Simpich writes: "What the mainstream media has not yet realized is that the JFK case is being solved, thanks largely to the brute force of the power of the Internet. As in most suppressed stories, the revelations come one piece at a time."
In this Nov. 23, 1963 file photo, Lee Harvey Oswald is led down a corridor of the Dallas police station for another round of questioning in connection with the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Oswald, who denied any involvement in the shooting, was formally charged with murder. (photo: AP)
The Murder of JFK: Another Puzzle Piece Solved
15 October 15
Right screen: The wallet found at the time of Oswald's arrest.
he mainstream media in America continually fails to understand that Americans are not interested in having a secret government.
Salon founder David Talbot has a new book coming out this week, entitled The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. The book explores how Dulles targeted foreign leaders for assassination and then brought this practice back home with the murder of JFK.
Tufts professor Michael Glennon released a book last year on the similarity in security policies of Bush and Obama entitled National Security and the Rise of Double Government. Glennon explains how the roles of the presidency, the Congress, and the courts are “largely illusory” compared to the powers of those safely situated in the back room.
Esquire writer Charles Pierce wrote a story picked up by RSN in the last week discussing how the CIA has been forced to admit, yet again, another clue to how the agency covered up the story of JFK’s murder.
What the mainstream media has not yet realized is that the JFK case is being solved, thanks largely to the brute force of the power of the Internet. As in most suppressed stories, the revelations come one piece at a time. The following story is illustrative of how social media is able to force long-hidden stories to break open.
Just two years ago, the story of the murder of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit on November 22, 1963, took a most unexpected twist.
A local TV newscast showed footage taken by the local ABC affiliate WFAA on that date more than 50 years ago. In the film, Dallas police captain Pinky Westbrook can be seen handling a wallet at the scene of Tippit’s murder. It appears to be the wallet of the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
What makes the footage remarkable is that the official story was that the wallet was not found until about an hour later, when Dallas police detective Paul Bentley removed it from Oswald’s back pocket shortly after taking him into custody at the Texas Theatre, several blocks away from where Tippit was gunned down.
FBI agent Bob Barrett, who was at the scene of Tippit’s murder and is still alive in Pell City, Alabama, now calls Paul Bentley’s story “hogwash.”
The wallet is important because its contents connected Oswald to the guns used in the murder of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit.
The WFAA story
The WFAA story last fall said that the wallet mystery had been “settled.” Reporter Jason Whitley interviewed retired FBI analyst Farris Rookstool, who conducted an investigation of the two wallet stories. Rookstool concluded that the wallet seen in the 1963 footage is an exact match with the Oswald wallet now at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.
Rookstool argues that the circular snaps, metal strips, and a zipper over the cash compartment are identical in both instances.
Rookstool’s conclusion is that the video footage of the wallet proves that Oswald killed Officer Tippit about 49 minutes after President Kennedy was shot and killed in downtown Dallas a mile and half away.
The power of Internet research suggests another possibility, spelled out in my recent book State Secret: The wallet was planted at the Tippit murder scene. New evidence continues to come in since its release.
Who found the wallet? And when did they find it?
Here’s the story insofar as it is known.
The first officer on the Tippit murder scene was Dallas Police Sergeant Kenneth H. Croy, who arrived as the ambulance was picking up Tippit’s body. Croy told an interviewer that an unknown man handed him Oswald’s wallet right after his arrival. The witnesses who preceded Croy at the crime scene were adamant that no one dropped a wallet anywhere in the vicinity.
The video footage from WFAA shows a wallet wound up in the hands of Captain Pinky Westbrook. The WFAA newscast also shows FBI agent Bob Barrett recounting how Westbrook turned to him at the scene while holding the wallet and asked, “You ever heard of a Lee Harvey Oswald?” I said, “No, I never have.” He said “How about an Alek Hidell?” I said, “No. I never have heard of him either,” Barrett explained.
“Why would they be asking me questions about Oswald and Hidell if it wasn’t in that wallet?”
Why does the wallet matter?
The wallet contained what is the only known instance of Oswald carrying identification under the alias of “Alek Hidell.” The two sets of identification cards found in the wallet are key evidence in the JFK case.
Kennedy was killed on Friday, November 22. By the next day, it was worldwide news that the rifle that was used in the shooting of President Kennedy was purchased by mail order with a postal money order made out by “A. Hidell” and listing Oswald’s P.O. box as the place for pick-up.
Oswald and “Hidell” were now tied by the rifle and the wallet to JFK’s murder, less than two hours after the event.
Again, why did the Dallas captain ask the FBI agent about Oswald and Hidell if their IDs weren't in the wallet?
In custody, Oswald denied that he was the owner of the rifle found at the Texas School Book Depository where he worked and where several people saw one and possibly two gunmen. The gun had been ordered in the name of “Hidell.”
For the FBI man, Barrett said, the wallet made the case against Oswald a “slam dunk.”
Yet the Dallas authorities never wrote a report about any wallet found at the Tippit murder scene. Perhaps that was oversight. Perhaps not.
FBI Man: Dallas cop lied
After 50 years, an FBI agent on the scene has charged that the Dallas officer who brought Oswald to the police station is lying about finding the wallet in Oswald’s possession.
Barrett attacked Bentley’s claim that he found Oswald’s wallet for the first time in the 2013 WFAA news story. “They said they took the wallet out of his pocket in the car? That’s so much hogwash. That wallet was in (Captain) Westbrook’s hand.”
Why did Barrett wait 50 years to accuse Bentley of lying and obstruction of justice?
It was not a fight he cared to pick. Bentley had been Dallas’s chief polygraph examiner during 1963. It would have been professionally hazardous for Barrett to challenge Bentley before his death in 2008.
So what does the story of the wallet tell us?
It was not public knowledge that Oswald’s wallet was found at the Tippit murder scene until 1996. FBI agent Jim Hosty, who had responsibility for watching Oswald, wrote that a wallet containing identification for both Oswald and “Alek Hidell” was found near a pool of blood. Again, no witness ever saw the wallet on the ground. A second witness, patrolman Leonard Jez, told a conference in 1999 that the wallet was identified at the murder scene as belonging to Oswald.
Rookstool told WFAA that the testimony of Barrett and Croy, Tippit’s billfold, and the WFAA film prove that Oswald’s wallet was at the scene of the policeman’s murder.
Rookstool’s finding is contested by researcher Dale Myers. On his website, Myers argues that the wallet seen on the videotape is thinner and has a straight flap rather than the rounded flap of the arrest wallet. Whether Myers’s contention is correct or not, Myers has also spent years publicizing Barrett’s story that the wallet at the murder scene contained identification for both Lee Harvey Oswald and Alek Hidell.
murder of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit.
The best evidence indicates that an unknown person brought something at least resembling Lee Harvey Oswald’s wallet to the scene of Tippit’s murder.
The Tippit murder was a staged scene, designed to inflame the Dallas cops to do everything they could to bring down Oswald.
Solving puzzles like these, one piece at a time, is how determined people take down a secret government.
MORE: See a video clip on Joseph McBride’s book Into the Nightmare, and my own research in Chapters 6-7 of State Secret. This ongoing story leads to some surprising places.
Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney and the author of State Secret. His work is cited in Salon editor David Talbot's new book, The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, coming out on Tuesday, October 13. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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