Sunday, December 29, 2019

Joe Goulden and Hugh Aynesworth - Disinfo Agents at Dealey Plaza


           How Coverup Artists Concealed Oswald's Role as a Law Enforcement Source

Joe Goulden and Hugh Aynesworth 

By Bill Simpich 

JFK researchers may be intrigued to hear that reporter Joseph Goulden was the executor to the will of CIA officer David Phillips (Joan Mellen, Farewell to Justice, p. 454).  At a minimum, Phillips played a big role in the cover-up of the JFK assassination.  (See my book State Secret, Chapter 6).   That is an intriguing item - but there is a lot more to know about Goulden and his buddies.

Between 1958 to 1961, Joe Goulden worked the police beat for the Dallas News.  By his own admission, Goulden knew many people in Dallas.  He basically had the same job at Jerry Hill - the evidence magnet of 11/22/63 - Hill was so avid that he had his police beat office in a jail cell!   
Goulden reported on December 8, 1963 that Oswald was an informant of the FBI.  This then was brought into the scheme of Bill Alexander and Hugh Aynesworth to spread a deliberately made-up story about LHO being Agent S-172 or S-179.   There are any number of reasons why they cooked this up.  All these reasons lead to the same result - the poisoning of any suggestion that Oswald was a law enforcement source.

This exercise in calculated disinformation needs to be run to earth...by every serious researcher involved in this case.  We can't let this kind of story slide.  Stories like this are the best evidence of what went down.

I will offer just one possible reason why this story got made up - either by these men or  - whoever got them started on this snipe hunt.   That possible reason was to cover-up Oswald's role as a source to US Customs and to FBI agent Warren de Brueys in New Orleans. 

Lonnie Hudkins printed the story about Oswald being an FBI informant in the Houston Post on Jan. 1, 1964

Hudkins was interviewed on 2/8/64 and said that the 179 number came from a Dallas government official, not a federal official -  undoubtedly Alexander - but he refused to reveal the exact name.  He said that Goulden gave him a number different from 179 that he couldn't recall.

In Esquire, Feb. 1976, Aynesworth admitted he and Alexander made it up to draw out the FBI on the issue. (James Hosty repeated this story in his book Assignment:  Oswald).  

Hudkins claimed that he invented the two phony informant numbers for Oswald "and leaked the information during a phone conversation in order to determine if the FBI had tapped his telephone."   Hudkins even claimed that an FBI dropped by his office a half an hour later and after beating around the bush asked if he had heard  anything about Oswald's phony payroll number.  Hudkins claim about both of these stories does not mean it is true.  Even FBI chief Clarence Kelley referred to Hudkins and his frequent tips as a "usually unreliable source of information".


Goulden denied it, claiming he got it from a "Dallas law enforcement officer".  The FBI considered Goulden's story scurrilous.  Goulden said he would try to get permission, and called back and said he couldn't reach him.   He told the FBI later that the officer assured him it was being "handled through proper channels".

Goulden also wrote that a Dallas law enforcement officer provided him information that Ruby gained access to the basement by posing as the helper of a cameraman.  He claimed he couldn't reach this officer again, and then used the same story about it being "handled through proper channels".

Years later, the man at FBI HQ believed that DA Bill Alexander had made up the story.   Alexander told Gerald Posner, "I never much liked the federals...I figured it was as good a way as any to keep them out of my way by having to run down that phony story."  (Posner, Case Closed, p. 348).

To top it off, reporter Hugh Aynesworth told Larry Sneed that "I made it up" - and that he gave the phony number S-172 to Hudkins.  (Sneed, No More Silence, p. 32).

Were Goulden or Hudkins prosecuted for lying to the FBI and this campaign of disinformation?  Or Alexander, who was a seasoned district attorney and knew that FBI informant numbers were identified as DL 2-S, not S-172?  Nope.   These men didn't have to say anything - but once they did, that's obstruction of justice under 18 USC 1001 then and now.

Assistant WC counsel Leon Hubert told his boss that if they wanted to make a proper record, the FBI could not simply get an affidavit from the FBI HQ Security Division, they needed to search the informant files for the field offices in Dallas and New Orleans.  According to Breach of Trust author Gerald McKnight, this was never done.  (p. 145). 

I think it's at least possible that all this was done to hide the very real relationship Oswald had with Customs and New Orleans FBI agent Warren de Brueys - who worked the Cuba beat -  as reported for more than fifty years by FBI informant Orestes Pena.

Cuban exile Orestes Pena testified that he saw Oswald chatting on a regular basis with FBI Cuban specialist Warren de Brueys, David Smith at Customs, and Wendell Roache at INS.   Pena told the Church Committee that Oswald was employed by Customs.   Informant Joseph Oster went farther, saying that Oswald's handler was David Smith at Customs.   Church Committee staff members knew that David Smith "was involved in CIA operations".  Orestes Pena's handler Warren de Brueys admitted he knew David Smith. Oswald was also frequently seen with Juan Valdes, who described himself as a "customs house broker".  


Note:  Pena told the Church Committee that Oswald was employed by Customs:   Church Committee Boxed Files / NARA Record Number: 157-10014-10120.   See http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1421&relPageId=31 (de Brueys); http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=182451    (Pena)(also see 180-10075-10167, 2000 release of Pena's depo, at National Archives; and Joan Mellen's Farewell to Justice, pp. 46-48) http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=488541 (Juan Valdes' still-unreleased file, part of the CIA's broken-up "Fair Play for Cuba file" 100-300-011) 

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