Authors: Lamar Waldron
of Tippit’s police-officer friends for more than an hour. According to
Hurt, this officer had been “working privately as a guard at an Oak Cliff
home when Tippit was murdered nearby.”45 Perhaps when Tippit was
killed before he was able to silence Oswald, Ruby tried to get another
officer to eliminate Oswald.
As for Tippit’s slaying, the evidence and witnesses are so inconsis-
tent that there are at least four possible explanations for his murder:
1. Oswald shot Tippit, just as the Warren Commission said he did, in the
manner depicted in Rosselli’s movie; 2. Someone with Oswald might
have shot Tippit; 3. While Tippit was talking to Oswald, the officer
might have been shot by someone nearby who was unconnected with
Oswald; 4. Oswald might have already been in the Texas Theater at the
time of Tippit’s death, and Tippit might have been shot by an unknown
person.
The physical evidence is troublesome, to say the least. As Griffith
noted, “the offending firearm was initially—and firmly—identified as
an automatic pistol, based on a shell that was found at the scene.”46
Oswald was carrying a revolver when he was arrested. Shells were
found at the murder scene, and numerous experts have pointed out how
odd it would have been for someone who had just killed a policeman to
take the time to open his revolver and remove the shells, conveniently
leaving incriminating evidence at the scene of the crime. Casting further
doubt on the Warren Commission version, three of the shells were Win-
chester and one was a Remington. But the bullets removed from Tippit’s
body were two Winchesters and two Remingtons—clearly, something
didn’t match up.47 The chain of evidence regarding the shells, and three
of the bullets, has also been called into question.
As documented in numerous books over the past forty years (we’ve
listed a few of the best in this endnote48), witnesses were inconsistent
in their description of the shooter, the number of people involved, and
how they fled. For example, witness Acquilla Clemmons said the killer
was “kind of short” and “kind of heavy,” and was with another man.
(The day Oswald was shot, a Dallas policeman told Clemmons that she
might get hurt if she told anyone what she saw.) Even the Dallas assis-
tant district attorney at the time said later that “Oswald’s movements
did not add up then and they do not add up now. . . . Certainly, he may
have had accomplices.”49 While most witnesses said the shooter fled on
foot, another saw him speed away in a gray car.
Witnesses also said different things at different times, possibly because
they were intimidated or threatened. Witness Warren Reynolds first told
the FBI he couldn’t identify Oswald as Tippit’s killer. Two days later,
Reynolds was shot in the head. (A suspect was arrested, but released
after one of Ruby’s former strippers gave him an alibi. According to the
FBI, two days later she “hung herself.”)50 After Reynolds recovered, he
decided that he could identify Oswald as the killer after all. The wit-
ness closest to the Tippit slaying, Domingo Benevides, said he couldn’t
identify Tippit’s killer as Oswald, even after seeing pictures of Oswald
on TV and in newspapers. That left as the Warren Commission’s star
witness a woman so inconsistent (she claimed to have talked to Tippit
after he was dead) that she was later described by one of the Commis-
sion attorneys who dealt with her as “an utter screwball.”51
The Texas Theater was not the first place police converged on in an
attempt to apprehend Tippit’s killer. Instead, police radio calls went out,
saying, “A witness reports that he [Tippit’s killer] was last seen in the
Abundant Life Temple. . . . We are fixing to go in and shake it down.”
Another patrolman said, “Send me another squad [car] to check out
this church basement.” The Abundant Life Temple is a huge building,
three stories tall (counting a large daylight basement), just one block
from the Tippit slaying site. But even as several policemen were getting
ready to enter the Temple, another call came in, erroneously reporting
that Tippit’s slayer was at a library several blocks away. All of the police
left, and the Temple was never searched.52 Later, it was alleged that the
Temple had been the site of Cuban exile activity.
The Warren Commission’s version of how and when Oswald got
into the Texas Theater has been challenged by numerous authors and
witnesses. But Oswald’s documented actions inside the theater seem
inconsistent with those of someone fleeing a murder scene. According
to theater patron Jack Davis, Oswald sat next to him for a few minutes
before Oswald got up and moved to sit next to another person for several
minutes. Then Oswald stood up and walked to the lobby, as if looking
for someone, before eventually returning to the auditorium. At the time,
Oswald had half of a torn box top in his pocket, and was perhaps looking
for someone with the other half. (Dollar bills torn in half were later found
in his rooming house, indicating Oswald had used that technique before.
The CIA file of Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime confirms that the CIA
also used this technique for Artime during AMWORLD in 1963.)53
Oddly, once the police arrived, they mirrored Oswald’s unusual
behavior by going to two people before going to Oswald. It was almost
as if one or more of the policemen wanted to give Oswald a chance to
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flee; if Oswald had been shot trying to run from the theater, things would
have been much simpler for Jack Ruby and his Mafia bosses. Oswald
was arrested after a scuffle, though Henry Hurt and other journalists
have noted “conflicting testimony among arresting officers about just
what happened during the arrest,” and “most of the dozen or so patrons
. . . were never canvassed and questioned in any inclusive fashion by
the FBI or the Warren Commission.”54 Mob associate John Martino later
told his wife that when police “went to the theater and got Oswald, they
blew it . . . there was a Cuban in there. They let him come out . . . they
let the guy go, the other trigger.”55
Questions have also arisen about the fake ID card Oswald had in his
wallet, with the name of “Alek Hidell,” the same alias he had apparently
used to obtain his mail-order weapons nine months earlier. The rifle had
been found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository just thirty minutes
before Oswald’s arrest, and the alias on the fake ID would let the FBI
quickly trace the guns to Oswald’s post office box. As with many other
details in the case, writers have debated whether the rifle the FBI found
really was Oswald’s, since each factory that produced the Mannlicher-
Carcano used its own set of serial numbers, meaning several rifles could
have the same serial number.56
Later, at the home where Marina was staying and where Oswald had
spent the night, Marina told police that Oswald had kept his mail-order
rifle wrapped in a blanket. She had last seen the wrapped rifle two weeks
earlier, but at the time of her interview, the blanket was empty. When
Oswald’s rooming house was searched, police found a miniature Minox
spy camera, three other cameras, and several rolls of exposed Minox
film.57 (A November 27, 1963, memo shows that David Morales’s Miami
CIA station used Minox cameras.)58
One theater patron placed Jack Ruby at the theater at the time of
Oswald’s arrest, though Ruby’s known movements would have made
the timing for that appearance very tight.59 But shortly after that, Jack
Ruby was seen at his bank with a large sum of money. According to jour-
nalist Seth Kantor, “Bill Cox, the loan officer at [Ruby’s bank], vividly
remembers Ruby standing in line at a teller’s cage on the afternoon of
November 22, after President Kennedy was slain. ‘Jack was standing
there crying, and he had about $7,000 in cash on him the day of the
assassination. . . . I warned him that he’d be knocked in the head one
day, carrying all that cash on him.’”60
Perhaps Ruby was crying because he knew the risk he was going
to have to take himself, now that Tippit was dead. Bank records show
that Ruby didn’t deposit the money; he may have gotten it from, or put
it into, a safety deposit box, or switched out the bills to make it harder
to trace. Seven thousand dollars was the amount Ruby had received
from a Hoffa associate in Chicago just before JFK’s planned motorcade
in that city, the one canceled because of an assassination threat. Two
other Marcello associates involved in JFK’s assassination, David Ferrie
and Joseph Milteer, had received similar amounts. Perhaps $7,000 was
either the down payment, or the expense money, for helping to kill the
President.
PART TWO
Chapter Eleven
The initial reactions of Bobby Kennedy and Richard Helms to the unfold-
ing events in Dallas would impact not just the immediate investigation,
but also lives, political careers, and US foreign policy for years to come.
The decisions they and other key officials made—including the infor-
mation they decided to release or withhold—would both generate and
impede government investigations for the next four decades. Bobby’s
goal, beginning that afternoon and continuing until his death, was to
find out what had happened to his brother without revealing informa-
tion that could trigger World War III or cost the lives of Almeida and
his allies. Helms shared some of Bobby’s concerns, but he also decided
to protect his own reputation and that of the CIA, while maintaining
a capability to assassinate Castro. The actions of Bobby and Helms on
and after November 22, 1963, are why “well over a million CIA records”
related to JFK’s assassination remain classified today, more than sixteen
years after Congress unanimously passed a law requiring their release.1
Among these files are more than one thousand identified in a lawsuit
seeking the release of documents about a CIA-backed Cuban exile group
linked to Oswald, a lawsuit that the CIA has been fighting for years.
Fifteen minutes after the gunfire in Dealey Plaza, Bobby received a call
from J. Edgar Hoover informing him that his brother had been shot in
Dallas. Bobby was still eating lunch by the pool behind his Hickory Hill
mansion with his wife, Ethel, New York’s US Attorney Robert Morgen-
thau, and another guest when he got the news. Hoover, in a flat tone,
told Bobby that he thought it was serious and that he’d call back when
he found out more. According to William Manchester, after Bobby hung
up he turned toward his guests: His “jaw sagged . . . it seemed that every
muscle was contorted with horror. ‘Jack’s been shot,’ he said, gagging,
and clapped his hand over his face.”2
At that point, neither Hoover nor Bobby knew that the President was
essentially dead, so Bobby’s first thought was to fly to Dallas, an idea
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he soon abandoned. He made a flurry of calls to people like Secretary
of Defense McNamara (who was getting his information from General
Carroll’s DIA), as well as to Parkland Hospital in Dallas and to CIA
Director John McCone, who was only five minutes away at the Agency’s
headquarters in Langley, Virginia.3
McCone was dining in a small private room beside his office when his
assistant came in with the news that JFK had been shot. Eating with
McCone were CIA Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick, Richard
Helms, and three other CIA officials. Helms’s own account of that day in
his autobiography is self-serving and incomplete at best, glossing over
most of his activity. He perpetuates the myth that there was nationwide
TV coverage of JFK’s Dallas trip, writing that “one of McCone’s aides
who had been following the President’s trip to Texas on live TV in a
nearby office brought the news of the shooting in Dallas.” It’s important
to stress that there was no live TV coverage of JFK’s motorcade in Dallas,
let alone in the rest of the country, which is why so many facts about the
shooting are still in dispute. Presidential motorcades were simply too
common in those days to be of national interest. Only one radio station
in Dallas provided live coverage of the motorcade, but the reporter’s
commentary wasn’t recorded; thus, a potential audio record of the event
was lost. The clip of a Dallas radio announcer that’s often used in docu-
mentaries, saying, “There has been a shooting in the motorcade,” was a
later re-creation by the original announcer. However, Helms’s version
avoids potentially troubling questions about how and when CIA head-
quarters was first informed of JFK’s shooting.4
Though Helms’s usually cool outward demeanor probably didn’t
show it, he must have been shocked upon hearing the news, and for
reasons beyond those of the others present. The stunning news had
additional resonance for Helms even aside from the JFK-Almeida coup
plan, which was known to at least several in the room. Of all those pres-