Case Closed Opens Old Wounds - Review of Posner

BK NOTES: This is an article I wrote in response to Gerald Posner's book Case Closed, years before I started a blog, and I had forgotten about it and lost it from my archive. Thanks to Assassinationweb for posting this so long ago. Am now interested in Tony Zopi, and obtaining his HSCA testimony that I can't find on line. In it Zopi allegedly says that Air Force Chief of Staff General LeMay was pals with Chicago and Havana casino mobster and gambler Charles "Babe" Barron, an unlikely association that I am trying to figure out. 

CASE CLOSED OPENS OLD WOUNDS

http://www.assassinationweb.com/kel.htm

by William E. Kelly

Despite the thesis of Case Closed (Random House, 1993), Gerald Posner manages to provide a few missing pieces of the puzzle that, rather than cutting off lines of inquiry, prompt further questions. Early psychological testing results of young Lee Harvey Oswald, the identity of the owner of the '57 Chevy Oswald photographed in General Walker's driveway, the man Ruby was with at the moment of the assassination and Ruby's KLIF connections are all fruits of Posner's research, providing further food for fodder.

Posner takes pride in reviewing what critics have long neglected - Dr. Renatus Hartogs' report on Oswald as a New York City delinquent. Although its value is predicated on Oswald actually being the assassin, its significance may have been missed. According to Posner, Oswald was tested by Hartogs and diagnosed as having a "passive-aggressive" personality, a unique trait that is mentioned elsewhere among the assassination literature.

In a London Sunday Times article reporting from an Oslo, Norway, NATO conference on stress, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Dr. Thomas Narut is quoted as saying that a "passive-aggressive" personality trait is exactly the type of person the Navy looked for in recruiting soldiers to become part of special assassination teams. Talking with reporter Peter Watson, Narut said, "U.S. Naval psychologists specially selected men for these commando tasks from submarine crews, paratroops, and some convicted murderers were being released from prisons to become assassins." They were then trained and programmed with the latest multi-media techniques at a Navy base in Southern California.

If Hartogs recognized this trait, certainly the USMC did as well, creating the distinct possibility that Oswald was recruited into this unit or a similar one. While Narut has conspicuously disappeared from public view, another Oslo conference participant, Alfred Zitani, was quoted in the London Sunday Times article saying, "Dr. Narut must realize this kind of information must be classified." In a December, 1993 telephone conversation, Zitani said that he does not know where Narut is today, but said that a British documentary TV producer also recently contacted him regarding Narut.

Zitani noted that the Oslo conference was not concerned solely with combat stress. Zitani presented a paper at the conference on stress experienced by students afraid of school - exactly why Oswald was tested by Hartogs after he was caught at the Bronx Zoo by a truant officer.

The "passive-aggressive" personality trait may not be common, Zitani said, but nor is it obvious. "You or I may be "passive-aggressive" and not know it," he said, you have to be tested specifically looking for such a trait.

How someone like Narut, a prominent psychologist and Naval Commander, could avoid further published scrutiny may indicate the significance of his information. Professor P. D. Scott's "negative template" - evidence by omission thesis, should be tested, not only by finding Narut, but by locating and interviewing Mr. Charles Klihr, whom Posner identifies as the owner of the '57 Chevy that Oswald photographed in Gen. Walker's driveway.

Although the photograph was among Oswald's effects taken by the Dallas police, and can be seen complete in Chief Curry's book (JFK Assassination File, 1969), the license plate on the car was obliterated after it came into the possession of the Dallas police. Posner mistakenly writes, "A photo of evidence taken at Oswald's flat after the assassination shows the hole was in the print at that time." (p.117) The photo was taken not from "Oswald's flat," but from Mrs. Paine's garage in Irving, and, as can be seen in Curry's book, the photo was intact when in his possession.

Since such license plate information has been successfully used elsewhere in this case, particularly with the Wise incident (See: Oswald - Tippit associates, HSCA Vol. XI), the car's owner is thought to be significant given the extent someone went to destroy evidence in order to protect another person. Posner continues to belittle this evidence however, dryly noting, "the photo was taken from such a distance that the license plate of the car would not have been legible in any case..." (P. 117)

Then, without a footnote or citing the source (another "negative template"), Posner writes, "...and it was later determined the car belonged to a Walker aide, Charles Klihr." (p.117) Given that Walker's group was then being infiltrated by the Schmidt brothers, Charles Klihr's background should be checked and it should be determined why Klihr's identity was significant enough to destroy evidence to protect him.

Then there's the case of Don Campbell. According to Posner's account, "From about 9:45 to 10:45, Ruby had dinner with Dallas businessman Ralph Paul, his good friend and financial backer. They ate at the Egyptian Lounge, a restaurant and nightclub." (pp. 367, 368)

The footnote at the bottom of the page reads:

"The owner of the Egyptian Lounge, Joseph Campisi, was evidently associated with a host of leading mobsters. Ruby was a frequent patron at the Egyptian Lounge, so his Thursday night dinner there was not out of the ordinary... Campisi did not see Ruby that night... Summers, relying on an FBI report, says Ruby had a brief conversation at the Lounge with someone named 'Conners' from the Dallas Morning News and 'no person of that name worked at the News in 1963,' implying there is a mystery about the person whom Ruby spoke to... However, the FBI mistakenly listed the name as 'Conners.' Ruby actually spoke to Don Campbell, a salesman in the advertising department at the News. He invited Ruby to the Castaway Club on Thursday night, but Ruby declined"

Instead of joining Campbell at the Castaway Club that night, Ruby met up with his old friend from Chicago, Larry Meyers, at the Cabana Hotel lounge. Also at the Cabana that night were Meyer's companion Jean Aase, who was in telephone communication with David Ferrie, Meyer's brother Ed and his wife, in town for a Pepsi Cola convention, mob courier Jim Braden and his friend Morgan Brown. The ubiquitious Beverly Oliver, (in The Third Decade, Nov. 1993) also claims to have been at the Cabana that night dancing with auto salesman Jack Lawrence.

The next day JFK was killed while Brown was visiting H. L. Hunt. Braden was taken into custody as a suspicious person at the scene of the crime. Ruby was four blocks away at the Dallas Morning News where he had spent the morning with Mr. Don Campbell.

Writes Posner: "On Friday, November 22, Ruby was up by 9:30 and at the Dallas Morning News shortly before 11:00 in order to place his regular weekend advertisements for his two nightclubs... He then stopped by the office of Tony Zoppi, the newspaper's entertainment reporter, but he was not in."

Posner's footnote for this: "Interview with Tony Zoppi, November 23, 1992), is also supported by Ruby's Warren Commission testimony, "So I went down there Friday morning to Tony Zoppi's office, and they said he went to New Orleans for a few days." (9 AH 1102; 5 WH 183; Scott, Deep Politics p. 198); but Zoppi gave a conflicting report to the Congressional investigators in 1978. Their report (HSCA Vol. 5, p. 170) reads:

"Ruby visited Zoppi at 10:30 on the morning of the assassination with a picture of an ESP expert he wanted Zoppi to plug... Ruby, he later said, was a 'highly emotional' person and Zoppi believed him to be too calm that morning to have been involved in a conspiracy. Ruby told him he was moving into a new apartment starting Monday that cost $190 a month (up from $100 that Ruby had been paying). The new address was 21 Turtle Creek. When Zoppi questioned him about it, Ruby said, 'I've scrimped all my life and now I want to live a little.' These were Ruby's last words to Zoppi..."

The Warren Report (p. 334) reads: "Ruby then went to the office of the Morning News Columnist, Tony Zoppi, where he states he obtained a brochure on his new master of ceremonies that he wanted to use in preparing copy for his advertisements. Proceeding to the advertising department, he spoke with advertising employee Don Campbell from about noon until 12:25 p.m. when Campbell left the office... According to Campbell, Ruby did not mention the Presidential motorcade nor did he display any unusual behavior."

Posner's version is: "Ruby next went to the second-floor advertising department where he met with Don Campbell, the sales agent he had seen at the Cabana Hotel (sic) the night before."

Campbell had seen and talked with Ruby at Campisi's Egyptian Lounge the night before the assassination, a fact brought out by Posner himself, and then Campbell is with Ruby again up until five minutes before the assassination.

After fifteen minutes Posner then picks up the scene, during which time JFK is shot in the back four blocks away.

"Before 12:40, John Newman, another advertising department employee, observed Ruby sitting at the same desk where Campbell had left him. He was reading the Morning News...'Welcome Mr. Kennedy,' (ad)... the text accused the President of being a Communist tool. It was signed by 'The American Fact Finding Committee, Bernard Weissman, Chairman.' Ruby was very disturbed that the News should have run such a demeaning advertisement and was dismayed that it was signed by someone with a Jewish name."

Weissman was an associate of Larry Schmidt, who was trying to infiltrate such right wing organizations as the Young Americans For Freedom, the John Birch Society and Walker's group. They organized the demonstration against UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Schmidt's brother had become Gen. Walker's driver. The Schmidt brothers have also become suspects as accomplices in the shooting of Gen. Walker (See: The Man Who Knew Too Much, Russell).

Entertainment writer Tony Zoppi was supposed to go to Cuba with Ruby, and was working at the Riviera casino in Vegas when the HSCA caught up with him in 1978, so the conflicting nature of his testimony concerning his presence at the Dallas Morning News that day should be clarified. P. D. Scott has speculated that Zoppi's office was the connection to the Vegas interests, just as Campisi's Egyptian lounge was the connection to Carlos Marcello and New Orleans interests. (See: HSCA, Vol. IX, Campisi testimony, and PBS Frontline).

In addition, what was Ruby doing in the missing fifteen minutes when no one saw him, which just happens to include the precise moment JFK was being killed a few blocks away? Whatever he was doing, his attitude changed drastically after the assassination. Even before he left the newspaper offices it was obvious he was more than just upset over the assassination.

Ruby then went to Parkland Hospital at 1:30, where he was seen by at least three witnesses. For some reason, Ruby later denied he was there, leading to speculation that he planted the "magic bullet" that was found on a stretcher. By 2p.m. he was back at the Carousel Club, making phone calls.

What is significant about the information Posner brings out is that Ruby met with Don Campbell on the night before the assassination at Campisi's Egyptian Lounge, and then spent over three hours in Campbell's office during which time the assassination occurred.

Posner also confirms Ruby's interesting associations with KLIF radio, even going so far as to conclude that, "As far as Jack (Ruby) was concerned, he was...officially representing KLIF as a reporter" when he shot Oswald. KLIF is the only radio station not listed in Posner's index, and when given the opportunity to mention that Ruby called the home of the station's owner, Gordon McLendon, to obtain the phone number of the station, he merely notes that Ruby, "had obtained the number." (Scott's "negative template"?)

McLendon's KLIF broadcast the rightwing propaganda radio show Lifeline, financed by the Hunt family, and copies of the Lifeline newsletter were found in Ruby's car. Ruby said he considered McLendon one of his "six best friends"(20 WH 29, Scott, Deep Politics, p. 217), and turned the tables on his inquisitors when he asked Earl Warren if he knew McLendon.

Ironically, Ruby had called a newsman at KLIF when he noticed the "Impeach Earl Warren" billboard, and asked who Earl Warren was. He considered the billboard significant enough to take a picture of it at 4 a.m. in the morning. Ruby went to the coffee shop at the Southland Building, where Antonio Veciana had previously met with "Maurice Bishop" and Oswald.

McLendon's friendship with David A. Phillips - (aka Maurice Bishop) dated to the 1940's, so McLendon provides a link between Ruby and Oswald.

Dr. Thomas Narut, Charles Klihr, Don Campbell and Gordon McLendon are four persons who should be further investigated. Thank you Gerald Posner