This week, I received my Kindle version of James DiEugenio's book, JFK Revisited, which contains annotated transcripts of the two versions of Oliver Stone's documentary. The citation about the segment on David Ferrie in the book is quite something. It leads to a Colonel William Bishop, who was quite the fabulist. Using a ridiculous conspiracy book to prop up the JFK Revisited documentary is not a good look.
I am also astonished by his laziness in putting together the citations - he neglected to put in hot links to articles and documents. Even worse, most of his citations are to other conspiracy books.
For instance, here is his note on the segment (55:30 in Episode 2 of JFK: Destiny Betrayed) regarding the Katzenbach memo: (page 177)
Hoover's memo to LBJ is written about by reporter Alex Johnson in an NBC news report of October 26, 2017. The tape and transcript of Hoover saying the case against Oswald is not that strong is at history-matters.com titled "LBJ-Hoover 11-22-63." The memorandum by Katzenbach is at the Mary Ferrell Foundation website, labeled simply "Katzenbach Memo."
The link to history-matters.com just goes to the web site and not the actual document. He could have easily put in a link to the Katzenbach memo, as I did in my post on this section of the documentary.
In episode four, JFK: Destiny Betrayed presents a segment on David Ferrie: (10:14)
Whoopi Goldberg: In the spring of 1963, Oswald moved from Dallas back to his home town of New Orleans, where he began associating with men who, it would be revealed, had clear connections with these government efforts. One of these men, David Ferrie, had been with Oswald in the Civil Air Patrol back in 1955, and was known as an extreme anti-communist. He was also a trainer and a pilot for the CIA in its secret war against Cuba. Oswald was involved with these Cuban exile training activities with Ferrie.
The notation regarding the segment caught my eye: (page 226)
The relationship of David Ferrie in the CAP with Oswald, and Ferrie’s anti-Castro activities are dealt with in William Davy’s Let Justice Be Done, pp 3–10, 25–33; information about Oswald being at the training camp is on p. 30; that information is also noted in Dick Russell’s book The Man Who Knew Too Much (p. 329). Ferrie’s activities are sketched in Deadly Secrets by Warren Hinckle and William Turner (pp. 232–33). Ferrie’s life and career is also written about in HSCA, vol. 10 (pp. 105–114).
Once again, no link to the HSCA volume and not even Amazon links to the conspiracy books that he cites. Besides the HSCA, primary sources are not cited.
I am quite familiar with the Davy and Turner books, but I needed to check the citation in the Dick Russell book.
The excerpt from page 329 quotes a Colonel William C Bishop:
"In many instances, what I picked up was after the fact. I did look into Oswald's background. I'd never met him, but I'd seen him in a training film in New Orleans the past summer. He just happened to be in the group out there at the Pontchartrain camp."
So, who is this Colonel William C. Bishop?
He was a contact of Robert D. Morrow, an author of two books claiming that he had inside knowledge of the JFK assassination. His first book, Betrayal, claimed that Jack Ruby, Eladio del Valle, Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw organized a plot to kill John F. Kennedy. Morrow claimed that he was the man who bought the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that killed JFK.
Shannon notes:
Another example is Morrow's stated knowledge of a man named John O'Hare, whom Morrow describes as a CIA mercenary. Morrow tells of interviewing him in 1983, and states that O'Hare died in Cleburne, Texas, in 1992. Yet O'Hare's death certificate, which is reproduced in the appendices of First Hand Knowledge ostensibly to support Morrow's claim, indicates that O'Hare died on March 23, 1975, in Orange County, Florida. When I confronted Morrow with this discrepancy, he stated:
Well, that's a different John--that--John O'Hare, is, I think, the same guy. But then, of course, they all faked their deaths. He was told to go underground and they buried a Cuban in his place.
Again, this is another "fact" Morrow failed to bring out in First Hand Knowledge. Morrow also told me that O'Hare used the name Bill Bishop and was known as Oscar The Assassin. Yet, in First Hand Knowledge, Morrow had those monikers belonging to Eladio del Valle. Again, Morrow does not seem to be very familiar with his alleged accomplices.
We will get back to John O'Hare in a few minutes.
Was Robert Morrow really in the CIA?
Morrow does like to throw around names - Frank Sturgis, Carlos Bringuier, Clay Shaw, David Ferrie and Jack Ruby. This alone violates Paul Hoch's rule about evaluating witnesses.
I suspect that a useful measure of the plausibility of an allegation could be derived from the percentage of well-known names. If a source claims to have met with David Ferrie, Allen Dulles, and Fidel Castro in Jack Ruby's nightclub, I'll go on to the next document.
In fact, there was a small training camp across from Lake Pontchartrain in the summer of 1963: (page 166 of On The Trail of Delusion)
In the summer of 1963, about twenty anti-Castro Cubans trained at a small camp. There were only a couple of rifles to practice assembly and disassembly, and no actual shooting occurred. Food was scarce, the men complained bitterly, and after a little more than a month, the Cubans were all sent back to Miami.
Time to get back to the story.
According to Russell, Morrow met a man in the early 1960s who had the 'war name' of Oscar del Valle Garcia. His true name was Bill Bishop, and he called Morrow up in 1983 because he was dying of terminal cancer, and "wanted to set the record straight." Supposedly Morrow flew to Cleburne, Texas, and interviewed Bishop.
Bishop's terminal cancer wasn't that terminal and in 1990 Russell received Morrow's file on Bishop and then went to researcher Gary Shaw's house to actually meet him. Bishop told Russell the following:
He was assigned by the CIA to assassinate Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo.
He knew Richard Case Nagell and said that Nagell was under CIA contract.
Bishop said he served as a case officer for Antonio Veciana.
In 1992, Gary Shaw played a portion of a tape in which Bishop claimed he participated in the CIA's MK-ULTRA program. (page 681 in the first edition of Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much)
"That was how, after the Korean War, I got involved with the CIA," Bishop said. "I have been subjected to every known type of drug. The medical doctors connected with the agency found that certain drugs work quite well in conjunction with hypnosis -- hypnotic power of suggestion -- with some subjects. It did with me. I speak with absolute certainty and knowledge and experience that this is not only possible, but did and is taking place today."
The talkative Bishop had more to say.
Robert D. Morrow's script for a one-hour documentary on the assassination had these allegations from Bishop:
That William Bishop was the CIA link between Oswald and Antonio Veciana.
Bishop said he was the "CIA man selected to personally report to President Kennedy on all matters pertaining to Cuba."
Bishop claimed he gave Kennedy proof of missiles in Cuba in March 1962.
Rolando Masferrer told Bishop that Veciana's Alpha 66 group carried out the JFK assassination.
Bishop personally met with Jack Ruby several times and that Ruby was a gun runner for Alpha 66.
Bishop claimed he met Clay Shaw in 1967 as Clay Bertram.
Bishop said that he flew with David Ferrie into Cuba on the night of the Bay of Pigs.
Former CIA Director William Colby told Bishop to go underground during the Church Committee.
Bishop told Morrow, off the record, that he killed Jimmy Hoffa.
Bishop claimed to be at Parkland Hospital when JFK was brought in after the assassination.
Concluding the script, Morrow wrote that "Bishop seems to be the most likely candidate to have engineered the President's death."
Can this get any sillier?
Why, yes it can!
Here is a page from his picture section, which alleges that Bishop was also John Adrian O'Hare:
Washington attorney Bernard Fensterwald lifted fingerprints belonging to Bishop from a drinking glass and discovered that they matched the fingerprints of O'Hare.
Really?
I couldn't find much on John Adrian O'Hare. But I did find a front-page story from the Daytona Beach Morning Journal of May 10, 1976:
You can download the rest of the article.
Here is a short excerpt from the second half:
This all seems to like an elaborate scam.
Here is John Adrian O'Hare's obituary:
Orlando Sentinel, March 25, 1975
Was O'Hare Bishop? I doubt it.
So, was William Bishop part of the CIA?
"Bishop impressed the group as being a psycho, and no one would take orders from him."
I found this about Clarence Ward Bishop:
Tallahassee Democrat, September 26, 1963
So, to make a long story short, Colonel William Bishop is James DiEugenio's source that Lee Harvey Oswald attended an anti-Castro Cuban training camp in 1963.
Well, guess what?
When Playboy Magazine was publishing James McKinley's history of political assassination in America in 1976, they were contacted by Morrow who showed them the supposed film of Oswald at the training camp:
Not surprisingly, "Morrow's film showed no one who looked remotely like Oswald."
I am sure that in reply DiEugenio will just say, well, I also sourced Davy's claim (page 30) that Robert Tanenbaum saw such a video at Georgetown University. David Phillips, Lee Harvey Oswald, Antonio Veciana, and Guy Banister were supposedly in the video (see page 116 in Destiny Betrayed, and page 48 in Joan Mellen's A Farewell to Justice)
DiEugenio Sources Non-Existent Evidence
DiEugenio likes to source documents that are either missing or were never in existence. He says he did get some of “the late Jim Rose’s documents about Crisman and Beckham,” and criticizes me for not seeing these documents. Yet, he won’t tell us what was in those documents, and, of course, he won’t publish any.
He writes that “Bob Tanenbaum saw documents from Helms’ office that directed Garrison’s witnesses to be surveilled and harassed. Which they were.” Unfortunately, Tanenbaum says those documents cannot be found.
DiEugenio then claims that Richard Case Nagell “told Garrison’s representative, William Martin, that he had an audiotape of four men in New Orleans talking about an assassination plot against Kennedy. He named one of them as Arcacha; he would only describe another of the men as “Q”. Which would strongly denote Quiroga.” Again, this tape has never surfaced, and yet that is enough for DiEugenio to convict both Arcacha Smith and Carlos Quiroga.
James DiEugenio is seriously auditioning to become the Marjorie Taylor Greene of JFK conspiracy theorists – Garrison is his “Q.” The only difference is that DiEugenio lacks Greene’s charm.
DiEugenio says that the “HSCA learned that the Dallas Police had found diagrams of the sewer system under Dealey Plaza in Arcacha Smith’s apartment after the assassination.” This is not true. Francis Fruge, a Louisiana State police officer, heard that Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police might have been told that…but he wasn’t too sure.
I wrote about this to my friend, and fellow researcher, Tracy Parnell, (don't miss his publication-in-progress e-book on Veciana’s Bishop, The Bishop Hoax) and he had this to say about William Bishop:
Of course, Bishop's wilder claims need no debunking; they are clearly nonsense. But I found no evidence that Bishop was Veciana's Bishop. He seems to be just a blowhard who learned a few facts and created his own little false history.
Just like Mr. DiEugenio, who is also creating his own false history.
His stories about the JFK assassination should have been buried with him rather than being dug up by James DiEugenio.
Update
On the past page of the document, they note:
Don't miss the Viewer's Guide to JFK: Destiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass.
Over the past several months, I have shown in multiple blog posts how Oliver Stone's documentary series, JFK Revisited and JFK: Destiny Betrayed, misleads viewers. In fact, despite months of work, there are still many more misleading segments that need to be addressed. It's no wonder that the fact checkers of Netflix nixed the airing of the films.
There is a choice between four hours of tendentious nonsense (JFK: Destiny Betrayed) and two hours (JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass). As a handy guide for viewers, here are all those posts in order of their appearance in JFK: Destiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, preceded by some general critiques