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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