Post by Rob Caprio on Jan 24, 2019 20:21:11 GMT -5
This was written by Gil Jesus in 2008. It looks at the issue of a Senate investigation into mail-order weapons. The investigation was led by Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut. He was doing this at the behest of Colt and other firearm manufacturers in Connecticut who were losing business to these mailer houses.
Could LHO's alleged weapons have been ordered through these houses?
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First, why, despite its too obvious paper trail leading to [Lee Harvey] Oswald, would a Mannlicher-Carcano be chosen as the rifle that will live in infamy?
In 1963, as head of the Senate's Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee, Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut was experimenting with ordering arms from mail order houses in an attempt to gather information allowing Congress to stem unregulated traffic. Senator Dodd instituted the program on behalf of Colt and other small firearms producers in Connecticut who complained of foreign imports.
Oswald might have participated in this program. Dodd, a former FBI agent and long-time J. Edgar Hoover loyalist,161 was also a leading member of the Cuba Lobby (which grew out of the right-wing, red-hunting, China Lobby) through which he was in touch with some of the same Cuban-exile mercenaries as Oswald. He was also investigating the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in which Oswald may have been an infiltrator. Returning to the treatise of criminologist Charles O'Hara, we can see how Oswald, working in a legitimate undercover capacity for Dodd, could have easily been manipulated into simultaneous conspiracies involving a Mannlicher-Carcano: "In the investigation of subversive activities and systematic thefts undercover operations are almost indispensable.
Undercover work is most successfully used when there is knowledge that certain persons are engaged in criminal activity, but proof which may be used as evidence is lacking...The effective undercover agent is, perhaps, the only means of obtaining detailed information concerning a subversive group or organization."162
Two of the gun mail-order houses Dodd's subcommittee was investigating were the ones from which Oswald allegedly ordered his Smith and Wesson .38 revolver (Seaport Traders of Los Angeles) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (Klein's of Chicago). Oswald ordered his pistol two days before Dodd's subcommittee began hearings on the matter on January 29, 1963. The subcommittee's sample statistics later showed a purchase in Texas made from Seaport Traders. One of the groups being investigated for firearm purchases was one whose members Oswald had in his address book, the American Nazi Party.
One of the investigators looking into interstate firearms sales at this time was Manuel Pena, the Los Angeles police lieutenant who was later one of the pivotal officers investigating Robert Kennedy's assassination. It was Pena who traced Oswald's telescopic sight to a California gun shop.163
And one of the primary culprits, robbing domestic manufacturers of profits, was the Mannlicher-Carcano.164
After the assassination, Dodd, using CIA sources, helped the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee publish a story that Oswald had been trained at a KGB assassination school in Minsk. At the time, Dodd was on the payroll of the American Security Council, "the leading public group campaigning to use U.S. military force to oust Castro from Cuba, and to escalate the war in Vietnam."165
Along with those connections, Dodd's long tenure in the U.S. Government brought him into direct contact with, or within one degree of separation from, a statistically significant number of suspected conspirators and suspicious groups linked to the JFK assassination: the FPCC's Richard Gibson; Guy Banister, who, like Dodd, had been a member of the FBI's elite team pursuing John Dillinger; Ed Butler and his Information Council of the Americas; certain members of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal; certain organized crime figures and labor racketeers; the United Fruit Company; the State Department's Office of Security; the Castillo Armas junta of Guatemala; Allen Dulles and associates, including Nazi assassination plotter Hans Bernd Gisevius and Ruth Forbes Paine's close friend Mary Bancroft; Richard Helms; the Rockefeller family and associates; the Lyndon Baines Johnson family and associates; Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans and associates, eventually including George DeMohrenschildt; the Citizens' Committee for a Free Cuba, including Clare Boothe Luce and other secret warriors against Cuba; Cord Meyer and his United World Federalists, including again, Ruth Forbes Paine; Nazi War Criminals like Alfreds Berzins; William F. Buckley, Jr. and associates, including E. Howard Hunt; expert Clay Shaw-defense witness J. Appel, Jr.; and Dodd's own son, Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.
On the day Kennedy was assassinated, Dodd considered the tragedy a.personal victory, bragging about his friendship with the "new" administration, grieving only over "the damage he [Kennedy] did to us in three years." We still await George Michael Evica's proof that, "Beyond speculation...I have learned that according to two unimpeachable sources, Senator Thomas Dodd indeed caused at least one Mannlicher Carcano to be ordered in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald (or in the name of `Alek Hidell') sometime in 1963."166
Conspiracy investigation is never about motive, because, by definition, conspiracies involve multiple motives. Conspiracy investigation is primarily about connections. The significance of Dodd's linkage to the conspiracy lies not in the closeness of his contact to any one of these entities, but in the closeness of his contact to all of them, and the fact that the only two significant common denominators of all of these entities is the CIA and the JFK assassination conspiracy and cover-up.
As O'Hara wrote, "Motive or that which induces the criminal to act must be distinguished from intent. The motive may be the desire to obtain revenge or personal gain; the intent is the accomplishment of the act. Motive need not be shown in order to obtain a conviction, but intent must always be proved where it is an element of the offense."167
The problem with relying on motive to identify conspirators is illustrated by the vacillating opinions of John Stockwell. In a chapter on the assassination in his 1991 book, The Praetorian Guard, Stockwell wrote: "In fact, there is strong evidence that both the FBI and the CIA high commands had prior knowledge of and direct involvement in the conspiracy." He cited excellent examples of that evidence, apart from motive. Two years later, for a new "Afterword" to that book, he wrote: "However, I consider the chapter on the Kennedy assassination to be substantially in error....You see, in 1963 the CIA and John Kennedy could not have been much closer....Of all the popular suspects, only the Mafia and perhaps Lyndon Johnson emerge with truly persuasive motives and opportunity to plot Kennedy['s] murder."168
NOTES
161. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York: Penguin, 1991) p. 407; cited in Scott 249.
162. O'Hara 197, 199.
163. 22H 528.
164. Evica 252-53. Scott 249, 250, 307, 370.
165. Scott 215, 216.
166. George Michael Evica, "And We Are All Still Mortal: Thomas Dodd and Lee Harvey Oswald," Assassination Chronicles, Mar. 1996, pp. 20-24. Lisa Pease, "Thomas J. Dodd & Son: Corruption of Blood?," Probe, Jul.-Aug. 1996, pp. 18-23. Anthony Summers, Conspiracy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980) pp. 290-98, 384, 444, 489. Richard Bartholomew, "Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used In the JFK Conspiracy," Fair Play online magazine (http://rmii.com/~jkelin/fp.html, issue 17, Jul.-Aug., 1997 (and self-published manuscript, 1993, pp. 8, 31, 35-48, 50, 51, 56, 57, 59, 62, 63, 66, 68, 78, 87-89,
91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102, 115, 113, 120, 124, 135, 152); hereafter cited as "Possible Discovery" with page number(s). William E. Kelly, Lines of Inquiry and The Divine Scheme (unpublished manuscript).
167. O'Hara 19.
168. John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard (Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1991) p. 125. John R. Stockwell, "Afterword," (written on his personal letterhead and inserted into later editions by his distributor, Prevailing Winds Research) Aug. 24, 1993
Quote off
Could LHO's alleged weapons have been ordered through these houses?
Quote on
First, why, despite its too obvious paper trail leading to [Lee Harvey] Oswald, would a Mannlicher-Carcano be chosen as the rifle that will live in infamy?
In 1963, as head of the Senate's Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee, Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut was experimenting with ordering arms from mail order houses in an attempt to gather information allowing Congress to stem unregulated traffic. Senator Dodd instituted the program on behalf of Colt and other small firearms producers in Connecticut who complained of foreign imports.
Oswald might have participated in this program. Dodd, a former FBI agent and long-time J. Edgar Hoover loyalist,161 was also a leading member of the Cuba Lobby (which grew out of the right-wing, red-hunting, China Lobby) through which he was in touch with some of the same Cuban-exile mercenaries as Oswald. He was also investigating the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in which Oswald may have been an infiltrator. Returning to the treatise of criminologist Charles O'Hara, we can see how Oswald, working in a legitimate undercover capacity for Dodd, could have easily been manipulated into simultaneous conspiracies involving a Mannlicher-Carcano: "In the investigation of subversive activities and systematic thefts undercover operations are almost indispensable.
Undercover work is most successfully used when there is knowledge that certain persons are engaged in criminal activity, but proof which may be used as evidence is lacking...The effective undercover agent is, perhaps, the only means of obtaining detailed information concerning a subversive group or organization."162
Two of the gun mail-order houses Dodd's subcommittee was investigating were the ones from which Oswald allegedly ordered his Smith and Wesson .38 revolver (Seaport Traders of Los Angeles) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (Klein's of Chicago). Oswald ordered his pistol two days before Dodd's subcommittee began hearings on the matter on January 29, 1963. The subcommittee's sample statistics later showed a purchase in Texas made from Seaport Traders. One of the groups being investigated for firearm purchases was one whose members Oswald had in his address book, the American Nazi Party.
One of the investigators looking into interstate firearms sales at this time was Manuel Pena, the Los Angeles police lieutenant who was later one of the pivotal officers investigating Robert Kennedy's assassination. It was Pena who traced Oswald's telescopic sight to a California gun shop.163
And one of the primary culprits, robbing domestic manufacturers of profits, was the Mannlicher-Carcano.164
After the assassination, Dodd, using CIA sources, helped the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee publish a story that Oswald had been trained at a KGB assassination school in Minsk. At the time, Dodd was on the payroll of the American Security Council, "the leading public group campaigning to use U.S. military force to oust Castro from Cuba, and to escalate the war in Vietnam."165
Along with those connections, Dodd's long tenure in the U.S. Government brought him into direct contact with, or within one degree of separation from, a statistically significant number of suspected conspirators and suspicious groups linked to the JFK assassination: the FPCC's Richard Gibson; Guy Banister, who, like Dodd, had been a member of the FBI's elite team pursuing John Dillinger; Ed Butler and his Information Council of the Americas; certain members of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal; certain organized crime figures and labor racketeers; the United Fruit Company; the State Department's Office of Security; the Castillo Armas junta of Guatemala; Allen Dulles and associates, including Nazi assassination plotter Hans Bernd Gisevius and Ruth Forbes Paine's close friend Mary Bancroft; Richard Helms; the Rockefeller family and associates; the Lyndon Baines Johnson family and associates; Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans and associates, eventually including George DeMohrenschildt; the Citizens' Committee for a Free Cuba, including Clare Boothe Luce and other secret warriors against Cuba; Cord Meyer and his United World Federalists, including again, Ruth Forbes Paine; Nazi War Criminals like Alfreds Berzins; William F. Buckley, Jr. and associates, including E. Howard Hunt; expert Clay Shaw-defense witness J. Appel, Jr.; and Dodd's own son, Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.
On the day Kennedy was assassinated, Dodd considered the tragedy a.personal victory, bragging about his friendship with the "new" administration, grieving only over "the damage he [Kennedy] did to us in three years." We still await George Michael Evica's proof that, "Beyond speculation...I have learned that according to two unimpeachable sources, Senator Thomas Dodd indeed caused at least one Mannlicher Carcano to be ordered in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald (or in the name of `Alek Hidell') sometime in 1963."166
Conspiracy investigation is never about motive, because, by definition, conspiracies involve multiple motives. Conspiracy investigation is primarily about connections. The significance of Dodd's linkage to the conspiracy lies not in the closeness of his contact to any one of these entities, but in the closeness of his contact to all of them, and the fact that the only two significant common denominators of all of these entities is the CIA and the JFK assassination conspiracy and cover-up.
As O'Hara wrote, "Motive or that which induces the criminal to act must be distinguished from intent. The motive may be the desire to obtain revenge or personal gain; the intent is the accomplishment of the act. Motive need not be shown in order to obtain a conviction, but intent must always be proved where it is an element of the offense."167
The problem with relying on motive to identify conspirators is illustrated by the vacillating opinions of John Stockwell. In a chapter on the assassination in his 1991 book, The Praetorian Guard, Stockwell wrote: "In fact, there is strong evidence that both the FBI and the CIA high commands had prior knowledge of and direct involvement in the conspiracy." He cited excellent examples of that evidence, apart from motive. Two years later, for a new "Afterword" to that book, he wrote: "However, I consider the chapter on the Kennedy assassination to be substantially in error....You see, in 1963 the CIA and John Kennedy could not have been much closer....Of all the popular suspects, only the Mafia and perhaps Lyndon Johnson emerge with truly persuasive motives and opportunity to plot Kennedy['s] murder."168
NOTES
161. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York: Penguin, 1991) p. 407; cited in Scott 249.
162. O'Hara 197, 199.
163. 22H 528.
164. Evica 252-53. Scott 249, 250, 307, 370.
165. Scott 215, 216.
166. George Michael Evica, "And We Are All Still Mortal: Thomas Dodd and Lee Harvey Oswald," Assassination Chronicles, Mar. 1996, pp. 20-24. Lisa Pease, "Thomas J. Dodd & Son: Corruption of Blood?," Probe, Jul.-Aug. 1996, pp. 18-23. Anthony Summers, Conspiracy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980) pp. 290-98, 384, 444, 489. Richard Bartholomew, "Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used In the JFK Conspiracy," Fair Play online magazine (http://rmii.com/~jkelin/fp.html, issue 17, Jul.-Aug., 1997 (and self-published manuscript, 1993, pp. 8, 31, 35-48, 50, 51, 56, 57, 59, 62, 63, 66, 68, 78, 87-89,
91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102, 115, 113, 120, 124, 135, 152); hereafter cited as "Possible Discovery" with page number(s). William E. Kelly, Lines of Inquiry and The Divine Scheme (unpublished manuscript).
167. O'Hara 19.
168. John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard (Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1991) p. 125. John R. Stockwell, "Afterword," (written on his personal letterhead and inserted into later editions by his distributor, Prevailing Winds Research) Aug. 24, 1993
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