Thanks to RED for posting this.
Date: Sun Aug 9 13:35:42 1992
From: "Robert E Daniels"
The following is posted with the permission of Spectator Publications,
Inc., and Grover B. Proctor Jr. Underlines indicate _italics_ in the original. Asterisks indicate *boldface*
in the original. I have added one comment marked [/// thusly ///]
Robert Daniels
===============================================================
Spectator Magazine
(919) 828 7393
Vol. No. 14 Publication Number 11
Pages 8-10
THE RALEIGH
by Grover B. Proctor Jr.
In the summer of 1980, Spectator
learned that Lee Harvey
Oswald attempted to call Raleigh , N.C. Dallas CIA
executive officer. Our purpose was to
establish the validity of the call and to attempt to discover its meaning to
the investigation of the JFK murder. The following copyrighted features ran on
July 24,
1980, as the second part of a two-part series. Readers will
notice that the articles have stood the test of time and are integral parts of the
newly awakened interest in the assassination
instigated by Oliver Stone's movie, JFK.
Oswald's Raleigh
DATELINE -- July 24, 1980
[Copyright, 1980, Spectator Publications,
Inc.]
After Spectator's
report last week on the controversy surrounding the "Raleigh Call" by
Lee Harvey Oswald, subsequent investigation, plus the examination of documents unavailable before the last
article, have demonstrated that
it is a legitimate aspect of the JFK assassination investigation. It is
considered by leading assassination authorities to be a key in the unsolved
mystery.
The story concerns a telephone call allegedly attempted by
Oswald from the Dallas Raleigh ,
N.C. November 23, 1963 . It was reported
to authorities by Mrs. Alveeta Treon, a telephone operator who was working that
night on
the switchboard connected to the Dallas jail, and who kept a written record
of the numbers and name she
claims Oswald was trying to reach. The telephone call slip shows the telephone numbers
834-7430 and 833-1253. According to Mrs.
Treon's statement, her fellow operator, Mrs. Louise Swinney, after consulting
with two supposed government agents, told
Oswald the numbers did not answer, though she never tried to place the
call.
[/// The original article included a photocopy of
the operator's form noting the call. The
preprinted form was filled out by hand and signed "L. Swinney." Mrs. Swinney, or whoever, also wrote the word
"Collect" and underlined it in the top left corner. Above her signature is written "da"
[?] which is underlined, and "Ca" which is circled. These are not explained ("dialed" ?,
"Called" ??). I cannot read the
printed word in the lower
left corner, but
the notation "A C 919" clearly refers to the area code
for Raleigh which is 919. ///]
____________________________________________________________
|
|
| Collect
|
| ------- |
| C I T Y O F
D A L L A S |
|
|
| LONG DISTANCE MESSAGES |
| Jail |
| Phone
No._______Time_______Minutes_______Amount________ |
|
|
| Lee Harvey Oswald |
| Person
calling_________________________Dept____________ |
|
|
| Raleigh , N.C.
|
To_____________________________________________________ |
| |
| John Hurt or
833 - 1253 |
| Person
called__________________________________________ |
|
|
| 11-23-63 da (Ca) |
|
Date_______________ -- |
|
|
| L.
Swinney |
| Received
Payment________________________________
|
|
|
| ???? AC
919
|
|__________________________________________________________|
The search for more information about the attempted call began
after Anthony Summers (from whose book Conspiracy the "Raleigh Call"
has gained its most recent public exposure) contacted this writer last
week.
Summers related an incident
that followed a
nationally televised appearance the
week before by him and the Chief Counsel of the
House Assassinations Committee, G. Robert Blakey. After the program,
during a longer, private conversation
covering many aspects of the case, author Summers confided to Blakey some doubt he had about
the authenticity of the call, especially concerning whether it was an incoming
call to Oswald, or outgoing from him, as
alleged by Mrs. Treon.
Blakey confessed to being troubled by the call as well, but,
to Summers' surprise, for the exact opposite reason. As a subsequent interview
with Blakey confirmed: "The call apparently
is real and it I goes out; it does not come in. That's the sum and substance of
it." Blakey continued, "It was an outgoing call, and therefore I
consider it very troublesome material. The direction in which it went was
deeply disturbing." (It should be noted that another reason for Summers'
surprise at confirmation of the
importance of the Raleigh
This kind of confirmation of the importance of the incident,
from someone of Blakey's reputation, followed closely by former CIA
officer Victor Marchetti's confirmation (see accompanying interview
["Victor Marchetti Disagrees", below]), gives a larger and deeper
context to the case. Why was the call made?
Whom was Oswald actually trying to reach?
If it was John Hurt, who was he? Why was the call not
allowed to go through? And most important, what does this say about the larger
picture of the assassination itself, and the people involved in it?
The most obvious concern of the incident is that, if Oswald
was trying to contact a heretofore unknown accomplice or acquaintance, then the
identity of this person and his connection to the case become extremely
important. The fact that the first of the numbers is still to this day listed
in the name of John David Hurt in Raleigh July 17,1980 , Spectator.]
The fact that John D. Hurt served in U.S. Army
Counterintelligence during World War II, taken in context with allegations that
Oswald may have had connections with the
Intelligence community, was described by
House Assassinations Committee staff
lawyer Surell Brady, in charge of
investigating the "Raleigh Call," as being "provocative. Though no connection
between Hurt and Oswald has ever been demonstrated, that in itself has not
quelled speculation concerning why Oswald would wish to call a John Hurt at that number.
Though the House Committee's final report did not mention the Raleigh
in 1978. Research has shown that the Raleigh Telephone
Directory issued December 2, 1962 ,
which would have been current at the
time of the assassination, and the Directory issued December 22, 1963 , both list a John D. Hurt at
834-7430 and a John W. Hurt at 833-1253. Thus, both of these numbers would have
been available to anyone calling "Information"
in Raleigh
Taking this piece of information with a scenario provided by
former CIA officer Victor Marchetti allows
speculation on the intent of the call. Marchetti, interviewed from his Northern
Virginia home at some length about the Raleigh call and the JFK assassination,
seems positive in his own mind that
Oswald was following a set intelligence practice, that of contacting his case officer through what is known as a
‘cut-out,’ a "clean" intermediary who can act as a conduit
between agent and officer without ever
getting involved in the intelligence operation itself. All the cut-out knows is that if anyone ever
calls asking for a certain officer's real name, or pseudonym, he's then to
contact a predetermined person or
agency. The cut-out can legitimately say he never heard of the
agent calling, in this case thought to be Lee Harvey Oswald.
Who was Oswald's cut-out, if the above scenario is correct?
Was it either of the John Hurts listed in Raleigh
out. Chief
Counsel Blakey told me, "I
think the call occurred.
Now whether it occurred to [John D.] Hurt or not, I'm not sure.... I was
not able to come up with a feeling that there was anything sinister about Hurt." Concerning the other Mr.
Hurt, John William, the committee memorandum
says nothing.
If we cannot know who, says Marchetti, we can at least
understand why the call and probably why North Carolina Soviet Union . The plan, according to Marchetti, was to send
young men there supposedly as defectors, but who in actuality were hoping to be
picked up as agents by the KGB. This process was known as "doubling,"
as the young men would then in effect be
double agents for both American and Soviet intelligence. Once placing an agent
in the KGB, American intelligence could then begin funneling in disinformation. According to Marchetti, this was the plan for
Oswald. Whether it worked or not, Marchetti did not say.
The logical
conclusion to Marchetti's theory based on the facts as uncovered to date, is that Oswald, whether guilty or not of the assassination, once inside the Dallas
jail was looking for some way to assure his interrogators, which may well have included
agents of the CIA , according to Marchetti,
that he was "okay." If this were true, then
one must imagine that Oswald remembered either the name John
Hurt in Raleigh, or some other location which got confused with Raleigh in his
attempt to call, and that either he or someone acting for him obtained the two
telephone numbers he attempted to call.
That the call was blocked from going through gives another disturbing,
and as yet unsolved aspect to the incident.
The importance of the Raleigh
`They Killed My President'
DATELINE -- July 24, 1980
[Copyright, 1980, Spectator Publications, Inc.]
"Do I think I know what happened to the President --
not simply in the Plaza but who was responsible for it?" asked G.
Robert Blakey. "The answer to that
is yes. I think I do. As a matter of historical truth, I think I know who
killed him and why." In an hour and a
half interview with *Spectator*, the Cornell
University
Chief Counsel and Director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (which concluded in 1979 that a conspiracy was responsible for the assassination of John
F. Kennedy) detailed his special
"insider's" knowledge and his conclusions on who killed John F. Kennedy.
Blakey, whose 20 years as an Investigator have been
highlighted by his work with Robert
Kennedy's Justice Department as well as the House Committee, has no
doubt about the status of the investigation to date. "Our duty now is to
come to grips with the evidence," he said. In doing so, he is confident
that the historical truth has been established.
There comes a point in any investigation, reported Blakey,
where the investigator knows what happened, but cannot prove it in a court of
law: "For historical purposes, I think we now know the Mob killed
Kennedy. You give me 25 FBI agents, five investigative prosecutors and
six months in the field, and I will tell you whether this case will be brought
to a successful conclusion."
Blakey, long recognized as one of the country's leading
experts on the Mafia, expressed doubt that the investigation would result in a successful criminal prosecution
"And this is not because it's 17 years" he said. "Because, in
fact, the people who would have been responsible for the President's death are,
on the whole, still on the street. The problem is that the intermediate people
may not be and that any number of the witnesses have since either died natural
deaths or otherwise."
Blakey keys in on three elements of the plot: those in the
Mob who were ultimately responsible for planning the murder, the "second
gunman" on the Grassy Knoll and Lee
Harvey Oswald. By limiting any future
investigation to just the
Mob, Blakey had drawn criticism
from researchers such as Victor Marchetti
(see box ["Victor Marchetti Disagrees", below]) and author
Anthony Summers, who find evidence pointing toward the involvement of
some elements of the American Intelligence community.
Blakey defends his assertions by saying it's "an area
where the suspicions simply don't firm up in such a way that merits more attention."
A central focus of the House Assassination Committee's work, Blakey said, was a
possible involvement of the Federal Government. The result of that part of the
investigation, Blakey explained, showed that
"this case simply does not point toward the
intelligence community."
Anthony Summers, whose new book, Conspiracy, was reviewed in [the July 17, 1980] Spectator, was singled out for criticism
by Blakey. "The problem I have with Tony's book, and I know it very well,
is his perspective is slightly left of center, as a European intellectual."
(Meaning he is looking for official involvement.) Though he admits Summers' book makes "an
effort" to "evaluate and
balance," Blakey insisted that only when one looks at the evidence
"from the inside, from the kind of perspective Summers couldn't get,"
as Blakey claims to have done from his
vantage as Chief Counsel to the House Committee, does one learn that the Intelligence angle
"does not merit such attention."
Blakey said the bottom line is that "once I have a
coherent theory of the assassination -- that is, the Mob -- the burden of proof
is on you to complicate that. The Mob didn't need the American Intelligence
community to kill the President." He continued by saying that even if they
were involved in some way, their presence was "not significant."
The general principle Blakey uses in the JFK investigation,
he said, is the Medieval philosophy of parsimony -- that is, that you don't "make
unnecessarily complex an explanation of
phenomena. You keep the explanation
as simple as possible based on the evidence you have." To Blakey, the
simplest explanation does not need Intelligence agents to make it work.
"I know -- and this is the order in which I know it --
that Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby. Number two, there were two
shooters in the Plaza. And only three do I come up with Lee Harvey Oswald shot
the President. I know that Jack Ruby shot Oswald a lot stronger than I know
that Oswald shot the President. I know that there were two shooters in the Plaza
more than I know who either of them were." From these facts,
Blakey deduces that Jack Ruby is the key to the mystery.
"The next thing I want to do is analyze, who is Jack
Ruby? And who is Lee Harvey Oswald? Are there any common things in their lives.
When I make a careful analysis of Jack Ruby, it's the Mob pure and
simple." Blakey claims this is the link that brought both men to the
basement of the Dallas November 24, 1963 .
Blakey further argues that the Warren Commission reasoned backwards,
starting with Oswald killing the President and then Jack Ruby
killing Oswald. He maintains that this reasoning does not get at the truth
because it inverts the proportional relevance of the key factors.
Of the Mob bosses to whom the House report ascribed
"motive, means and opportunity" to kill the President, Carlos Marcello of New
Orleans and Santos Trafficante of Tampa,
Blakey had little further to say. In fact, though he does not publicly doubt
the Mob's ultimate culpability, he maintains that it was even possible that
their subordinates executed the plot for them. Just as Henry II called out for
some knight to "rid the
Kingt of a meddlesome
bishop," Blakey said, so, too,
could Marcello's reported
Sicilian curse to the Kennedy's, "Let this stone be taken from my shoe" have been the basis for
underlings to plot the assassination.
"Carlos Marcello himself may be perfectly innocent, but
then people who worked for him did it on their own." Blakey is searching
for this group of intermediaries.
Conversely, of the "second gunman" the House Assassinations
Committee proved to have been firing from the famed Grassy Knoll in front of the
President's motorcade, Blakey is much more verbal. "I can tell you an awful
lot about him. First of all, I can tell you he was male. Of all of Oswald's
companions, none have been suggested to be female. They also are not old men and they're not
young men. They're 25 to 35. All of the people Oswald was seen with tend to be
Cuban in character. So, the people who were involved in the assassination
effort with Oswald in all likelihood were of Cuban derivation. I can probably
give you a general notion of address, in the sense that in all likelihood
he was
Cuban, which would mean his address would be either New
Orleans Miami
Blakey maintains that to this day the second gunman probably
thinks he killed Kennedy. And assuming he was not eliminated as was Oswald after
the assassination, he has secluded himself in fear of his life. The final shot
fired from behind the President and the one the second gunman fired occurred within
a second of each other. Blakey said the gunman heard his own shot, saw the
President's head explode, and assumed he did it. Though the forensic evidence
demonstrates quite clearly, maintains Blakey, that the fatal shot came from
behind, the second gunman believes otherwise and fears for his life from
authorities and from his Mob employers. Asked if he has any reasonable
expectations that we will ever know who the second gunman was, Blakey
confidently said, "Oh, sure."
Finally, of the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald, Blakey does not equivocate.
"The evidence is simply overwhelming that Oswald did it.
Oswald is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt." Not all
investigators agree.
Anthony Summers quotes eyewitnesses and plots the timing of Oswald's
known movements to come to the conclusion that Oswald could not have been in
the sixth-floor sniper's nest at the time the shots were fired. Commenting on
Summers' reasoning, Blakey was adamant. "That's foolishness. Why Tony
[Summers] would take that position I find very troublesome. In fact, it's
almost to the point where it makes me tend to
question his judgment."
Blakey quickly listed the evidence against Oswald that makes
him certain of guilt: It was his rifle, with which he was photographed and on which
were found his fingerprints; the photos were signed on the back by Oswald; he
was seen on the sixth floor about 45 minutes before the shooting, at which time
he indicated he would not be going downstairs for lunch; his fingerprints were
found on a carton that formed part of the sniper's nest and on the bag that may
have been the vehicle for bringing the rifle into the building. And most
telling, said Blakey, were his actions of fleeing the building, shooting a
policeman and when caught, not screaming "Frame" vehemently.
Blakey describes Oswald as "a loner type, a
misfit," who, while not formally well educated, "and thus having the
defects of a person who has not been to college and studied systematically,"
was a prime target to be absorbed into the plot. "That organized crime figures
would see in him someone to enlist in an effort to kill Kennedy seems to me
perfectly obvious," Blakey said. He was asked if he thought this had been done
through Carlos Marcello's
lieutenant and Oswald's long- time
acquaintance David Ferrie, and he replied, "Absolutely. That's hard evidence."
Why continue the investigation, 17 years later? "They
killed my President and got away with it!" said Blakey, whose own book on the
assassination will be published in November. Though he believes in Oswald's
guilt, he says it is irrelevant now. "I don't care whether he did it or
not. The only issue that's outstanding in this case, in my judgment, is in
behalf of whom did the person behind the fence act."
Finding these intermediate plotters and hence a "final
truth" about the JFK murder, Blakey maintains, is well within our grasp if
we will pursue it.
Victor Marchetti Disagrees
DATELINE -- July 24, 1980
[Copyright, 1980, Spectator Publications, Inc.]
Victor Marchetti was for over 14 years an officer for the CIA ,
where he rose to the position of executive assistant to the Deputy Director. He
is the co-author with John D. Marks of The CIA and
The Cult of Intelligence, the first
book in U.S.
about the so-called "Raleigh Call" and the larger
picture of possible American Intelligence involvement in the Kennedy assassination. The following is an excerpt
from that interview.
Spectator: Do you think the CIA
was involved in any way with the assassination?
Marchetti: Yes, but not officially. My feeling, based on
what I know, and I may be absolutely wrong, is that there's no way the Agency
would get involved in this kind of mess. They may do a lot of things like overthrow
governments, prop up dictatorships and a lot of other things, but there are
certain things beyond the pale. However, there are individuals within the
Agency who are willing to go beyond. So there may have been an individual, or
two or three, within the Agency who was involved. There are certain renegades
in the Agency -- or were, and probably still are - particularly people who were
involved in the Cuban affair and never forgave Kennedy. These people are
perfectly capable of pretty goddamn dirty tricks. E. Howard Hunt is the kind of
guy, along with a lot of other people who were contract agents, who, in their
anger and fury, were capable of doing
something crazy like this, working along
with other people. They're also smart enough to have messed it up so well that
you could never figure out who was responsible for anything.
Spectator: So you see individuals at work -- not agencies?
Marchetti: That's right.
Spectator: Individuals such as CIA
contract agents David Ferrie and Clay Shaw?
Marchetti: Yes, I think they were probably involved in some
way. I just don't know how. There were a
lot of people who wanted to get rid of the president for one reason or another.
And I think they all just coalesced somehow, some way -- maybe by accident. I think that in that group -- and this is
strictly personal opinion -- there were some FBI and CIA
renegades. They did their job, cleaned up afterwards, and got the hell out of
there.
***
One of the most talked about portions of the House Assassinations Committee's investigation was
testimony by Antonio Veciana, A Cuban
refugee leader, that he had seen a man
he identified as Lee Harvey Oswald in the
presence of one "Maurice Bishop," who for 13 years represented himself to Veciana as his CIA
advisor. In its attempts to discover "Bishop's" identity, the House
Committee keyed on one
man,
later identified by Committee sources as former CIA
Western Hemisphere Chief David Phillips. As reported in [the July 17, 1980 edition of] Spectator, the
committee was allegedly suspicious of both Veciana's and Phillip's denials that
Phillips was "Bishop." Mr. Marchetti
commented.
[Spectator:] Is David Phillips "Maurice Bishop"?
[Marchetti:] No.
[Spectator:] Do you know who "Maurice Bishop" is?
[Marchetti:] Yes. It isn't Dave [Phillips].
[Spectator:] Was "Maurice Bishop" connected with
the assassination, to the best of your knowledge?
[Marchetti:] Look, when you're dealing in pseudonyms, forget
it.
[Spectator:] What do you mean, "forget it"?
[Marchetti:] I mean just forget it, because you're not going
to be able to prove a thing. But no, he
[Phillips] wasn't "Maurice Bishop".
[Spectator:] But you did say that you know who "Maurice
Bishop" is.
[Marchetti:] Yes.
[Spectator:] I'm
sure if I
asked you, you would not
tell me his identity.
[Marchetti:] That's right.
[Spectator:] If you were, as an agent, in trouble somewhere
in America
...
[Marchetti:] I was never an agent. I was an officer.
[Spectator:] Okay, if someone were an agent, and they were
involved in something, and nobody believes they are an agent. He is arrested, and
trying to communicate, let's say, and he is one of your guys. What is the
procedure?
[Marchetti:] I'd kill him.
[Spectator:] If I were an agent for the Agency, and I was
involved in something involving the law domestically and the FBI, would I have
to a contact to call?
[Marchetti:] Yes.
[Spectator:] A verification contact?
[Marchetti:] Yes, you would.
[Spectator:] Would I be dead?
[Marchetti:] It would all depend on the situation. If you get into bad trouble, we're not going
to verify you. No how, no way.
[Spectator:] But there is a call mechanism set up.
[Marchetti:] Yes.
[Spectator:] So it is conceivable that Lee Harvey Oswald was
...
[Marchetti:] That's what we was doing. He was trying to call in and say "Tell
them I'm all right."
[Spectator:] Was that his death warrant?
[Marchetti:] You betcha.
Because this time he went over the dam, whether he knew it or not, or
whether they set him up or not. It
doesn't matter. He was over the dam. At this point it was executive action.*
[Spectator:] Is the contact person's name ever the name of
someone who is not necessarily an active
agent but is just a contact person?
[Marchetti:] That's right.
[Spectator:] Then that person would go up to the next level?
[Marchetti:] That's right, and it would be a "funny
name" - a pseudonym. Like for example, you would have a number to call.. If
you were my agent, and you got yourself into a peck of trouble, you might try
to contact me, bit maybe you can't get through.
[Spectator:] I would contact you by telephone, right?
[Marchetti:] Yes. But I might have covered my tracks real
good so you can't contact me by telephone.
In other words, I contact you, you don't contact me. But I give you a
(unintelligible) number.
So you call him, but I've already talked to him and said, "Don't
touch him." You're screwed up.
[Spectator:] But you would use, for that middle man, people
who were not necessarily active agents or agency people, right?
[Marchetti:] That's right. Most likely they would be
cut-outs.** You would have to call
indirectly.
[Spectator:] Could Oswald have had a name ...
[Marchetti:] He was probably calling his cut-out. He was
calling somebody who could put him in touch with his case officer. He couldn't
go beyond that person. There's no way he could. He just had to depend on this
person to say, "Okay, I'll deliver the message." Now, if the cut-out
had already been alerted to cut him
off and ignore
him, then (unintelligible).
[Spectator:] Would CIA
agents have been in the Dallas
[Marchetti:] Well, I've been put in jails to interrogate
prisoners.
[Spectator:] So it's not inconceivable that a CIA
agent of some type could have been there?
[Marchetti:] That's the name of the game. Get it whatever
way you can.
---------
Footnotes
* Executive action: a CIA
code phrase for assassination.
** According to Anthony Summers (_Conspiracy_, p. 314):
"In the world of intelligence many operations are run through `cut-outs,' buffer organizations or individuals whose
sins can never formally be laid at the door of an agency or government."
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