Amateur Sluths Hit Paydirt

Some people are under the impression that the biggest discoveries in JFK researh are made by the heavyweights who have devoted much of their lives to it - John Newman, Bill Simpich, Larry Hancock, Dick Russell, et. al.

But in fact, sometimes the unsung heroes are amateur sluths with time on their hands, sitting at home with their computers on Google, deciding to help find a lost piece of the Dealey Plaza puzzle.

In that regard, in the past few weeks, three independent researchers have made significant discoveries that could have an impact on this case.

William Paris, who otherwise works as a musican in a rock band, joined CAPA and as a member of the research team, took up the chase after Gene Wheaton after others gave up. Paris found an obituary for Wheaton that gave the names of his family and two good friends from the military, and mentioned his suspicious death from a New Year's eve head injury due to a fall.

In the videotaped interview Larry Hancock and William M. Law did with Wheaton that was recently posted on line, Wheaton mentions that he had previoiusly been interviewed at length by a Minnesotta documentary film maker - and Law provided the correct spelling of his name - Matt Ehling.

Then after I failed to find him, Bruce Johnson, who happens to live in the Twin Cities himself, found Ehling's Public Records Media Company and shortly thereafter I was talking with Matt on the phone, and he agreed to send me a copy of the tape of his interview with Wheaton, that I promised to transcribe and share with other researchers.

When I posted the Wheaton interview on my Facebook Page, asking if anyone can understand the name of the person Wheaton said helped Carl Jenkins train the anti-Castro Cuban commandos at JMWAVE, I thought he said "Ira" Harper.

My Facebook friend Pat Dugan then went over the tape and listended closely and came up with the name "I.W." Harper. Bingo!

It appears that the "I.W." was a nickname, because its not his real first name, and "I.W. Harper" is the name of a Kentucky whiskey.

But that's the moniker that was used to identify him in a Soldier of Fortune magazine article "The Wild Bunch," who were sent down to Nicaragua and Costa Rico to train the Cocaine Contras who fought the leftest Sandinistas after the Somoza dictatorship ended.

It's pretty curious to me that Michael Paine's wife Ruth Hyde Paine was also in Costa Rico keeping tabs on the American Quakers there who were assisting the Sandinistass.

In any case, one of my hypothesis is that those who pulled off the Dealey Plaza Operation had conducted similar covert operations before and have done them since. The Iran-Contra Affair was one of them.

And without an obituary for either Carl Jenkins or "I.W." Harper, we considered them to still be alive, and some other armchair sluths actually located them both.

Since we are approaching these still living witnesses with kid gloves, to see if they will talk about their experiences at JMWAVE, I humbly ask other researchers to pull back and not to search for them or try to contact them, as that would be running interference and you will be called on it.

On the other side of that token, William Paris, Bruce Johnson and Pat Dugan get special research feathers for their caps for coming up with the obit, the proper names of these key witnesses.

If there are any other researchers who want to get in this game, join CAPA-US.org and become a member of the research team to get in the loop. There's so much research to do, and so little time.