Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

439 Report of police search of Sergio Archacha-Smith's appartment


Continued from:
438 Sergio Arcachia-Smith's maps of sewer system in Dealey Plaza

Two weeks before the assassination Thomas Beckham, a runner for David
Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha, Clay Shaw, and Grady Durham, was given $200 by Ferrie and
told to deliver a package to a man at the Executive Inn Motel in Dallas. Beckham
delivered the package, which contained photographs and street maps, to Lawrence
Howard at the motel. When Howard opened the package he said, "This is not all of it.
What is going on here?"


Arcacha-Smith during the time Jim Garrison tried to extradite him

NOTE: This package may also have contained diagrams of the sewer system in Dealey
Plaza, which Lieutenant Francis Fruge learned from Captain Will Fritz had been
found in (Sergio) Arcacha's apartment following the assassination.

QUESTION: What
caused the Dallas Police to search Arcacha's apartment and why were no police reports
filed?

(Armstrong, Harvey & Lee, p. 807)

441 List of license numbers of cars parked in Dealey Plaza area


See also:
318  Knoll shooter crime scene evidence
321  The identity of the parking lot police officer
354  One list of Texas Theatre patrons
392  FBI/Police Records or reports regarding interviews with Carl Mather

The committee also attempted to pin down information about cars which were parked in the area of the depository at the time of the Presidential motorcade for any further identification of cars reported fleeing from Dealey Plaza.

Earle V. Brown was a Dallas Police Department patrolman at the time of the assassination who was assigned to stay on the railroad overpass over the Stemmons Freeway and to prevent any unauthorized persons from standing on the overpass at the time of the motorcade. In his testimony before the Warren Commission, Brown stated that he and Officer James Lomax had been ordered after the assassination to return to the area of the depository and list the license number of all cars parked in the vicinity. Brown was not asked during his testimony whether any further investigation resulted from the list of the license numbers or what had happened to the list.

Brown was interviewed by the committee in Dallas on October 26, 1978. At that time, he recalled the assignment to get the license plate numbers about an hour after the assassination. He said that about four to five officers were involved. He believed he turned the list in to Sergeant Howard, who was his supervisor. He gave no further details concerning the list or the cars parked near the Texas School Book Depository.

(HSCA Appendix to Hearings - Volume XII, p. 18/19)


Hughes film, car park. Credit: Gerda Dunckel

My grandfather’s experience is immortalized in the Warren Commission’s report, and an actor portrayed him in a JFK documentary that recently appeared on the History Channel.

I used to press him for more of his perspective. He believed wholeheartedly in the “single-shooter” conclusion of the Warren Commission. “The people who thought they heard shots from the grassy knoll were just hearing echoes,” he would say.

But he was never one to elaborate much beyond that, or to speculate on the conspiracy theories. To my knowledge he never accepted media requests for interviews – the Dallas Police Department had instructed him and the other officers to refrain from speaking to the press, and my grandfather respected that for the rest of his life.

(Rick Minor, A witness to the Kennedy assassination, Tallahassee Democrat)

443 Oswald's whereabouts on the Sunday before the assassination


Within a week of Kennedy's death, according to Harold Reynolds, [...] Oswald [...] attempted to contact an anti-Castro Cuban exile leader in Abilene. about 185 miles west of Dallas. Reynolds, then a commercial photographer who had taken photos of Cuban refugee families in Abilene, had befriended Oswald's contact, former Cuban construction contractor Pedro Valerian Gonzalez. Reynolds believes that a meeting Oswald intended to have with Gonzalez in Abilene may answer the mystery of Oswald's whereabouts on the Sunday before the assassination, the only day the Warren Commission could not determine where he was.

(Earl Golz, FBI files part 2, Gallery, December 1982)

444 Oswald's note to Pedro Valerian Gonzalez

Reynolds said that in November 1963, he read a note left in the apartment mailbox of Gonzalez, president of the Cuban Liberation Committee in Abilene. "In handwriting it said something like 'call me immediately—urgent' and had two Dallas numbers written on it," Reynolds said. "I noticed the name Lee Oswald and asked Gonzalez who he was. Seems like he said, 'Some attorney from Dallas.' He looked nervous.. so I left to go up the street and deliver some photos. As I was coming back I noticed his car few blocks from his house and him standing in a pay booth."


Since WWII, Abilene has had an Air Force Base

Reynolds assumed Oswald left the card in Gonzalez' mailbox about two days earlier, on November 17, 1963, when Gonzalez and other Cuban refugees were at Reynolds' house for Sunday dinner. During the gathering, Reynolds recalls showing Gonzalez a story on the front page of a Dallas newspaper headlined, "Incident-Free Day Urged for JFK Visit." "Pedro got quite excited," Reynolds said, "and although he wasn't supposed to have much knowledge of English, he went into the other room and translated the article into Spanish for four or five other Cubans. They also got excited. He came back waving the newspaper and whistling 'Bridge Over the River Kwai. —

(Earl Golz, FBI files part 2, Gallery, December 1982)

After leaving Jack's Bar Lee Oswald either drove or was driven two hundred
miles west to Abilene where he slipped a handwritten note under the apartment door
of Harold Reynolds, by mistake. The note was intended for Reynolds' next door neighbor,
Pedro Valeriano Gonzalez, a 38-year-old Cuban exile leader.

(John Armstrong, Harvey & Lee, p. 777)

445  Reynolds photographs of Pedro Valerian Gonzalez

On the Sunday following the Kennedy assassination, when a Dallas nightclub operator, Jack Ruby, shot Oswald to death in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, Gonzalez and a refugee friend came by the Reynolds home. Mrs. Reynolds said Gonzalez "wanted all the photos of his baby and all the party shots Harold had taken of them. He also asked for all the negatives. When I told him Harold usually released only the prints. Pedro repeated very firmly, 'I want the negatives, too. I figured he really meant it, so I gave them to him. "

(Earl Golz, FBI files part 2, Gallery, December 1982)

446 FBI report of Reynolds tip

Gonzalez moved to the Los Angeles area, from where he made payments to the Abilene Teachers Federal Credit Union on a car loan until June 1964, when he disappeared. Friends say he left the United States that summer to join the anti-Castro movement in Venezuela and work in a sugar factory. Reynolds said he twice tried to tell the FBI about the Gonzalez incident in the months following the assassination. Both times, he said, federal agents showed no interest in even meeting with him because the Cuban Connection was not pro-Castro. Reynolds' story did not publicly surface until The Dallas Morning News published it in June 1979, six months after the House Select Committee on Assassinations went out of business.

(Earl Golz, FBI files part 2, Gallery, December 1982)

Gonzalez was friends with Antonio de Verona, who led the Cuban Revolutionary Council, which was backed by the CIA. 

(James Kelleher, He Was Expendable, 2016) 

448 Record of SS/FBI interview with Adele Edisen


Compare:
212 The identity of the mystery Oxnard area caller
251 Papers compiled by crypto-code operator Eugene Dinkin foretelling a military plot against JFK

"Write down this name: Lee Harvey Oswald. Tell him to kill the chief."

Erasing the Past...Discussions

Edisen claimed that in April of 1963 she met a person who apparently had foreknowledge of the assassination of President Kennedy, Dr. Jose Rivera. He gave her a phone number through which she contacted and talked with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in May, 1963. She called the Secret Service to warn them of the assassination and was interviewed by the Secret Service and FBI after the assassination.

(Bill Kelly, A new Oswald witness, 1999)


Edisen in 1966

In April, 1963, Adele met Jose Rivera at a biomedical scientific conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The conference had been organized by the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology. Rivera told Edisen that he been on the faculty of the biochemistry department at Loyola University in New Orleans, and that he was now living in Washington. Edisen was planning to visit Washington and so Rivera suggested she she telephone him when she arrived in the city.


Col. Dr. José Rivera passed away in 1989

Adele arrived in Washington on 22nd April, 1963. She telephoned Rivera and had dinner with him at Blackie's House of Beef restaurant. During the meal Rivera asked Adele if she knew Lee Harvey Oswald. He also talked about the Carousel Club in Dallas.

The following evening Rivera gave Adele a tour of Washington. When they passed the White House he asked Adele, "I wonder what Jackie will do when her husband dies?" After Adele replied "What!", Rivera said, "Oh, oh, I meant the baby. She might lose the baby."

During the tour Rivera made several comments about John F. Kennedy. Adele later reported: "He asked me if I saw Caroline on her pony Macaroni, and all kinds of crazy nonsense, and I was beginning to think I was with an absolute madman.... Rivera's part of the conversation at times was difficult to follow, but many of his statements, such as the reference to 'Jackie,' seemed deliberately placed. When he spoke of President Kennedy, Rivera was extremely critical of Kennedy's position on civil rights. Rivera made many disparaging remarks about black people and the civil rights movement."

Later that evening Rivera asked Adele to carry out a couple of tasks when she arrived home in New Orleans. This included contacting Winston DeMonsabert, a member of the faculty at Loyola University. He then asked her to call Lee Harvey Oswald at 899-4244. "Write down this name: Lee Harvey Oswald. Tell him to kill the chief." Rivera then said, "No, no, don't write that down. You will remember it when you get to New Orleans. We're just playing a little joke on him."

(Spartacus educational)


When Edisen arrived in New Orleans, she called Oswald, as instructed, and spoke to him on the phone, but he denied knowing who Jose Rivera was, and Adele chose not to deliver the “kill the chief.”

(J.L. Pattison, Thirteen People Who Had Foreknowledge of JFK’s Assassination)


Agent Rice (hat, glasses) via Vince Palamara

In the office, Special Agent Rice identified himself this time as Secret Service Agent John W. Rice, in charge of the Secret Service's New Orleans office. He asked Adele to sit down. (…)

Adele continued, after I sat down, agent Rice introduced me to a tall, heavy set, balding man with wire-rimmed eyeglasses. This was FBI Special Agent Oren Bartlett. He was FBI liaison with the Secret Service. There was no one else in the office with us that I saw. They interviewed me for about four hours, and I think that the interview was tape-recorded. Agent Rice sat at his desk and I sat to his right, and FBI agent Bartlett stayed standing most of the time. Several times, agent Rice got up and went behind a partition to check something, I think, I assumed this was a tape recorder.”

Adele provided the two agents detailed background on herself, and then told them and then told them how she had come to meet Dr. Jose Rivera in Atlantic City, and about her two days in Bethesda and Washington D.C. She showed the agents her airline tickets, hotel receipts, and the notes she had kept, including the notebook page with Lee Harvey Oswald's name on it. (…)

When Bartlett came back from behind the partition, he asked Adele if he and Rice could have the page from my notebook. Adele handed it over, realizing that her interview was over at this point.

(Albarelli, A Secret Order, p. 144)


Rivera told Edisen that he been on the faculty of the biochemistry department at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Loyola's day school was integrated in 1962, yet persistent racism on and off the campus fueled discontent.

Dr. Adele Edisen has written several letters to the Review Board and has also provided public testimony to the Review Board. In her letters and testimony, Dr. Edisen stated that, in New Orleans on November 24, 1963, she recounted to an FBI agent and a Secret Service agent her knowledge of apparent dealings between Dr. Jose Rivera, Mr. Winston de Monsabert, and Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963.

The Review Board requested FBI records on these individuals from FBI Headquarters and field offices in Baltimore, Dallas, Denver, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. The FBI retrieved only a few records relating to the individuals referenced above, all of which the Review Board designated as assassination records.

(ARRB Final Report)