HSCA Evidence of Conspiracy

 HSCA  Evidence of Conspiracy

In an email correspondence among some of the top researchers in the country, W. Tracy Parnell  replied to  Brian Bender’s fine article on the December 2021 NARA release of records under the JFK Act, that is linked here:

[    https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2021/12/bryan-bender-on-new-released-records.html      ]

Bender used to be a staff reporter for the Boston Globe and covered the Kennedy family and wrote a number of important articles on the assassination, rare for a mainstream media journalist.

Parnell, one of the numerous die hard lone nutters who still tries to contend the President was killed by a deranged loner for no apparent reason, posts a blog that attempts to debunk every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike, and is finishing a book length report on what he perceives as the David Atlee Phillips – Antonio Veciana – Maurice Bishop “Hoax” that I will eventually get to.

[ http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/ ]     

Parnell tried to contest Bennder’s mentioning the fact that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) conclusion that there was probably a conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy, saying the only evidence of conspiracy that the HSCA came up with was the acoustical study, that has since been debunked.

That of course is a Lone Nut factoid that is often stated and repeated, when the true fact is the HSCA came up with dozens if not hundreds of conspiracy leads that they asked the Justice Department to pursue, but have since been left to independent researchers to try to resolve.

And the acoustical echo analysis, though often disputed, has never been debunked because the only way to prove or disprove a scientific study is to repeat it, and the HSCA acoustical echo analysis has never been duplicated. The scientific team that conducted the study consisting primarily of major defense contractors and scientists stick by their guns, as demonstrated by Dr. Barger’s conversations with Josiah Thompson and published as an appendix to Thompson’s recently published book – Last Second in Dallas  (University Press of Kansas 2021).

I think that the idea the acoustics study was the only evidence of conspiracy developed by the HSCA stems from one of the congressmen who sat on the Committee, as the acoustical study results were not revealed to anyone until the very last public hearing of the Committee. The committee was shortly thereafter disbanded because it was only a temporary committee and not a permanent one. As usual, not all of the committee members attended every meeting, and few of them kept up with the investigations conducted primarily by the staff lawyers and investigators.

As for evidence of conspiracy other than the acoustical study, it was developed by HSCA investigators in the field and reported to the Chief counsels, both of whom believed there was a conspiracy to kill the president. First chief counsel Richard Sprague thought the CIA had its hand in what happened at Dealey Plaza, while the second Chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey wrote a book about how the Mafia was responsible.

Since then however Blakey has changed his tune. With the revelations that former CIA officer and agency liaison to the committee George Joannides was previously the case officer for the DRE anti-Castro  Cubans,  some of whom got into a scuffle in New Orleans with the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and that Joannides was called out of retirement by the CIA to serve as their liaison to the Committee, Blakey has decided the CIA were involved, at least in the cover-up of the truth. Blakey now says that if he knew then what he knows now, Joannides would have been questioned under oath as a suspect rather than being the middleman between the Committee and the CIA.

The first Chief Counsel, Richard Sprague, Esq., was a former Philadelphia District Attorney who successfully prosecuted Tony Boyle for the conspiracy murder of United Mine Workers boss Jock Yablonski. Sprague wanted to conduct a real homicide investigation, and hired New York City assistant DA Robert Tannenbaum, who prosecuted many big city homicides and was named to head the JFK team of investigators. Sprague also hired former Philadelphia reporter Gaeton Fonzi on the basis of a recommendation by Senator Richard Schweiker (Rep. Pa.), as Fonzi had previously worked as an investigator for the Schweiker-(Gary) Hart sub-committee of the Church Intelligence Committee on the JFK Assassination.

Schweiker himself leaned towards CIA involvement in the assassination as he said “there’s fingerprints of Intelligence” all over the assassination story.

As a member of the Church Intelligence Committee, and half of the Schweiker-Hart subcommittee on the assassination of President Kennedy, Schweiker would be disapointed today to learn that many of the Church committee’s records, especially key interviews with subjects have been erased or are outright missing.

Bob Tannenbaum wrote a series of popular detective fiction, one of which recounts his experiences working for the HSCA, especially his displeasure of Sprague being fired for trying to conduct a real homicide investigation. Tannenbaum went on to become mayor of Beverly Hills, California, but has always maintained his interest in the assassination, making a presentation on Oswald’s innocence before the CAPA-South Texas Law School Mock Trial in Houston in 2017.

Sprague had also hired another big city detective Jack Moriarity, who investigated what the HSCA called “TheWise allegation,” named after former Dallas TV reporter and Mayor Wes Wise, who first learned about JD Tippit’s good friend Carl Mather and his car being seen near the site of Tippit’s murder, with the accused assassin behind the wheel.  While the FBI was reluctant to investigate this lead, and for good reasons, Jack Moriarity was the only official to visit Collins Radio and learn what Carl Mather’s job was there. It turns out that Mather’s job at Collins was to install and monitor the radios in the Executive fleet that was used by Vice President LBJ.

The more we learn about Collins Radio the more questions are posed, and lead to even more questions of a conspiratorial bent. As the November 1, 1963 edition of the New York Times revealed in a front page article, Collins Rado leased the CIA raider shop The Rex, that deposited anti-Castro Cuban JMWAVE trained assassins in Cuba with high powered rifles who were caught and confessed to being trained by the CIA to kill Cuban leaders.

Art Collins, the founder of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa  radio company, was the only person capable of receiving the radio broadcasts of artic explorer Navy Admiral Richard Byrd, cousin of the owner of the Dallas oil man D. H. Byrd, who owned the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at the time of the assassination. He then got major military contracts and became good, personal friends with Air Force General Curtis LeMay, a HAM radio buff who arranged for all of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) nuclear bombers to be outfitted with Collins sideband radios, as well as the Executive Air Fleet, including Air Force One, all of which used Collins’ “Liberty” station in Cedar Rapids as a relay center for all of their radio communications, including those on the day of the assassination.

My file on Collins Radio grew to such an extent that I delivered a report at a COPA conference and wrote an article on The Collins Radio Connections  -  [   https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-collins-radio-connections-to.html   ]

David Montague, one of the HSCA investigators and now a university professor, addressed the 2021 CAPA conference in regards to the JFK Act and still withheld records. He too is an avid conspiracy believer whose work for the HSCA came up with numerous leads of conspiracy, most notably that the wife of a federal judge flew on a Military Air Transport (MAT) flight from McGuire AFB in New Jersey to France, sitting alongside a Marine in full dress uniform with the name Oswald, who said his name was Lee Harvey Oswald, from New Orleans, who was on an important mission that made him very nervous.  And it took place at precisely the same time Oswald was supposed to be on a tramp steamer defectng to USSR.

[    https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2014/06/oswald-takes-macs-flight-to-defect.html    /    https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2014/07/flight-from-mcguire.html   ]

The Fonzi – Church Committee – Veciana – Marurice Bishop – that Parnell has delved into in depth and we will get into later, after I read Parnell’s book on the subject.

Fonzi also interviewed Mitch Werbell – a tape recorded session the tape  of which – as discovered by Malcolm Blunt, has been erased, but we still have Fonzi’s notes, which mention Werbell’s acknowledgement that the Pan Am Bank of Miami was used by the CIA. Of course we already knew that from the HSCA report that Jack Ruby, on his return home from Havana, did a favor for his friend Lewis McWillie and deposited a suitcase full of cash in the Pan Am bank for McWillie’s casino bosses, Fox brothers.

And a point that I don’t expect Parnell to address in his mythical interpretation of Antonio Veciana’s story, is how David Atlee Phillips, as Maurce Bishop, took Veciana to an office in the Pan Am Bank building in Miami in order to sign a security oath and begin his lessons in psychological warfare.

Then there’s Robert McKeown, who delivered arms to Fidel Castro in the mountains and testified before the HSCA that he was paid in cash bundled in Pan Am Bank wrappers.  So there’s certainly something shady going on at the Pan Am Bank of Miami, that the HSCA discovered but nobody has bothered to investigate.  

[ https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmckeown.htm   /   https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/04/happenstance-coincidence-enemy-action.html      ]

After retiring to his Texas ranch McKeown was visited by a victorious Fidel Castro who offered him a position in the new Cuban government, which McKeown declined. But Castro’s visit sparked two other visitors, Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald, bot h of whom wanted McKeown’s assistance in regards to weapons and Cuba.

After Sprague was fired, G. Robert Blakey, the head of the Cornell University Law School Institute on Organized Crime was brought on. Blakey had written the RICO statute that was being used by prosecutors to attack organized crime, and should have been used in the Kennedy assassination but wasn’t. Blakey brought along some of his Cornell law school students, including Ed Lopez and Dan Hardaway, who he sent over to the CIA to review what records they had on the assassination. They also went to Mexico and wrote the long censored Lopez Report, that details many of the conspiracy leads that Parnell won’t even recognize. Both Lopez and Hardaway, to this day, are dedicated and proud conspiracy theorists.

In any case, Parnell’s statement that the HSCA did not come up with any evidence of conspiracy is belittled by the HSCA work of both chief counsels Richard Sprague and G. Robert Blakey, and those they hired to conduct the investigation – Tannenbaum, Moriarity, Montague, Fonzi, Lopez and Hardway, most of whom are still living and stand by their conspiratorial beliefs.

Comments welcome: Billkelly3@gmail.com