Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

297   Report of an interview with Jim Doyle


Related:
201 Over half of the Doyle film
202 Negatives of the Doyle film

Missing: Report of an interview with Jim Doyle or information concerning Doyle film.

(National Archives-Security Classification Problems Involving Warren Commission Files, p. 59, 1975)

FBI special agents Julius Bernhard and William S. Brown interviewed father and mother Doyle
and Mr. and Mrs. Wilson who accompanied the Doyles to New Orleans where young Jim Doyle was one
of two people to film the street brawl between Lee Harvey Oswald and Carlos Bringuier. (The other 
was General Walker associate John T. Martin). The interviews took place on 29-11-1963.

299 One money order addressed to the YMCA
300 One telegram to Washington


Related:
149 FBI 17-11-1963 Teletype
267 The source of Oswald's funds

The five-day warning telex soon took on added significance when I belatedly learned of some
remarkable information made public years before by C.A. Hamblen, the early night manager of
Western Union’s Dallas office. A week or so following the assassination, I discovered, Hamblen had
stated to a number of individuals that approximately ten days before the assassination, Lee Oswald
had been in the Western Union office and had sent a telegram to Washington, D.C. It was his
impression that Oswald’s telegram had been directed to the secretary of the Navy. I already knew that
Oswald, although relatively mild-mannered, was assertive enough to have sent other complaints to the
secretary of the Navy—a fact which Hamblen could not be expected to have known.†

Hamblen also recalled that on several occasions Oswald had come to the Western Union office to
collect modest money orders which had been sent to him. According to Hamblen, for identification
Oswald showed him a library card and a Navy I.D. card. This was very close to what Oswald
routinely carried for identification: a library card and Marine I.D. card.

With Hamblen’s recollection an intriguing situation arose: About ten days before the
assassination Lee Oswald had sent a telegram to the secretary of the Navy. Then, five days before the
assassination F.B.I. headquarters had sent a detailed telex warning of the impending attempt to kill the
President to all Bureau offices. Might the two messages, I wondered, somehow be related?

(Jim garrison, On the trail of the assassins, p. 142-3)


Fred Korth and JFK

KORTH, FRED, secretary of the navy; friend of LBJ. Korth was
appointed at LBJ's insistence and was about to be dumped, according to
author Seth Kantor, because he had been using his position to " further
some of his Fort Worth banking investments." According to author Craig I.
Zirbel, "Korth knew the Oswald family since several years before; as a
lawyer in private practice, he represented Oswald's mother in her divorce."

(Who's who in the JFK assassination)

Appointed as Navy Secretary by President John F. Kennedy on January 4, 1962, Korth resigned October 14,
1963 effective November 1, 1963. Various sources cite different reasons for Secretary Korth's departure.

(Wikipedia, retrieved 2-16-20)


Paul Burgess Fay Jr. (8 July 1918, San Francisco, California – 23 September 2009 Woodside, California), was
the Acting United States Secretary of the Navy in November 1963, and a close confidant of President John F.
Kennedy. (Wikipedia, retrieved 2-16-20)


Western Union
Another indication that Oswald may have received mysterious funds came from
C. A. Hamblen, early night manager at Western Union in Dallas. Hamblen reported
that Oswald had collected money orders for small amounts of money on
several occasions, and about ten days before the assassination he had come in to
send a telegram to Washington, D. C., possibly to the Secretary of the Navy.
(WR 332)



The Commission proceeds to point out that during his testimony (on July
23, 1964, many months after the initial report) Hamblen "did not recall with
clarity the statements he had previously made, and was unable to state whether
the person he reportedly had seen in the Western Union office was or was not
Lee Harvey Oswald." (This is hardly surprising, considering the manner in
which Counsel Liebeler launched his cross-examination, confusing the witness
and concentrating on what Hamblen had told a newspaper reporter, not on his
contacts with a customer he believed to be Oswald. The three pages of Hamblen's
testimony (11H 311-314) have to he read in full to appreciate the fashion
in which counsel conducted the examination.)

The Commission next states that Hamblen's fellow employees did not corroborate
his story or identify Oswald as a customer; that neither the money
orders nor the telegram to Washington could be found in a complete search of
Western Union records; and that Hamblen's superiors have concluded that the
whole thing was a figment of his imagination, "and the Commission accepts this
assessment." (WR 333)

A reading of the documents raises some questions about the Commission's
evaluation of Hamblen's story. Hamblen had first reported his encounters with
a customer he believed to be Oswald to his superior, Laurance Wilcox, on November
26, 1963, and a few days later to Bob Fenley, a reporter for the Dallas Times-Herald.



Another Western Union employee, Aubrey Lewis, had corroborated one part
of Hamblen's story, involving a money order addressed to a
person at the Dallas YMCA. (Wilcox Exhibit 3015) Wilcox, Fenley, Lewis, and
another of Hamblen's superiors, W. W. Semingsen, were all deposed by counsel
for the Warren Commission before Hamblen himself ( as early as March 1964,
in two cases). Another Western Union employee, Mrs. D. J. McClure—who
denied having had anything to do with the customer—was not asked to give
testimony at all though Hamblen had named her as being involved in one of the
incidents with the man he alleged to be Oswald. (10H 412)

It seems curious that although Hamblen's allegations were publicized on
November 30, 1963, he was not examined by the Commission until July 23,
1964, after four other witnesses had already testified on the matter. It seems
curious also that Aubrey Lewis as well as Hamblen himself testified to the delivery
of a money order to a payee at the YMCA, where Oswald in fact stayed
for a few days upon his return from Mexico City early in October, and that both
witnesses said that the payee had identified himself by exhibiting a "Navy ID
card and a library card." (Wilcox Exhibit 3005-3006) Oswald, of course, was an
ex-Marine and did carry a library card. (WR 616) Lewis recalled that the customer
was effeminate and was accompanied by another man, of Spanish descent—
a description strikingly like that given by Dean Andrews, a New Orleans attorney,
who also alleged contacts with Oswald. (WR 325)

Hamblen recalled that the man he believed to be Oswald had sent a telegram
to Washington, to the Secretary of the Navy; Oswald, in fact, had communicated
with the Secretary of the Navy on earlier dates attempting to reverse
his "unsatisfactory" discharge from the Marines. (CE 2663) Was Hamblen in
a position to know that as early as November 26, 1963 and to invent the alleged
telegram?

True, the employee named by Hamblen as having handled the payment for
the alleged telegram denied it; true, a search of the records was made and no
such telegram was found. That is unfavorable to Hamblen.

But Aubrey Lewis supported part of Hamblen's story. Was Lewis sharing
a figment of Hamblen's imagination?

Mr. Hamblen's written statement refers to a money order made payable to
Oswald several weeks ago on which Mr. A. L. Lewis, Relief Clerk, had
difficulty in paying. Mr. Lewis has stated he does not recall the payee's
name and that the transaction in question was a money order addressed to
someone at the YMCA . . . and that the date of the occurrence was Tuesday,
October 29, 1963. We have searched the paid money orders and extracted
all money orders payable to anyone at the YMCA during October
and November in an effort to locate the money order which both Messrs.
Hamblen and Lewis say Mr. Lewis had difficulty in paying. Mr. Lewis does
not recognize any of the several money orders that were extracted as covering
the particular case he and Mr. Hamblen alluded to. (Wilcox Exhibit 3015)

The Commission, with its usual élan, has been quick to conclude that the
"whole thing" was a figment of Hamblen's imagination, but has not assessed the
testimony of Lewis. Was his story also a fabrication? If not, why was the money
order addressed to the YMCA missing from the records of Western Union?
Is it possible that that money order, and the telegram to Washington as well,
was quickly removed and destroyed when the story broke in the papers and
before the search was made?

The Commission had a duty to examine that possibility carefully since it
was important to determine whether Oswald was receiving money from a mysterious
source.

It would be interesting to know also why Hamblen said on November 26
or 28, 1963 that a photograph of Oswald was the "spit image" of the customer
who had given him a hard time on several occasions (Wilcox Exhibit 3005) and
why he said on July 23, 1964 when shown a photograph of Oswald that there
was "no resemblance" to the trouble-making patron. (11H 313) What happened
in the intervening eight months to cause such a complete reversal?

(Sylvia Maegher, Accessories after the fact, p. 365-7)

302 Records of Oswald-like ex-Navy defector


Continued from:
301 Interview report with re-defecting Marine from Minsk

Schorr: CBS News has waited a week for the CIA to check on this report of a possible Oswald contact.
The agency now says it did interview a re-defector in 1962, a case very similar to Oswald, but an ex-Navy
man, not an ex-Marine, who worked in a plant in another Soviet city, not Minsk. The Navy says it found no
such record of such a man.


Daniël Schorr (1916-2010)

(Mal Hyman, Burying the lead, p.247)

304 The limousine


See also:
140  Large skull fragment from presidential limousine


One of the most blatant acts of destruction of evidence must be blamed directly on Lyndon Johnson. The
President's limousine, the car in which President Kennedy was killed, was taken to Detroit, Michigan and completely
demolished as far as legal evidence is concerned. The old body was taken off and replaced with a new steel body
with bulletproof glass. In our judicial system, this is a clear case of destruction of material evidenee, and the nation
should have demanded an accounting from Johnson.

All of us know that such an important and historic piece of evidence as this automobile should have been
placed immediately in a museum or in the National Archives where all could view it for the next thousand years.

(Penn Jones, Forgive my Grief III, 1969)


Workin' at the carwash

Destruction of Evidence: Examples include the destruction of an Oswald note by FBI Agent Hosty; the destruction of a license-plate number on a photograph of General Edwin Walker's home found intact among Oswald's possessions; and the immediate cleaning of the presidential limousine, which effectively destroyed vital ballistic evidence.

(Jim Marrs, Crossfire)

Presidential Limousine SS100X
1961 Lincoln Continental Four-door convertible limousine, VIN # 1Y86H405950 JFK was riding in when he was assassinated. Quite possibly the most famous and controversial automobile in modern history. The car was custom built by Hess & Eisenhardt and was known as the X-100.

At the time of the assassination, the car was painted dark blue and had a 1962 grille. It was later returned to H and E for extensive modifications, including armor plating, and the custom fitted front bumper cone lights were removed and replaced with simple chrome bumper plugs, and the limo was repainted black at the request of President Johnson. The limousine is now at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan

(Information from Jeff Stork and the Imperial Car Organization)