Post by Rob Caprio on Dec 26, 2022 21:01:15 GMT -5
All portions are ©️ Robert Caprio 2006-2024
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Garrison_Jim.jpg
image.ibb.co/cyJTgc/DPD_Joe_Marshall_Smith.jpg
In the mid-1960s New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began looking into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK). The reason he was interested in the case was because the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO), had spent the summer of 1963 in New Orleans and this caused Garrison to wonder if elements in the city could have been involved with him.
His subsequent investigation led him a myriad of directions. This post will focus on Dallas Police Department (DPD) Officer Joe Smith and what he observed in Dealey Plaza (DP) on November 22, 1963.
Officer Smith was stationed at the corner of Houston and Elm Streets when the assassination occurred. Smith was working in the traffic division of the DPD on November 22, 1963, and after the shots were fired he was told by a woman that the shots were coming from “the bushes.”
Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir, and this woman came up to me and she was just in hysterics. She told me, "They are shooting the President from the bushes." So I immediately proceeded up here.
Mr. LIEBELER. You proceeded up to an area immediately behind the concrete structure here that is described by Elm Street and the street that runs immediately in front of the Texas School Book Depository, is that right?
Mr. SMITH. I was checking all the bushes and I checked all the cars in the parking lot.
Mr. LIEBELER. There is a parking lot in behind this grassy area back from Elm Street toward the railroad tracks, and you went down to the parking lot and looked around?
Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir; I checked all the cars. I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I wasn't alone. There was some deputy sheriff with me, and I believe one Secret Service man when I got there.
I got to make this statement, too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot and this woman, I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent.
Here is what Garrison wrote about this testimony.
Quote on
…According to the Warren Commission report, all of the Secret Service agents assigned to the parade had gone along with it en route to the hospital. The Secret Service was on record that not a single one of its agents was at the scene of the assassination, other than those passing through in the motorcade—and all of them were gone in minutes. This meant either that the Secret Service was lying or mistaken that the man Officer Smith encountered was not really a Secret Service agent. (On The Trail Of The Assassins, p. 21, hardcover edition)
Quote off
Clearly, this wasn’t a Secret Service (SS) agent that Smith encountered on the Grassy Knoll (GK). So who was it then? Most likely it was an intelligence agent. Either military or civilians as they are the only ones who could secure the identification and pins that SS agents wore.
Smith was also involved in the strange incident involving an epileptic seizure shortly before the assassination.
Officer Smith was also involved in a way with the famous "epileptic" seizure incident too.
Mr. LIEBELER. Now after you received your instructions at 8:45, what did you do?
Mr. SMITH. I proceeded to the intersection of Elm and Houston, and it was about 9:50 or 10 o'clock when I was on the corner there. At approximately 11:50 or 12 o'clock, there was a white male that had an epileptic seizure on the esplanade on Houston Street between Main and Elm. Well, I went down to see if any assistance was needed, and I stayed there until the white male was loaded into an ambulance and sent to a hospital. Then I proceeded back to my assignment.
Some researchers have said this event was staged to allow the shooters to move into place without too much attention. The odd thing here is the man was supposedly taken to the hospital, but he was NEVER checked in and did NOT stay.
Jim Garrison wrote the following about this incident.
Quote on
The incident involving the “epileptic” who had a seizure shortly before the arrival of the President’s motorcade aroused suspicion on several counts. First, it effectively made unavailable the ambulance that was on standby in case of injury to the President, which had to be used to take the epileptic man to Parkland Hospital.
Second, the incident created a distraction and caused Dallas police officer Joe Smith to leave his post at the corner of the Depository, making it possible for men on the grassy knoll to move into position as the parade turned off Main onto Houston.
Third, a number of witnesses who wrote to our office found it strange that the woman who was treating the epileptic until the ambulance picked him up—he had bloodied his head slightly in falling—and who had promptly appeared and identified herself as a nurse, was nevertheless dipping her handkerchief in the goldfish pond before wiping his head. Some of these correspondents described the epileptic as a Latin man wearing Army fatigues.
Fourth, when our office followed up at Parkland Hospital, we found that once the ambulance arrived there the alleged epileptic walked off, refusing to be treated or identify himself. (Ibid., p.97)
Quote off
Garrison makes a good point about the ambulance. While it is unlikely that it would have saved JFK’s life given the mortal wound he suffered to his head, what if he would have suffered a less fatal wound? How much time would have went by before he was treated at Parkland Hospital (PH)? The fact that he received no treatment until he reached the PH certainly didn’t help an already grim outlook.
To me, and Garrison, this illustrates planning and forethought. LHO couldn’t have arranged this even if he was the assassin as claimed, and he wasn’t, so who could have planned this ahead of time?
Who was the woman who just appeared and claimed to be a nurse? Would a nurse use dirty and possibly contaminated water to clean a head cut? Most likely not, so who was this woman?
Those that defend the Warren Commission’s (WC) conclusion claim that the man’s name was Jerry Belknap because that is what the FBI claimed after interviewing him in June 1964. If this is correct, why were Garrison’s investigators unable to identify the man when they went to PH?
The people who wrote Garrison said that the man was Latin, but does Belknap sound like a Latin name? To me, it doesn’t. So this begs the question, did the FBI interview the actual man who supposedly had an epileptic seizure in Dealey Plaza (DP)? Most likely no. They never tried to locate the nurse either.
Belknap ironically (or not so ironically) worked part-time at the Dallas Morning News (DMN). The DMN was no JFK supporter and Jack Ruby claimed to be there when the assassination occurred.
Officer Smith was a key witness who for the most part was ignored by the WC. It isn’t surprising when we consider what he saw on November 22, 1963.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Garrison_Jim.jpg
image.ibb.co/cyJTgc/DPD_Joe_Marshall_Smith.jpg
In the mid-1960s New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began looking into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK). The reason he was interested in the case was because the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO), had spent the summer of 1963 in New Orleans and this caused Garrison to wonder if elements in the city could have been involved with him.
His subsequent investigation led him a myriad of directions. This post will focus on Dallas Police Department (DPD) Officer Joe Smith and what he observed in Dealey Plaza (DP) on November 22, 1963.
Officer Smith was stationed at the corner of Houston and Elm Streets when the assassination occurred. Smith was working in the traffic division of the DPD on November 22, 1963, and after the shots were fired he was told by a woman that the shots were coming from “the bushes.”
Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir, and this woman came up to me and she was just in hysterics. She told me, "They are shooting the President from the bushes." So I immediately proceeded up here.
Mr. LIEBELER. You proceeded up to an area immediately behind the concrete structure here that is described by Elm Street and the street that runs immediately in front of the Texas School Book Depository, is that right?
Mr. SMITH. I was checking all the bushes and I checked all the cars in the parking lot.
Mr. LIEBELER. There is a parking lot in behind this grassy area back from Elm Street toward the railroad tracks, and you went down to the parking lot and looked around?
Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir; I checked all the cars. I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I wasn't alone. There was some deputy sheriff with me, and I believe one Secret Service man when I got there.
I got to make this statement, too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot and this woman, I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent.
Here is what Garrison wrote about this testimony.
Quote on
…According to the Warren Commission report, all of the Secret Service agents assigned to the parade had gone along with it en route to the hospital. The Secret Service was on record that not a single one of its agents was at the scene of the assassination, other than those passing through in the motorcade—and all of them were gone in minutes. This meant either that the Secret Service was lying or mistaken that the man Officer Smith encountered was not really a Secret Service agent. (On The Trail Of The Assassins, p. 21, hardcover edition)
Quote off
Clearly, this wasn’t a Secret Service (SS) agent that Smith encountered on the Grassy Knoll (GK). So who was it then? Most likely it was an intelligence agent. Either military or civilians as they are the only ones who could secure the identification and pins that SS agents wore.
Smith was also involved in the strange incident involving an epileptic seizure shortly before the assassination.
Officer Smith was also involved in a way with the famous "epileptic" seizure incident too.
Mr. LIEBELER. Now after you received your instructions at 8:45, what did you do?
Mr. SMITH. I proceeded to the intersection of Elm and Houston, and it was about 9:50 or 10 o'clock when I was on the corner there. At approximately 11:50 or 12 o'clock, there was a white male that had an epileptic seizure on the esplanade on Houston Street between Main and Elm. Well, I went down to see if any assistance was needed, and I stayed there until the white male was loaded into an ambulance and sent to a hospital. Then I proceeded back to my assignment.
Some researchers have said this event was staged to allow the shooters to move into place without too much attention. The odd thing here is the man was supposedly taken to the hospital, but he was NEVER checked in and did NOT stay.
Jim Garrison wrote the following about this incident.
Quote on
The incident involving the “epileptic” who had a seizure shortly before the arrival of the President’s motorcade aroused suspicion on several counts. First, it effectively made unavailable the ambulance that was on standby in case of injury to the President, which had to be used to take the epileptic man to Parkland Hospital.
Second, the incident created a distraction and caused Dallas police officer Joe Smith to leave his post at the corner of the Depository, making it possible for men on the grassy knoll to move into position as the parade turned off Main onto Houston.
Third, a number of witnesses who wrote to our office found it strange that the woman who was treating the epileptic until the ambulance picked him up—he had bloodied his head slightly in falling—and who had promptly appeared and identified herself as a nurse, was nevertheless dipping her handkerchief in the goldfish pond before wiping his head. Some of these correspondents described the epileptic as a Latin man wearing Army fatigues.
Fourth, when our office followed up at Parkland Hospital, we found that once the ambulance arrived there the alleged epileptic walked off, refusing to be treated or identify himself. (Ibid., p.97)
Quote off
Garrison makes a good point about the ambulance. While it is unlikely that it would have saved JFK’s life given the mortal wound he suffered to his head, what if he would have suffered a less fatal wound? How much time would have went by before he was treated at Parkland Hospital (PH)? The fact that he received no treatment until he reached the PH certainly didn’t help an already grim outlook.
To me, and Garrison, this illustrates planning and forethought. LHO couldn’t have arranged this even if he was the assassin as claimed, and he wasn’t, so who could have planned this ahead of time?
Who was the woman who just appeared and claimed to be a nurse? Would a nurse use dirty and possibly contaminated water to clean a head cut? Most likely not, so who was this woman?
Those that defend the Warren Commission’s (WC) conclusion claim that the man’s name was Jerry Belknap because that is what the FBI claimed after interviewing him in June 1964. If this is correct, why were Garrison’s investigators unable to identify the man when they went to PH?
The people who wrote Garrison said that the man was Latin, but does Belknap sound like a Latin name? To me, it doesn’t. So this begs the question, did the FBI interview the actual man who supposedly had an epileptic seizure in Dealey Plaza (DP)? Most likely no. They never tried to locate the nurse either.
Belknap ironically (or not so ironically) worked part-time at the Dallas Morning News (DMN). The DMN was no JFK supporter and Jack Ruby claimed to be there when the assassination occurred.
Officer Smith was a key witness who for the most part was ignored by the WC. It isn’t surprising when we consider what he saw on November 22, 1963.