I could in checking the authenticity of the Glaze letters, the next thing that needs to be done is to cross-check the information contained in them with what we know about William Shelley.
At the time the assassination occurred, Shelley was, according to his testimony, standing on the steps of the Book Depository with Billy Lovelady and Wesley Frazier. [11] The James Altgens photograph of the limousine under fire confirms the presence of Lovelady on the steps but not Shelley or Frazier. About a minute after the assassination, two female employees in the Book Depository came down the stairs and saw Shelley and Lovelady in the back of the building just about in front of the two freight elevators. One lady said, "I believe the President has been shot." Curiously, neither Shelley nor Lovelady said anything in reply. [12] After the two women ran out the back door, Roy Truly and Police Officer Marion Baker rushed in through the front door. They were going up to the roof to search for a gunman. According to Baker's testimony, he saw two white men sitting by the stairs. [13] According to Shelley, he and Lovelady were appointed by Truly to guard the stairs and elevators. [14]
In any reconstruction of what was happening with the stairs and elevators, it is obvious that Shelley and Lovelady must have seen the escape of one of the assassins. About a minute or two after Truly and Baker went up the stairs, a witness on the street saw a man in a dark sportcoat running out the back door. This man was no doubt the same one seen at a fifth floor window standing next to a man armed with a rifle. After the shooting ended, the man in the dark sportcoat took an elevator down to the ground floor, while at the same time Truly and Baker were going up the stairs. As the culprit headed for the back door, he would have had to pass Shelley and Lovelady in order to exit the building. [15]
About a minute or two after the man in the dark sportcoat dashed out the back door, NBC news reporter Robert MacNeil came in through the front door. In a written account of what he saw, he said that he was surprised to see three men, totally oblivious to the chaos outside, standing by a pay phone.
I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw – a man who was telephoning from a pillar in the middle of the room – where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were lit up. I made my call and left. . . . I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. [16]
MacNeil's amazement at the strange placidity of the three men is indicated by the way he repeated this observation for emphasis. The man using the pay phone was quite probably Shelley, for in an affidavit made out that same afternoon, Shelley said, "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." [17]
About a minute or two after MacNeil saw the three calm men - between 12:35 and 12:40 - Oswald had a five-to-ten minute chat with the assistant manager. According to an FBI report of the first interrogation of Oswald in the Dallas homocide office:
OSWALD stated that [at the time of the assassination] he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of BILL SHELLEY, he did not believe that there was going to be any more work that day due to the confusion in the building. [18]
The timing and location of Oswald's departure from the Book Depository correlates exactly with the appearance of a Nash Rambler on Elm Street driven by a dark-skinned man. Between 12:40 and 12:45, Deputy Roger Craig heard a loud whistle and looked up to see Oswald running down the grassy slope in front of the Book Depository. Oswald opened the passenger side door of the Nash Rambler and got in. The car was last seen speeding towards Oak Cliff, where the shooting of Officer Tippit was to occur twenty to thirty minutes later. If Oswald had been talking to Shelley prior to his departure, then there can be no doubt that Shelley had seen him getting away.
Not long after Oswald left the scene, Shelley told Truly that Oswald was missing. (How he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed.) A roll call of warehouse employees was made, and it was determined that Oswald was indeed absent. Truly notified Police Captain Will Fritz, who immediately thought that it was "important to hold that man." [19]
The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it. Assuming that the police really had arrested him and charged him with the assassination, they certainly would have had ample cause. For one thing, they would have known that Shelley was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Secondly, the accused assassin had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave. Thirdly, the police knew about the Nash Rambler story as early as 5:00 in the afternoon, when Roger Craig reported it to them. Finally, Shelley might not have been entirely candid in how he came to realize that Oswald was missing. No doubt Shelley was asked a lot of questions, and it is possible that he was kept in custody until he gave some satisfactory answers. Admittedly, there is no record of Shelley being arrested, but that does not necessarily mean Glaze was wrong. Missing evidence could just as easily be due to the systematic destruction of anything contrary to the official version.
The presence of an agent, or an ex-agent, of the CIA at the Book Depository would explain a great deal regarding how the conspirators managed to get their gunmen on the premises. Let us now look into Shelley's background to see what additional corroboration can be shed on this matter.
According to statements made to the police and to the Warren Commission, Shelley was born in Gunter, Texas in 1925. During World War Two, he worked "a little bit" in defense plants. On October 29, 1945 at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository. Eighteen years later, in 1963, he was holding the position of assistant manager of the "miscellaneous department." [20] By 1975, when Glaze talked to him, he had passed his thirtieth anniversary in the company. Such a long career in one place is confirmed in the listings of the city directories. In 1947 he was listed as a clerk at the Hugh Perry Book Depository (the old name for the Texas School Book Depository), and he had a room at 515 Martinique Avenue. In 1960 he was a department manager; his wife's name was Marie; and they lived in a house on 126 Tatum Avenue. They were still living in that house at the time of the assassination.
Although the facts are few, the picture is clear. Shelley was a simple desk clerk and warehouse man, content to live out his working life under the roof of one company. He certainly did not fit the image of a globetrotting CIA operative, embarking on secret missions with the latest in high tech weaponry. Even if we can assume that he really had been an intelligence officer during World War Two, it does not seem possible that he could have joined the CIA afterwards. The agency did not even come into existence until two years after Shelley got his job at the Book Depository.
It would thus appear that we have an irreconcilable situation; Shelley could not have been in the CIA before his employment at the Book Depository. Yet I believe that a seemingly irresolvable problem might on closer examination yield a solution that brings a deeper understanding of the truth. Let us take a different approach. Let us suppose that the job at the Book Depository was concurrent with a career in the CIA. If we can assume that is true, then the Book Depository itself must have been a front for CIA activities.
While it is commonly acknowledged that the agency has too much influence in national affairs, it is still amazing to find its hand in such a wide diversity of organizations and institutions. These include such entities as labor unions, airlines, college student associations, foundations, law firms, banks, savings and loans, investment firms, travel agencies, police departments, post offices, publishing companies, newspapers, call girl services, and mental health institutions. Considering the far-reaching extent of control over so many different areas in American society, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the CIA would have the moral restraint to make an exception of the Book Depository - provided, of course, that the control of it would further its goals in some way.
If CIA operators had been working inside the building in which the Book Depository was located, they would have not been on unfriendly ground. The property itself was owned by a wealthy, right-wing Texas oilman named D. H. Byrd. He was also a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, which included among its members Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. That Ferrie and Oswald knew each other was proven in a 1993 Frontline special on Oswald, in which former cadets Tony Atzenhoffer and Johnny Ciravola displayed a picture showing Ferrie and Oswald at a cadet campout near New Orleans. What is not so well known is that the two men also knew Colonel Byrd. Atzenhoffer told this author that Byrd was the "head honcho" of the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana and Texas, and that he came to Moissant Airport to give speeches on special occasions, such as orientation sessions for new cadets. [21] Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
Another member of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol who was an associate of the CIA was Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggler who set up the Mena Airport operation in Arkansas in the early 1980's and later got involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was murdered in 1986 by three Colombian hitmen. Seal first got his pilot's license in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1954, when he was sixteen years old. According to a high school friend, Seal was well acquainted with David Ferrie.
One Friday evening while we were in high school, I got a call from Barry, asking if I'd like to fly over to Lacombe with him in the morning, a little town on the north shore across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. We left about 5:30 and flew over to the little airport there and Barry and I get out of the plane, and here's this really weird-looking guy, dressed all in black, sitting in a director's chair on the tarmac, and he's drilling a bunch of Civil Air Patrol guys that are standing in formation in front of him. They were carrying old M-1s. His name was David Ferrie. He was a captain in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. . . . See, Barry was making $400 a week in high school flying for David Ferrie. . . .
On the flight back, Barry shouted over the engine. "That weird looking guy? He's got no hair on his body! It's why he's wearing a wig! Get up close, he's even got fake eyebrows, and fake eyelashes, but . . . that weirdo's a big-time pilot and works with the CIA.
Seal and his friend also talked about the wooden crates that Ferrie and Seal were examining. They contained guns and ammo, Seal explained to his friend, and he would be transporting this cargo on the weekend. Ferrie was paying him $400 a week to fly this stuff. $400 was a great deal of money in the mid-1950's. [22]
If the CIA was using Byrd's chapter of the Civil Air Patrol to transport illegal shipments of guns and ammo, then what could have prevented them from using Byrd's property on the corner of Elm and Houston for the same purpose? Since Dallas was a source of munitions going to New Orleans in the drive to overthrow leftist governments in Central and South America, then a way had to be found to move them secretly. Big, heavy boxes marked "Schoolbooks" would have been a handy way of delivering the goods. Perhaps that was what the "miscellaneous department" of the Book Depository was all about.
Working backwards from the fact that an assassination squad could move freely through a building without any fear of interference, there must have been some link between the building and the clandestine organizations that put together the assassination plot. Such a link would enable the conspirators to set up the ambush safely and securely. It is therefore conceivable that the secret history of the Book Depository could extend far into the past - perhaps even as early as 1945, the last year of World War Two.
1. Warren Report, pp. 140-141, 249.
2. Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to J. Lee Rankin, dated June 16, 1964 (HSCA Doc. 62-109090- 26th unrecorded after 2nd 170). By September 1964 the FBI got fingerprints from sixteen employees. These included Roy Truly himself, his assistant manager William Shelley, and all fourteen warehouse employees. None of the prints obtained matched the unidentified palmprint.
3. Jean Hill, JFK, The Last Dissenting Witness (Pelican Publishing Co., 1992), p. 85.
4. 1H79-80 (Marina Oswald).
5. Letter to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA Doc. 004079). Glaze misdated the letter "12/12/74," for the postmark on the envelope had the year 1977. The true date should have been 12/12/77.
6. Blakey's reply to Elzie Glaze dated January 19, 1978 (HSCA Doc. 004741).
7. Letter by Elzie Dean Glaze to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network, dated June 2, 1989.
8. Harris letter to the author, dated December 15, 1992.
9. Chet Flippo, "Nitty Gritty Pick & Grin" in the October 14, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. Also The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band web page from the Internet.
10. Telephone conversation with John Peets, manager of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, May 12, 1999.
11. 6H328-329 (Shelley).
12. 6H390 (Victoria Adams).
13. 3H263 (Baker).
14. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit) and 6H330 (Shelley). Shelley and Lovelady had been inconsistent regarding their actions during the first minutes after the shooting. An entirely different story has them running out to the street island in front of the building to see what was going on. In an attempt to resolve these discrepanicies, I contacted William Shelley on March 20, 1995 and asked him if he would be willing to answer a few questions. His response was an abrupt no. He then added, "Everything that I have to say on that subject is in the public record. You'll have to go with that."
15. "The Fifth Floor Sniper" in the May 1993 issue of The Third Decade.
16. "Robert MacNeil and the Three Calm Men" in the November 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade.
17. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit).
18. The Warren Report, p. 619.
19. See "The Transplantation of the Texas School Book Depository" in the September 1993 issue of The Third Decade and "411 Elm Street" in the May 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade. Also see Jerry Rose's article "Important to Hold That Man" in the May 1986 issue of The Third Decade.
20. 6H327-328 (Shelley).
21. Telephone conversations with Tony Atzenhoffer, July 11 and August 15, 1998.
22. "Barry & the 'Boys'" by Daniel Hopsicker, Internet file, copyright 1998.
Full Version: Glaze Letters
QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 2 2006, 02:11 AM) 
The following was an article that was published in the May 1999 Issue of the Fourth Decade.
The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate? No, for in Jean Hill's book, The Last Dissenting Witness, a Dallas motorcycle officer, J. B. Marshall, was quoted as saying, "The Feds are tearing our whole department to pieces . . . they tell 'em, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll take your badge.' . . . they've been especially rough on all the guys who were on motorcade duty that day." [3] Still another victim was Marina Oswald, who was told that if she did not cooperate, she would be forced to leave the country. [4] These examples demonstrate a stern resolve to squash even the mildest of troublemakers. Why then should the FBI meekly tolerate a slap in the face from someone at the Book Depository? Did the warehouse manager have some clout that even Hoover had to respect? If so, it is difficult to understand where this clout came from. The innocence of anyone working in that particular building was far from certain in the eyes of suspicious investigators.
Whatever might be said in the ongoing debate concerning the number of bullets whizzing through Dealey Plaza, it is a fact that the Book Depository was a source location. On the premises was at least one hit team, including a leader, a sniper, a radioman, and two or three watchers to secure the escape route. It was also the staging area of the patsy, who had to be controlled and moved around in such a way that he would be in a credible position to take the blame. To keep the risks of exposure to a minimum, the conspirators had to have complete control over the building. How they managed to accomplish this is a question that remains to be answered.
Six years ago I received from Larry Ray Harris a copy of a letter that sheds some light on this issue. Written by a Mr. Glaze to the Alternative Information Network in Austin, Texas on June 2, 1989, this letter mentioned an earlier letter that was sent to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Recently I was able to get a copy of the earlier letter from the National Archives. Through a comparison of the details in both letters, I have been able to produce the following narrative.
In late 1974, while working as a journalist in Dallas, Glaze met a woman who began working for the Book Depository in 1969 - six years after the assassination. (She was no longer working there at the time she spoke to Glaze.) Her supervisor was William Shelley. The company, she said, had a strange way of introducing new employees to their duties. She and another new employee were approached by two men, who produced I.D. wallets and identified themselves as "government agents." They were taken to an empty room and given questionnaires to fill out. These exams were full of oddly irrelevant questions, calling for opinions on various topics of the day, especially social issues. Obediently the two employees wrote out their answers. When they were done, they gave the sheets back, and in the short pause that followed, one of the examiners bluntly asked: "Have you been recruited by the FBI or the CIA?" The two employees were stunned. As ordinary office workers, they were only doing minor clerical tasks at low wages. Why would anyone think that they came from the FBI or the CIA? While it was true that the Book Depository had acquired the notoriety of being the place where Oswald shot the President, still by 1969 that should have been ancient history. Yet even more disturbing were the next questions that came to mind. If the Book Depository was just an insignificant, little company, why would it be attracting the attention of the two biggest intelligence establishments in the country? Furthermore, what was the intrigue that was spurring these "government agents" to hunt down unwanted infiltrators?
Glaze asked the woman if she and her co-worker were the only ones subjected to this kind of treatment. No, they were not the only ones. Background checks on new employees were done as a routine procedure at the Book Depository. After listening to the woman's account, Glaze decided to check it out. He contacted her former supervisor, William Shelley, and asked to meet with him. Shelley agreed to this request and even allowed the reporter to take notes and use a tape recorder. The meeting took place at the Book Depository warehouse near the intersection of Royal Lane and Interstate 35 on the far northwest side of Dallas. (The company had moved from its old location on 411 Elm Street in 1970.) The information that Glaze was gathering must have been extensive, for the two men had numerous meetings together. Yet only a few disclosures are provided in the letters. The most significant one appears in the 1989 letter: "Mr. Shelley claims to have been an intelligence officer during World War II and thereafter joined the CIA." This extraordinary revelation goes far in explaining the mysteries of the Book Depository, and a discussion of its implications will be given later in this article.
Shelley told Glaze that he had been the supervisor of Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination, the Dallas police placed Shelley under arrest and formally charged him with the murder of the President. (No mention was made by Glaze as to why Shelley had been arrested, nor did he say what connection this arrest had with the arrest of Oswald.) The charges against Shelley were soon dropped, and he was released. Since that day, at various times, journalists representing several newspapers and magazines approached him with offers of huge sums of money for his personal account of the assassination. These offers were all turned down. When Glaze tried to get permission to quote him in his own article, Shelley refused and insisted that even his name was not to be printed.
In spite of this setback, Glaze was not discouraged. He went back to the woman and told her that he was doing a story on the Book Depository. He was going to talk to the FBI and possibly get some more information. When the woman heard this, she was absolutely appalled. The very idea that he was writing an article filled her with terror. She told him that if he persisted in his efforts to publicize this story, she would emphatically deny everything she told him. The prospects for an article irretrievably came to an end, and Glaze had no choice but to go home empty-handed.
It was not long after his departure that he felt obliged to speak to the woman again. What he intended to say is not mentioned in his letters, but perhaps he wanted to make an apology. In any case, it was only a few hours after he last saw her that he decided to see her again.
When he arrived at her apartment, he was surprised to find it totally empty. It looked as if no one had ever lived there. Glaze knew that she had a husband and a child, and they too were gone. The mystified reporter could not understand how three people could have moved away so quickly. The next day he went to the woman's place of employment and found out that she never showed up for work, and no one knew where she was. Later inquiries revealed that she did not even stop by to pick up her final paycheck. In his quest to find them, the most promising lead Glaze had was the fact that the husband had once been a musician in "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band." Yet even this fortuitous bit of information got him nowhere. Not one acquaintance or associate had any idea where they could have gone.
About the same time as he was conducting his search, Glaze went to get his interview notes and tapes and found that they had inexplicably disappeared. Then one day, he heard a commotion outside his apartment. He looked out the window and saw an estimated twenty Dallas policemen pulled up in front. They lingered for nearly an hour, shouting in a highly threatening manner and pointing their pistols at his window. Frightened for his life, he immediately left the city.
On December 12, 1977, while working as a reporter for the Avalanche Journal in Lubbock, Texas, he sent a letter to the HSCA. He wrote that he had some information regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and gave a brief sketch of his investigation of the Book Depository. In the closing paragraphs of his letter, he wrote, "I must admit that my own fear of getting involved in the investigation has prevented me from writing you earlier. I apologize." [5]
Whether or not the HSCA had taken an interest in this matter is not known. The only reply it sent was a form letter, which read: "Dear Ms. Glaze [The HSCA had mistakenly thought he was a woman], Thank you for your letter. It has been directed to the Deputy Chief Counsel in charge of the investigation for his review. Your interest in the work of our Committee is appreciated. Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director." [6]
Eleven years later, Glaze wrote a letter to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network. [7] He also sent them a copy of the reply that he got from Blakey. Somehow a copy of both these letters ended up in the hands of Larry Ray Harris. In his own letter to me, Harris wrote: "I don't recall its origins with clarity, but I think it was given to me by a professor at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas. Regardless, it ended up in my files around the time we opened the JFK Center in 1989. I don't know that anyone has ever looked into it. It could be a hoax, but sounds sincere. It would be easy to verify (1) if a reporter named Glaze has ever worked for the Lubbock newspaper; (2) if a journalist named Glaze was living in Dallas in 1974/1975; and (3) if there is/was an 'Alternative Information Network' in Austin, or if Kellner and Morrow are real persons and remember receiving the letter. If it is true that Shelley was affiliated in some way with CIA or U.S. Intelligence, that would be a disturbing and potentially significant development." [8]
When I first began my inquiry, I was hampered by a minor problem. The signature at the bottom of the letter was blacked out. Fortunately the salutation "Dear Ms. Glaze" on the HSCA letter was not. I thus had a clue that the first name must be some gender neutral type such as Robin or Terry. In January 1993, I called up the Avalanche Journal and asked for Mr. Glaze. No one by that name was currently employed. Neither were there any records of a Glaze in the files of the personnel department. Yet the absence of records did not necessarily mean he never worked there; it was a regular practice to discard the records of former employees after three years. Was there anyone who had been around long enough to remember a journalist named Glaze? The personnel director said that she had been with the paper for about as long as anyone, since 1982, and she never knew anyone by that name.
I next tried to reach either Kellner or Morrow at the Alternative Information Network. Kellner was the one who took my call. I told him who I was and that I had a letter addressed to him and his partner regarding the Kennedy assassination. After I read the contents, Kellner said he never got it. It was odd, he said, that I should have a letter in which he was named as a recipient but he had never seen it. He asked that a copy be sent to his home - not to the business - and after he read it, he would check into it. Two weeks later I made a follow-up phone call and asked Kellner if he found out anything. He said that he showed the letter to Morrow, who said that he vaguely remembered it but could not give any additional information regarding the contents or the author who wrote it.
That was as far as I got in 1993. In February 1999, a researcher named Steve Gaal checked the National Archives web site and found that someone named Glaze had written to the HSCA. That was when I finally had the full name of the reporter: Elzie Dean Glaze. A search of the Internet revealed that a man with this same name has a current e-mail address in Austin, Texas. I sent two messages to that address, but so far I received no response.
The next lead that had to be tracked down was the identity of the man who had been a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The band started out in 1966 as a jug band in Long Beach, California. They became known for their unique blend of country western and rock and roll. Among the original musicians were John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr, Leslie Thompson, and Jimmie Fadden. After appearing in a movie calledPaint Your Wagon, the band went through some hard times. In 1968 a meeting was held in the manager's Hollywood office, and the group decided to dissolve. Les Thompson ended the meeting with a question: "Does that mean we don't hafta practice anymore?" He then went to Texas to enroll in a bulldozer school. A year or two later, the members of the band, with the exception of Kunkel and Barr, decided to try again. A new member from Philadelphia named Jimmie Ibbotson was added on. This time they achieved commercial success, and in 1970 a song called "Mr. Bojangles" became a top ten hit. Sometime prior to 1974, Les Thompson left the band again. In 1977 the group acquired the distinction of being the first American band to tour the Soviet Union. They are still going strong today, having released a new album called Bang! Bang! Bang! in May 1999. [9]
In an attempt to get more information, I sent them a letter, along with copies of the Glaze correspondence. In a follow-up phone call, I spoke with the manager, and he told me that he talked with the two musicians who had been with the band from the beginning. They said that it has been a such long time since they heard from the early members, that they were unable to provide any information as to where they went or what they had been doing. [10]
With nothing else to go, I would say that the musician spoken of by Glaze was probably Leslie Thompson. He was the only one who went to Texas, and he might have stayed there long enough to establish long-term ties with some of the people in that state.
Having gone as far as I could in checking the authenticity of the Glaze letters, the next thing that needs to be done is to cross-check the information contained in them with what we know about William Shelley.
At the time the assassination occurred, Shelley was, according to his testimony, standing on the steps of the Book Depository with Billy Lovelady and Wesley Frazier. [11] The James Altgens photograph of the limousine under fire confirms the presence of Lovelady on the steps but not Shelley or Frazier. About a minute after the assassination, two female employees in the Book Depository came down the stairs and saw Shelley and Lovelady in the back of the building just about in front of the two freight elevators. One lady said, "I believe the President has been shot." Curiously, neither Shelley nor Lovelady said anything in reply. [12] After the two women ran out the back door, Roy Truly and Police Officer Marion Baker rushed in through the front door. They were going up to the roof to search for a gunman. According to Baker's testimony, he saw two white men sitting by the stairs. [13] According to Shelley, he and Lovelady were appointed by Truly to guard the stairs and elevators. [14]
In any reconstruction of what was happening with the stairs and elevators, it is obvious that Shelley and Lovelady must have seen the escape of one of the assassins. About a minute or two after Truly and Baker went up the stairs, a witness on the street saw a man in a dark sportcoat running out the back door. This man was no doubt the same one seen at a fifth floor window standing next to a man armed with a rifle. After the shooting ended, the man in the dark sportcoat took an elevator down to the ground floor, while at the same time Truly and Baker were going up the stairs. As the culprit headed for the back door, he would have had to pass Shelley and Lovelady in order to exit the building. [15]
About a minute or two after the man in the dark sportcoat dashed out the back door, NBC news reporter Robert MacNeil came in through the front door. In a written account of what he saw, he said that he was surprised to see three men, totally oblivious to the chaos outside, standing by a pay phone.
I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw – a man who was telephoning from a pillar in the middle of the room – where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were lit up. I made my call and left. . . . I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. [16]
MacNeil's amazement at the strange placidity of the three men is indicated by the way he repeated this observation for emphasis. The man using the pay phone was quite probably Shelley, for in an affidavit made out that same afternoon, Shelley said, "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." [17]
About a minute or two after MacNeil saw the three calm men - between 12:35 and 12:40 - Oswald had a five-to-ten minute chat with the assistant manager. According to an FBI report of the first interrogation of Oswald in the Dallas homocide office:
OSWALD stated that [at the time of the assassination] he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of BILL SHELLEY, he did not believe that there was going to be any more work that day due to the confusion in the building. [18]
The timing and location of Oswald's departure from the Book Depository correlates exactly with the appearance of a Nash Rambler on Elm Street driven by a dark-skinned man. Between 12:40 and 12:45, Deputy Roger Craig heard a loud whistle and looked up to see Oswald running down the grassy slope in front of the Book Depository. Oswald opened the passenger side door of the Nash Rambler and got in. The car was last seen speeding towards Oak Cliff, where the shooting of Officer Tippit was to occur twenty to thirty minutes later. If Oswald had been talking to Shelley prior to his departure, then there can be no doubt that Shelley had seen him getting away.
Not long after Oswald left the scene, Shelley told Truly that Oswald was missing. (How he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed.) A roll call of warehouse employees was made, and it was determined that Oswald was indeed absent. Truly notified Police Captain Will Fritz, who immediately thought that it was "important to hold that man." [19]
The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it. Assuming that the police really had arrested him and charged him with the assassination, they certainly would have had ample cause. For one thing, they would have known that Shelley was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Secondly, the accused assassin had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave. Thirdly, the police knew about the Nash Rambler story as early as 5:00 in the afternoon, when Roger Craig reported it to them. Finally, Shelley might not have been entirely candid in how he came to realize that Oswald was missing. No doubt Shelley was asked a lot of questions, and it is possible that he was kept in custody until he gave some satisfactory answers. Admittedly, there is no record of Shelley being arrested, but that does not necessarily mean Glaze was wrong. Missing evidence could just as easily be due to the systematic destruction of anything contrary to the official version.
The presence of an agent, or an ex-agent, of the CIA at the Book Depository would explain a great deal regarding how the conspirators managed to get their gunmen on the premises. Let us now look into Shelley's background to see what additional corroboration can be shed on this matter.
According to statements made to the police and to the Warren Commission, Shelley was born in Gunter, Texas in 1925. During World War Two, he worked "a little bit" in defense plants. On October 29, 1945 at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository. Eighteen years later, in 1963, he was holding the position of assistant manager of the "miscellaneous department." [20] By 1975, when Glaze talked to him, he had passed his thirtieth anniversary in the company. Such a long career in one place is confirmed in the listings of the city directories. In 1947 he was listed as a clerk at the Hugh Perry Book Depository (the old name for the Texas School Book Depository), and he had a room at 515 Martinique Avenue. In 1960 he was a department manager; his wife's name was Marie; and they lived in a house on 126 Tatum Avenue. They were still living in that house at the time of the assassination.
Although the facts are few, the picture is clear. Shelley was a simple desk clerk and warehouse man, content to live out his working life under the roof of one company. He certainly did not fit the image of a globetrotting CIA operative, embarking on secret missions with the latest in high tech weaponry. Even if we can assume that he really had been an intelligence officer during World War Two, it does not seem possible that he could have joined the CIA afterwards. The agency did not even come into existence until two years after Shelley got his job at the Book Depository.
It would thus appear that we have an irreconcilable situation; Shelley could not have been in the CIA before his employment at the Book Depository. Yet I believe that a seemingly irresolvable problem might on closer examination yield a solution that brings a deeper understanding of the truth. Let us take a different approach. Let us suppose that the job at the Book Depository was concurrent with a career in the CIA. If we can assume that is true, then the Book Depository itself must have been a front for CIA activities.
While it is commonly acknowledged that the agency has too much influence in national affairs, it is still amazing to find its hand in such a wide diversity of organizations and institutions. These include such entities as labor unions, airlines, college student associations, foundations, law firms, banks, savings and loans, investment firms, travel agencies, police departments, post offices, publishing companies, newspapers, call girl services, and mental health institutions. Considering the far-reaching extent of control over so many different areas in American society, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the CIA would have the moral restraint to make an exception of the Book Depository - provided, of course, that the control of it would further its goals in some way.
If CIA operators had been working inside the building in which the Book Depository was located, they would have not been on unfriendly ground. The property itself was owned by a wealthy, right-wing Texas oilman named D. H. Byrd. He was also a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, which included among its members Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. That Ferrie and Oswald knew each other was proven in a 1993 Frontline special on Oswald, in which former cadets Tony Atzenhoffer and Johnny Ciravola displayed a picture showing Ferrie and Oswald at a cadet campout near New Orleans. What is not so well known is that the two men also knew Colonel Byrd. Atzenhoffer told this author that Byrd was the "head honcho" of the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana and Texas, and that he came to Moissant Airport to give speeches on special occasions, such as orientation sessions for new cadets. [21] Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
Another member of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol who was an associate of the CIA was Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggler who set up the Mena Airport operation in Arkansas in the early 1980's and later got involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was murdered in 1986 by three Colombian hitmen. Seal first got his pilot's license in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1954, when he was sixteen years old. According to a high school friend, Seal was well acquainted with David Ferrie.
One Friday evening while we were in high school, I got a call from Barry, asking if I'd like to fly over to Lacombe with him in the morning, a little town on the north shore across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. We left about 5:30 and flew over to the little airport there and Barry and I get out of the plane, and here's this really weird-looking guy, dressed all in black, sitting in a director's chair on the tarmac, and he's drilling a bunch of Civil Air Patrol guys that are standing in formation in front of him. They were carrying old M-1s. His name was David Ferrie. He was a captain in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. . . . See, Barry was making $400 a week in high school flying for David Ferrie. . . .
On the flight back, Barry shouted over the engine. "That weird looking guy? He's got no hair on his body! It's why he's wearing a wig! Get up close, he's even got fake eyebrows, and fake eyelashes, but . . . that weirdo's a big-time pilot and works with the CIA.
Seal and his friend also talked about the wooden crates that Ferrie and Seal were examining. They contained guns and ammo, Seal explained to his friend, and he would be transporting this cargo on the weekend. Ferrie was paying him $400 a week to fly this stuff. $400 was a great deal of money in the mid-1950's. [22]
If the CIA was using Byrd's chapter of the Civil Air Patrol to transport illegal shipments of guns and ammo, then what could have prevented them from using Byrd's property on the corner of Elm and Houston for the same purpose? Since Dallas was a source of munitions going to New Orleans in the drive to overthrow leftist governments in Central and South America, then a way had to be found to move them secretly. Big, heavy boxes marked "Schoolbooks" would have been a handy way of delivering the goods. Perhaps that was what the "miscellaneous department" of the Book Depository was all about.
Working backwards from the fact that an assassination squad could move freely through a building without any fear of interference, there must have been some link between the building and the clandestine organizations that put together the assassination plot. Such a link would enable the conspirators to set up the ambush safely and securely. It is therefore conceivable that the secret history of the Book Depository could extend far into the past - perhaps even as early as 1945, the last year of World War Two.
1. Warren Report, pp. 140-141, 249.
2. Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to J. Lee Rankin, dated June 16, 1964 (HSCA Doc. 62-109090- 26th unrecorded after 2nd 170). By September 1964 the FBI got fingerprints from sixteen employees. These included Roy Truly himself, his assistant manager William Shelley, and all fourteen warehouse employees. None of the prints obtained matched the unidentified palmprint.
3. Jean Hill, JFK, The Last Dissenting Witness (Pelican Publishing Co., 1992), p. 85.
4. 1H79-80 (Marina Oswald).
5. Letter to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA Doc. 004079). Glaze misdated the letter "12/12/74," for the postmark on the envelope had the year 1977. The true date should have been 12/12/77.
6. Blakey's reply to Elzie Glaze dated January 19, 1978 (HSCA Doc. 004741).
7. Letter by Elzie Dean Glaze to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network, dated June 2, 1989.
8. Harris letter to the author, dated December 15, 1992.
9. Chet Flippo, "Nitty Gritty Pick & Grin" in the October 14, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. Also The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band web page from the Internet.
10. Telephone conversation with John Peets, manager of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, May 12, 1999.
11. 6H328-329 (Shelley).
12. 6H390 (Victoria Adams).
13. 3H263 (Baker).
14. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit) and 6H330 (Shelley). Shelley and Lovelady had been inconsistent regarding their actions during the first minutes after the shooting. An entirely different story has them running out to the street island in front of the building to see what was going on. In an attempt to resolve these discrepanicies, I contacted William Shelley on March 20, 1995 and asked him if he would be willing to answer a few questions. His response was an abrupt no. He then added, "Everything that I have to say on that subject is in the public record. You'll have to go with that."
15. "The Fifth Floor Sniper" in the May 1993 issue of The Third Decade.
16. "Robert MacNeil and the Three Calm Men" in the November 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade.
17. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit).
18. The Warren Report, p. 619.
19. See "The Transplantation of the Texas School Book Depository" in the September 1993 issue of The Third Decade and "411 Elm Street" in the May 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade. Also see Jerry Rose's article "Important to Hold That Man" in the May 1986 issue of The Third Decade.
20. 6H327-328 (Shelley).
21. Telephone conversations with Tony Atzenhoffer, July 11 and August 15, 1998.
22. "Barry & the 'Boys'" by Daniel Hopsicker, Internet file, copyright 1998.
The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate? No, for in Jean Hill's book, The Last Dissenting Witness, a Dallas motorcycle officer, J. B. Marshall, was quoted as saying, "The Feds are tearing our whole department to pieces . . . they tell 'em, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll take your badge.' . . . they've been especially rough on all the guys who were on motorcade duty that day." [3] Still another victim was Marina Oswald, who was told that if she did not cooperate, she would be forced to leave the country. [4] These examples demonstrate a stern resolve to squash even the mildest of troublemakers. Why then should the FBI meekly tolerate a slap in the face from someone at the Book Depository? Did the warehouse manager have some clout that even Hoover had to respect? If so, it is difficult to understand where this clout came from. The innocence of anyone working in that particular building was far from certain in the eyes of suspicious investigators.
Whatever might be said in the ongoing debate concerning the number of bullets whizzing through Dealey Plaza, it is a fact that the Book Depository was a source location. On the premises was at least one hit team, including a leader, a sniper, a radioman, and two or three watchers to secure the escape route. It was also the staging area of the patsy, who had to be controlled and moved around in such a way that he would be in a credible position to take the blame. To keep the risks of exposure to a minimum, the conspirators had to have complete control over the building. How they managed to accomplish this is a question that remains to be answered.
Six years ago I received from Larry Ray Harris a copy of a letter that sheds some light on this issue. Written by a Mr. Glaze to the Alternative Information Network in Austin, Texas on June 2, 1989, this letter mentioned an earlier letter that was sent to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Recently I was able to get a copy of the earlier letter from the National Archives. Through a comparison of the details in both letters, I have been able to produce the following narrative.
In late 1974, while working as a journalist in Dallas, Glaze met a woman who began working for the Book Depository in 1969 - six years after the assassination. (She was no longer working there at the time she spoke to Glaze.) Her supervisor was William Shelley. The company, she said, had a strange way of introducing new employees to their duties. She and another new employee were approached by two men, who produced I.D. wallets and identified themselves as "government agents." They were taken to an empty room and given questionnaires to fill out. These exams were full of oddly irrelevant questions, calling for opinions on various topics of the day, especially social issues. Obediently the two employees wrote out their answers. When they were done, they gave the sheets back, and in the short pause that followed, one of the examiners bluntly asked: "Have you been recruited by the FBI or the CIA?" The two employees were stunned. As ordinary office workers, they were only doing minor clerical tasks at low wages. Why would anyone think that they came from the FBI or the CIA? While it was true that the Book Depository had acquired the notoriety of being the place where Oswald shot the President, still by 1969 that should have been ancient history. Yet even more disturbing were the next questions that came to mind. If the Book Depository was just an insignificant, little company, why would it be attracting the attention of the two biggest intelligence establishments in the country? Furthermore, what was the intrigue that was spurring these "government agents" to hunt down unwanted infiltrators?
Glaze asked the woman if she and her co-worker were the only ones subjected to this kind of treatment. No, they were not the only ones. Background checks on new employees were done as a routine procedure at the Book Depository. After listening to the woman's account, Glaze decided to check it out. He contacted her former supervisor, William Shelley, and asked to meet with him. Shelley agreed to this request and even allowed the reporter to take notes and use a tape recorder. The meeting took place at the Book Depository warehouse near the intersection of Royal Lane and Interstate 35 on the far northwest side of Dallas. (The company had moved from its old location on 411 Elm Street in 1970.) The information that Glaze was gathering must have been extensive, for the two men had numerous meetings together. Yet only a few disclosures are provided in the letters. The most significant one appears in the 1989 letter: "Mr. Shelley claims to have been an intelligence officer during World War II and thereafter joined the CIA." This extraordinary revelation goes far in explaining the mysteries of the Book Depository, and a discussion of its implications will be given later in this article.
Shelley told Glaze that he had been the supervisor of Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination, the Dallas police placed Shelley under arrest and formally charged him with the murder of the President. (No mention was made by Glaze as to why Shelley had been arrested, nor did he say what connection this arrest had with the arrest of Oswald.) The charges against Shelley were soon dropped, and he was released. Since that day, at various times, journalists representing several newspapers and magazines approached him with offers of huge sums of money for his personal account of the assassination. These offers were all turned down. When Glaze tried to get permission to quote him in his own article, Shelley refused and insisted that even his name was not to be printed.
In spite of this setback, Glaze was not discouraged. He went back to the woman and told her that he was doing a story on the Book Depository. He was going to talk to the FBI and possibly get some more information. When the woman heard this, she was absolutely appalled. The very idea that he was writing an article filled her with terror. She told him that if he persisted in his efforts to publicize this story, she would emphatically deny everything she told him. The prospects for an article irretrievably came to an end, and Glaze had no choice but to go home empty-handed.
It was not long after his departure that he felt obliged to speak to the woman again. What he intended to say is not mentioned in his letters, but perhaps he wanted to make an apology. In any case, it was only a few hours after he last saw her that he decided to see her again.
When he arrived at her apartment, he was surprised to find it totally empty. It looked as if no one had ever lived there. Glaze knew that she had a husband and a child, and they too were gone. The mystified reporter could not understand how three people could have moved away so quickly. The next day he went to the woman's place of employment and found out that she never showed up for work, and no one knew where she was. Later inquiries revealed that she did not even stop by to pick up her final paycheck. In his quest to find them, the most promising lead Glaze had was the fact that the husband had once been a musician in "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band." Yet even this fortuitous bit of information got him nowhere. Not one acquaintance or associate had any idea where they could have gone.
About the same time as he was conducting his search, Glaze went to get his interview notes and tapes and found that they had inexplicably disappeared. Then one day, he heard a commotion outside his apartment. He looked out the window and saw an estimated twenty Dallas policemen pulled up in front. They lingered for nearly an hour, shouting in a highly threatening manner and pointing their pistols at his window. Frightened for his life, he immediately left the city.
On December 12, 1977, while working as a reporter for the Avalanche Journal in Lubbock, Texas, he sent a letter to the HSCA. He wrote that he had some information regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and gave a brief sketch of his investigation of the Book Depository. In the closing paragraphs of his letter, he wrote, "I must admit that my own fear of getting involved in the investigation has prevented me from writing you earlier. I apologize." [5]
Whether or not the HSCA had taken an interest in this matter is not known. The only reply it sent was a form letter, which read: "Dear Ms. Glaze [The HSCA had mistakenly thought he was a woman], Thank you for your letter. It has been directed to the Deputy Chief Counsel in charge of the investigation for his review. Your interest in the work of our Committee is appreciated. Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director." [6]
Eleven years later, Glaze wrote a letter to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network. [7] He also sent them a copy of the reply that he got from Blakey. Somehow a copy of both these letters ended up in the hands of Larry Ray Harris. In his own letter to me, Harris wrote: "I don't recall its origins with clarity, but I think it was given to me by a professor at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas. Regardless, it ended up in my files around the time we opened the JFK Center in 1989. I don't know that anyone has ever looked into it. It could be a hoax, but sounds sincere. It would be easy to verify (1) if a reporter named Glaze has ever worked for the Lubbock newspaper; (2) if a journalist named Glaze was living in Dallas in 1974/1975; and (3) if there is/was an 'Alternative Information Network' in Austin, or if Kellner and Morrow are real persons and remember receiving the letter. If it is true that Shelley was affiliated in some way with CIA or U.S. Intelligence, that would be a disturbing and potentially significant development." [8]
When I first began my inquiry, I was hampered by a minor problem. The signature at the bottom of the letter was blacked out. Fortunately the salutation "Dear Ms. Glaze" on the HSCA letter was not. I thus had a clue that the first name must be some gender neutral type such as Robin or Terry. In January 1993, I called up the Avalanche Journal and asked for Mr. Glaze. No one by that name was currently employed. Neither were there any records of a Glaze in the files of the personnel department. Yet the absence of records did not necessarily mean he never worked there; it was a regular practice to discard the records of former employees after three years. Was there anyone who had been around long enough to remember a journalist named Glaze? The personnel director said that she had been with the paper for about as long as anyone, since 1982, and she never knew anyone by that name.
I next tried to reach either Kellner or Morrow at the Alternative Information Network. Kellner was the one who took my call. I told him who I was and that I had a letter addressed to him and his partner regarding the Kennedy assassination. After I read the contents, Kellner said he never got it. It was odd, he said, that I should have a letter in which he was named as a recipient but he had never seen it. He asked that a copy be sent to his home - not to the business - and after he read it, he would check into it. Two weeks later I made a follow-up phone call and asked Kellner if he found out anything. He said that he showed the letter to Morrow, who said that he vaguely remembered it but could not give any additional information regarding the contents or the author who wrote it.
That was as far as I got in 1993. In February 1999, a researcher named Steve Gaal checked the National Archives web site and found that someone named Glaze had written to the HSCA. That was when I finally had the full name of the reporter: Elzie Dean Glaze. A search of the Internet revealed that a man with this same name has a current e-mail address in Austin, Texas. I sent two messages to that address, but so far I received no response.
The next lead that had to be tracked down was the identity of the man who had been a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The band started out in 1966 as a jug band in Long Beach, California. They became known for their unique blend of country western and rock and roll. Among the original musicians were John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr, Leslie Thompson, and Jimmie Fadden. After appearing in a movie calledPaint Your Wagon, the band went through some hard times. In 1968 a meeting was held in the manager's Hollywood office, and the group decided to dissolve. Les Thompson ended the meeting with a question: "Does that mean we don't hafta practice anymore?" He then went to Texas to enroll in a bulldozer school. A year or two later, the members of the band, with the exception of Kunkel and Barr, decided to try again. A new member from Philadelphia named Jimmie Ibbotson was added on. This time they achieved commercial success, and in 1970 a song called "Mr. Bojangles" became a top ten hit. Sometime prior to 1974, Les Thompson left the band again. In 1977 the group acquired the distinction of being the first American band to tour the Soviet Union. They are still going strong today, having released a new album called Bang! Bang! Bang! in May 1999. [9]
In an attempt to get more information, I sent them a letter, along with copies of the Glaze correspondence. In a follow-up phone call, I spoke with the manager, and he told me that he talked with the two musicians who had been with the band from the beginning. They said that it has been a such long time since they heard from the early members, that they were unable to provide any information as to where they went or what they had been doing. [10]
With nothing else to go, I would say that the musician spoken of by Glaze was probably Leslie Thompson. He was the only one who went to Texas, and he might have stayed there long enough to establish long-term ties with some of the people in that state.
Having gone as far as I could in checking the authenticity of the Glaze letters, the next thing that needs to be done is to cross-check the information contained in them with what we know about William Shelley.
At the time the assassination occurred, Shelley was, according to his testimony, standing on the steps of the Book Depository with Billy Lovelady and Wesley Frazier. [11] The James Altgens photograph of the limousine under fire confirms the presence of Lovelady on the steps but not Shelley or Frazier. About a minute after the assassination, two female employees in the Book Depository came down the stairs and saw Shelley and Lovelady in the back of the building just about in front of the two freight elevators. One lady said, "I believe the President has been shot." Curiously, neither Shelley nor Lovelady said anything in reply. [12] After the two women ran out the back door, Roy Truly and Police Officer Marion Baker rushed in through the front door. They were going up to the roof to search for a gunman. According to Baker's testimony, he saw two white men sitting by the stairs. [13] According to Shelley, he and Lovelady were appointed by Truly to guard the stairs and elevators. [14]
In any reconstruction of what was happening with the stairs and elevators, it is obvious that Shelley and Lovelady must have seen the escape of one of the assassins. About a minute or two after Truly and Baker went up the stairs, a witness on the street saw a man in a dark sportcoat running out the back door. This man was no doubt the same one seen at a fifth floor window standing next to a man armed with a rifle. After the shooting ended, the man in the dark sportcoat took an elevator down to the ground floor, while at the same time Truly and Baker were going up the stairs. As the culprit headed for the back door, he would have had to pass Shelley and Lovelady in order to exit the building. [15]
About a minute or two after the man in the dark sportcoat dashed out the back door, NBC news reporter Robert MacNeil came in through the front door. In a written account of what he saw, he said that he was surprised to see three men, totally oblivious to the chaos outside, standing by a pay phone.
I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw – a man who was telephoning from a pillar in the middle of the room – where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were lit up. I made my call and left. . . . I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. [16]
MacNeil's amazement at the strange placidity of the three men is indicated by the way he repeated this observation for emphasis. The man using the pay phone was quite probably Shelley, for in an affidavit made out that same afternoon, Shelley said, "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." [17]
About a minute or two after MacNeil saw the three calm men - between 12:35 and 12:40 - Oswald had a five-to-ten minute chat with the assistant manager. According to an FBI report of the first interrogation of Oswald in the Dallas homocide office:
OSWALD stated that [at the time of the assassination] he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of BILL SHELLEY, he did not believe that there was going to be any more work that day due to the confusion in the building. [18]
The timing and location of Oswald's departure from the Book Depository correlates exactly with the appearance of a Nash Rambler on Elm Street driven by a dark-skinned man. Between 12:40 and 12:45, Deputy Roger Craig heard a loud whistle and looked up to see Oswald running down the grassy slope in front of the Book Depository. Oswald opened the passenger side door of the Nash Rambler and got in. The car was last seen speeding towards Oak Cliff, where the shooting of Officer Tippit was to occur twenty to thirty minutes later. If Oswald had been talking to Shelley prior to his departure, then there can be no doubt that Shelley had seen him getting away.
Not long after Oswald left the scene, Shelley told Truly that Oswald was missing. (How he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed.) A roll call of warehouse employees was made, and it was determined that Oswald was indeed absent. Truly notified Police Captain Will Fritz, who immediately thought that it was "important to hold that man." [19]
The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it. Assuming that the police really had arrested him and charged him with the assassination, they certainly would have had ample cause. For one thing, they would have known that Shelley was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Secondly, the accused assassin had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave. Thirdly, the police knew about the Nash Rambler story as early as 5:00 in the afternoon, when Roger Craig reported it to them. Finally, Shelley might not have been entirely candid in how he came to realize that Oswald was missing. No doubt Shelley was asked a lot of questions, and it is possible that he was kept in custody until he gave some satisfactory answers. Admittedly, there is no record of Shelley being arrested, but that does not necessarily mean Glaze was wrong. Missing evidence could just as easily be due to the systematic destruction of anything contrary to the official version.
The presence of an agent, or an ex-agent, of the CIA at the Book Depository would explain a great deal regarding how the conspirators managed to get their gunmen on the premises. Let us now look into Shelley's background to see what additional corroboration can be shed on this matter.
According to statements made to the police and to the Warren Commission, Shelley was born in Gunter, Texas in 1925. During World War Two, he worked "a little bit" in defense plants. On October 29, 1945 at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository. Eighteen years later, in 1963, he was holding the position of assistant manager of the "miscellaneous department." [20] By 1975, when Glaze talked to him, he had passed his thirtieth anniversary in the company. Such a long career in one place is confirmed in the listings of the city directories. In 1947 he was listed as a clerk at the Hugh Perry Book Depository (the old name for the Texas School Book Depository), and he had a room at 515 Martinique Avenue. In 1960 he was a department manager; his wife's name was Marie; and they lived in a house on 126 Tatum Avenue. They were still living in that house at the time of the assassination.
Although the facts are few, the picture is clear. Shelley was a simple desk clerk and warehouse man, content to live out his working life under the roof of one company. He certainly did not fit the image of a globetrotting CIA operative, embarking on secret missions with the latest in high tech weaponry. Even if we can assume that he really had been an intelligence officer during World War Two, it does not seem possible that he could have joined the CIA afterwards. The agency did not even come into existence until two years after Shelley got his job at the Book Depository.
It would thus appear that we have an irreconcilable situation; Shelley could not have been in the CIA before his employment at the Book Depository. Yet I believe that a seemingly irresolvable problem might on closer examination yield a solution that brings a deeper understanding of the truth. Let us take a different approach. Let us suppose that the job at the Book Depository was concurrent with a career in the CIA. If we can assume that is true, then the Book Depository itself must have been a front for CIA activities.
While it is commonly acknowledged that the agency has too much influence in national affairs, it is still amazing to find its hand in such a wide diversity of organizations and institutions. These include such entities as labor unions, airlines, college student associations, foundations, law firms, banks, savings and loans, investment firms, travel agencies, police departments, post offices, publishing companies, newspapers, call girl services, and mental health institutions. Considering the far-reaching extent of control over so many different areas in American society, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the CIA would have the moral restraint to make an exception of the Book Depository - provided, of course, that the control of it would further its goals in some way.
If CIA operators had been working inside the building in which the Book Depository was located, they would have not been on unfriendly ground. The property itself was owned by a wealthy, right-wing Texas oilman named D. H. Byrd. He was also a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, which included among its members Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. That Ferrie and Oswald knew each other was proven in a 1993 Frontline special on Oswald, in which former cadets Tony Atzenhoffer and Johnny Ciravola displayed a picture showing Ferrie and Oswald at a cadet campout near New Orleans. What is not so well known is that the two men also knew Colonel Byrd. Atzenhoffer told this author that Byrd was the "head honcho" of the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana and Texas, and that he came to Moissant Airport to give speeches on special occasions, such as orientation sessions for new cadets. [21] Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
Another member of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol who was an associate of the CIA was Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggler who set up the Mena Airport operation in Arkansas in the early 1980's and later got involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was murdered in 1986 by three Colombian hitmen. Seal first got his pilot's license in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1954, when he was sixteen years old. According to a high school friend, Seal was well acquainted with David Ferrie.
One Friday evening while we were in high school, I got a call from Barry, asking if I'd like to fly over to Lacombe with him in the morning, a little town on the north shore across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. We left about 5:30 and flew over to the little airport there and Barry and I get out of the plane, and here's this really weird-looking guy, dressed all in black, sitting in a director's chair on the tarmac, and he's drilling a bunch of Civil Air Patrol guys that are standing in formation in front of him. They were carrying old M-1s. His name was David Ferrie. He was a captain in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. . . . See, Barry was making $400 a week in high school flying for David Ferrie. . . .
On the flight back, Barry shouted over the engine. "That weird looking guy? He's got no hair on his body! It's why he's wearing a wig! Get up close, he's even got fake eyebrows, and fake eyelashes, but . . . that weirdo's a big-time pilot and works with the CIA.
Seal and his friend also talked about the wooden crates that Ferrie and Seal were examining. They contained guns and ammo, Seal explained to his friend, and he would be transporting this cargo on the weekend. Ferrie was paying him $400 a week to fly this stuff. $400 was a great deal of money in the mid-1950's. [22]
If the CIA was using Byrd's chapter of the Civil Air Patrol to transport illegal shipments of guns and ammo, then what could have prevented them from using Byrd's property on the corner of Elm and Houston for the same purpose? Since Dallas was a source of munitions going to New Orleans in the drive to overthrow leftist governments in Central and South America, then a way had to be found to move them secretly. Big, heavy boxes marked "Schoolbooks" would have been a handy way of delivering the goods. Perhaps that was what the "miscellaneous department" of the Book Depository was all about.
Working backwards from the fact that an assassination squad could move freely through a building without any fear of interference, there must have been some link between the building and the clandestine organizations that put together the assassination plot. Such a link would enable the conspirators to set up the ambush safely and securely. It is therefore conceivable that the secret history of the Book Depository could extend far into the past - perhaps even as early as 1945, the last year of World War Two.
1. Warren Report, pp. 140-141, 249.
2. Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to J. Lee Rankin, dated June 16, 1964 (HSCA Doc. 62-109090- 26th unrecorded after 2nd 170). By September 1964 the FBI got fingerprints from sixteen employees. These included Roy Truly himself, his assistant manager William Shelley, and all fourteen warehouse employees. None of the prints obtained matched the unidentified palmprint.
3. Jean Hill, JFK, The Last Dissenting Witness (Pelican Publishing Co., 1992), p. 85.
4. 1H79-80 (Marina Oswald).
5. Letter to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA Doc. 004079). Glaze misdated the letter "12/12/74," for the postmark on the envelope had the year 1977. The true date should have been 12/12/77.
6. Blakey's reply to Elzie Glaze dated January 19, 1978 (HSCA Doc. 004741).
7. Letter by Elzie Dean Glaze to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network, dated June 2, 1989.
8. Harris letter to the author, dated December 15, 1992.
9. Chet Flippo, "Nitty Gritty Pick & Grin" in the October 14, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. Also The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band web page from the Internet.
10. Telephone conversation with John Peets, manager of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, May 12, 1999.
11. 6H328-329 (Shelley).
12. 6H390 (Victoria Adams).
13. 3H263 (Baker).
14. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit) and 6H330 (Shelley). Shelley and Lovelady had been inconsistent regarding their actions during the first minutes after the shooting. An entirely different story has them running out to the street island in front of the building to see what was going on. In an attempt to resolve these discrepanicies, I contacted William Shelley on March 20, 1995 and asked him if he would be willing to answer a few questions. His response was an abrupt no. He then added, "Everything that I have to say on that subject is in the public record. You'll have to go with that."
15. "The Fifth Floor Sniper" in the May 1993 issue of The Third Decade.
16. "Robert MacNeil and the Three Calm Men" in the November 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade.
17. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit).
18. The Warren Report, p. 619.
19. See "The Transplantation of the Texas School Book Depository" in the September 1993 issue of The Third Decade and "411 Elm Street" in the May 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade. Also see Jerry Rose's article "Important to Hold That Man" in the May 1986 issue of The Third Decade.
20. 6H327-328 (Shelley).
21. Telephone conversations with Tony Atzenhoffer, July 11 and August 15, 1998.
22. "Barry & the 'Boys'" by Daniel Hopsicker, Internet file, copyright 1998.
---------------------------------
I worked and flew with Adler Berriman Seal for many years. Also, I spent far too many hours on the telephone with Hopsicker (while he was shacked up with "Berry's widow) and he quotes me in his phony book.
Seal always signed off as "Berry", NOT Barry. There was NEVER an airport at LaCombe, LA, not even a private "grass strip" such as those used by crop-dusters. The nearest airport is at Slidell, some 13 miles distant towards the northeast. The next one is to the northwest at Mandeville, and almost 20 miles distant.
There was never a training camp at LaCombe, LA -- nor at Hammond, LA, -- nor at N.A.F. (LTA) Houma, LA , because the McLaney operation (involving Rich Lauchli, "Papucho" Espinoza, Herman Koch Gene, et al.) was a "Honey-Trap Op" to give the Cuban DGI Agents "handling" Ricardo Davis, Nico Crespi, and Oswald further bona fides that they were pro-Castro, and snitching out "Gusano" training/raider camps and operations.
NONE existed since we were there during early 1962, and so they had to be created out of thin air. When Paulino Sierra came down from Chicago with "Big Buck$", Sanchez Arango's AAA put on a phony show at the now defunct No Name Key site. Batista Falla (M.D.C.) wanted to sucker out some Sierra money, so he sent some clowns to Hammond, in tan/khaki uniforms but no guns. Laureano planned to sucker Sierra by making a deal with Guatemalen Roberto Alejos, who told him that any Cubans coming into Guatemala would have to chop wood, after they got work permits.
When the dumbass "Gusanos" discovered this farce, they immediately returned to Miami, went back to Flagler Surplus (W. Flagler & 17th Ave.) and traded in the khakis for 25 cents on the dollar !! Not to be outdone, Laureano had his guys grab Fernando Fernandez as a "Castro Spy". Because Fernandez was a real "Dangle', this blew a genuine penetration Op.
So, as we told Oliver Stone: We will build you a "Training Camp" (at Jean laFitte, LA); but the whole Garrison spiel on a Ponchartrain Camp is complete bullshit. It was Mike mcLaney doing a favor for RFK. Lauchli bitched about it later, after he had served his 2nd prison term -- and wanted to know why this whole sham went down? Especially since he had NEVER built the bomb fuses at his shop in Collinsville, Illinois.
Sorry folks, NO camps, no LHO & Ferrie, Russo, Novel, et al. -- just a pervert doing his duty for Marcello !!
__________________________
William Weston wrote:
Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
If believe that Oswald was probably associated with the Central Intelligence Agency, but who can in good faith assert that there is "no question" that he was? Malarkey!
And by what leap of logic should we assume that Oswald's commander in the CAP was associated with the CIA merely because Oswald was (if he was)?
Otherwise, an interesting article.
Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
If believe that Oswald was probably associated with the Central Intelligence Agency, but who can in good faith assert that there is "no question" that he was? Malarkey!
And by what leap of logic should we assume that Oswald's commander in the CAP was associated with the CIA merely because Oswald was (if he was)?
Otherwise, an interesting article.
QUOTE (Tim Gratz @ Jan 2 2006, 10:11 AM)
William Weston wrote:
Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
If believe that Oswald was probably associated with the Central Intelligence Agency, but who can in good faith assert that there is "no question" that he was? Malarkey!
And by what leap of logic should we assume that Oswald's commander in the CAP was associated with the CIA merely because Oswald was (if he was)?
Otherwise, an interesting article.
Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
If believe that Oswald was probably associated with the Central Intelligence Agency, but who can in good faith assert that there is "no question" that he was? Malarkey!
And by what leap of logic should we assume that Oswald's commander in the CAP was associated with the CIA merely because Oswald was (if he was)?
Otherwise, an interesting article.
Hey TG? What? Now you can possibly buy the idea that Shelly, Lovelady and Frazer could have been part of the plot too?
If the acussed assassin, patsy and fall guy worked there, why not others? Just as Paul Linebarger described covert operations as being like the Big Con - ala the Sting - where every body knows their role, but not necessarily the Big Picture, it all makes a little more sense. The same idea was repeated every week on tv in the old 70s tv show Mission Impossible, where in the end the bad guy still didn't often know how he got had.
As Hevve Lemarr of French Intelligence said, "President Kennedy's assassination was the work of magicians. It was stage trick complete with actor's accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, dissappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way."
BK
Hey TG? What? Now you can possibly buy the idea that Shelly, Lovelady and Frazer could have been part of the plot too? (Bill Kelly)
I post the following as a curiosity more than anything.
First off, I don't believe for one moment that Truly and Shelley were in on the plot. Having said that, they were well acquainted with each other beyond work hours. Both men were heavily involved with dog breeding and showing dating back to the early 1950's.
FWIW.
James
I post the following as a curiosity more than anything.
First off, I don't believe for one moment that Truly and Shelley were in on the plot. Having said that, they were well acquainted with each other beyond work hours. Both men were heavily involved with dog breeding and showing dating back to the early 1950's.
FWIW.
James
QUOTE (Gerry Hemming @ Jan 2 2006, 08:36 AM)
QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 2 2006, 02:11 AM)
The following was an article that was published in the May 1999 Issue of the Fourth Decade.
The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate? No, for in Jean Hill's book, The Last Dissenting Witness, a Dallas motorcycle officer, J. B. Marshall, was quoted as saying, "The Feds are tearing our whole department to pieces . . . they tell 'em, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll take your badge.' . . . they've been especially rough on all the guys who were on motorcade duty that day." [3] Still another victim was Marina Oswald, who was told that if she did not cooperate, she would be forced to leave the country. [4] These examples demonstrate a stern resolve to squash even the mildest of troublemakers. Why then should the FBI meekly tolerate a slap in the face from someone at the Book Depository? Did the warehouse manager have some clout that even Hoover had to respect? If so, it is difficult to understand where this clout came from. The innocence of anyone working in that particular building was far from certain in the eyes of suspicious investigators.
Whatever might be said in the ongoing debate concerning the number of bullets whizzing through Dealey Plaza, it is a fact that the Book Depository was a source location. On the premises was at least one hit team, including a leader, a sniper, a radioman, and two or three watchers to secure the escape route. It was also the staging area of the patsy, who had to be controlled and moved around in such a way that he would be in a credible position to take the blame. To keep the risks of exposure to a minimum, the conspirators had to have complete control over the building. How they managed to accomplish this is a question that remains to be answered.
Six years ago I received from Larry Ray Harris a copy of a letter that sheds some light on this issue. Written by a Mr. Glaze to the Alternative Information Network in Austin, Texas on June 2, 1989, this letter mentioned an earlier letter that was sent to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Recently I was able to get a copy of the earlier letter from the National Archives. Through a comparison of the details in both letters, I have been able to produce the following narrative.
In late 1974, while working as a journalist in Dallas, Glaze met a woman who began working for the Book Depository in 1969 - six years after the assassination. (She was no longer working there at the time she spoke to Glaze.) Her supervisor was William Shelley. The company, she said, had a strange way of introducing new employees to their duties. She and another new employee were approached by two men, who produced I.D. wallets and identified themselves as "government agents." They were taken to an empty room and given questionnaires to fill out. These exams were full of oddly irrelevant questions, calling for opinions on various topics of the day, especially social issues. Obediently the two employees wrote out their answers. When they were done, they gave the sheets back, and in the short pause that followed, one of the examiners bluntly asked: "Have you been recruited by the FBI or the CIA?" The two employees were stunned. As ordinary office workers, they were only doing minor clerical tasks at low wages. Why would anyone think that they came from the FBI or the CIA? While it was true that the Book Depository had acquired the notoriety of being the place where Oswald shot the President, still by 1969 that should have been ancient history. Yet even more disturbing were the next questions that came to mind. If the Book Depository was just an insignificant, little company, why would it be attracting the attention of the two biggest intelligence establishments in the country? Furthermore, what was the intrigue that was spurring these "government agents" to hunt down unwanted infiltrators?
Glaze asked the woman if she and her co-worker were the only ones subjected to this kind of treatment. No, they were not the only ones. Background checks on new employees were done as a routine procedure at the Book Depository. After listening to the woman's account, Glaze decided to check it out. He contacted her former supervisor, William Shelley, and asked to meet with him. Shelley agreed to this request and even allowed the reporter to take notes and use a tape recorder. The meeting took place at the Book Depository warehouse near the intersection of Royal Lane and Interstate 35 on the far northwest side of Dallas. (The company had moved from its old location on 411 Elm Street in 1970.) The information that Glaze was gathering must have been extensive, for the two men had numerous meetings together. Yet only a few disclosures are provided in the letters. The most significant one appears in the 1989 letter: "Mr. Shelley claims to have been an intelligence officer during World War II and thereafter joined the CIA." This extraordinary revelation goes far in explaining the mysteries of the Book Depository, and a discussion of its implications will be given later in this article.
Shelley told Glaze that he had been the supervisor of Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination, the Dallas police placed Shelley under arrest and formally charged him with the murder of the President. (No mention was made by Glaze as to why Shelley had been arrested, nor did he say what connection this arrest had with the arrest of Oswald.) The charges against Shelley were soon dropped, and he was released. Since that day, at various times, journalists representing several newspapers and magazines approached him with offers of huge sums of money for his personal account of the assassination. These offers were all turned down. When Glaze tried to get permission to quote him in his own article, Shelley refused and insisted that even his name was not to be printed.
In spite of this setback, Glaze was not discouraged. He went back to the woman and told her that he was doing a story on the Book Depository. He was going to talk to the FBI and possibly get some more information. When the woman heard this, she was absolutely appalled. The very idea that he was writing an article filled her with terror. She told him that if he persisted in his efforts to publicize this story, she would emphatically deny everything she told him. The prospects for an article irretrievably came to an end, and Glaze had no choice but to go home empty-handed.
It was not long after his departure that he felt obliged to speak to the woman again. What he intended to say is not mentioned in his letters, but perhaps he wanted to make an apology. In any case, it was only a few hours after he last saw her that he decided to see her again.
When he arrived at her apartment, he was surprised to find it totally empty. It looked as if no one had ever lived there. Glaze knew that she had a husband and a child, and they too were gone. The mystified reporter could not understand how three people could have moved away so quickly. The next day he went to the woman's place of employment and found out that she never showed up for work, and no one knew where she was. Later inquiries revealed that she did not even stop by to pick up her final paycheck. In his quest to find them, the most promising lead Glaze had was the fact that the husband had once been a musician in "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band." Yet even this fortuitous bit of information got him nowhere. Not one acquaintance or associate had any idea where they could have gone.
About the same time as he was conducting his search, Glaze went to get his interview notes and tapes and found that they had inexplicably disappeared. Then one day, he heard a commotion outside his apartment. He looked out the window and saw an estimated twenty Dallas policemen pulled up in front. They lingered for nearly an hour, shouting in a highly threatening manner and pointing their pistols at his window. Frightened for his life, he immediately left the city.
On December 12, 1977, while working as a reporter for the Avalanche Journal in Lubbock, Texas, he sent a letter to the HSCA. He wrote that he had some information regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and gave a brief sketch of his investigation of the Book Depository. In the closing paragraphs of his letter, he wrote, "I must admit that my own fear of getting involved in the investigation has prevented me from writing you earlier. I apologize." [5]
Whether or not the HSCA had taken an interest in this matter is not known. The only reply it sent was a form letter, which read: "Dear Ms. Glaze [The HSCA had mistakenly thought he was a woman], Thank you for your letter. It has been directed to the Deputy Chief Counsel in charge of the investigation for his review. Your interest in the work of our Committee is appreciated. Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director." [6]
Eleven years later, Glaze wrote a letter to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network. [7] He also sent them a copy of the reply that he got from Blakey. Somehow a copy of both these letters ended up in the hands of Larry Ray Harris. In his own letter to me, Harris wrote: "I don't recall its origins with clarity, but I think it was given to me by a professor at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas. Regardless, it ended up in my files around the time we opened the JFK Center in 1989. I don't know that anyone has ever looked into it. It could be a hoax, but sounds sincere. It would be easy to verify (1) if a reporter named Glaze has ever worked for the Lubbock newspaper; (2) if a journalist named Glaze was living in Dallas in 1974/1975; and (3) if there is/was an 'Alternative Information Network' in Austin, or if Kellner and Morrow are real persons and remember receiving the letter. If it is true that Shelley was affiliated in some way with CIA or U.S. Intelligence, that would be a disturbing and potentially significant development." [8]
When I first began my inquiry, I was hampered by a minor problem. The signature at the bottom of the letter was blacked out. Fortunately the salutation "Dear Ms. Glaze" on the HSCA letter was not. I thus had a clue that the first name must be some gender neutral type such as Robin or Terry. In January 1993, I called up the Avalanche Journal and asked for Mr. Glaze. No one by that name was currently employed. Neither were there any records of a Glaze in the files of the personnel department. Yet the absence of records did not necessarily mean he never worked there; it was a regular practice to discard the records of former employees after three years. Was there anyone who had been around long enough to remember a journalist named Glaze? The personnel director said that she had been with the paper for about as long as anyone, since 1982, and she never knew anyone by that name.
I next tried to reach either Kellner or Morrow at the Alternative Information Network. Kellner was the one who took my call. I told him who I was and that I had a letter addressed to him and his partner regarding the Kennedy assassination. After I read the contents, Kellner said he never got it. It was odd, he said, that I should have a letter in which he was named as a recipient but he had never seen it. He asked that a copy be sent to his home - not to the business - and after he read it, he would check into it. Two weeks later I made a follow-up phone call and asked Kellner if he found out anything. He said that he showed the letter to Morrow, who said that he vaguely remembered it but could not give any additional information regarding the contents or the author who wrote it.
That was as far as I got in 1993. In February 1999, a researcher named Steve Gaal checked the National Archives web site and found that someone named Glaze had written to the HSCA. That was when I finally had the full name of the reporter: Elzie Dean Glaze. A search of the Internet revealed that a man with this same name has a current e-mail address in Austin, Texas. I sent two messages to that address, but so far I received no response.
The next lead that had to be tracked down was the identity of the man who had been a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The band started out in 1966 as a jug band in Long Beach, California. They became known for their unique blend of country western and rock and roll. Among the original musicians were John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr, Leslie Thompson, and Jimmie Fadden. After appearing in a movie calledPaint Your Wagon, the band went through some hard times. In 1968 a meeting was held in the manager's Hollywood office, and the group decided to dissolve. Les Thompson ended the meeting with a question: "Does that mean we don't hafta practice anymore?" He then went to Texas to enroll in a bulldozer school. A year or two later, the members of the band, with the exception of Kunkel and Barr, decided to try again. A new member from Philadelphia named Jimmie Ibbotson was added on. This time they achieved commercial success, and in 1970 a song called "Mr. Bojangles" became a top ten hit. Sometime prior to 1974, Les Thompson left the band again. In 1977 the group acquired the distinction of being the first American band to tour the Soviet Union. They are still going strong today, having released a new album called Bang! Bang! Bang! in May 1999. [9]
In an attempt to get more information, I sent them a letter, along with copies of the Glaze correspondence. In a follow-up phone call, I spoke with the manager, and he told me that he talked with the two musicians who had been with the band from the beginning. They said that it has been a such long time since they heard from the early members, that they were unable to provide any information as to where they went or what they had been doing. [10]
With nothing else to go, I would say that the musician spoken of by Glaze was probably Leslie Thompson. He was the only one who went to Texas, and he might have stayed there long enough to establish long-term ties with some of the people in that state.
Having gone as far as I could in checking the authenticity of the Glaze letters, the next thing that needs to be done is to cross-check the information contained in them with what we know about William Shelley.
At the time the assassination occurred, Shelley was, according to his testimony, standing on the steps of the Book Depository with Billy Lovelady and Wesley Frazier. [11] The James Altgens photograph of the limousine under fire confirms the presence of Lovelady on the steps but not Shelley or Frazier. About a minute after the assassination, two female employees in the Book Depository came down the stairs and saw Shelley and Lovelady in the back of the building just about in front of the two freight elevators. One lady said, "I believe the President has been shot." Curiously, neither Shelley nor Lovelady said anything in reply. [12] After the two women ran out the back door, Roy Truly and Police Officer Marion Baker rushed in through the front door. They were going up to the roof to search for a gunman. According to Baker's testimony, he saw two white men sitting by the stairs. [13] According to Shelley, he and Lovelady were appointed by Truly to guard the stairs and elevators. [14]
In any reconstruction of what was happening with the stairs and elevators, it is obvious that Shelley and Lovelady must have seen the escape of one of the assassins. About a minute or two after Truly and Baker went up the stairs, a witness on the street saw a man in a dark sportcoat running out the back door. This man was no doubt the same one seen at a fifth floor window standing next to a man armed with a rifle. After the shooting ended, the man in the dark sportcoat took an elevator down to the ground floor, while at the same time Truly and Baker were going up the stairs. As the culprit headed for the back door, he would have had to pass Shelley and Lovelady in order to exit the building. [15]
About a minute or two after the man in the dark sportcoat dashed out the back door, NBC news reporter Robert MacNeil came in through the front door. In a written account of what he saw, he said that he was surprised to see three men, totally oblivious to the chaos outside, standing by a pay phone.
I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw – a man who was telephoning from a pillar in the middle of the room – where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were lit up. I made my call and left. . . . I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. [16]
MacNeil's amazement at the strange placidity of the three men is indicated by the way he repeated this observation for emphasis. The man using the pay phone was quite probably Shelley, for in an affidavit made out that same afternoon, Shelley said, "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." [17]
About a minute or two after MacNeil saw the three calm men - between 12:35 and 12:40 - Oswald had a five-to-ten minute chat with the assistant manager. According to an FBI report of the first interrogation of Oswald in the Dallas homocide office:
OSWALD stated that [at the time of the assassination] he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of BILL SHELLEY, he did not believe that there was going to be any more work that day due to the confusion in the building. [18]
The timing and location of Oswald's departure from the Book Depository correlates exactly with the appearance of a Nash Rambler on Elm Street driven by a dark-skinned man. Between 12:40 and 12:45, Deputy Roger Craig heard a loud whistle and looked up to see Oswald running down the grassy slope in front of the Book Depository. Oswald opened the passenger side door of the Nash Rambler and got in. The car was last seen speeding towards Oak Cliff, where the shooting of Officer Tippit was to occur twenty to thirty minutes later. If Oswald had been talking to Shelley prior to his departure, then there can be no doubt that Shelley had seen him getting away.
Not long after Oswald left the scene, Shelley told Truly that Oswald was missing. (How he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed.) A roll call of warehouse employees was made, and it was determined that Oswald was indeed absent. Truly notified Police Captain Will Fritz, who immediately thought that it was "important to hold that man." [19]
The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it. Assuming that the police really had arrested him and charged him with the assassination, they certainly would have had ample cause. For one thing, they would have known that Shelley was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Secondly, the accused assassin had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave. Thirdly, the police knew about the Nash Rambler story as early as 5:00 in the afternoon, when Roger Craig reported it to them. Finally, Shelley might not have been entirely candid in how he came to realize that Oswald was missing. No doubt Shelley was asked a lot of questions, and it is possible that he was kept in custody until he gave some satisfactory answers. Admittedly, there is no record of Shelley being arrested, but that does not necessarily mean Glaze was wrong. Missing evidence could just as easily be due to the systematic destruction of anything contrary to the official version.
The presence of an agent, or an ex-agent, of the CIA at the Book Depository would explain a great deal regarding how the conspirators managed to get their gunmen on the premises. Let us now look into Shelley's background to see what additional corroboration can be shed on this matter.
According to statements made to the police and to the Warren Commission, Shelley was born in Gunter, Texas in 1925. During World War Two, he worked "a little bit" in defense plants. On October 29, 1945 at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository. Eighteen years later, in 1963, he was holding the position of assistant manager of the "miscellaneous department." [20] By 1975, when Glaze talked to him, he had passed his thirtieth anniversary in the company. Such a long career in one place is confirmed in the listings of the city directories. In 1947 he was listed as a clerk at the Hugh Perry Book Depository (the old name for the Texas School Book Depository), and he had a room at 515 Martinique Avenue. In 1960 he was a department manager; his wife's name was Marie; and they lived in a house on 126 Tatum Avenue. They were still living in that house at the time of the assassination.
Although the facts are few, the picture is clear. Shelley was a simple desk clerk and warehouse man, content to live out his working life under the roof of one company. He certainly did not fit the image of a globetrotting CIA operative, embarking on secret missions with the latest in high tech weaponry. Even if we can assume that he really had been an intelligence officer during World War Two, it does not seem possible that he could have joined the CIA afterwards. The agency did not even come into existence until two years after Shelley got his job at the Book Depository.
It would thus appear that we have an irreconcilable situation; Shelley could not have been in the CIA before his employment at the Book Depository. Yet I believe that a seemingly irresolvable problem might on closer examination yield a solution that brings a deeper understanding of the truth. Let us take a different approach. Let us suppose that the job at the Book Depository was concurrent with a career in the CIA. If we can assume that is true, then the Book Depository itself must have been a front for CIA activities.
While it is commonly acknowledged that the agency has too much influence in national affairs, it is still amazing to find its hand in such a wide diversity of organizations and institutions. These include such entities as labor unions, airlines, college student associations, foundations, law firms, banks, savings and loans, investment firms, travel agencies, police departments, post offices, publishing companies, newspapers, call girl services, and mental health institutions. Considering the far-reaching extent of control over so many different areas in American society, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the CIA would have the moral restraint to make an exception of the Book Depository - provided, of course, that the control of it would further its goals in some way.
If CIA operators had been working inside the building in which the Book Depository was located, they would have not been on unfriendly ground. The property itself was owned by a wealthy, right-wing Texas oilman named D. H. Byrd. He was also a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, which included among its members Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. That Ferrie and Oswald knew each other was proven in a 1993 Frontline special on Oswald, in which former cadets Tony Atzenhoffer and Johnny Ciravola displayed a picture showing Ferrie and Oswald at a cadet campout near New Orleans. What is not so well known is that the two men also knew Colonel Byrd. Atzenhoffer told this author that Byrd was the "head honcho" of the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana and Texas, and that he came to Moissant Airport to give speeches on special occasions, such as orientation sessions for new cadets. [21] Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
Another member of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol who was an associate of the CIA was Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggler who set up the Mena Airport operation in Arkansas in the early 1980's and later got involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was murdered in 1986 by three Colombian hitmen. Seal first got his pilot's license in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1954, when he was sixteen years old. According to a high school friend, Seal was well acquainted with David Ferrie.
One Friday evening while we were in high school, I got a call from Barry, asking if I'd like to fly over to Lacombe with him in the morning, a little town on the north shore across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. We left about 5:30 and flew over to the little airport there and Barry and I get out of the plane, and here's this really weird-looking guy, dressed all in black, sitting in a director's chair on the tarmac, and he's drilling a bunch of Civil Air Patrol guys that are standing in formation in front of him. They were carrying old M-1s. His name was David Ferrie. He was a captain in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. . . . See, Barry was making $400 a week in high school flying for David Ferrie. . . .
On the flight back, Barry shouted over the engine. "That weird looking guy? He's got no hair on his body! It's why he's wearing a wig! Get up close, he's even got fake eyebrows, and fake eyelashes, but . . . that weirdo's a big-time pilot and works with the CIA.
Seal and his friend also talked about the wooden crates that Ferrie and Seal were examining. They contained guns and ammo, Seal explained to his friend, and he would be transporting this cargo on the weekend. Ferrie was paying him $400 a week to fly this stuff. $400 was a great deal of money in the mid-1950's. [22]
If the CIA was using Byrd's chapter of the Civil Air Patrol to transport illegal shipments of guns and ammo, then what could have prevented them from using Byrd's property on the corner of Elm and Houston for the same purpose? Since Dallas was a source of munitions going to New Orleans in the drive to overthrow leftist governments in Central and South America, then a way had to be found to move them secretly. Big, heavy boxes marked "Schoolbooks" would have been a handy way of delivering the goods. Perhaps that was what the "miscellaneous department" of the Book Depository was all about.
Working backwards from the fact that an assassination squad could move freely through a building without any fear of interference, there must have been some link between the building and the clandestine organizations that put together the assassination plot. Such a link would enable the conspirators to set up the ambush safely and securely. It is therefore conceivable that the secret history of the Book Depository could extend far into the past - perhaps even as early as 1945, the last year of World War Two.
1. Warren Report, pp. 140-141, 249.
2. Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to J. Lee Rankin, dated June 16, 1964 (HSCA Doc. 62-109090- 26th unrecorded after 2nd 170). By September 1964 the FBI got fingerprints from sixteen employees. These included Roy Truly himself, his assistant manager William Shelley, and all fourteen warehouse employees. None of the prints obtained matched the unidentified palmprint.
3. Jean Hill, JFK, The Last Dissenting Witness (Pelican Publishing Co., 1992), p. 85.
4. 1H79-80 (Marina Oswald).
5. Letter to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA Doc. 004079). Glaze misdated the letter "12/12/74," for the postmark on the envelope had the year 1977. The true date should have been 12/12/77.
6. Blakey's reply to Elzie Glaze dated January 19, 1978 (HSCA Doc. 004741).
7. Letter by Elzie Dean Glaze to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network, dated June 2, 1989.
8. Harris letter to the author, dated December 15, 1992.
9. Chet Flippo, "Nitty Gritty Pick & Grin" in the October 14, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. Also The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band web page from the Internet.
10. Telephone conversation with John Peets, manager of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, May 12, 1999.
11. 6H328-329 (Shelley).
12. 6H390 (Victoria Adams).
13. 3H263 (Baker).
14. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit) and 6H330 (Shelley). Shelley and Lovelady had been inconsistent regarding their actions during the first minutes after the shooting. An entirely different story has them running out to the street island in front of the building to see what was going on. In an attempt to resolve these discrepanicies, I contacted William Shelley on March 20, 1995 and asked him if he would be willing to answer a few questions. His response was an abrupt no. He then added, "Everything that I have to say on that subject is in the public record. You'll have to go with that."
15. "The Fifth Floor Sniper" in the May 1993 issue of The Third Decade.
16. "Robert MacNeil and the Three Calm Men" in the November 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade.
17. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit).
18. The Warren Report, p. 619.
19. See "The Transplantation of the Texas School Book Depository" in the September 1993 issue of The Third Decade and "411 Elm Street" in the May 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade. Also see Jerry Rose's article "Important to Hold That Man" in the May 1986 issue of The Third Decade.
20. 6H327-328 (Shelley).
21. Telephone conversations with Tony Atzenhoffer, July 11 and August 15, 1998.
22. "Barry & the 'Boys'" by Daniel Hopsicker, Internet file, copyright 1998.
---------------------------------
I worked and flew with Adler Berriman Seal for many years. Also, I spent far too many hours on the telephone with Hopsicker (while he was shacked up with "Berry's widow) and he quotes me in his phony book.
Seal always signed off as "Berry", NOT Barry. There was NEVER an airport at LaCombe, LA, not even a private "grass strip" such as those used by crop-dusters. The nearest airport is at Slidell, some 13 miles distant towards the northeast. The next one is to the northwest at Mandeville, and almost 20 miles distant.
There was never a training camp at LaCombe, LA -- nor at Hammond, LA, -- nor at N.A.F. (LTA) Houma, LA , because the McLaney operation (involving Rich Lauchli, "Papucho" Espinoza, Herman Koch Gene, et al.) was a "Honey-Trap Op" to give the Cuban DGI Agents "handling" Ricardo Davis, Nico Crespi, and Oswald further bona fides that they were pro-Castro, and snitching out "Gusano" training/raider camps and operations.
NONE existed since we were there during early 1962, and so they had to be created out of thin air. When Paulino Sierra came down from Chicago with "Big Buck$", Sanchez Arango's AAA put on a phony show at the now defunct No Name Key site. Batista Falla (M.D.C.) wanted to sucker out some Sierra money, so he sent some clowns to Hammond, in tan/khaki uniforms but no guns. Laureano planned to sucker Sierra by making a deal with Guatemalen Roberto Alejos, who told him that any Cubans coming into Guatemala would have to chop wood, after they got work permits.
When the dumbass "Gusanos" discovered this farce, they immediately returned to Miami, went back to Flagler Surplus (W. Flagler & 17th Ave.) and traded in the khakis for 25 cents on the dollar !! Not to be outdone, Laureano had his guys grab Fernando Fernandez as a "Castro Spy". Because Fernandez was a real "Dangle', this blew a genuine penetration Op.
So, as we told Oliver Stone: We will build you a "Training Camp" (at Jean laFitte, LA); but the whole Garrison spiel on a Ponchartrain Camp is complete bullshit. It was Mike mcLaney doing a favor for RFK. Lauchli bitched about it later, after he had served his 2nd prison term -- and wanted to know why this whole sham went down? Especially since he had NEVER built the bomb fuses at his shop in Collinsville, Illinois.
Sorry folks, NO camps, no LHO & Ferrie, Russo, Novel, et al. -- just a pervert doing his duty for Marcello !!
__________________________
http://www.careersinsite.org/namedesc-1-LA...E-Louisiana.htm and
http://worldaerodata.com/US/LOUISIANA.php
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Someone posted to you ++ and you did not reply ??
Dear Mr. Hemming,
Sorry to see your old friend hitting on hard times. Not to change the subject, [it's really the same subject]. Rumsfeld muses, "What electrode would Jesus use?" Some of us are concerned about how one human treats another. Some of us are also concerned about justice - to know the why, and the "WHO." Pinochet is a monster and an international criminal. Those who helped him rise to power should IMHO, be tried with him. You know what the D.A. says about criminals, "If you can't get them for one crime, you can get them for another." I'm sure you get my drift.
http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4297919&nav=1LFX
http://www.trentu.ca/~mneumann/pinochet.html
QUOTE (Steven Gaal @ Jan 3 2006, 03:48 AM)
QUOTE (Gerry Hemming @ Jan 2 2006, 08:36 AM)
QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 2 2006, 02:11 AM)
The following was an article that was published in the May 1999 Issue of the Fourth Decade.
The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate? No, for in Jean Hill's book, The Last Dissenting Witness, a Dallas motorcycle officer, J. B. Marshall, was quoted as saying, "The Feds are tearing our whole department to pieces . . . they tell 'em, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll take your badge.' . . . they've been especially rough on all the guys who were on motorcade duty that day." [3] Still another victim was Marina Oswald, who was told that if she did not cooperate, she would be forced to leave the country. [4] These examples demonstrate a stern resolve to squash even the mildest of troublemakers. Why then should the FBI meekly tolerate a slap in the face from someone at the Book Depository? Did the warehouse manager have some clout that even Hoover had to respect? If so, it is difficult to understand where this clout came from. The innocence of anyone working in that particular building was far from certain in the eyes of suspicious investigators.
Whatever might be said in the ongoing debate concerning the number of bullets whizzing through Dealey Plaza, it is a fact that the Book Depository was a source location. On the premises was at least one hit team, including a leader, a sniper, a radioman, and two or three watchers to secure the escape route. It was also the staging area of the patsy, who had to be controlled and moved around in such a way that he would be in a credible position to take the blame. To keep the risks of exposure to a minimum, the conspirators had to have complete control over the building. How they managed to accomplish this is a question that remains to be answered.
Six years ago I received from Larry Ray Harris a copy of a letter that sheds some light on this issue. Written by a Mr. Glaze to the Alternative Information Network in Austin, Texas on June 2, 1989, this letter mentioned an earlier letter that was sent to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Recently I was able to get a copy of the earlier letter from the National Archives. Through a comparison of the details in both letters, I have been able to produce the following narrative.
In late 1974, while working as a journalist in Dallas, Glaze met a woman who began working for the Book Depository in 1969 - six years after the assassination. (She was no longer working there at the time she spoke to Glaze.) Her supervisor was William Shelley. The company, she said, had a strange way of introducing new employees to their duties. She and another new employee were approached by two men, who produced I.D. wallets and identified themselves as "government agents." They were taken to an empty room and given questionnaires to fill out. These exams were full of oddly irrelevant questions, calling for opinions on various topics of the day, especially social issues. Obediently the two employees wrote out their answers. When they were done, they gave the sheets back, and in the short pause that followed, one of the examiners bluntly asked: "Have you been recruited by the FBI or the CIA?" The two employees were stunned. As ordinary office workers, they were only doing minor clerical tasks at low wages. Why would anyone think that they came from the FBI or the CIA? While it was true that the Book Depository had acquired the notoriety of being the place where Oswald shot the President, still by 1969 that should have been ancient history. Yet even more disturbing were the next questions that came to mind. If the Book Depository was just an insignificant, little company, why would it be attracting the attention of the two biggest intelligence establishments in the country? Furthermore, what was the intrigue that was spurring these "government agents" to hunt down unwanted infiltrators?
Glaze asked the woman if she and her co-worker were the only ones subjected to this kind of treatment. No, they were not the only ones. Background checks on new employees were done as a routine procedure at the Book Depository. After listening to the woman's account, Glaze decided to check it out. He contacted her former supervisor, William Shelley, and asked to meet with him. Shelley agreed to this request and even allowed the reporter to take notes and use a tape recorder. The meeting took place at the Book Depository warehouse near the intersection of Royal Lane and Interstate 35 on the far northwest side of Dallas. (The company had moved from its old location on 411 Elm Street in 1970.) The information that Glaze was gathering must have been extensive, for the two men had numerous meetings together. Yet only a few disclosures are provided in the letters. The most significant one appears in the 1989 letter: "Mr. Shelley claims to have been an intelligence officer during World War II and thereafter joined the CIA." This extraordinary revelation goes far in explaining the mysteries of the Book Depository, and a discussion of its implications will be given later in this article.
Shelley told Glaze that he had been the supervisor of Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination, the Dallas police placed Shelley under arrest and formally charged him with the murder of the President. (No mention was made by Glaze as to why Shelley had been arrested, nor did he say what connection this arrest had with the arrest of Oswald.) The charges against Shelley were soon dropped, and he was released. Since that day, at various times, journalists representing several newspapers and magazines approached him with offers of huge sums of money for his personal account of the assassination. These offers were all turned down. When Glaze tried to get permission to quote him in his own article, Shelley refused and insisted that even his name was not to be printed.
In spite of this setback, Glaze was not discouraged. He went back to the woman and told her that he was doing a story on the Book Depository. He was going to talk to the FBI and possibly get some more information. When the woman heard this, she was absolutely appalled. The very idea that he was writing an article filled her with terror. She told him that if he persisted in his efforts to publicize this story, she would emphatically deny everything she told him. The prospects for an article irretrievably came to an end, and Glaze had no choice but to go home empty-handed.
It was not long after his departure that he felt obliged to speak to the woman again. What he intended to say is not mentioned in his letters, but perhaps he wanted to make an apology. In any case, it was only a few hours after he last saw her that he decided to see her again.
When he arrived at her apartment, he was surprised to find it totally empty. It looked as if no one had ever lived there. Glaze knew that she had a husband and a child, and they too were gone. The mystified reporter could not understand how three people could have moved away so quickly. The next day he went to the woman's place of employment and found out that she never showed up for work, and no one knew where she was. Later inquiries revealed that she did not even stop by to pick up her final paycheck. In his quest to find them, the most promising lead Glaze had was the fact that the husband had once been a musician in "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band." Yet even this fortuitous bit of information got him nowhere. Not one acquaintance or associate had any idea where they could have gone.
About the same time as he was conducting his search, Glaze went to get his interview notes and tapes and found that they had inexplicably disappeared. Then one day, he heard a commotion outside his apartment. He looked out the window and saw an estimated twenty Dallas policemen pulled up in front. They lingered for nearly an hour, shouting in a highly threatening manner and pointing their pistols at his window. Frightened for his life, he immediately left the city.
On December 12, 1977, while working as a reporter for the Avalanche Journal in Lubbock, Texas, he sent a letter to the HSCA. He wrote that he had some information regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and gave a brief sketch of his investigation of the Book Depository. In the closing paragraphs of his letter, he wrote, "I must admit that my own fear of getting involved in the investigation has prevented me from writing you earlier. I apologize." [5]
Whether or not the HSCA had taken an interest in this matter is not known. The only reply it sent was a form letter, which read: "Dear Ms. Glaze [The HSCA had mistakenly thought he was a woman], Thank you for your letter. It has been directed to the Deputy Chief Counsel in charge of the investigation for his review. Your interest in the work of our Committee is appreciated. Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director." [6]
Eleven years later, Glaze wrote a letter to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network. [7] He also sent them a copy of the reply that he got from Blakey. Somehow a copy of both these letters ended up in the hands of Larry Ray Harris. In his own letter to me, Harris wrote: "I don't recall its origins with clarity, but I think it was given to me by a professor at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas. Regardless, it ended up in my files around the time we opened the JFK Center in 1989. I don't know that anyone has ever looked into it. It could be a hoax, but sounds sincere. It would be easy to verify (1) if a reporter named Glaze has ever worked for the Lubbock newspaper; (2) if a journalist named Glaze was living in Dallas in 1974/1975; and (3) if there is/was an 'Alternative Information Network' in Austin, or if Kellner and Morrow are real persons and remember receiving the letter. If it is true that Shelley was affiliated in some way with CIA or U.S. Intelligence, that would be a disturbing and potentially significant development." [8]
When I first began my inquiry, I was hampered by a minor problem. The signature at the bottom of the letter was blacked out. Fortunately the salutation "Dear Ms. Glaze" on the HSCA letter was not. I thus had a clue that the first name must be some gender neutral type such as Robin or Terry. In January 1993, I called up the Avalanche Journal and asked for Mr. Glaze. No one by that name was currently employed. Neither were there any records of a Glaze in the files of the personnel department. Yet the absence of records did not necessarily mean he never worked there; it was a regular practice to discard the records of former employees after three years. Was there anyone who had been around long enough to remember a journalist named Glaze? The personnel director said that she had been with the paper for about as long as anyone, since 1982, and she never knew anyone by that name.
I next tried to reach either Kellner or Morrow at the Alternative Information Network. Kellner was the one who took my call. I told him who I was and that I had a letter addressed to him and his partner regarding the Kennedy assassination. After I read the contents, Kellner said he never got it. It was odd, he said, that I should have a letter in which he was named as a recipient but he had never seen it. He asked that a copy be sent to his home - not to the business - and after he read it, he would check into it. Two weeks later I made a follow-up phone call and asked Kellner if he found out anything. He said that he showed the letter to Morrow, who said that he vaguely remembered it but could not give any additional information regarding the contents or the author who wrote it.
That was as far as I got in 1993. In February 1999, a researcher named Steve Gaal checked the National Archives web site and found that someone named Glaze had written to the HSCA. That was when I finally had the full name of the reporter: Elzie Dean Glaze. A search of the Internet revealed that a man with this same name has a current e-mail address in Austin, Texas. I sent two messages to that address, but so far I received no response.
The next lead that had to be tracked down was the identity of the man who had been a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The band started out in 1966 as a jug band in Long Beach, California. They became known for their unique blend of country western and rock and roll. Among the original musicians were John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr, Leslie Thompson, and Jimmie Fadden. After appearing in a movie calledPaint Your Wagon, the band went through some hard times. In 1968 a meeting was held in the manager's Hollywood office, and the group decided to dissolve. Les Thompson ended the meeting with a question: "Does that mean we don't hafta practice anymore?" He then went to Texas to enroll in a bulldozer school. A year or two later, the members of the band, with the exception of Kunkel and Barr, decided to try again. A new member from Philadelphia named Jimmie Ibbotson was added on. This time they achieved commercial success, and in 1970 a song called "Mr. Bojangles" became a top ten hit. Sometime prior to 1974, Les Thompson left the band again. In 1977 the group acquired the distinction of being the first American band to tour the Soviet Union. They are still going strong today, having released a new album called Bang! Bang! Bang! in May 1999. [9]
In an attempt to get more information, I sent them a letter, along with copies of the Glaze correspondence. In a follow-up phone call, I spoke with the manager, and he told me that he talked with the two musicians who had been with the band from the beginning. They said that it has been a such long time since they heard from the early members, that they were unable to provide any information as to where they went or what they had been doing. [10]
With nothing else to go, I would say that the musician spoken of by Glaze was probably Leslie Thompson. He was the only one who went to Texas, and he might have stayed there long enough to establish long-term ties with some of the people in that state.
Having gone as far as I could in checking the authenticity of the Glaze letters, the next thing that needs to be done is to cross-check the information contained in them with what we know about William Shelley.
At the time the assassination occurred, Shelley was, according to his testimony, standing on the steps of the Book Depository with Billy Lovelady and Wesley Frazier. [11] The James Altgens photograph of the limousine under fire confirms the presence of Lovelady on the steps but not Shelley or Frazier. About a minute after the assassination, two female employees in the Book Depository came down the stairs and saw Shelley and Lovelady in the back of the building just about in front of the two freight elevators. One lady said, "I believe the President has been shot." Curiously, neither Shelley nor Lovelady said anything in reply. [12] After the two women ran out the back door, Roy Truly and Police Officer Marion Baker rushed in through the front door. They were going up to the roof to search for a gunman. According to Baker's testimony, he saw two white men sitting by the stairs. [13] According to Shelley, he and Lovelady were appointed by Truly to guard the stairs and elevators. [14]
In any reconstruction of what was happening with the stairs and elevators, it is obvious that Shelley and Lovelady must have seen the escape of one of the assassins. About a minute or two after Truly and Baker went up the stairs, a witness on the street saw a man in a dark sportcoat running out the back door. This man was no doubt the same one seen at a fifth floor window standing next to a man armed with a rifle. After the shooting ended, the man in the dark sportcoat took an elevator down to the ground floor, while at the same time Truly and Baker were going up the stairs. As the culprit headed for the back door, he would have had to pass Shelley and Lovelady in order to exit the building. [15]
About a minute or two after the man in the dark sportcoat dashed out the back door, NBC news reporter Robert MacNeil came in through the front door. In a written account of what he saw, he said that he was surprised to see three men, totally oblivious to the chaos outside, standing by a pay phone.
I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw – a man who was telephoning from a pillar in the middle of the room – where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were lit up. I made my call and left. . . . I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. [16]
MacNeil's amazement at the strange placidity of the three men is indicated by the way he repeated this observation for emphasis. The man using the pay phone was quite probably Shelley, for in an affidavit made out that same afternoon, Shelley said, "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." [17]
About a minute or two after MacNeil saw the three calm men - between 12:35 and 12:40 - Oswald had a five-to-ten minute chat with the assistant manager. According to an FBI report of the first interrogation of Oswald in the Dallas homocide office:
OSWALD stated that [at the time of the assassination] he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of BILL SHELLEY, he did not believe that there was going to be any more work that day due to the confusion in the building. [18]
The timing and location of Oswald's departure from the Book Depository correlates exactly with the appearance of a Nash Rambler on Elm Street driven by a dark-skinned man. Between 12:40 and 12:45, Deputy Roger Craig heard a loud whistle and looked up to see Oswald running down the grassy slope in front of the Book Depository. Oswald opened the passenger side door of the Nash Rambler and got in. The car was last seen speeding towards Oak Cliff, where the shooting of Officer Tippit was to occur twenty to thirty minutes later. If Oswald had been talking to Shelley prior to his departure, then there can be no doubt that Shelley had seen him getting away.
Not long after Oswald left the scene, Shelley told Truly that Oswald was missing. (How he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed.) A roll call of warehouse employees was made, and it was determined that Oswald was indeed absent. Truly notified Police Captain Will Fritz, who immediately thought that it was "important to hold that man." [19]
The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it. Assuming that the police really had arrested him and charged him with the assassination, they certainly would have had ample cause. For one thing, they would have known that Shelley was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Secondly, the accused assassin had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave. Thirdly, the police knew about the Nash Rambler story as early as 5:00 in the afternoon, when Roger Craig reported it to them. Finally, Shelley might not have been entirely candid in how he came to realize that Oswald was missing. No doubt Shelley was asked a lot of questions, and it is possible that he was kept in custody until he gave some satisfactory answers. Admittedly, there is no record of Shelley being arrested, but that does not necessarily mean Glaze was wrong. Missing evidence could just as easily be due to the systematic destruction of anything contrary to the official version.
The presence of an agent, or an ex-agent, of the CIA at the Book Depository would explain a great deal regarding how the conspirators managed to get their gunmen on the premises. Let us now look into Shelley's background to see what additional corroboration can be shed on this matter.
According to statements made to the police and to the Warren Commission, Shelley was born in Gunter, Texas in 1925. During World War Two, he worked "a little bit" in defense plants. On October 29, 1945 at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository. Eighteen years later, in 1963, he was holding the position of assistant manager of the "miscellaneous department." [20] By 1975, when Glaze talked to him, he had passed his thirtieth anniversary in the company. Such a long career in one place is confirmed in the listings of the city directories. In 1947 he was listed as a clerk at the Hugh Perry Book Depository (the old name for the Texas School Book Depository), and he had a room at 515 Martinique Avenue. In 1960 he was a department manager; his wife's name was Marie; and they lived in a house on 126 Tatum Avenue. They were still living in that house at the time of the assassination.
Although the facts are few, the picture is clear. Shelley was a simple desk clerk and warehouse man, content to live out his working life under the roof of one company. He certainly did not fit the image of a globetrotting CIA operative, embarking on secret missions with the latest in high tech weaponry. Even if we can assume that he really had been an intelligence officer during World War Two, it does not seem possible that he could have joined the CIA afterwards. The agency did not even come into existence until two years after Shelley got his job at the Book Depository.
It would thus appear that we have an irreconcilable situation; Shelley could not have been in the CIA before his employment at the Book Depository. Yet I believe that a seemingly irresolvable problem might on closer examination yield a solution that brings a deeper understanding of the truth. Let us take a different approach. Let us suppose that the job at the Book Depository was concurrent with a career in the CIA. If we can assume that is true, then the Book Depository itself must have been a front for CIA activities.
While it is commonly acknowledged that the agency has too much influence in national affairs, it is still amazing to find its hand in such a wide diversity of organizations and institutions. These include such entities as labor unions, airlines, college student associations, foundations, law firms, banks, savings and loans, investment firms, travel agencies, police departments, post offices, publishing companies, newspapers, call girl services, and mental health institutions. Considering the far-reaching extent of control over so many different areas in American society, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the CIA would have the moral restraint to make an exception of the Book Depository - provided, of course, that the control of it would further its goals in some way.
If CIA operators had been working inside the building in which the Book Depository was located, they would have not been on unfriendly ground. The property itself was owned by a wealthy, right-wing Texas oilman named D. H. Byrd. He was also a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, which included among its members Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. That Ferrie and Oswald knew each other was proven in a 1993 Frontline special on Oswald, in which former cadets Tony Atzenhoffer and Johnny Ciravola displayed a picture showing Ferrie and Oswald at a cadet campout near New Orleans. What is not so well known is that the two men also knew Colonel Byrd. Atzenhoffer told this author that Byrd was the "head honcho" of the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana and Texas, and that he came to Moissant Airport to give speeches on special occasions, such as orientation sessions for new cadets. [21] Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
Another member of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol who was an associate of the CIA was Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggler who set up the Mena Airport operation in Arkansas in the early 1980's and later got involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was murdered in 1986 by three Colombian hitmen. Seal first got his pilot's license in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1954, when he was sixteen years old. According to a high school friend, Seal was well acquainted with David Ferrie.
One Friday evening while we were in high school, I got a call from Barry, asking if I'd like to fly over to Lacombe with him in the morning, a little town on the north shore across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. We left about 5:30 and flew over to the little airport there and Barry and I get out of the plane, and here's this really weird-looking guy, dressed all in black, sitting in a director's chair on the tarmac, and he's drilling a bunch of Civil Air Patrol guys that are standing in formation in front of him. They were carrying old M-1s. His name was David Ferrie. He was a captain in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. . . . See, Barry was making $400 a week in high school flying for David Ferrie. . . .
On the flight back, Barry shouted over the engine. "That weird looking guy? He's got no hair on his body! It's why he's wearing a wig! Get up close, he's even got fake eyebrows, and fake eyelashes, but . . . that weirdo's a big-time pilot and works with the CIA.
Seal and his friend also talked about the wooden crates that Ferrie and Seal were examining. They contained guns and ammo, Seal explained to his friend, and he would be transporting this cargo on the weekend. Ferrie was paying him $400 a week to fly this stuff. $400 was a great deal of money in the mid-1950's. [22]
If the CIA was using Byrd's chapter of the Civil Air Patrol to transport illegal shipments of guns and ammo, then what could have prevented them from using Byrd's property on the corner of Elm and Houston for the same purpose? Since Dallas was a source of munitions going to New Orleans in the drive to overthrow leftist governments in Central and South America, then a way had to be found to move them secretly. Big, heavy boxes marked "Schoolbooks" would have been a handy way of delivering the goods. Perhaps that was what the "miscellaneous department" of the Book Depository was all about.
Working backwards from the fact that an assassination squad could move freely through a building without any fear of interference, there must have been some link between the building and the clandestine organizations that put together the assassination plot. Such a link would enable the conspirators to set up the ambush safely and securely. It is therefore conceivable that the secret history of the Book Depository could extend far into the past - perhaps even as early as 1945, the last year of World War Two.
1. Warren Report, pp. 140-141, 249.
2. Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to J. Lee Rankin, dated June 16, 1964 (HSCA Doc. 62-109090- 26th unrecorded after 2nd 170). By September 1964 the FBI got fingerprints from sixteen employees. These included Roy Truly himself, his assistant manager William Shelley, and all fourteen warehouse employees. None of the prints obtained matched the unidentified palmprint.
3. Jean Hill, JFK, The Last Dissenting Witness (Pelican Publishing Co., 1992), p. 85.
4. 1H79-80 (Marina Oswald).
5. Letter to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA Doc. 004079). Glaze misdated the letter "12/12/74," for the postmark on the envelope had the year 1977. The true date should have been 12/12/77.
6. Blakey's reply to Elzie Glaze dated January 19, 1978 (HSCA Doc. 004741).
7. Letter by Elzie Dean Glaze to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network, dated June 2, 1989.
8. Harris letter to the author, dated December 15, 1992.
9. Chet Flippo, "Nitty Gritty Pick & Grin" in the October 14, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. Also The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band web page from the Internet.
10. Telephone conversation with John Peets, manager of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, May 12, 1999.
11. 6H328-329 (Shelley).
12. 6H390 (Victoria Adams).
13. 3H263 (Baker).
14. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit) and 6H330 (Shelley). Shelley and Lovelady had been inconsistent regarding their actions during the first minutes after the shooting. An entirely different story has them running out to the street island in front of the building to see what was going on. In an attempt to resolve these discrepanicies, I contacted William Shelley on March 20, 1995 and asked him if he would be willing to answer a few questions. His response was an abrupt no. He then added, "Everything that I have to say on that subject is in the public record. You'll have to go with that."
15. "The Fifth Floor Sniper" in the May 1993 issue of The Third Decade.
16. "Robert MacNeil and the Three Calm Men" in the November 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade.
17. 24H226 (Shelley affidavit).
18. The Warren Report, p. 619.
19. See "The Transplantation of the Texas School Book Depository" in the September 1993 issue of The Third Decade and "411 Elm Street" in the May 1994 issue of The Fourth Decade. Also see Jerry Rose's article "Important to Hold That Man" in the May 1986 issue of The Third Decade.
20. 6H327-328 (Shelley).
21. Telephone conversations with Tony Atzenhoffer, July 11 and August 15, 1998.
22. "Barry & the 'Boys'" by Daniel Hopsicker, Internet file, copyright 1998.
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I worked and flew with Adler Berriman Seal for many years. Also, I spent far too many hours on the telephone with Hopsicker (while he was shacked up with "Berry's widow) and he quotes me in his phony book.
Seal always signed off as "Berry", NOT Barry. There was NEVER an airport at LaCombe, LA, not even a private "grass strip" such as those used by crop-dusters. The nearest airport is at Slidell, some 13 miles distant towards the northeast. The next one is to the northwest at Mandeville, and almost 20 miles distant.
There was never a training camp at LaCombe, LA -- nor at Hammond, LA, -- nor at N.A.F. (LTA) Houma, LA , because the McLaney operation (involving Rich Lauchli, "Papucho" Espinoza, Herman Koch Gene, et al.) was a "Honey-Trap Op" to give the Cuban DGI Agents "handling" Ricardo Davis, Nico Crespi, and Oswald further bona fides that they were pro-Castro, and snitching out "Gusano" training/raider camps and operations.
NONE existed since we were there during early 1962, and so they had to be created out of thin air. When Paulino Sierra came down from Chicago with "Big Buck$", Sanchez Arango's AAA put on a phony show at the now defunct No Name Key site. Batista Falla (M.D.C.) wanted to sucker out some Sierra money, so he sent some clowns to Hammond, in tan/khaki uniforms but no guns. Laureano planned to sucker Sierra by making a deal with Guatemalen Roberto Alejos, who told him that any Cubans coming into Guatemala would have to chop wood, after they got work permits.
When the dumbass "Gusanos" discovered this farce, they immediately returned to Miami, went back to Flagler Surplus (W. Flagler & 17th Ave.) and traded in the khakis for 25 cents on the dollar !! Not to be outdone, Laureano had his guys grab Fernando Fernandez as a "Castro Spy". Because Fernandez was a real "Dangle', this blew a genuine penetration Op.
So, as we told Oliver Stone: We will build you a "Training Camp" (at Jean laFitte, LA); but the whole Garrison spiel on a Ponchartrain Camp is complete bullshit. It was Mike mcLaney doing a favor for RFK. Lauchli bitched about it later, after he had served his 2nd prison term -- and wanted to know why this whole sham went down? Especially since he had NEVER built the bomb fuses at his shop in Collinsville, Illinois.
Sorry folks, NO camps, no LHO & Ferrie, Russo, Novel, et al. -- just a pervert doing his duty for Marcello !!
__________________________
http://www.careersinsite.org/namedesc-1-LA...E-Louisiana.htm
Someone posted to you ++ and you did not reply ??
Dear Mr. Hemming,
Sorry to see your old friend hitting on hard times. Not to change the subject, [it's really the same subject]. Rumsfeld muses, "What electrode would Jesus use?" Some of us are concerned about how one human treats another. Some of us are also concerned about justice - to know the why, and the "WHO." Pinochet is a monster and an international criminal. Those who helped him rise to power should IMHO, be tried with him. You know what the D.A. says about criminals, "If you can't get them for one crime, you can get them for another." I'm sure you get my drift.
http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4297919&nav=1LFX
http://www.trentu.ca/~mneumann/pinochet.html
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r AIRCRAFT
Aircraft Informations
Registrant’s Name : MCDERMOTT DONALD R AIRCRAFT
Address : PO BOX 916
LACOMBE
Registrant’s State : LOUISIANA
Registrant’s Zip Code : 70445-0916
Registrant’s Region : SOUTHWESTERN
Type Registrant : INDIVIDUAL
County Mail : US
Last Action Date : 20030715
Certificate Issue Date : 20000721
Certification : STANDARD,NORMAL
Type Aircraft : FIXED WING SINGLE ENGINE
Type Engine : RECIPROCATING
Status Code : THE TRIENNIAL AIRCRAFT REGISTRATION FORM WAS MAILED AND HAS NOT BEEN RETURNED BY THE POST OFFICE
Aircraft Transponder Code : 50024357
Airworthiness Date : 19750609
N-Number : 1093L
----------------------------------------------
Why don't you give Mr. McDermott a call and see if indeed his "registered" aircraft is at the Slidell, LA airport
as there is NO airport at LaCombe.
As is the routine (SOP), he has "registered" his aircraft "N1093L" using his lawful domicile, OR where he has a business, OR where he receives mail -- such as his PO Box !!
As a "Koinky-Dink", there are two owners of aircraft who curently reside at No Name Key, FL -- but there aircraft are parked at the Marathon "T-Hangers" some 18 miles distant. NO, there has never been an airstrip at No Name Key either -- but there are at least two "AIRCRAFT OWNERS who reside there [one on bard a houseboat).
Check out the LaCombe Airport located in Alberta, Canada -- mayhaps that was the one Garrison had his sights set upon.
As for not responding to an e-mail which I NEVER received -- you have my permission to obtain my e-mail address from John Simkin. Also, I have had a lot of problems with this Forum message (e-mail) set-up; and i have had to sweep my PC for over an hour after just attempting to track said missives. My PC guru brother states that this is due to the Forum ISP protcting its bandwidth, which is why I sign on only for short periods. I have regularly picked up an average of.......just got jammed again !! My freebie download "BeClean" regurlarly discovers 20+ registry entries, and about 40+ unnecessary files -- which I delete every time I sign off of the Forum. Try it out. Google both "BeClean" & "MyCleaner" for good security practices -- you will be amazed at how your hard-drive is loaded up with extraneous trash.
GPH
___________________________
Bill wrote:
Hey TG? What? Now you can possibly buy the idea that Shelly, Lovelady and Frazer could have been part of the plot too?
Bill, I can find an article or book interesting without subscribing to its every theory, of course.
Re Frazier, without accusing him of being part of the conspiracy, it is interesting that in "Live By the Sword" Russo suggests it may have been Frazier that drove him to the shooting range.
Hey TG? What? Now you can possibly buy the idea that Shelly, Lovelady and Frazer could have been part of the plot too?
Bill, I can find an article or book interesting without subscribing to its every theory, of course.
Re Frazier, without accusing him of being part of the conspiracy, it is interesting that in "Live By the Sword" Russo suggests it may have been Frazier that drove him to the shooting range.
[quote name='Gerry Hemming' date='Jan 3 2006, 04:45 AM' post='50403']
[quote post='50397' date='Jan 3 2006, 03:48 AM' name='Steven Gaal']
[quote post='50342' date='Jan 2 2006, 08:36 AM' name='Gerry Hemming']
[quote post='50329' date='Jan 2 2006, 02:11 AM' name='William Weston']
The following was an article that was published in the May 1999 Issue of the Fourth Decade.
The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate? No, for in Jean Hill's book, The Last Dissenting Witness, a Dallas motorcycle officer, J. B. Marshall, was quoted as saying, "The Feds are tearing our whole department to pieces . . . they tell 'em, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll take your badge.' . . . they've been especially rough on all the guys who were on motorcade duty that day." [3] Still another victim was Marina Oswald, who was told that if she did not cooperate, she would be forced to leave the country. [4] These examples demonstrate a stern resolve to squash even the mildest of troublemakers. Why then should the FBI meekly tolerate a slap in the face from someone at the Book Depository? Did the warehouse manager have some clout that even Hoover had to respect? If so, it is difficult to understand where this clout came from. The innocence of anyone working in that particular building was far from certain in the eyes of suspicious investigators.
Whatever might be said in the ongoing debate concerning the number of bullets whizzing through Dealey Plaza, it is a fact that the Book Depository was a source location. On the premises was at least one hit team, including a leader, a sniper, a radioman, and two or three watchers to secure the escape route. It was also the staging area of the patsy, who had to be controlled and moved around in such a way that he would be in a credible position to take the blame. To keep the risks of exposure to a minimum, the conspirators had to have complete control over the building. How they managed to accomplish this is a question that remains to be answered.
Six years ago I received from Larry Ray Harris a copy of a letter that sheds some light on this issue. Written by a Mr. Glaze to the Alternative Information Network in Austin, Texas on June 2, 1989, this letter mentioned an earlier letter that was sent to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Recently I was able to get a copy of the earlier letter from the National Archives. Through a comparison of the details in both letters, I have been able to produce the following narrative.
In late 1974, while working as a journalist in Dallas, Glaze met a woman who began working for the Book Depository in 1969 - six years after the assassination. (She was no longer working there at the time she spoke to Glaze.) Her supervisor was William Shelley. The company, she said, had a strange way of introducing new employees to their duties. She and another new employee were approached by two men, who produced I.D. wallets and identified themselves as "government agents." They were taken to an empty room and given questionnaires to fill out. These exams were full of oddly irrelevant questions, calling for opinions on various topics of the day, especially social issues. Obediently the two employees wrote out their answers. When they were done, they gave the sheets back, and in the short pause that followed, one of the examiners bluntly asked: "Have you been recruited by the FBI or the CIA?" The two employees were stunned. As ordinary office workers, they were only doing minor clerical tasks at low wages. Why would anyone think that they came from the FBI or the CIA? While it was true that the Book Depository had acquired the notoriety of being the place where Oswald shot the President, still by 1969 that should have been ancient history. Yet even more disturbing were the next questions that came to mind. If the Book Depository was just an insignificant, little company, why would it be attracting the attention of the two biggest intelligence establishments in the country? Furthermore, what was the intrigue that was spurring these "government agents" to hunt down unwanted infiltrators?
Glaze asked the woman if she and her co-worker were the only ones subjected to this kind of treatment. No, they were not the only ones. Background checks on new employees were done as a routine procedure at the Book Depository. After listening to the woman's account, Glaze decided to check it out. He contacted her former supervisor, William Shelley, and asked to meet with him. Shelley agreed to this request and even allowed the reporter to take notes and use a tape recorder. The meeting took place at the Book Depository warehouse near the intersection of Royal Lane and Interstate 35 on the far northwest side of Dallas. (The company had moved from its old location on 411 Elm Street in 1970.) The information that Glaze was gathering must have been extensive, for the two men had numerous meetings together. Yet only a few disclosures are provided in the letters. The most significant one appears in the 1989 letter: "Mr. Shelley claims to have been an intelligence officer during World War II and thereafter joined the CIA." This extraordinary revelation goes far in explaining the mysteries of the Book Depository, and a discussion of its implications will be given later in this article.
Shelley told Glaze that he had been the supervisor of Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination, the Dallas police placed Shelley under arrest and formally charged him with the murder of the President. (No mention was made by Glaze as to why Shelley had been arrested, nor did he say what connection this arrest had with the arrest of Oswald.) The charges against Shelley were soon dropped, and he was released. Since that day, at various times, journalists representing several newspapers and magazines approached him with offers of huge sums of money for his personal account of the assassination. These offers were all turned down. When Glaze tried to get permission to quote him in his own article, Shelley refused and insisted that even his name was not to be printed.
In spite of this setback, Glaze was not discouraged. He went back to the woman and told her that he was doing a story on the Book Depository. He was going to talk to the FBI and possibly get some more information. When the woman heard this, she was absolutely appalled. The very idea that he was writing an article filled her with terror. She told him that if he persisted in his efforts to publicize this story, she would emphatically deny everything she told him. The prospects for an article irretrievably came to an end, and Glaze had no choice but to go home empty-handed.
It was not long after his departure that he felt obliged to speak to the woman again. What he intended to say is not mentioned in his letters, but perhaps he wanted to make an apology. In any case, it was only a few hours after he last saw her that he decided to see her again.
When he arrived at her apartment, he was surprised to find it totally empty. It looked as if no one had ever lived there. Glaze knew that she had a husband and a child, and they too were gone. The mystified reporter could not understand how three people could have moved away so quickly. The next day he went to the woman's place of employment and found out that she never showed up for work, and no one knew where she was. Later inquiries revealed that she did not even stop by to pick up her final paycheck. In his quest to find them, the most promising lead Glaze had was the fact that the husband had once been a musician in "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band." Yet even this fortuitous bit of information got him nowhere. Not one acquaintance or associate had any idea where they could have gone.
About the same time as he was conducting his search, Glaze went to get his interview notes and tapes and found that they had inexplicably disappeared. Then one day, he heard a commotion outside his apartment. He looked out the window and saw an estimated twenty Dallas policemen pulled up in front. They lingered for nearly an hour, shouting in a highly threatening manner and pointing their pistols at his window. Frightened for his life, he immediately left the city.
On December 12, 1977, while working as a reporter for the Avalanche Journal in Lubbock, Texas, he sent a letter to the HSCA. He wrote that he had some information regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and gave a brief sketch of his investigation of the Book Depository. In the closing paragraphs of his letter, he wrote, "I must admit that my own fear of getting involved in the investigation has prevented me from writing you earlier. I apologize." [5]
Whether or not the HSCA had taken an interest in this matter is not known. The only reply it sent was a form letter, which read: "Dear Ms. Glaze [The HSCA had mistakenly thought he was a woman], Thank you for your letter. It has been directed to the Deputy Chief Counsel in charge of the investigation for his review. Your interest in the work of our Committee is appreciated. Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director." [6]
Eleven years later, Glaze wrote a letter to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network. [7] He also sent them a copy of the reply that he got from Blakey. Somehow a copy of both these letters ended up in the hands of Larry Ray Harris. In his own letter to me, Harris wrote: "I don't recall its origins with clarity, but I think it was given to me by a professor at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas. Regardless, it ended up in my files around the time we opened the JFK Center in 1989. I don't know that anyone has ever looked into it. It could be a hoax, but sounds sincere. It would be easy to verify (1) if a reporter named Glaze has ever worked for the Lubbock newspaper; (2) if a journalist named Glaze was living in Dallas in 1974/1975; and (3) if there is/was an 'Alternative Information Network' in Austin, or if Kellner and Morrow are real persons and remember receiving the letter. If it is true that Shelley was affiliated in some way with CIA or U.S. Intelligence, that would be a disturbing and potentially significant development." [8]
When I first began my inquiry, I was hampered by a minor problem. The signature at the bottom of the letter was blacked out. Fortunately the salutation "Dear Ms. Glaze" on the HSCA letter was not. I thus had a clue that the first name must be some gender neutral type such as Robin or Terry. In January 1993, I called up the Avalanche Journal and asked for Mr. Glaze. No one by that name was currently employed. Neither were there any records of a Glaze in the files of the personnel department. Yet the absence of records did not necessarily mean he never worked there; it was a regular practice to discard the records of former employees after three years. Was there anyone who had been around long enough to remember a journalist named Glaze? The personnel director said that she had been with the paper for about as long as anyone, since 1982, and she never knew anyone by that name.
I next tried to reach either Kellner or Morrow at the Alternative Information Network. Kellner was the one who took my call. I told him who I was and that I had a letter addressed to him and his partner regarding the Kennedy assassination. After I read the contents, Kellner said he never got it. It was odd, he said, that I should have a letter in which he was named as a recipient but he had never seen it. He asked that a copy be sent to his home - not to the business - and after he read it, he would check into it. Two weeks later I made a follow-up phone call and asked Kellner if he found out anything. He said that he showed the letter to Morrow, who said that he vaguely remembered it but could not give any additional information regarding the contents or the author who wrote it.
That was as far as I got in 1993. In February 1999, a researcher named Steve Gaal checked the National Archives web site and found that someone named Glaze had written to the HSCA. That was when I finally had the full name of the reporter: Elzie Dean Glaze. A search of the Internet revealed that a man with this same name has a current e-mail address in Austin, Texas. I sent two messages to that address, but so far I received no response.
The next lead that had to be tracked down was the identity of the man who had been a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The band started out in 1966 as a jug band in Long Beach, California. They became known for their unique blend of country western and rock and roll. Among the original musicians were John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr, Leslie Thompson, and Jimmie Fadden. After appearing in a movie calledPaint Your Wagon, the band went through some hard times. In 1968 a meeting was held in the manager's Hollywood office, and the group decided to dissolve. Les Thompson ended the meeting with a question: "Does that mean we don't hafta practice anymore?" He then went to Texas to enroll in a bulldozer school. A year or two later, the members of the band, with the exception of Kunkel and Barr, decided to try again. A new member from Philadelphia named Jimmie Ibbotson was added on. This time they achieved commercial success, and in 1970 a song called "Mr. Bojangles" became a top ten hit. Sometime prior to 1974, Les Thompson left the band again. In 1977 the group acquired the distinction of being the first American band to tour the Soviet Union. They are still going strong today, having released a new album called Bang! Bang! Bang! in May 1999. [9]
In an attempt to get more information, I sent them a letter, along with copies of the Glaze correspondence. In a follow-up phone call, I spoke with the manager, and he told me that he talked with the two musicians who had been with the band from the beginning. They said that it has been a such long time since they heard from the early members, that they were unable to provide any information as to where they went or what they had been doing. [10]
With nothing else to go, I would say that the musician spoken of by Glaze was probably Leslie Thompson. He was the only one who went to Texas, and he might have stayed there long enough to establish long-term ties with some of the people in that state.
Having gone as far as I could in checking the authenticity of the Glaze letters, the next thing that needs to be done is to cross-check the information contained in them with what we know about William Shelley.
At the time the assassination occurred, Shelley was, according to his testimony, standing on the steps of the Book Depository with Billy Lovelady and Wesley Frazier. [11] The James Altgens photograph of the limousine under fire confirms the presence of Lovelady on the steps but not Shelley or Frazier. About a minute after the assassination, two female employees in the Book Depository came down the stairs and saw Shelley and Lovelady in the back of the building just about in front of the two freight elevators. One lady said, "I believe the President has been shot." Curiously, neither Shelley nor Lovelady said anything in reply. [12] After the two women ran out the back door, Roy Truly and Police Officer Marion Baker rushed in through the front door. They were going up to the roof to search for a gunman. According to Baker's testimony, he saw two white men sitting by the stairs. [13] According to Shelley, he and Lovelady were appointed by Truly to guard the stairs and elevators. [14]
In any reconstruction of what was happening with the stairs and elevators, it is obvious that Shelley and Lovelady must have seen the escape of one of the assassins. About a minute or two after Truly and Baker went up the stairs, a witness on the street saw a man in a dark sportcoat running out the back door. This man was no doubt the same one seen at a fifth floor window standing next to a man armed with a rifle. After the shooting ended, the man in the dark sportcoat took an elevator down to the ground floor, while at the same time Truly and Baker were going up the stairs. As the culprit headed for the back door, he would have had to pass Shelley and Lovelady in order to exit the building. [15]
About a minute or two after the man in the dark sportcoat dashed out the back door, NBC news reporter Robert MacNeil came in through the front door. In a written account of what he saw, he said that he was surprised to see three men, totally oblivious to the chaos outside, standing by a pay phone.
I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw – a man who was telephoning from a pillar in the middle of the room – where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were lit up. I made my call and left. . . . I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. [16]
MacNeil's amazement at the strange placidity of the three men is indicated by the way he repeated this observation for emphasis. The man using the pay phone was quite probably Shelley, for in an affidavit made out that same afternoon, Shelley said, "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." [17]
About a minute or two after MacNeil saw the three calm men - between 12:35 and 12:40 - Oswald had a five-to-ten minute chat with the assistant manager. According to an FBI report of the first interrogation of Oswald in the Dallas homocide office:
OSWALD stated that [at the time of the assassination] he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of BILL SHELLEY, he did not believe that there was going to be any more work that day due to the confusion in the building. [18]
The timing and location of Oswald's departure from the Book Depository correlates exactly with the appearance of a Nash Rambler on Elm Street driven by a dark-skinned man. Between 12:40 and 12:45, Deputy Roger Craig heard a loud whistle and looked up to see Oswald running down the grassy slope in front of the Book Depository. Oswald opened the passenger side door of the Nash Rambler and got in. The car was last seen speeding towards Oak Cliff, where the shooting of Officer Tippit was to occur twenty to thirty minutes later. If Oswald had been talking to Shelley prior to his departure, then there can be no doubt that Shelley had seen him getting away.
Not long after Oswald left the scene, Shelley told Truly that Oswald was missing. (How he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed.) A roll call of warehouse employees was made, and it was determined that Oswald was indeed absent. Truly notified Police Captain Will Fritz, who immediately thought that it was "important to hold that man." [19]
The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it. Assuming that the police really had arrested him and charged him with the assassination, they certainly would have had ample cause. For one thing, they would have known that Shelley was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Secondly, the accused assassin had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave. Thirdly, the police knew about the Nash Rambler story as early as 5:00 in the afternoon, when Roger Craig reported it to them. Finally, Shelley might not have been entirely candid in how he came to realize that Oswald was missing. No doubt Shelley was asked a lot of questions, and it is possible that he was kept in custody until he gave some satisfactory answers. Admittedly, there is no record of Shelley being arrested, but that does not necessarily mean Glaze was wrong. Missing evidence could just as easily be due to the systematic destruction of anything contrary to the official version.
The presence of an agent, or an ex-agent, of the CIA at the Book Depository would explain a great deal regarding how the conspirators managed to get their gunmen on the premises. Let us now look into Shelley's background to see what additional corroboration can be shed on this matter.
According to statements made to the police and to the Warren Commission, Shelley was born in Gunter, Texas in 1925. During World War Two, he worked "a little bit" in defense plants. On October 29, 1945 at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository. Eighteen years later, in 1963, he was holding the position of assistant manager of the "miscellaneous department." [20] By 1975, when Glaze talked to him, he had passed his thirtieth anniversary in the company. Such a long career in one place is confirmed in the listings of the city directories. In 1947 he was listed as a clerk at the Hugh Perry Book Depository (the old name for the Texas School Book Depository), and he had a room at 515 Martinique Avenue. In 1960 he was a department manager; his wife's name was Marie; and they lived in a house on 126 Tatum Avenue. They were still living in that house at the time of the assassination.
Although the facts are few, the picture is clear. Shelley was a simple desk clerk and warehouse man, content to live out his working life under the roof of one company. He certainly did not fit the image of a globetrotting CIA operative, embarking on secret missions with the latest in high tech weaponry. Even if we can assume that he really had been an intelligence officer during World War Two, it does not seem possible that he could have joined the CIA afterwards. The agency did not even come into existence until two years after Shelley got his job at the Book Depository.
It would thus appear that we have an irreconcilable situation; Shelley could not have been in the CIA before his employment at the Book Depository. Yet I believe that a seemingly irresolvable problem might on closer examination yield a solution that brings a deeper understanding of the truth. Let us take a different approach. Let us suppose that the job at the Book Depository was concurrent with a career in the CIA. If we can assume that is true, then the Book Depository itself must have been a front for CIA activities.
While it is commonly acknowledged that the agency has too much influence in national affairs, it is still amazing to find its hand in such a wide diversity of organizations and institutions. These include such entities as labor unions, airlines, college student associations, foundations, law firms, banks, savings and loans, investment firms, travel agencies, police departments, post offices, publishing companies, newspapers, call girl services, and mental health institutions. Considering the far-reaching extent of control over so many different areas in American society, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the CIA would have the moral restraint to make an exception of the Book Depository - provided, of course, that the control of it would further its goals in some way.
If CIA operators had been working inside the building in which the Book Depository was located, they would have not been on unfriendly ground. The property itself was owned by a wealthy, right-wing Texas oilman named D. H. Byrd. He was also a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, which included among its members Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. That Ferrie and Oswald knew each other was proven in a 1993 Frontline special on Oswald, in which former cadets Tony Atzenhoffer and Johnny Ciravola displayed a picture showing Ferrie and Oswald at a cadet campout near New Orleans. What is not so well known is that the two men also knew Colonel Byrd. Atzenhoffer told this author that Byrd was the "head honcho" of the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana and Texas, and that he came to Moissant Airport to give speeches on special occasions, such as orientation sessions for new cadets. [21] Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
Another member of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol who was an associate of the CIA was Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggler who set up the Mena Airport operation in Arkansas in the early 1980's and later got involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was murdered in 1986 by three Colombian hitmen. Seal first got his pilot's license in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1954, when he was sixteen years old. According to a high school friend, Seal was well acquainted with David Ferrie.
One Friday evening while we were in high school, I got a call from Barry, asking if I'd like to fly over to Lacombe with him in the morning, a little town on the north shore across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. We left about 5:30 and flew over to the little airport there and Barry and I get out of the plane, and here's this really weird-looking guy, dressed all in black, sitting in a director's chair on the tarmac, and he's drilling a bunch of Civil Air Patrol guys that are standing in formation in front of him. They were carrying old M-1s. His name was David Ferrie. He was a captain in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. . . . See, Barry was making $400 a week in high school flying for David Ferrie. . . .
On the flight back, Barry shouted over the engine. "That weird looking guy? He's got no hair on his body! It's why he's wearing a wig! Get up close, he's even got fake eyebrows, and fake eyelashes, but . . . that weirdo's a big-time pilot and works with the CIA.
Seal and his friend also talked about the wooden crates that Ferrie and Seal were examining. They contained guns and ammo, Seal explained to his friend, and he would be transporting this cargo on the weekend. Ferrie was paying him $400 a week to fly this stuff. $400 was a great deal of money in the mid-1950's. [22]
If the CIA was using Byrd's chapter of the Civil Air Patrol to transport illegal shipments of guns and ammo, then what could have prevented them from using Byrd's property on the corner of Elm and Houston for the same purpose? Since Dallas was a source of munitions going to New Orleans in the drive to overthrow leftist governments in Central and South America, then a way had to be found to move them secretly. Big, heavy boxes marked "Schoolbooks" would have been a handy way of delivering the goods. Perhaps that was what the "miscellaneous department" of the Book Depository was all about.
__________________________
[/quote]Hemming Sir, Seems some type of aviation at LaCombe LA sg
http://www.careersinsite.org/namedesc-1-LA...E-Louisiana.htm
Someone posted to you ++ and you did not reply ??
Dear Mr. Hemming,
Sorry to see your old friend hitting on hard times. Not to change the subject, [it's really the same subject]. Rumsfeld muses, "What electrode would Jesus use?" Some of us are concerned about how one human treats another. Some of us are also concerned about justice - to know the why, and the "WHO." Pinochet is a monster and an international criminal. Those who helped him rise to power should IMHO, be tried with him. You know what the D.A. says about criminals, "If you can't get them for one crime, you can get them for another." I'm sure you get my drift.
http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4297919&nav=1LFX
http://www.trentu.ca/~mneumann/pinochet.html
[/quote]
-----------------------------------
r AIRCRAFT
Aircraft Informations
Registrant’s Name : MCDERMOTT DONALD R AIRCRAFT
Address : PO BOX 916
LACOMBE
Registrant’s State : LOUISIANA
Registrant’s Zip Code : 70445-0916
Registrant’s Region : SOUTHWESTERN
Type Registrant : INDIVIDUAL
County Mail : US
Last Action Date : 20030715
Certificate Issue Date : 20000721
Certification : STANDARD,NORMAL
Type Aircraft : FIXED WING SINGLE ENGINE
Type Engine : RECIPROCATING
Status Code : THE TRIENNIAL AIRCRAFT REGISTRATION FORM WAS MAILED AND HAS NOT BEEN RETURNED BY THE POST OFFICE
Aircraft Transponder Code : 50024357
Airworthiness Date : 19750609
N-Number : 1093L
----------------------------------------------
Why don't you give Mr. McDermott a call and see if indeed his "registered" aircraft is at the Slidell, LA airport
as there is NO airport at LaCombe.
As is the routine (SOP), he has "registered" his aircraft "N1093L" using his lawful domicile, OR where he has a business, OR where he receives mail -- such as his PO Box !!
As a "Koinky-Dink", there are two owners of aircraft who curently reside at No Name Key, FL -- but there aircraft are parked at the Marathon "T-Hangers" some 18 miles distant. NO, there has never been an airstrip at No Name Key either -- but there are at least two "AIRCRAFT OWNERS who reside there [one on bard a houseboat).
Check out the LaCombe Airport located in Alberta, Canada -- mayhaps that was the one Garrison had his sights set upon.
As for not responding to an e-mail which I NEVER received -- you have my permission to obtain my e-mail address from John Simkin. Also, I have had a lot of problems with this Forum message (e-mail) set-up; and i have had to sweep my PC for over an hour after just attempting to track said missives. My PC guru brother states that this is due to the Forum ISP protcting its bandwidth, which is why I sign on only for short periods. I have regularly picked up an average of.......just got jammed again !! My freebie download "BeClean" regurlarly discovers 20+ registry entries, and about 40+ unnecessary files -- which I delete every time I sign off of the Forum. Try it out. Google both "BeClean" & "MyCleaner" for good security practices -- you will be amazed at how your hard-drive is loaded up with extraneous trash.
GPH
___________________________
[/quote]
---------------------------------
SOUTHERN NATURAL GAS CO.
General Info
Country United States
State LOUISIANA
FAA ID 3LA2
Latitude 30-16-50.706N
Longitude 089-57-15.255W
Elevation 0 feet
Near City LACOMBE
Source: NFD
Note: NFD-derived records are still actively being developed. They might not be up to date, and could still contain errors or omissions. Check back often!
-------------------------------------------------
Southern Natural Gas has a licensed HELICOPTER PAD at that site, just as the Houma Regional medical and dozens of other have HELICOPTER LANDING PADS !!
GIVE THEM A CALL.
A far better twist would have been: "...Well, once the bombs were ready and the "Gusanos" trained...it was only a short truck ride to Slidell Airport..or Mandeville...or even Hammind..."!! Which means diddly squat once again !!
Could you clarify exactly WHO is that "Old Freind" who is hitting on hard times ??!!
____________________________--
[quote post='50397' date='Jan 3 2006, 03:48 AM' name='Steven Gaal']
[quote post='50342' date='Jan 2 2006, 08:36 AM' name='Gerry Hemming']
[quote post='50329' date='Jan 2 2006, 02:11 AM' name='William Weston']
The following was an article that was published in the May 1999 Issue of the Fourth Decade.
The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate? No, for in Jean Hill's book, The Last Dissenting Witness, a Dallas motorcycle officer, J. B. Marshall, was quoted as saying, "The Feds are tearing our whole department to pieces . . . they tell 'em, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll take your badge.' . . . they've been especially rough on all the guys who were on motorcade duty that day." [3] Still another victim was Marina Oswald, who was told that if she did not cooperate, she would be forced to leave the country. [4] These examples demonstrate a stern resolve to squash even the mildest of troublemakers. Why then should the FBI meekly tolerate a slap in the face from someone at the Book Depository? Did the warehouse manager have some clout that even Hoover had to respect? If so, it is difficult to understand where this clout came from. The innocence of anyone working in that particular building was far from certain in the eyes of suspicious investigators.
Whatever might be said in the ongoing debate concerning the number of bullets whizzing through Dealey Plaza, it is a fact that the Book Depository was a source location. On the premises was at least one hit team, including a leader, a sniper, a radioman, and two or three watchers to secure the escape route. It was also the staging area of the patsy, who had to be controlled and moved around in such a way that he would be in a credible position to take the blame. To keep the risks of exposure to a minimum, the conspirators had to have complete control over the building. How they managed to accomplish this is a question that remains to be answered.
Six years ago I received from Larry Ray Harris a copy of a letter that sheds some light on this issue. Written by a Mr. Glaze to the Alternative Information Network in Austin, Texas on June 2, 1989, this letter mentioned an earlier letter that was sent to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Recently I was able to get a copy of the earlier letter from the National Archives. Through a comparison of the details in both letters, I have been able to produce the following narrative.
In late 1974, while working as a journalist in Dallas, Glaze met a woman who began working for the Book Depository in 1969 - six years after the assassination. (She was no longer working there at the time she spoke to Glaze.) Her supervisor was William Shelley. The company, she said, had a strange way of introducing new employees to their duties. She and another new employee were approached by two men, who produced I.D. wallets and identified themselves as "government agents." They were taken to an empty room and given questionnaires to fill out. These exams were full of oddly irrelevant questions, calling for opinions on various topics of the day, especially social issues. Obediently the two employees wrote out their answers. When they were done, they gave the sheets back, and in the short pause that followed, one of the examiners bluntly asked: "Have you been recruited by the FBI or the CIA?" The two employees were stunned. As ordinary office workers, they were only doing minor clerical tasks at low wages. Why would anyone think that they came from the FBI or the CIA? While it was true that the Book Depository had acquired the notoriety of being the place where Oswald shot the President, still by 1969 that should have been ancient history. Yet even more disturbing were the next questions that came to mind. If the Book Depository was just an insignificant, little company, why would it be attracting the attention of the two biggest intelligence establishments in the country? Furthermore, what was the intrigue that was spurring these "government agents" to hunt down unwanted infiltrators?
Glaze asked the woman if she and her co-worker were the only ones subjected to this kind of treatment. No, they were not the only ones. Background checks on new employees were done as a routine procedure at the Book Depository. After listening to the woman's account, Glaze decided to check it out. He contacted her former supervisor, William Shelley, and asked to meet with him. Shelley agreed to this request and even allowed the reporter to take notes and use a tape recorder. The meeting took place at the Book Depository warehouse near the intersection of Royal Lane and Interstate 35 on the far northwest side of Dallas. (The company had moved from its old location on 411 Elm Street in 1970.) The information that Glaze was gathering must have been extensive, for the two men had numerous meetings together. Yet only a few disclosures are provided in the letters. The most significant one appears in the 1989 letter: "Mr. Shelley claims to have been an intelligence officer during World War II and thereafter joined the CIA." This extraordinary revelation goes far in explaining the mysteries of the Book Depository, and a discussion of its implications will be given later in this article.
Shelley told Glaze that he had been the supervisor of Lee Harvey Oswald. After the assassination, the Dallas police placed Shelley under arrest and formally charged him with the murder of the President. (No mention was made by Glaze as to why Shelley had been arrested, nor did he say what connection this arrest had with the arrest of Oswald.) The charges against Shelley were soon dropped, and he was released. Since that day, at various times, journalists representing several newspapers and magazines approached him with offers of huge sums of money for his personal account of the assassination. These offers were all turned down. When Glaze tried to get permission to quote him in his own article, Shelley refused and insisted that even his name was not to be printed.
In spite of this setback, Glaze was not discouraged. He went back to the woman and told her that he was doing a story on the Book Depository. He was going to talk to the FBI and possibly get some more information. When the woman heard this, she was absolutely appalled. The very idea that he was writing an article filled her with terror. She told him that if he persisted in his efforts to publicize this story, she would emphatically deny everything she told him. The prospects for an article irretrievably came to an end, and Glaze had no choice but to go home empty-handed.
It was not long after his departure that he felt obliged to speak to the woman again. What he intended to say is not mentioned in his letters, but perhaps he wanted to make an apology. In any case, it was only a few hours after he last saw her that he decided to see her again.
When he arrived at her apartment, he was surprised to find it totally empty. It looked as if no one had ever lived there. Glaze knew that she had a husband and a child, and they too were gone. The mystified reporter could not understand how three people could have moved away so quickly. The next day he went to the woman's place of employment and found out that she never showed up for work, and no one knew where she was. Later inquiries revealed that she did not even stop by to pick up her final paycheck. In his quest to find them, the most promising lead Glaze had was the fact that the husband had once been a musician in "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band." Yet even this fortuitous bit of information got him nowhere. Not one acquaintance or associate had any idea where they could have gone.
About the same time as he was conducting his search, Glaze went to get his interview notes and tapes and found that they had inexplicably disappeared. Then one day, he heard a commotion outside his apartment. He looked out the window and saw an estimated twenty Dallas policemen pulled up in front. They lingered for nearly an hour, shouting in a highly threatening manner and pointing their pistols at his window. Frightened for his life, he immediately left the city.
On December 12, 1977, while working as a reporter for the Avalanche Journal in Lubbock, Texas, he sent a letter to the HSCA. He wrote that he had some information regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and gave a brief sketch of his investigation of the Book Depository. In the closing paragraphs of his letter, he wrote, "I must admit that my own fear of getting involved in the investigation has prevented me from writing you earlier. I apologize." [5]
Whether or not the HSCA had taken an interest in this matter is not known. The only reply it sent was a form letter, which read: "Dear Ms. Glaze [The HSCA had mistakenly thought he was a woman], Thank you for your letter. It has been directed to the Deputy Chief Counsel in charge of the investigation for his review. Your interest in the work of our Committee is appreciated. Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director." [6]
Eleven years later, Glaze wrote a letter to Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow of The Alternative Information Network. [7] He also sent them a copy of the reply that he got from Blakey. Somehow a copy of both these letters ended up in the hands of Larry Ray Harris. In his own letter to me, Harris wrote: "I don't recall its origins with clarity, but I think it was given to me by a professor at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas. Regardless, it ended up in my files around the time we opened the JFK Center in 1989. I don't know that anyone has ever looked into it. It could be a hoax, but sounds sincere. It would be easy to verify (1) if a reporter named Glaze has ever worked for the Lubbock newspaper; (2) if a journalist named Glaze was living in Dallas in 1974/1975; and (3) if there is/was an 'Alternative Information Network' in Austin, or if Kellner and Morrow are real persons and remember receiving the letter. If it is true that Shelley was affiliated in some way with CIA or U.S. Intelligence, that would be a disturbing and potentially significant development." [8]
When I first began my inquiry, I was hampered by a minor problem. The signature at the bottom of the letter was blacked out. Fortunately the salutation "Dear Ms. Glaze" on the HSCA letter was not. I thus had a clue that the first name must be some gender neutral type such as Robin or Terry. In January 1993, I called up the Avalanche Journal and asked for Mr. Glaze. No one by that name was currently employed. Neither were there any records of a Glaze in the files of the personnel department. Yet the absence of records did not necessarily mean he never worked there; it was a regular practice to discard the records of former employees after three years. Was there anyone who had been around long enough to remember a journalist named Glaze? The personnel director said that she had been with the paper for about as long as anyone, since 1982, and she never knew anyone by that name.
I next tried to reach either Kellner or Morrow at the Alternative Information Network. Kellner was the one who took my call. I told him who I was and that I had a letter addressed to him and his partner regarding the Kennedy assassination. After I read the contents, Kellner said he never got it. It was odd, he said, that I should have a letter in which he was named as a recipient but he had never seen it. He asked that a copy be sent to his home - not to the business - and after he read it, he would check into it. Two weeks later I made a follow-up phone call and asked Kellner if he found out anything. He said that he showed the letter to Morrow, who said that he vaguely remembered it but could not give any additional information regarding the contents or the author who wrote it.
That was as far as I got in 1993. In February 1999, a researcher named Steve Gaal checked the National Archives web site and found that someone named Glaze had written to the HSCA. That was when I finally had the full name of the reporter: Elzie Dean Glaze. A search of the Internet revealed that a man with this same name has a current e-mail address in Austin, Texas. I sent two messages to that address, but so far I received no response.
The next lead that had to be tracked down was the identity of the man who had been a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The band started out in 1966 as a jug band in Long Beach, California. They became known for their unique blend of country western and rock and roll. Among the original musicians were John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr, Leslie Thompson, and Jimmie Fadden. After appearing in a movie calledPaint Your Wagon, the band went through some hard times. In 1968 a meeting was held in the manager's Hollywood office, and the group decided to dissolve. Les Thompson ended the meeting with a question: "Does that mean we don't hafta practice anymore?" He then went to Texas to enroll in a bulldozer school. A year or two later, the members of the band, with the exception of Kunkel and Barr, decided to try again. A new member from Philadelphia named Jimmie Ibbotson was added on. This time they achieved commercial success, and in 1970 a song called "Mr. Bojangles" became a top ten hit. Sometime prior to 1974, Les Thompson left the band again. In 1977 the group acquired the distinction of being the first American band to tour the Soviet Union. They are still going strong today, having released a new album called Bang! Bang! Bang! in May 1999. [9]
In an attempt to get more information, I sent them a letter, along with copies of the Glaze correspondence. In a follow-up phone call, I spoke with the manager, and he told me that he talked with the two musicians who had been with the band from the beginning. They said that it has been a such long time since they heard from the early members, that they were unable to provide any information as to where they went or what they had been doing. [10]
With nothing else to go, I would say that the musician spoken of by Glaze was probably Leslie Thompson. He was the only one who went to Texas, and he might have stayed there long enough to establish long-term ties with some of the people in that state.
Having gone as far as I could in checking the authenticity of the Glaze letters, the next thing that needs to be done is to cross-check the information contained in them with what we know about William Shelley.
At the time the assassination occurred, Shelley was, according to his testimony, standing on the steps of the Book Depository with Billy Lovelady and Wesley Frazier. [11] The James Altgens photograph of the limousine under fire confirms the presence of Lovelady on the steps but not Shelley or Frazier. About a minute after the assassination, two female employees in the Book Depository came down the stairs and saw Shelley and Lovelady in the back of the building just about in front of the two freight elevators. One lady said, "I believe the President has been shot." Curiously, neither Shelley nor Lovelady said anything in reply. [12] After the two women ran out the back door, Roy Truly and Police Officer Marion Baker rushed in through the front door. They were going up to the roof to search for a gunman. According to Baker's testimony, he saw two white men sitting by the stairs. [13] According to Shelley, he and Lovelady were appointed by Truly to guard the stairs and elevators. [14]
In any reconstruction of what was happening with the stairs and elevators, it is obvious that Shelley and Lovelady must have seen the escape of one of the assassins. About a minute or two after Truly and Baker went up the stairs, a witness on the street saw a man in a dark sportcoat running out the back door. This man was no doubt the same one seen at a fifth floor window standing next to a man armed with a rifle. After the shooting ended, the man in the dark sportcoat took an elevator down to the ground floor, while at the same time Truly and Baker were going up the stairs. As the culprit headed for the back door, he would have had to pass Shelley and Lovelady in order to exit the building. [15]
About a minute or two after the man in the dark sportcoat dashed out the back door, NBC news reporter Robert MacNeil came in through the front door. In a written account of what he saw, he said that he was surprised to see three men, totally oblivious to the chaos outside, standing by a pay phone.
I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw – a man who was telephoning from a pillar in the middle of the room – where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were lit up. I made my call and left. . . . I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. [16]
MacNeil's amazement at the strange placidity of the three men is indicated by the way he repeated this observation for emphasis. The man using the pay phone was quite probably Shelley, for in an affidavit made out that same afternoon, Shelley said, "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." [17]
About a minute or two after MacNeil saw the three calm men - between 12:35 and 12:40 - Oswald had a five-to-ten minute chat with the assistant manager. According to an FBI report of the first interrogation of Oswald in the Dallas homocide office:
OSWALD stated that [at the time of the assassination] he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY, and thereafter went home. He stated that he left work because, in his opinion, based upon remarks of BILL SHELLEY, he did not believe that there was going to be any more work that day due to the confusion in the building. [18]
The timing and location of Oswald's departure from the Book Depository correlates exactly with the appearance of a Nash Rambler on Elm Street driven by a dark-skinned man. Between 12:40 and 12:45, Deputy Roger Craig heard a loud whistle and looked up to see Oswald running down the grassy slope in front of the Book Depository. Oswald opened the passenger side door of the Nash Rambler and got in. The car was last seen speeding towards Oak Cliff, where the shooting of Officer Tippit was to occur twenty to thirty minutes later. If Oswald had been talking to Shelley prior to his departure, then there can be no doubt that Shelley had seen him getting away.
Not long after Oswald left the scene, Shelley told Truly that Oswald was missing. (How he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed.) A roll call of warehouse employees was made, and it was determined that Oswald was indeed absent. Truly notified Police Captain Will Fritz, who immediately thought that it was "important to hold that man." [19]
The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it. Assuming that the police really had arrested him and charged him with the assassination, they certainly would have had ample cause. For one thing, they would have known that Shelley was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Secondly, the accused assassin had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave. Thirdly, the police knew about the Nash Rambler story as early as 5:00 in the afternoon, when Roger Craig reported it to them. Finally, Shelley might not have been entirely candid in how he came to realize that Oswald was missing. No doubt Shelley was asked a lot of questions, and it is possible that he was kept in custody until he gave some satisfactory answers. Admittedly, there is no record of Shelley being arrested, but that does not necessarily mean Glaze was wrong. Missing evidence could just as easily be due to the systematic destruction of anything contrary to the official version.
The presence of an agent, or an ex-agent, of the CIA at the Book Depository would explain a great deal regarding how the conspirators managed to get their gunmen on the premises. Let us now look into Shelley's background to see what additional corroboration can be shed on this matter.
According to statements made to the police and to the Warren Commission, Shelley was born in Gunter, Texas in 1925. During World War Two, he worked "a little bit" in defense plants. On October 29, 1945 at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository. Eighteen years later, in 1963, he was holding the position of assistant manager of the "miscellaneous department." [20] By 1975, when Glaze talked to him, he had passed his thirtieth anniversary in the company. Such a long career in one place is confirmed in the listings of the city directories. In 1947 he was listed as a clerk at the Hugh Perry Book Depository (the old name for the Texas School Book Depository), and he had a room at 515 Martinique Avenue. In 1960 he was a department manager; his wife's name was Marie; and they lived in a house on 126 Tatum Avenue. They were still living in that house at the time of the assassination.
Although the facts are few, the picture is clear. Shelley was a simple desk clerk and warehouse man, content to live out his working life under the roof of one company. He certainly did not fit the image of a globetrotting CIA operative, embarking on secret missions with the latest in high tech weaponry. Even if we can assume that he really had been an intelligence officer during World War Two, it does not seem possible that he could have joined the CIA afterwards. The agency did not even come into existence until two years after Shelley got his job at the Book Depository.
It would thus appear that we have an irreconcilable situation; Shelley could not have been in the CIA before his employment at the Book Depository. Yet I believe that a seemingly irresolvable problem might on closer examination yield a solution that brings a deeper understanding of the truth. Let us take a different approach. Let us suppose that the job at the Book Depository was concurrent with a career in the CIA. If we can assume that is true, then the Book Depository itself must have been a front for CIA activities.
While it is commonly acknowledged that the agency has too much influence in national affairs, it is still amazing to find its hand in such a wide diversity of organizations and institutions. These include such entities as labor unions, airlines, college student associations, foundations, law firms, banks, savings and loans, investment firms, travel agencies, police departments, post offices, publishing companies, newspapers, call girl services, and mental health institutions. Considering the far-reaching extent of control over so many different areas in American society, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the CIA would have the moral restraint to make an exception of the Book Depository - provided, of course, that the control of it would further its goals in some way.
If CIA operators had been working inside the building in which the Book Depository was located, they would have not been on unfriendly ground. The property itself was owned by a wealthy, right-wing Texas oilman named D. H. Byrd. He was also a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, which included among its members Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. That Ferrie and Oswald knew each other was proven in a 1993 Frontline special on Oswald, in which former cadets Tony Atzenhoffer and Johnny Ciravola displayed a picture showing Ferrie and Oswald at a cadet campout near New Orleans. What is not so well known is that the two men also knew Colonel Byrd. Atzenhoffer told this author that Byrd was the "head honcho" of the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana and Texas, and that he came to Moissant Airport to give speeches on special occasions, such as orientation sessions for new cadets. [21] Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
Another member of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol who was an associate of the CIA was Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggler who set up the Mena Airport operation in Arkansas in the early 1980's and later got involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. He was murdered in 1986 by three Colombian hitmen. Seal first got his pilot's license in Baton Rouge on July 16, 1954, when he was sixteen years old. According to a high school friend, Seal was well acquainted with David Ferrie.
One Friday evening while we were in high school, I got a call from Barry, asking if I'd like to fly over to Lacombe with him in the morning, a little town on the north shore across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. We left about 5:30 and flew over to the little airport there and Barry and I get out of the plane, and here's this really weird-looking guy, dressed all in black, sitting in a director's chair on the tarmac, and he's drilling a bunch of Civil Air Patrol guys that are standing in formation in front of him. They were carrying old M-1s. His name was David Ferrie. He was a captain in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. . . . See, Barry was making $400 a week in high school flying for David Ferrie. . . .
On the flight back, Barry shouted over the engine. "That weird looking guy? He's got no hair on his body! It's why he's wearing a wig! Get up close, he's even got fake eyebrows, and fake eyelashes, but . . . that weirdo's a big-time pilot and works with the CIA.
Seal and his friend also talked about the wooden crates that Ferrie and Seal were examining. They contained guns and ammo, Seal explained to his friend, and he would be transporting this cargo on the weekend. Ferrie was paying him $400 a week to fly this stuff. $400 was a great deal of money in the mid-1950's. [22]
If the CIA was using Byrd's chapter of the Civil Air Patrol to transport illegal shipments of guns and ammo, then what could have prevented them from using Byrd's property on the corner of Elm and Houston for the same purpose? Since Dallas was a source of munitions going to New Orleans in the drive to overthrow leftist governments in Central and South America, then a way had to be found to move them secretly. Big, heavy boxes marked "Schoolbooks" would have been a handy way of delivering the goods. Perhaps that was what the "miscellaneous department" of the Book Depository was all about.
__________________________
[/quote]Hemming Sir, Seems some type of aviation at LaCombe LA sg
http://www.careersinsite.org/namedesc-1-LA...E-Louisiana.htm
Someone posted to you ++ and you did not reply ??
Dear Mr. Hemming,
Sorry to see your old friend hitting on hard times. Not to change the subject, [it's really the same subject]. Rumsfeld muses, "What electrode would Jesus use?" Some of us are concerned about how one human treats another. Some of us are also concerned about justice - to know the why, and the "WHO." Pinochet is a monster and an international criminal. Those who helped him rise to power should IMHO, be tried with him. You know what the D.A. says about criminals, "If you can't get them for one crime, you can get them for another." I'm sure you get my drift.
http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4297919&nav=1LFX
http://www.trentu.ca/~mneumann/pinochet.html
[/quote]
-----------------------------------
r AIRCRAFT
Aircraft Informations
Registrant’s Name : MCDERMOTT DONALD R AIRCRAFT
Address : PO BOX 916
LACOMBE
Registrant’s State : LOUISIANA
Registrant’s Zip Code : 70445-0916
Registrant’s Region : SOUTHWESTERN
Type Registrant : INDIVIDUAL
County Mail : US
Last Action Date : 20030715
Certificate Issue Date : 20000721
Certification : STANDARD,NORMAL
Type Aircraft : FIXED WING SINGLE ENGINE
Type Engine : RECIPROCATING
Status Code : THE TRIENNIAL AIRCRAFT REGISTRATION FORM WAS MAILED AND HAS NOT BEEN RETURNED BY THE POST OFFICE
Aircraft Transponder Code : 50024357
Airworthiness Date : 19750609
N-Number : 1093L
----------------------------------------------
Why don't you give Mr. McDermott a call and see if indeed his "registered" aircraft is at the Slidell, LA airport
as there is NO airport at LaCombe.
As is the routine (SOP), he has "registered" his aircraft "N1093L" using his lawful domicile, OR where he has a business, OR where he receives mail -- such as his PO Box !!
As a "Koinky-Dink", there are two owners of aircraft who curently reside at No Name Key, FL -- but there aircraft are parked at the Marathon "T-Hangers" some 18 miles distant. NO, there has never been an airstrip at No Name Key either -- but there are at least two "AIRCRAFT OWNERS who reside there [one on bard a houseboat).
Check out the LaCombe Airport located in Alberta, Canada -- mayhaps that was the one Garrison had his sights set upon.
As for not responding to an e-mail which I NEVER received -- you have my permission to obtain my e-mail address from John Simkin. Also, I have had a lot of problems with this Forum message (e-mail) set-up; and i have had to sweep my PC for over an hour after just attempting to track said missives. My PC guru brother states that this is due to the Forum ISP protcting its bandwidth, which is why I sign on only for short periods. I have regularly picked up an average of.......just got jammed again !! My freebie download "BeClean" regurlarly discovers 20+ registry entries, and about 40+ unnecessary files -- which I delete every time I sign off of the Forum. Try it out. Google both "BeClean" & "MyCleaner" for good security practices -- you will be amazed at how your hard-drive is loaded up with extraneous trash.
GPH
___________________________
[/quote]
---------------------------------
SOUTHERN NATURAL GAS CO.
General Info
Country United States
State LOUISIANA
FAA ID 3LA2
Latitude 30-16-50.706N
Longitude 089-57-15.255W
Elevation 0 feet
Near City LACOMBE
Source: NFD
Note: NFD-derived records are still actively being developed. They might not be up to date, and could still contain errors or omissions. Check back often!
-------------------------------------------------
Southern Natural Gas has a licensed HELICOPTER PAD at that site, just as the Houma Regional medical and dozens of other have HELICOPTER LANDING PADS !!
GIVE THEM A CALL.
A far better twist would have been: "...Well, once the bombs were ready and the "Gusanos" trained...it was only a short truck ride to Slidell Airport..or Mandeville...or even Hammind..."!! Which means diddly squat once again !!
Could you clarify exactly WHO is that "Old Freind" who is hitting on hard times ??!!
____________________________--
Oy! I'll keep my comments short:
One indicator of this is that not all TSBD building personnel were TSBD company personnel, Truly had no real "say" over what the folks at, say, Scott Foresman did or didn't do with respect to fingerprinting; that would have been left to the supervisor of each company that leased space within the building.
Too, you will recall from my earlier missive that of the 69 people who worked in the building, 47 of them were women (not high on the suspect list) and 23 of them were men, one of whom was dead at that point. So in effect, Truly asked the FBI to exclude two men. Should I guess that they were perhaps himself and TSBD VP O.V. Campbell?
Suddenly, Truly's (and TSBD's) "clout" become less significant, doesn't it.
We all know what happens when you ASS-U-ME. An assumption based upon a story told by someone who got it from a woman who "abruptly disappeared" immediately before his own notes did, that nobody vouches for working with them ... and then not finding arrest records and saying they could be "missing ... just as easily" due to destruction as the more likely fact that they never existed in the first place?!? How far can one stretch to reach a "fact" anyway?
We don't "reach," we leap! We cannot "assume that is true." That's irreconciliable too, even as an assumption.
Amazing. Simply amazing.
QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 1 2006, 07:11 PM)
The following was an article that was published in the May 1999 Issue of the Fourth Decade.
The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate?
Since the FBI had a habit of looking only where told to and discovering only those things that were acceptable to The Director, and since the only TSBD employee under any sort of suspicion was the late short-timer, Lee Oswald, I can see how they would have so quickly acquiesced to Truly's "demand." After all, it was less work for them ... and to what end anyway?The Glaze Letters
William Weston
May 1999
Among the boxes forming the sniper's nest were four that had twenty-eight identifiable prints. Traceable to Oswald were two palmprints and one fingerprint. Twenty-four prints were made by two law enforcement officials, but one palmprint could not be identified. The unmatched print might mean an accomplice. Or maybe someone was innocently moving boxes from one place to another. [1] To settle the matter, the FBI needed a set of prints from everyone employed at the Texas School Book Depository - a total of sixty-nine people. It was a simple procedure, quick and easy, and no one should have had any complaints about disruptions or delays. Notwithstanding, the agency ran smack into an unexpected wall of resistance. In a letter to the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover tried to explain why the Bureau failed to do its job.
Mr. Roy S. Truly, Warehouse Superintendent, who has been very cooperative with this Bureau in the past, strongly objected to the printing of all employees as he felt it would seriously handicap the work of his firm. Mr. Truly stated there are about twenty employees who would have had occasion to handle the cartons in question and he desired the printing to be limited to this group. [2]
As a result of these objections, the FBI was forced to modify its demand according to the limitation imposed. How could this happen? How could a mere warehouse manager dictate to a law enforcement agency as powerful as the FBI what it could, or could not do, in the investigation of a crime as serious as the assassination of the President? Were Hoover's agents always so timid with people who refused to cooperate?
One indicator of this is that not all TSBD building personnel were TSBD company personnel, Truly had no real "say" over what the folks at, say, Scott Foresman did or didn't do with respect to fingerprinting; that would have been left to the supervisor of each company that leased space within the building.
Too, you will recall from my earlier missive that of the 69 people who worked in the building, 47 of them were women (not high on the suspect list) and 23 of them were men, one of whom was dead at that point. So in effect, Truly asked the FBI to exclude two men. Should I guess that they were perhaps himself and TSBD VP O.V. Campbell?
Suddenly, Truly's (and TSBD's) "clout" become less significant, doesn't it.
QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 1 2006, 07:11 PM)
Why then should the FBI meekly tolerate a slap in the face from someone at the Book Depository? Did the warehouse manager have some clout that even Hoover had to respect? If so, it is difficult to understand where this clout came from. The innocence of anyone working in that particular building was far from certain in the eyes of suspicious investigators.
QED. Incidentally, what investigators were "suspicious" of anyone other than a man already dead?QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 1 2006, 07:11 PM)
In any reconstruction of what was happening with the stairs and elevators, it is obvious that Shelley and Lovelady must have seen the escape of one of the assassins. About a minute or two after Truly and Baker went up the stairs, a witness on the street saw a man in a dark sportcoat running out the back door. This man was no doubt the same one seen at a fifth floor window standing next to a man armed with a rifle. After the shooting ended, the man in the dark sportcoat took an elevator down to the ground floor, while at the same time Truly and Baker were going up the stairs. As the culprit headed for the back door, he would have had to pass Shelley and Lovelady in order to exit the building. [15]
Maybe it was still "obvious" back in 1999, but it isn't anymore. At the very least it is not proven.QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 1 2006, 07:11 PM)
Not long after Oswald left the scene, Shelley told Truly that Oswald was missing. (How he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed.) A roll call of warehouse employees was made, and it was determined that Oswald was indeed absent. Truly notified Police Captain Will Fritz, who immediately thought that it was "important to hold that man." [19]
The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it.
First, "only" Oswald was missing. Then, researchers thought it "odd" that Givens wasn't noted as "missing" as well. Now we know that Jack Cason was not there, either, and never apparently remarked upon.The above noted actions seem to indicate that Shelley was very close to the conspiracy, if not actually participating in it.
QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 1 2006, 07:11 PM)
Assuming that the police really had arrested [Shelley] and charged him with the assassination, they certainly would have had ample cause. For one thing, they would have known that Shelley was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Secondly, the accused assassin had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave. Thirdly, the police knew about the Nash Rambler story as early as 5:00 in the afternoon, when Roger Craig reported it to them. Finally, Shelley might not have been entirely candid in how he came to realize that Oswald was missing. No doubt Shelley was asked a lot of questions, and it is possible that he was kept in custody until he gave some satisfactory answers. Admittedly, there is no record of Shelley being arrested, but that does not necessarily mean Glaze was wrong. Missing evidence could just as easily be due to the systematic destruction of anything contrary to the official version.
How does the Rambler provide "ample cause" for Shelley's supposed detainment? Oswald did not say that Shelley told him to leave, only (and then we "know" this only by hearsay) that he'd talked with him outside, and that Oswald himself had thought there'd be no more work that day, so left (we've since seen that he was not the only one who did ... tho' the rest were women).We all know what happens when you ASS-U-ME. An assumption based upon a story told by someone who got it from a woman who "abruptly disappeared" immediately before his own notes did, that nobody vouches for working with them ... and then not finding arrest records and saying they could be "missing ... just as easily" due to destruction as the more likely fact that they never existed in the first place?!? How far can one stretch to reach a "fact" anyway?
QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 1 2006, 07:11 PM)
... According to statements made to the police and to the Warren Commission, Shelley was born in Gunter, Texas in 1925. During World War Two, he worked "a little bit" in defense plants. On October 29, 1945 at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository. Eighteen years later, in 1963, he was holding the position of assistant manager of the "miscellaneous department." ... Even if we can assume that he really had been an intelligence officer during World War Two, it does not seem possible that he could have joined the CIA afterwards. The agency did not even come into existence until two years after Shelley got his job at the Book Depository.
Oops, I asked too soon! Some of us can reach far! Why should we "assume" that Shelley was an "intelligence officer during World War Two" when in 1945, "at the age of nineteen or twenty he began working for the Book Depository?" We would then have to assume that he became an "intelligence officer" at the ripe young age of ... what? 15? 16? Maybe 17 so he at least got to see some service?QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 1 2006, 07:11 PM)
It would thus appear that we have an irreconcilable situation; Shelley could not have been in the CIA before his employment at the Book Depository. Yet I believe that a seemingly irresolvable problem might on closer examination yield a solution that brings a deeper understanding of the truth. Let us take a different approach. Let us suppose that the job at the Book Depository was concurrent with a career in the CIA. If we can assume that is true, then the Book Depository itself must have been a front for CIA activities.]
The "irreconciliable situation" is how the heck did Shelley get to be CIA or an "intelligence officer" before he was barely old enough to have graduated high school?!? A "prodigy" perhaps? That explains him working in a freakin' warehouse for 30 years then!We don't "reach," we leap! We cannot "assume that is true." That's irreconciliable too, even as an assumption.
QUOTE (William Weston @ Jan 1 2006, 07:11 PM)
If CIA operators had been working inside the building in which the Book Depository was located, they would have not been on unfriendly ground. The property itself was owned by a wealthy, right-wing Texas oilman named D. H. Byrd. He was also a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol, which included among its members Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie. That Ferrie and Oswald knew each other was proven in a 1993 Frontline special on Oswald, in which former cadets Tony Atzenhoffer and Johnny Ciravola displayed a picture showing Ferrie and Oswald at a cadet campout near New Orleans. What is not so well known is that the two men also knew Colonel Byrd. Atzenhoffer told this author that Byrd was the "head honcho" of the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana and Texas, and that he came to Moissant Airport to give speeches on special occasions, such as orientation sessions for new cadets. [21] Since there is no question that CAP members Ferrie and Oswald were associated with the CIA, it would only be logical to assume that their commander was too.
This is almost too astounding to comment on. Clearly you know nothing of Byrd or the CAP or any of its protocols, least among which is the "orientation sessions for new cadets," something that would rarely if ever include a visit from the Regional Commander or National Board Member, which Byrd was at the time of LHO's membership in the organization, and certainly nothing so important as to require his even being informed of, much less his attendance at. That Oswald and Ferrie may well have know of Byrd is not so surprising, but to assume (there's that word again!) that Byrd therefore knew them too ...?!?Amazing. Simply amazing.
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