An examination of Palamara's second eight pieces of corroborating evidence for the plot.
An examination of Palamara's first eight pieces of corroborating evidence for the plot.
A look at the origin of the supposed plot.
A look at Homer Echeverria.
A look at Lloyd John Wilson.
Vince leads off his reply with this:
Well, I call Fred Litwin "The Omission Man"- there are whole swaths of my book-even whole chapters- he has avoided reviewing, despite all these parts.
I have indeed avoided large parts of Palamara's book. My focus is on his epic failure to prove there was a plot in Chicago in November 1963.
Fred conveniently leaves out that a former Chicago office agent who was mentioned by the HSCA in a summary and who served with Abe Bolden, Maurice Martineau, Ed Z. Tucker, Joseph Noonan and others, Nemo Ciochina, ALSO told me about "Puerto Rican persons of interest for the Chicago trip." No, it is NOT "just" about Lloyd John Wilson; far from it.
Well, I've never claimed it was 'just' about Lloyd John Wilson, although Palamara has devoted a whole chapter to him. So, let's talk about the "Puerto Rican persons of interest."
Here is the document in question:
So, yes Bolden was investigating three Puerto Ricans on November 25, 1963. I fail to see what this has to do with a supposed plot in early November. None of these people are named in Bolden's book, and two of the names he remembered as being involved with the November plot were Bradley and Gonzalez.
My guess is that somebody from the Chicago office checked on these people once a year, and Bolden got the short stick this year. They were all Puerto Rican nationalists -- Diaz-Matos and Medina were sentenced to six years in prison at their sedition trial in 1954. At a second trial in 1955, Medina got 18 months.
But is Palamara claiming that this has anything to do with a plot in early November 1963?
By the way, the only sources in his book that point to Puerto Rico are the quotation from George McNally which talked about a possible Puerto Rican threat in March 1963, and Louis Sims who was talking about a threat that "could have been any time up to a year prior to the assassination," and that involved gun running. He was most probably thinking of Homer Echevarria (and indeed he mentioned Echevarria by name).
The importance of the agents who were investigating Wilson, former White House Detail agents who left the detail during the Summer and Fall of 1963, joining field offices and investigating this mortal threat to JFK, is not noted and, thus, is conveniently ignored.
Yes, ignored because the point is so opaque that nobody understands it. What on earth are you trying to say?
Fred states that it is no big deal that Wilson was not noted in any prior book or article before because, in his opinion, he wasn't of importance and the documents were on the Mary Ferrell website (and the Archives). But, as with the millions of other documents out there, one has to call attention to them first- they might have been "there", but no one noticed or thought to look them up and no one I knew of ever even knew who Wilson was to begin with. And again: the volume of reports and the specific agents involved demonstrate the large importance that Wilson signified to the Secret Service (and FBI). A number of these documents were from months BEFORE both the Chicago plot and the 11/22/63 assassination.
The Wilson allegation was thoroughly investigated back in 1963 and 1964 and all the reports were sent to the Warren Commission. No one thought this was a worthwhile lead. And no one in the critical community thought this was a worthwhile lead, until Mr. Ciochina told you about Wilson. Vince, he gave you a bum steer.
I mean, come on, Wilson said that he paid Oswald $1,000 at a wrestling match in San Francisco to kill Kennedy, and you think this is a worthwhile lead?
Also: the authorities found no evidence of psychosis and Wilson was found COMPETENT TO STAND TRIAL! In addition, and this goes for Fred's attempt to debunk Richard Case Nagell by stating that he was mentally ill (crazy): I am not impressed with any attempt to paint Wilson or many others as "mentally ill." Here is why:
Author and prominent lone nutter Vince Bugliosi stated during the 1986 mock trial of Oswald that there was no doubt that Oswald was nuts. Still, he was allegedly capable of the assassination and, before that, was competent enough to be employed, have a wife, kids, a radar operator duty in the Marines, etc. In other words, Oswald was competent.
I didn't paint Wilson as "mentally ill." I did post the results of his psychiatric examination at Springfield. Yes, he was deemed competent to stand trial, but he clearly had problems.
I strongly suggest you read my new book, A Heritage of Nonsense: Jim Garrison's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, to fully understand Richard Case Nagell. Nagell suffered organic brain damage in his 1954 plane crash and that affected him the rest of his life. Vince, just go and read his own pleadings in his lawsuit for disability.
Fred calls Wilson a "bum steer." If he was (and I do not believe he was a bum steer), he certainly fooled a lot of federal agents (Secret Service and FBI) who thought enough of Wilson and his threat to write many reports and actually have former Kennedy White House Detail agents (Sherman, Giovanetti, Tucker, etc.) LEAVE THE DETAIL to join field offices that were INVESTIGATING and following Wilson! The Wilson threat also involved several Chicago office agents (SAIC Maurice Martineau [Ciochina and Bolden's boss, all of whom believed there was a conspiracy], Joseph Noonan, Ed Tucker), as well as Springfield Illinois SAIC Fred Backstrom.
Wilson didn't fool anyone. They investigated his case and realized there was nothing to it. The charges were dropped, and he went home to live with his family and get psychiatric help.
Wilson: sent to Springfield, MO fed med center like Bolden and Richard case Nagell.
So what? What on earth is your point?
Wilson: connection to LHO; “Harvey Lee Oswald” as a Secret Service report noted. Also- who is to say that the "Oswald" Wilson claims he met in San Francisco wasn't an Oswald IMPOSTER and NOT LHO, per se?
Is that your claim? That Wilson met an Oswald impersonator at the wrestling match?
Really?
Fred dismisses the notion that the 11/1/63 Vietnamese President Diem assassination was a CIA-backed coup by attempting to show that President Kennedy was involved, as well, but this has been disputed by others: as with Lumumba and the attempts on Castro, Kennedy was horrified by this event.
Kennedy wasn't horrified by the coup; he was horrified by the Diem's assassination.
Contrary to what Edwin Black reported several years before Salinger's HSCA interview, when Salinger told Black that the Chicago trip would not be canceled due to the Diem assassination, Salinger changed his tune and told the HSCA that Kennedy did cancel the Chicago trip due to the Diem assassination. That said, Fred ignores what is said by Salinger at the bottom of the document he posts:
No need to ignore it since I posted the document. But so what? The salient point is that he was unaware of any threat to JFK, and he said that the Chicago trip was cancelled because of the assassination of Diem.
My book lays out all the evidence of threats and plots (both) to Kennedy, demonstrating the appalling lack of security for JFK in Dallas, as the Secret Service was much aware of all of these threats and plots, many just in 1963 alone. I know the difference between a threat and a plot. "Just" a threat in no way lessens the severity or importance of said threat. I don't claim to have all the answers: I am merely an author over 6 decades removed from the assassination. I published 200-plus documents/photos/articles with 300-plus detailed footnotes to make my case without adding reams of speculation. The main thrust of my book is to demonstrate the sheer volume of threats and/or plots, with a special emphasis on Chicago (both 3/23/63 AND 11/2/63) and how all of these may relate or, in fact, do relate to 11/22/63.
There are always lots of threats. You have not demonstrated that there was a plot. If you were honest, you would admit that the ONLY source for a plot is Abraham Bolden. There are no corroborating documents or witnesses, and Bolden's story changes every time he tells it. You can source JFK Revisited or JFK and the Unspeakable, or Edwin Black's article, but the only source is Bolden.
The importance of Mosely and Echevarria is to demonstrate that former OSS man, Deputy Chief Paul Paterni, former CHICAGO Secret Service agent in charge of the Chicago office when GUY BANISTER was CHICAGO agent in charge of the FBI office, told the Chicago office to drop the case:
And what on earth does Echevarria have to do with the Chicago plot. The supposed Chicago plot occurred at the beginning of November. The Echevarria story was after the JFK assassination.
Fred doesn't find Bolden credible. I do. I also find Ciochina credible regarding Wilson. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and there is a whole lot of smoke. Again, I admittedly don't have all the answers and never claimed that I did: I am merely an amateur author six-plus decades removed doing my best.
While there might be fire where there is smoke, in this case, there is no smoke.
Is Bolden credible?
Here is a very telling paragraph from Bolden's book: (page 104 in the Kindle edition)
By bringing the case against me, the Secret Service had unwittingly given me a national platform from which I could speak out about these issues. I wondered if they had considered the possibility that the press would be all over me. I thought that since I would be dead by the time I was thirty anyway, I had nothing to lose. I owed it to President Kennedy.
None of the reporters interrupted by tirade. When I was finished, I walked to the kitchen to get some water, then came back into the living room and announced, "The news conference is over."
He owed it to President Kennedy? And yet, Bolden didn't say one word about the supposed plot in Chicago.
How credible is that?
Fred makes the claim that Bolden's story/details of the Chicago plot have changed somewhat thru the years but I view this mainly as a byproduct of many authors/sources detailing the case at different times and different vantage points (and, of course, thru the prism of their own voices, not Bolden himself actually authoring the prior statements/reports). Inevitably, some things fall thru the cracks, are misinterpreted, omitted or even exaggerated. I and many other authors have fallen victim to this thru the years. It goes with the territory.
It doesn't go with the territory. Bolden's story changes every time he tells it. Shouldn't this give us pause? It's his story, after all. The fact that he named suspects in the Garrison case back in 1968 as two of the gunmen is a huge red flag, no?
Chicago SAIC Maurice Martineau, no fan of Bolden (to put it mildly), adamantly believed there was a conspiracy.
So what? Lots of people believe there was a conspiracy. Secret Service agents aren't immune to the conspiracy bug.
Ciochina ALSO mentioned "Puerto Rican persons of interest." Bolden checked up on Puerto Rican persons of interest, including a few that did time in federal prison for attempting to assassinate US Congressman in 1954! Recall that on 11/1/50, TWO Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate President Truman. My book details TWO Puerto Rican Nationalist plots to assassinate President Eisenhower.
And, in keeping with the above, Fred omits:
I did not omit that from my analysis. Palamara mentions the McNally quote five times in his book. But McNally was talking about a threat in March 1963, not November 1963.
Fred attempts to downplay Sherman Skolnick as yet another source for the 1975 Edwin Black article, but he WAS another source AND Fred says nothing of the other sources named and interviewed in the article such as FBI Agent Thomas Coll (who said, regarding 11/2/63, "some people [plural] were picked up"), and Thomas Arthur Vallee himself, who stated:
Skolnick was not another source. He got his information from Bolden. In any case, Skolnick is not someone to be believed. Here is an excerpt from a Skolnick interview from April 1970:
Did Bolden say this? Or did Skolnick make this up? Either way, it's pretty damning.
As for Thomas Vallee, well, all he mentions in that quote is that he was arrested. Black notes that "He then supplied confirming details about his whereabouts, the arrest, the weapons, the ammunition, where he purchased them, and his political beliefs about JFK and Major Daley." Vallee "patently denied he actually threatened the President or even considered doing him any harm."
I agree with that. There is little evidence that he actually threatened JFK. But note that Vallee did not tell Black any details of the plot -- because there was no plot, and he knew absolutely nothing.
But why should we even believe Black. He later says this:
A quick check of Vallee's past with the CIA shows his involvement in anti-Castro assassination squads in Long Island.
Where on earth is the evidence for that?
It is easy to dismiss what the SAIC of the Secret Service's Chicago office, Maurice Martineau (the boss of Ciochina, Bolden, Stocks, Motto, Tucker, Noonan, etc.) when one never mentions what Martineau told me in 1993 and which I report at the very beginning of my book and in my first book, for that matter: Martineau adamantly believed there was a conspiracy. It is also crucial to note that Martineau was not a fan of Bolden: he called him "a blight on the agency" and did not even want to discuss anything about him. Martineau was there, Fred wasn't.
So what? And this says nothing about a supposed plot in Chicago in November 1963.
In another instance of "whistling past the graveyard", Fred invokes (yet again) a clever prosecuting lawyer's trick: actually calling attention to incriminating evidence, then dismissing its significance in the hopes that the spin on it will lessen the severity of said evidence. Like the 9/10/63 Secret Service report shown above, get a load of this:
Fred also fails to note that Paterni was a former OSS man who served with James Jesus Angleton and Ray Rocca, as I duly reference in my book, the one he is reviewing.
Who cares if Paterni was a former OSS man who served with Angleton? How is that relevant. The document above refers to Homer Echevarria, a story which happened after the JFK assassination.
-I adamantly disagree with Fred's dismissal of FBI agent/spokesman Thomas Coll and his 1975 statements about "people" [plural] being picked up at Soldiers Field in Chicago. Coll was a distinguished and long serving member of the Bureau:
This quotation comes from the Edwin Black article. We have no idea what he was really talking about or if the quotation is accurate. He was a PR flack for the FBI and was not involved in what happened in Chicago.
1) Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office, Maurice Martineau, believed there was a conspiracy.
2) Chicago Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden believes there was a conspiracy.
3) Chicago Secret Service agent Nemo Ciochina believed there was a conspiracy.
Again, so what?
I believe the sum total of my book demonstrates many threats and traces of conspiracy that led to both the 3/23/63 Chicago threats and plot AND the cancelled 11/2/63 Chicago trip. What's more, I believe that these threats and evidence of plots demonstrate a moving crime that led to 11/22/63. While not ALL of the threats I detail are necessarily evidence of a PLOT, per se, they do reveal the stunning level of mortal danger that President Kennedy was under and just how appalling his security was. In spite of all of these threats and the evidence of plots and, despite the good security used on prior trips, Kennedy was left a sitting duck by the agents who were much aware of most if not all of these threats and probably more.
Traces of conspiracy? What traces is Palamara talking about? Why lump the March trip with the November trip?
There was no moving crime.
Vince Palamara's book is an epic failure.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts
An examination of Palamara's second eight pieces of corroborating evidence for the plot.
An examination of Palamara's first eight pieces of corroborating evidence for the plot.
A look at the origin of the supposed plot.
A look at Homer Echeverria.
A look at Lloyd John Wilson.
Chad Nagle tries to argue that there was a plot.
The HSCA did speak to Edwin Black. It was a memorable interview.
There is no evidence of a plot in Chicago against JFK.
Bolden's story about the supposed Chicago plot has changed over the years.
An examination of supposed other plots against JFK.
Bolden didn't say one word about a supposed plot against JFK in Chicago.