Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

494 Small snapshot of black Cadillac in Clinton


Related:
122 More than half of the records of the Garrison inquiry
493 Record of Reeves Morgan's call to the FBI

Lee Oswald followed McGehee and Morgan's advice about registering to vote and arrived in Clinton, Louisiana between 9:00 and 10:00 am the next morning. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had been sponsoring a voter registration drive in Clinton and tensions between black and white voters were running high. The following headlines, which appeared in the Baton Rouge States-Times, reflected the mood of the town's people:

August 8-"CORE Worker From New York Held in Clinton"
August 9-"CORE Members Appear Before Judge"
August 10-"CORE Worker Seeks to Quash Charges"
August 16-"Trial of CORE Men in Clinton Postponed"
August 22-"Tension May be Receding in Clinton"

Corrie Collins was the Chairman of the Clinton, Louisiana chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Collins and a large number of residents in Clinton immediately noticed when a late model black Cadillac pulled up to the curb across the street from the voter registration office on St. Helena Street. A white male exited from the backseat and stood in line at the voter registration office while two men remained in the car.


a 1963 black Cadillac

Collins said, "There weren't many strange cars in Clinton at the time and when one would show up everyone, white and black, would keep an eye on them-so when they drove up I was outside and noticed them, most of the people registering that day was black and every now and then a white would go in, so L.H.O. (Lee Oswald) was a stranger and was easy to spot.

(Harvey & Lee, p 578)

Jim Garrison tried to locate the owner of the black Cadillac. Moo Moo learned that G. Wray Gill made his automobile available to David Ferrie “in the scope of his employment.” Shaw’s friend Jeff Biddison owned a similar automobile, which Shaw borrowed on occasion. Banister’s cohort A. Roswell Thompson also drove a black Cadillac. When John Volz scrutinized Shaw’s appointment books for the summer of 1963, nothing demonstrated that he could not have been in Clinton.
By now, Francis Fruge had a small snapshot of the black Cadillac that had been taken by a local resident. It pictured four figures, their faces indistinct.

(Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, p. 223)


St. Helena Street, Clinton, more recently

Because the HSCA found the Clinton/Jackson incident so credible, Litwin tries to say such was not the case. Like Lambert, he has to find a way to question the picture Garrison investigator Anne Dischler found. This depicted a car in proximity to the voter registration office with the New Orleans crew in it. Like Lambert, he says it could have been used as a “powerful brainwashing tool.” (Litwin, p. 121) This is ridiculous. First, that picture had to have been taken by one of the bystanders at the time of the voter registration. Under those circumstances, how could it be termed a brainwashing tool? Second, the Clinton/Jackson witnesses did not surface for Jim Garrison. They talked about the incident previously for congressman John Rarick and publisher Ned Touchstone of The Councilor.

(Jim DiEugenio, review of On the trail of delusion, part II)

496 Henry Earl Palmer’s big registration book


related:
438 Sergio Arcachia-Smith's maps of sewer system in Dealey Plaza
493 Record of Reeves Morgan's call to the FBI
494 Small snapshot of black Cadillac in Clinton

        “Look,” he said, “this is where Oswald registered.”

When Oswald was questioned by registrar of voters Henry Palmer, Palmer asked him if he had any associates or living quarters in the area. As a result of the JFK Act, amid all the documentation released on the incident, we know that Oswald replied with two names: Malcolm Pierson and Frank Silva. When the HSCA retrieved the 1963 roster of treating physicians at the hospital, both those names were on the list. (Davy, p. 107) How could Oswald have known this? One way would have been through Shaw’s well established relationship with CIA asset Dr. Alton Ochsner, who had a connection to the Jackson hospital. (Davy, p. 112)

(Jim DiEugenio, review of On the trail of delusion, part II)



On May 23, 1967, Fruge and Dischler appeared at Henry Earl Palmer’s office. On this first visit, they intended only to make contact; Dischler had not even brought along her notebook. She did have her tape recorder, which resembled a briefcase. It lay flat on the floor and ran throughout the interview. (...)

“Oswald registered to vote up here,” Palmer remarked. He took out his big registration book, opened it, and pointed to a place on one of the pages. “Look,” he said, “this is where Oswald registered.”
The name had been erased and written over, but you could still see the big “O” and the space where “Lee H.” had been signed. Over the erasure, another name had been written, but you could make out the pentimento, the shadow of “Oswald,” the truth beneath the surface.
“Why was his name erased?” Fruge said.
Henry Earl offered no explanation. Instead, he explained how you had to be acquainted with two registered parish voters in order to register. Oswald had mentioned two doctors at East: one was “Dr. Frank Silva,” the medical director of the hospital that summer. He was “living with Dr. Frank Silva,” Oswald had claimed. The other was Dr. Malcolm Pearson, (...)

Oswald had produced separation papers from the Navy, Palmer said. On the strength of his having mentioned Dr. Silva, Palmer had permitted him to register. (...)

“We’d like to come back tomorrow,” Fruge said, planning to have the registration book copied. (...)


Henry Earl Palmer

When Fruge and Dischler appeared at Palmer’s office the next day, the big registration book had disappeared. Palmer expressed surprise. He offered no explanation. He did not deny that he had said that Oswald had registered. “Nobody can erase that from my memory,” Dischler says today.
In the months to come, Fruge and Dischler met with Palmer several more times. Never again did he mention that Oswald had registered successfully. Soon Palmer began to talk as if Oswald had failed to register. “Why eased off on statement in comparison with tape?” Dischler writes in her notebook.

(Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, p. 216-218)

498 The Kassab Report


More RFK (selection):
114 RFK's Marcello-Halfen-Johnson file
308 Documentation of Robert Kennedy's private investigation
487 The Homme Report

In the Special Unit Senator files, there are continual references to the “Kassab Report,” a report of an investigation into “alleged ties between the J.F.K. and the R.F.K. assassinations.” The report itself is nowhere to be found. Listed as being in the report are names such as Clay Shaw, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Jim Braden, Russell Parsons, and many others of interest to assassination researchers. The report is over 900 pages long, according to page references scattered among these files. Why was such a massive report compiled? Why do so many references to it appear in the SUS files? And why has the full Kassab report been suppressed to this day?

(Lisa Pease, The RFK Plot Part II: Rubik’s Cube, The Assassinations, p. 576)


RFK-assassination patsy Sirhan Sirhan, right, is accompanied by his attorney, Russell E. Parsons, in Los Angeles in
June 1968. (Associated Press)

500 ONI files located by Lieutenant Commander Florence (Terri) Pike


Related:
361 Navy officer Steel's reports on Lee Harvey Oswald
470 ONI post-defection investigation
473 John Hart Ely Interviews of El Toro Marines
482 Rufus Taylor files

The Office of Naval Intelligence twice informed the Assassination Records Review Board that they had no relevant files. The third attempt by the ARRB staff seemed promising. They met with an ONI team directed by Lieutenant Commander [Florence] Terri Pike, who was somehow belatedly informed on March 7, 1997, that they were tasked to turn over relevant files. Pike dove into the job and had identified where the record collections were held. She reported to the ARRB within two months that her team had already located about 125 cubic feet of documents related to the ARRB requests and that the ONI had identified about 950 cubic feet of records which might be related. Pike told ARRB staffers 4 / 21 / 97, that most of the relevant records were discovered by accident since they were misfiled in boxes they should not have been in. When the ARRB next contacted Pike, she informed them that she had been “relieved of her leadership on the project.” Pike then faced court-martial charges over “fraudulent” travel expenses. The final certification of compliance to the ARRB stated that the ONI was unable to find any relevant file for the Director of ONI from 1959-1964.

(Mal Hyman, Burying the lead, p. 437-438)


The Washington National Records Center (WNRC) is located in the Suitland Federal Complex in Suitland, Maryland.

“Pike then presented us a small written briefing package detailing what they had identified that they are required to do and the process they will use to go about the review. She noted that their first priority was to identify the records collections they need to search, then determining the physical location of the records. Most of these will be at Suitland, she said, but there will be others located in district offices round the country in locations like Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, New Orleans, St. Louis and Boston. They have also identified a need to determine standard subject identification codes which should cause a document to be searched, and she concluded by detailing the records disposition procedures within ONI.”

(Bill Kelly, The Railroading of LCDR Terri Pike, JFK Countercoup)

ARRB staffers Horne, Barger and Masih meet with LCDR Pike and LCDR Doolittle of ONI. LCDR Pike stated that review of the first 123 cubic feet of ONI records had been completed, and that as a result .8 cubic feet of records (18 distinct files) on defectors had been identified as responsive to the CNO tasking; these records were presented to ARRB staffers at the meeting for cursory review. Completion of declassification review and delivery of the original records to the ARRB was tentatively promised within 2-4 weeks. LCDR Pike also mentioned that approx. 950 cubic feet of additional records had been identified which might be responsive to the topics the ARRB was interested in, and said that review of this material would take approximately 6 months.

(Chronology of Key Events in ARRB-ONI Interface, 21 Apr 1997)

ARRB staffer Ron Haron sends letter to Navy OGC (Lt. Col. Finnie, USMC) memorializing results of 19 May meeting between ARRB staff and Navy OGC regarding Navy-wide compliance with JFK Act. This letter formally transmitted ARRB’s expectation of receipt of the .8 cubic feet of ONI records on defectors, and ARRB’s request that ONI find and search the files of the ONI Director at both the time of Oswald’s defection (1959-1960), and at the time of the Warren Commission (1963-64), for assassination-related material.

(Chronology of Key Events in ARRB-ONI Interface, 2 June 1997)

ARRB staffer Doug Horne called Terri Pike and requested that ONI look for “119 Reports” covering an alleged ONI investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald’s October, 1959 defection to the Soviet Union. LCDR Pike accepted the tasking, but ARRB never received any feedback on its results.

(Chronology of Key Events in ARRB-ONI Interface, 19 Aug 1997)

From the perspective of a JFK Assassination researcher, I don’t know Terri Pike, but just from reading these records she’s a hero of mine. And I want to know more, especially what became of her after she was railroaded by the military brass for doing her job. She should get a medal for what she did.

From a review of the documents, it is clear that Pike was removed from her job, reprimanded, demoted, and wrongly disciplined under trumped up charges. Her career was effectively ended because she took the initiative to retrieve and catalogue ONI records pursuant to the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Act.

Another researcher who read the documents independently concluded, “She was disciplined and (probably) kicked out of the Navy solely because she traveled to ONI document storage holding locations and retrieved records, rather than just rely on records at her location in DC. She seems to be a genuine American hero, trying to do the right thing and getting guillotined for it. This is a shocking case that exhibits the level of abuse that can occur in ONI when that office wants to stonewall and hide records. It is also instructive to see the massive quantities of records that were destroyed prematurely and improperly, according to the records.”

(Bill Kelly, The Railroading of LCDR Terri Pike, JFK Countercoup)