Ian Griggs - RIP

Ian Griggs – RIP

Not as well known as the JFK assassination experts featured in the mainstream media, Ian Griggs is a living legend among independent JFK assassination researchers, even after his death.

From Hornchurch, Essex, England, Ian’s earliest memories were of the aerial dogfights over his home during the Battle of Britain in World War II, and his home was destroyed by a German V1 rocket.

 A British Army veteran who was deployed to Kenya and Kuwait, Ian served a 23 year career as a police officer, retiring in 1994. He was not your typical conspiracy theorist or JFK researcher. 

As the best researchers do, Ian took an aspect of the JFK assassination that lacked clarity and needed to be focused on, and chose to look closely at the Dallas Police Department, as he thought he knew something about such things.

In his book “No Case to Answer – A Retired English Detective’s Essays and Articles on the JFK Assassination 1993 – 2003” (JFK Lancer, 2005), Griggs outlines the chains of command within the Dallas PD, describing each bureau, their duties and responsibilities and who was detailed to each one.

It was Ian Griggs who called my attention to the Special Service Bureau – as this relatively small detachment played major roles in the assassination drama.

According to Griggs, “This was the first of the specialized departments. It operated under the command of Captain W. P. “Pat” Gannaway who was supported by six Lieutenants, 34 regular Detectives, 14 Patrolmen who were temporarily assigned to the Bureau and four female civilians (one stenographer and three clerk typists). The 14 ‘temporarily assigned’ men were what we in the UK would call Aides to CID or TDC’s (Temporary Detective Constables). More on them shortly.”

“Captain Gannaway (at that time known as ‘Mr. Narcotics’) had been in charge of the notorious 1957 undercover operation and raid that culminated in stripper Candy Barr being arrested for possession of half an ounce of marijuana. For this offense, she was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, actually serving less than three years before being paroled.”

“Initially,” writes Griggs, “I had some difficulty in working out what the Special Services actually did….Indeed, eight of them testified before the Commission and three of them had their names as titles of Commission Exhibits. Careful study of the appropriate testimony, together with other DPD documents in my possession, finally enabled me to work out the purpose and responsibilities of the Special Service Bureau.”

“It was basically a covert surveillance and intelligence-gathering unit which, as well as the Criminal Intelligence Squad (CIS), included the Vice Squad and the Narcotics Squad, etc. It’s regular officers were plain-clothes detectives. Some were genuinely ‘on trial’ or undergoing training prior to being appointed full-time detectives. Others had been drafted from the uniform branch to undertake basic covert surveillance work in areas where their faces would not be known. A similar system exists in the UK and probably in other countries today.”

Quoting Lieutenant Jack Revill’s Warren Commission testimony Revill said: “I am currently in charge of the criminal intelligence section….Our primary responsibility is to investigate crimes of an organized nature, subversive activities, racial matters, labor racketeering, and to do anything that the chief might desire. We work for the chief of police. I report to a captain who is in charge of the bureau – Captain Gannaway.”

As Grigg’s points out, “For a very revealing account of the functions of the CIS, see Philip H. Melanson’s article ‘Dallas Mosaaic’ published in the Third Decade, vol. 1, no. 3, March 1985, pages 12-15." 

JFKCountercoup2: Phil Melanson's Dallas Mosiac - The Cops, Cubans and the Company

"Among other things, Dr. Melanson mentions that ‘the spooky little unit was physically removed from the rest of the DPD and was headquartered in a building on the state fairgrounds.” (Volume IV HSCA, 597)”

Now it’s understandable that the Special Services Bureau – that ran undercover informants, would not want them to report to DPD HQ at City Hall, but instead ran them from a remote base at the state fairgrounds, but that particular place is full of assassination related shenanigans – as I reflect on in my article -       JFKcountercoup: Shenanigans at the Dallas State Fairgrounds
.

Jack Ruby’s friends ran a tent show film there – “How Hollywood Makes Movies,” a failed enterprise that he got his Chicago friend Larry Meyers to invest $500 in, a show that when it folded, gave Ruby two of its employees – roustabout and former Army soldier Larry Crafard and dancer Joyce McDonald, who became a friend of Larry Meyers’ companion Jean Aase on the weekend of the assassination.

The state fairgrounds is also the home of the Science Museum, below which was the Civil Defense Emergency Communications bunker – supposedly nuclear bomb proof, that contained the most up to date Collins Radio equipment to maintain and control communications during a national emergency. That communications bunker was operated by oil man and US Army Reserve Colonel Jack Crichton, founder of the 488^th Army Intelligence unit.

What Ian Griggs doesn’t mention and probably didn’t know is that more than half of the Special Services Bureau policemen were also officers in Crichton’s Army Reserve unit, and were very active on the day of the assassination.

For instance the pilot car in the motorcade – that drove about a mile ahead looking for signs of trouble – was driven by Deputy Chief of the Service Division George L. Lumpkin, a U.S. Army Reserve officer who arranged for the head of the U.S. Army Reserves in North Texas Col. Whitmeyer, to ride in the back seat, without the knowledge or approval of the Secret Service. 

When they got to Dealey Plaza Lumpkin pulled off to the side of the curb at Houston and Elm and informed one of the three traffic policeman assigned there – as well as the Sixth Floor sniper just above him, that the motorcade was only minutes away.

After allowing the motorcade to pass to get to Parkland Hospital, Lumpkin followed it, but then returned to the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) where he met superintendent Roy Truly. Truly told him, that despite encountering Oswald in the second floor lunchroom within minutes of the shooting, and giving him a bye, Truly now considered Oswald suspiciously missing and informed Lumpkin. Truly had already called the main office and obtained Oswald’s Irving, Texas address of Mrs. Paine and gave it to Lumpkin. The two men then went up to the sixth floor of the TSBD, and after homicide Capt. Will Fritz was done inspecting the rifle, Lumpkin told Fritz about Oswald, giving him the Irving address.

Fritz then walked across the street to meet with Sheriff Bill Decker, a meeting for which there is no record, and then went back to his office at the DPD in City Hall. There he ordered some men to go out to Irving to get Oswald. “No need to do that,” he was told, “there he sits” in Fritz’s office, a suspect in the murder of Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippit.

Besides dissecting the Dallas Police Department for us, when he was in Texas Ian Griggs also interviewed a number of important witnesses – including Beverly Oliver – who he believes (and so do I), and Johnny Calvin Brewer – the shoe store salesman who noticed Oswald entered the Texas Theater without buying a ticket and pointed him out to police.

Although this fact has escaped most of those who have studied Brewer, Ian Griggs asked him the simple question – “Were you in the shop by yourself?”

And the answer was no!

JCB: “There were two other men in there. They were from IBM – they were in the neighborhood. I had known them ever since I came there.”

In a footnote Griggs says that “These men have never been identified.”

ILG: “Were they customers?”

JCB: “No, they weren’t customers. They’d just come in and kill time and lounge around.”

Brewer later says that after the arrest of Oswald, he returned to the shoe store and found that the two men from IBM had left and locked the door.

Now there was an official FBI investigation of the IBM office in Dallas, as a customer on the day of the assassination said that he had seen a film or video of the assassination on a television at the IBM office, something that was impossible as no film video had yet been released.

While video was in its infancy, IBM had developed early prototypes and they were in use at the time. And a US Army soldier assigned to an intelligence unit at Fort Hood said that his unit was taken to Dealey Plaza in plain unmarked trucks and videotaped the assassination, tapes that were immediately confiscated. 

JFKCountercoup2: Fort Hood Intelligence Unit at Dealey Plaza

Were those videotapes being viewed at the IBM office in Dallas when the customer accidentally saw them? And who were the two guys from IBM that were “lounging around” Brewer’s shoe store at the time he dropped a dime on Oswald?

Besides Griggs’ important work on the Dallas PD and his interviews with witnesses, Ian also demolishes the idea that the DPD lineups were of any value at all, though he spends more time on this issue than it probably deserves.

From what I understand Ian Griggs was working on another JFK assassination manuscript that he never got to finish due to his health, but I hope that some UK researchers will pick up on this and try to finish it or get it out as he left it.

In any case, Ian Griggs gave us many answers that we really appreciate, and he lives on in the important work he did.

[ BK NOTES: Please excuse the lapse of posts over the past few days as besides Ian Griggs, another good friend of mine suddenly passed and I had to attend his funeral. I will be posting regularly again from now on, so stay tuned. And if you can please support JFK research and my JFKCountercoup blogs – as big things are happening, and I will keep you posted. ]

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