Double Identities
Double identities are the bane of all historical researchers, as we know, and have seen in the first few case studies.
William Gulley – WHCA officer
This problem wrecks havoc in JFK research.
As we have seen in the first few case studies, this is a recurring problem.
There were dozens of Cubans with the name Julio Fernandez, and two who come into play, both entirely different men - one a journalist and the other a JMWAVE maritime commando team leader.
Eugene Hale Brading changed his name to Jim Braden and a guy named Jim Braden I called in LA was really pissed off at me for disturbing him and said I wasn't the only one looking for the other Jim Braden - ala the Big Lebowski.
Then there were two Betty Mcdonalds, one a Ruby dancer and the other a Magnolia oil secretary.
And there were three Don Nortons - Don O. Norton a fisherman, the other a gay piano player in the military officer's club - Don P. Norton. A third one wrote a book on a major defense contractor.
John Armstrong has made a career out of describing two different Lee Harvey Oswalds, and has also found two Margaretes, his - their mothers.
Double identities are the bane of all historical researchers, as we know, and have seen in the first few case studies.
JOHN BARRY
While researching the background of John Barry, the
first flag officer of the U.S. Navy, I found another John Barry who was also
born in Ireland, lived in the same Philadelphia neighborhood, went to the same church,
belonged to the same Irish Hibernian society and knew many of the same people,
but rather than a sea captain he was a school master and author of the first
book copyrighted in the United States.
John Barry – Father of US Navy
John Barry – Schoolmaster
There’s another Bill Kelly, besides me, who lived in
Ocean City, N.J. when I lived there, and I’m lucky he is such a nice guy and
now a Facebook friend, or I could blame him for getting me in trouble all the
time.
There’s also another Bill Kelly involved in the
investigation of the Kennedy assassination, a Florida policeman who is
prominently mentioned in the book “The Tomali Squad,” because of his work with
the Cuban refugees, and indexed in Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History.
Bill Kelly – Journalist
Bill Kelly – Florida Cop
My long time college mate and research associate
John Judge – the director of COPA, once met another John Judge – a heavy metal
rock guitarist, and they both looked remarkably alike, similar to the ZZ-Top
guitarists.
John Judge – COPA Director
John Judge – Guitarist
In the course of a Watergate era inquiry I called a
retired military officer who was identified as William Gulley, a former White
House Communications Agency (WHCA) officer, but Mr. Gulley told me that was his
name and he was an military officer of the same rank, but a different guy, - he
never worked for the WHCA. But that, he said as an afterthought, explains how
he got all those invitations to White House social functions.
William Gulley – WHCA officer
William Gulley – US military officer
As we have seen in the first few case studies, this is a recurring problem.
There were dozens of Cubans with the name Julio Fernandez, and two who come into play, both entirely different men - one a journalist and the other a JMWAVE maritime commando team leader.
Eugene Hale Brading changed his name to Jim Braden and a guy named Jim Braden I called in LA was really pissed off at me for disturbing him and said I wasn't the only one looking for the other Jim Braden - ala the Big Lebowski.
Then there were two Betty Mcdonalds, one a Ruby dancer and the other a Magnolia oil secretary.
And there were three Don Nortons - Don O. Norton a fisherman, the other a gay piano player in the military officer's club - Don P. Norton. A third one wrote a book on a major defense contractor.
John Armstrong has made a career out of describing two different Lee Harvey Oswalds, and has also found two Margaretes, his - their mothers.
Although their names are spelled slightly different,
they have a similar law enforcement background so at first I was confused by
Jack Revill, the Dallas police officer in the Special Services Squad who worked
informants, and Jack Revell, the ex-USMC and FBI agent who became the head of
the Dallas FBI office for many years.
Jack Revill – Dallas Cop
Jack Revell – FBI Agent
There are so many Jack Martins that I can’t even
count them all, but a few stand out, especially the “Jack Martin” who worked
for Guy Bannister, the character played by Jack Lemon in the movie “JFK,” whose
real name is Edward Stewart Suggs.
There’s also the Jack Martin who was an early
suspect in the assassination, a religious fanatic from northern Louisiana who
the Dallas Secret Service sent Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) of the New
Orleans Secret Service office John Rice to investigate immediately after the
assassination.
Jack Martin – aka Edward Stewart Suggs
Jack Martin – Northern Louisiana early suspect in
assassination
Then there’s:
Jack Martin – Took films of Oswald handing out
leaflets in New Orleans and Walker
Juan Martin – South American arms dealer in Dallas
John Martin – Chicago Union officer affiliated with
Jack Ruby
John Barlow Martin – Interviewed RFK for JFK Library
There’s also a “Mr. Martin” who was frantically
looking for Ruby on the night before the assassination, and a few other Martins
turn up as well.
To confuse matters even further there were two
Secret Service Agents in New Orleans named John Rice, John W. Rice, the
aforementioned Special Agent in Charge and another federal agent involved in
the assassination - J. Calvin Rice.
John W. Rice – SAIC New Orleans SS
J. Calvin Rice – SS Agent
There’s two Robert Morrows, one a former covert
operative crank from Baltimore who wrote two books on the assassination, and
the other a Texas assassination enthusiast who promotes the idea that LBJ was
behind the assassination.
Robert Morrow – Baltimore, Maryland
Robert Morrow – Texas
From the files alone there are a number of cases of
mistaken identity - including two Priscilla Johnsons, one the reporter, a CIA
asset who knew both JFK and Oswald and another of the same name who got
entwined in OSS intrigue during World War II.
Priscilla Johnson – American CIA
Priscilla Johnson – OSS Europe
There may be two Joe Campisis, one who served in the
OSS during World War II and the other who owned a Dallas restaurant frequented
by Jack Ruby, though it’s possible they may be one and the same person. If a
researcher with the time could straighten that out it may prove worthwhile.
Joseph Campisi – OSS
Joseph Campisi – Dallas restaurant owner
When it was alleged that former JMWAVE CIA officer
Gordon Campbell was at the Ambassador Hotel the night that RFK was
assassinated, David Talbot and Jeff Morley determined that Gordon Campbell died
in 1962, so it couldn’t have been him. But Army Ranger Captain Bradley Ayers
remembers Gordon Campbell at JMWAVE a year after his death certificate says he
died. Then I found another Gordon Campbell who worked for the Wright Company
and had served in the Navy, so there were two Gordon Campbells with similar
backgrounds.
Gordon Campbell – CIA JMWAVE
Gordon Campbell – USN
There are two Robert Steels among the Kennedy
assassination records, one Navy Commander Robert Steel of San Diego who
investigated Oswald’s defection and role in the assassination and Robert Steel
from Pennsylvania, who reported on his sister’s neighbor Julio Fernandez, a
Cuban newspaper editor who was acting suspiciously. When the HSCA asked the CIA
for files on Julio Fernandez, they sent the files of twelve individuals with
that name, but not the one they wanted.
Robert Steel - USNR ONI investigator in San Diego
Robert Steel – Brother of Pennsylvania neighbor of journalist
Julio Fernandez
RICHARD A. SPRAGUE
This brings us to Richard A. Sprague, the
Philadelphia attorney and first chief counsel to the House Select Committee on
Assassinations who was relieved of his job after it was realized that he was
conducting a real investigation, and the case of mistaken identity that sparked
this essay.
Richard A. Sprague, Esq. may be the most significant
case study, and the one related to the assassination that deserves the most
attention, because two official bodies – the Assassination Records Review Board
(ARRB) and the National Archives (NARA) apparently confused him with Richard E.
Sprague, a JFK assassination researcher who collected photos, assisted New
Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison in his investigation and contributed articles to
Computers and Automation magazine in the 1970s.
And the result of this confusion has led to the fact
that the files of the first chief counsel to the HSCA are not among the
assassination records of the JFK Collection at the NARA, as the JFK Act of 1992
intended and requires.
Unlike the massive files of his replacement G.
Robert Blakey, there are no personnel records on file in the JFK Collection at
the NARA Archives II regarding Richard A. Sprague, Esq., first chief counsel to
the HSCA. When Blakey took over he was determined to write a “final report,”
and then declared his HSCA records “Congressional Records,” not subject to the Freedom
of Information Act (FOA) saying, “I’ll rest on the judgment of historians in
fifty years.” This required Congress to pass the JFK Act to spring them.
When he left Washington Richard A. Sprague, Esq.
took his HSCA files with him back to Philadelphia, where they remain part of
his private records, not open to the public as the JFK Act requires.
So while the complete record of Blakey’s tenure at
the HSCA is pretty much open for the public to read, there are no records for
Sprague’s tenure at the HSCA among the JFK Collection at the NARA, even though
I called attention to them in my testimony at the first public hearing of the
ARRB. This clearly indicates that the Review Board members and its staff did
not listen closely to those who testified at the public sessions and certainly
their staff did not follow up on what was clearly presented to them. This was
not an isolated case.
When I more recently notified the NARA that I
couldn’t locate Sprague’s records among the JFK Collection today, I was politely
referred to the records of one Richard E. Sprague, but as I responded to them,
that Richard Sprague was not a lawyer but a researcher from New England whose
extensive photo collection and papers are included in the JFK Collection at
NARA.
The NARA archivist wrote to inform me that::
“Mr.
Kelly, Thanks for bringing Mr. Richard A. Sprague’s files to our
attention. We searched the collection and concur that the collection
does not contain a record series of Sprague’s files as Chief Counsel of the
HSCA. We also searched the records of the ARRB and did not find
evidence that the review board discussed acquiring his
records. We’re contacting Mr. Sprague at the address you
provided regarding a potential donation of his files.” - Best,
A. D. Archivist Special Access and FOIA Branch
Since I was previously referred to the records of
independent researcher Richard E. Sprague when I requested the records of the
chief counsel to HSCA Richard A. Sprague, Esq., it is apparent that the ARRB
and NARA staff checked the name file and found the quite extensive records of
the independent researcher Richard E. Sprague, and assumed they were the files
of Richard A. Sprague, Esq., the first chief counsel to the HSCA, but in fact
they are the files of the researcher, not the lawyer.
Despite the passage of the JFK Act and fifteen years
after the ARRB disbanded, Richard A. Sprague, Esq. still has his HSCA files
because historical archivists were confused by the files of someone else with
the same name.
The NARA then politely asked Mr. Sprague about donating
his HSCA files to the JFK Collection, and Sprague was also contacted by a group
of independent researchers from CAPA who requested that Sprague allow them to copy the
relevant records and release them to the public, but Sprague has not yet
responded to either request.
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1 comment:
Not to mention the two unrelated George Bush es. The CIA often does this, they will intentionally hire people with identical names of celebrities, or help the careers of people with the same names to confuse people. They want to make every situation as confusing as possible so any place where the CIA is to blame gets harder and harder to explain.
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