Jack Ruby - Spartacus Educational
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKruby.htm
Jacob Rubenstein (Jack Ruby), the fifth of eight children, was born in Chicago on 25th March, 1911. Both his parents were born in Poland but had emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. His father, Joseph Rubenstein, a carpenter, was a violent man and was frequently arrested for assault and battery charges.
Jack caused trouble at school and at the age of eleven was sent to
the Institute of Juvenile Research for psychiatric treatment. It was
decided that Jack was not receiving proper parental care and Chicago's
Juvenile Court sent him to a foster home. His mother was eventually
diagnosed as suffering from psychoneurosis and admitted to Elgin State
Hospital.
After leaving school in 1927 Jack did various odd jobs and is rumoured to have worked for Al Capone. He also spent time in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He eventually returned to Chicago
and a friend, Leon Cooke, arranged for him to work for the Scrap Iron
and Junk Handlers Union. On 8th December, 1939, Cooke was shot dead by
John Martin, the president of the union. As a result of this killing
Jack Ruby left this job and found employment as a salesman. This
included selling plagues commemorating Pearl Harbor.
In May, 1943, Jack Ruby, was called up into the armed services. He served in the United States Army Air Forces
at various airbases in America. His behaviour was fairly good but on a
couple of occasions he got into fights after comments were made about
him being Jewish. Jack Ruby attained the rank of private first class and
was honorably discharged on 21st February, 1946.
Jack Ruby returned to Chicago and found work selling small cedar
chests for a company owned by his brother, Earl Ruby. In 1947 Ruby moved
to Dallas where he managed the Singapore night-club for his sister, Eva
Grant. In October, 1947, he was arrested by the Bureau of Narcotics.
Steve Guthrie, the sheriff of Dallas, later claimed that Ruby had been
sent to criminals in Chicago to manage illegal gambling activities in
the city. However, Jack Ruby was eventually released without charge.
Jack Ruby remained in Dallas and after borrowing money from a friend
he purchased the Silver Spur Club. He also acquired the Bob Wills Ranch
House, a western-style nightclub. These clubs were not successful and
in 1954 he became a part-owner of the Vegas Club. His attempts to
establish another nightclub, the Sovereign Club, also ended in failure.
Ruby now opened the Carousel Club. He employed a master of ceremonies, a
small band and four strippers.
In August 1959 Jack Ruby was invited to visit Cuba
by the Dallas nightclub owner, Lewis McWillie. At that time McWillie
was supervising gambling activities at Havana's Tropicana Hotel. Later,
McWillie was involved in the campaign to have Fidel Castro overthrown after he had taken power from Fulgencio Batista.
Ruby's workers were members of the American Guild of Variety Artists
(AGVA). Ruby had a record of not paying his workers on time and for
dismissing them for unreasonable reasons. This behaviour resulted in
several disputes with the AGVA. In June 1963 Jack Ruby visited New Orleans
where he obtained the services of a stripper known as Jada. After three
months she was also dismissed and this caused further union problems.
It is claimed that as a result of his problems with the AGVA Ruby made
contact with associates of Mafia leaders, Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, during the summer of 1963.
On 22nd November, 1963, President John F. Kennedy arrived in Dallas. It was decided that Kennedy and his party, including his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Governor John Connally and Senator Ralph Yarborough,
would travel in a procession of cars through the business district of
Dallas. A pilot car and several motorcycles rode ahead of the
presidential limousine. As well as Kennedy the limousine included his
wife, John Connally, his wife Nellie, Roy Kellerman, head of the Secret
Service at the White House and the driver, William Greer. The next car
carried eight Secret Service Agents. This was followed by a car
containing Lyndon Johnson and Ralph Yarborough.
At about 12.30 p.m. the presidential limousine entered Elm Street.
Soon afterwards shots rang out. John Kennedy was hit by bullets that hit
him in the head and the left shoulder. Another bullet hit John Connally
in the back. Ten seconds after the first shots had been fired the
president's car accelerated off at high speed towards Parkland Memorial
Hospital. Both men were carried into separate emergency rooms. Connally
had wounds to his back, chest, wrist and thigh. Kennedy's injuries were
far more serious. He had a massive wound to the head and at 1 p.m. he
was declared dead.
Soon afterwards Lee Harvey Oswald
was arrested. Oswald worked at the Texas Book Depository. They also
discovered his palm print on the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was found
earlier that day. Other evidence emerged that suggested that Oswald had
been involved in the killing of John F. Kennedy.
Oswald's hand prints were found on the book cartons and the brown paper
bag. Charles Givens, a fellow worker, testified that he saw Oswald on
the sixth floor at 11.55 a.m. Another witness, Howard Brennan, claimed
he saw Oswald holding a rifle at the sixth floor window.
The police also discovered that the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was
purchased under the name A. Hiddell. When he was arrested, the police
found that Oswald was carrying a forged identity card bearing the name
Alek Hiddell. The rifle had been sent by the mail order company from
Chicago to P.O. Box 2915, Dallas, Texas. The Post Office box belonged to
Oswald.
While being interrogated by the Dallas Police, Oswald denied he had
been involved in the killing of Kennedy. He claimed that he was a
"patsy" (a term used by the Mafia to describe someone set up to take the
punishment for a crime they did not commit).
On 24th November, 1963, the Dallas Police decided to transfer to
Oswald to the county jail. As Oswald was led through the basement of
police headquarters Jack Ruby rushed forward and shot him in the
stomach. The gunman was quickly arrested by police officers. Lee Harvey Oswald died soon afterwards.
After the death of John F. Kennedy, his deputy, Lyndon B. Johnson, was appointed president. He immediately set up a commission to "ascertain, evaluate and report upon the facts relating to the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy." The seven man commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and included Gerald Ford, Allen W. Dulles, John J. McCloy, Richard B. Russell, John S. Cooper and Thomas H. Boggs.
Larry Craford testified before the Warren Commission that on 23rd November, 1963, he went with Ruby and George Senator
to photograph an "Impeach Earl Warren" billboard in Dallas. Ruby said
he wanted to photograph the billboard because of its similarity to an
anti-Kennedy advert that appeared in newspapers on the day of the
assassination. This information created some interest as it had not been
mentioned before by either Ruby or Senator.
Nancy Perrin Rich worked for Ruby at his Carousal Club. She told the Warren Commission
that Ruby had instructed her to supply free drinks to the Dallas Police
Department. Rich added "I don't think there is a cop in Dallas that
doesn't know Jack Ruby. He practically lived at that (police) station.
They lived in his place."
Ruby told Earl Warren that he would "come clean" if he was moved from Dallas and allowed to testify in Washington. He told Warren "my life is in danger here". He added: "I want to tell the truth, and I can't tell it here." Warren refused to have Ruby moved and so he refused to tell what he knew about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
During his trial Ruby claimed he had killed Lee Harvey Oswald
because he "couldn't bear the idea of the President's widow being
subjected to testifying at the trial of Oswald". Later he changed his
mind claiming that his lawyer, Tom Howard,
had put him up to saying it. He now pleaded guilty by reason of
insanity. On March 14, 1964, the jury convicted Jack Ruby of killing
Oswald and sentenced him to death.
In October, 1964, the Warren Commission
reported that it "found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or
Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to
assassinate President Kennedy". It also stated that there was no
"significant link between Ruby and organized crime". This information
came from friends of Ruby, including Dave Yarras, a Mafia hit man.
Jack Ruby's conviction was later overturned, but he died from cancer on 3rd January, 1967, while waiting for a new trial.
Dr. Mary Sherman
it is believed CIA killed Jack Ruby with the cancer developed by Dr. Mary Sherman supposedly to kill Fidel Castro
On 21st July, 1964, Dr. Mary Sherman was murdered in New Orleans. She had been stabbed in the heart, arm, leg and stomach. Her laboratory was also set on fire. The crime has never been sold. Later Edward T. Haslam published Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus : The Story of an Underground Medical Laboratory. In the book he argued that Sherman was working with David Ferrie. Haslam believed that this Central Intelligence Agency backed research involved disease intelligence gathering and cancer research using laboratory-made biological weapons. Haslam claimed this biological weapon was to be used against Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Judyth Baker later began giving interviews aboout involvement in an anti-Castro conspiracy. She claims that in 1963 she was recruited by Dr. Canute Michaelson to work with Dr. Alton Ochsner and Dr. Mary Sherman in a CIA secret project. This involved creating the means to insure Fidel Castro developed cancer.
In 1963 Judyth moved to New Orleans where she worked closely with others involved in this plot. This included Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw and Guy Bannister. Later she claimed she began an affair with Oswald. The research into this biological weapon was carried out in the homes of Ferrie and Sherman. Oswald role in this conspiracy was to work as a courier. However, the project was abandoned in September, 1963, and Oswald was ordered to Dallas.
Dr. Mary's Monkey
Physician and columnist Dr. Brobson Lutz examines a book that alleges a 1960s
medical conspiracy with global implications.
Any New Orleans list of best physicians from the 1960s would include Dr. Alton Ochsner, Sr., and Dr. Mary Sherman. Both Ochsner and Sherman had roots and degrees from the Midwest. Both schooled or trained in Europe during their formative years, migrated to New Orleans to practice medicine and were on the faculty at Tulane Medical School. Both died in New Orleans. Today, Ochsner is a local medical legend; Sherman is an unsolved New Orleans murder mystery.
Ochsner was one of the physician founders of the medical complex which bears his name and an early proponent of the link between smoking and lung cancer. He was a chest surgeon interested in all cancers and was elected national president of the American Cancer Society. He was also known for his ultraconservative politics, except when lobbying for federal funds to expand his hospital.
Early in her career, Sherman published several papers pertaining to viral research beginning in the 1940s. After medical school, she finished a residency in orthopedics – a tough row to hoe for a female physician in those days. In ‘52, Ochsner recruited Sherman to New Orleans. He offered her a partnership at Ochsner Foundation Hospital, her own cancer laboratory and a faculty position at Tulane.
From 1952 until her death in ‘64, Sherman, a widow before moving South, lived in an apartment on St. Charles Avenue near Louisiana Avenue. She was on the staff of several local hospitals but really thrived in her research laboratory, working with bone and soft tissue cancers. She published several research papers and served on expert committees dealing with bone pathology and cancers.
The late Don Lee Keith, a writer and editor of New Orleans Magazine, called me a couple of times over the years to discuss Sherman’s death. Keith reconstructed the crime scene in his mind and was the first to smell a conspiracy with a cover-up. He was obsessed with Sherman’s murder and wrote about it several times.
Former aide to Professor Longhair and advertising
executive-turned-author Edward “Ed” T. Haslam has expanded on Keith’s
earlier work. He has written Dr. Mary’s Monkey, a required book for
conspiracy lovers. It’s also an interesting read for those with memories
of the New Orleans medical profession during the 1960s and ‘70s and
really for anyone who wants an armchair visit back to the New Orleans of
that era.
As with Ochsner and Sherman, a Tulane Medical School position brought
author Ed Haslam to New Orleans in the 1950s, but the appointment was
for his physician father. He moved here with his family at a young age
and attended several local schools including the New Orleans Academy,
Jesuit High School and Tulane University.
Haslam has woven Sherman’s murder into a conspiracy tale involving a clandestine mouse laboratory operated by David Ferrie on Louisiana Parkway; a heavily guarded linear accelerator located Uptown; monkeys from Tulane Medical School; a young high school science fair winner and Lee Harvey Oswald’s secret lover; and a plot to kill Fidel Castro with cancer causing monkey cells orchestrated by a right wing marriage between Carlos Marcello and Alton Ochsner, Sr. – the stealth viruses were then dumped in Haiti where they simmered for almost two decades before erupting into a worldwide epidemic of various cancers and AIDS.
Dr. Monroe Samuels performed Sherman’s autopsy. Samuels documented the cause of death as a heart penetrating stab wound to the chest. The autopsy documented multiple other stab wounds to the abdomen, left arm and right leg. Her sexual organs were also lacerated postmortem.
Even more fascinating to Keith were the burn injuries. I can remember Keith reading me the autopsy report over the telephone a couple of decades after Sherman’s death. A copy of this autopsy report is reprinted in Haslam’s book.
The only remaining portion of Sherman’s right arm was a piece of her upper arm bone. The rest of the extremity was burned to a crisp. The body was discovered in Sherman’s bedroom and the bed was smoldering. However, neither Keith nor Haslam believed the fire was intense enough to have caused almost complete thermal destruction of an arm.
Haslam hypothesizes that government forces installed a huge clandestine linear accelerator on the Uptown grounds of the old U.S. Public Health Hospital. Sherman conducted experiments there to mutate monkey viruses to assist a CIA plot headed by Ochsner to mutate monkey viruses. Something went wrong with the linear accelerator and Sherman suffered a severe but non-fatal burn. If she had been taken to an emergency room, the nature of her burn injuries would’ve exposed their occult plot. One of her comrades sacrificed her with a knife wound to her chest. Her charred body was then moved to her apartment, more stab wounds were inflicted to make it look like a crazed sex killing and then her bed and body were set on fire.
I called Dr. Samuels, who remembers the autopsy and discounts an offsite thermal injury. “She had severe right-sided burns with exposure of her liver. There was no soot in her lungs meaning that she was dead before any fire. I have seen similar thermal burns in autopsies of bodies found on burning beds,” Samuels says.
According to Haslam, the “official” plot to infect Castro with mutated and lethal viruses from New Orleans ground to a halt after Sherman’s death. Haslam writes that David Ferrie, the funny looking pilot in Jim Garrison’s cast of characters with glued pieces of carpet over his eyes for eyebrows, took over after Sherman’s death. He harvested the most lethal of the mutated monkey viruses and delivered them to Haiti, a country despised by the racist Ferrie and with proximity to Cuba. From Haiti, unleashed viruses spread around the world causing a pandemic of AIDS and soft tissue cancers.
The book contains several factual errors unrelated to the conspiracy plot, ranging from a minor misnaming of a New Orleans housing development to major scientific glitches. Haslam gets a D in medical history and an F in virology.
In setting the stage for Tulane as an institution with a long history in tropical disease research and “capable and willing to conduct clandestine governmental work” Haslam writes: “It was Tulane that proved malaria was spread by mosquitoes.” Tulane’s roots in tropical medicine run deep and discoveries especially in parasitology defined Tulane as a major player in tropical diseases. However, a French army doctor and a British physician in the late 1800s discovered malarial parasites in blood and described its life cycle involving infected mosquitoes biting humans. Both received separate Nobel prizes; this work was not done at Tulane.
A frozen human blood specimen collected in 1959 has tested positive for HIV and it’s implausible that radiated monkey viruses in the ‘60s independently mutated into this same virus. Ionizing radiation can indeed cause genetic mutations but Haslam’s theory has a major flaw. Radiation can no more turn one virus into another virus than it can turn an apple tree into a fig tree. It just doesn’t happen that way.
There are unanswered details. How did Haslam name his book Dr. Mary’s Monkey? Not once did he document her association with a live monkey or with monkey research. Mysteries abound on many levels.
Ed Haslam – growing up in a conspiracy
The visitor’s dock at Lake Pontchartrain. Haslam saw a sailor with a
monkey. His father cautioned him to stay away from monkeys as they
carried “weird viruses that we don’t yet understand.”
New Orleans Academy. Mrs. Ellis, a history teacher, warned students in 1963 or ‘64 that the polio vaccine contained monkey viruses that would spread through the blood supply causing a new generation of diseases. Two Ochsner grandchildren received an early dose of the Salk vaccine to show how safe it was. Both contracted polio. One survived and one died according to Haslam.
Jesuit High School. After David Ferrie’s death, the son of the then-New Orleans coroner told his classmates, including Haslam, about a telephone conversation between his father and Bobby Kennedy. Nicky Chetta mesmerized the class with the contents of Ferrie’s apartment at his death – priest robes, women’s clothing, a clandestine medical lab with a dozen mice in cages, medical books, mice injected with monkey viruses and a discussion about biological weapons.
An apartment on Louisiana Parkway. Barbara, the author’s graduate school girlfriend, lived in an apartment that once housed Ferrie’s mouse lab. She baked bread to help dissipate the lingering mouse odors.
A graduate school sociology seminar at Tulane. Haslam quoted a Latin American graduate student identified as “Freckles” in a 1979 Tulane graduate seminar: “El Padrino is working on a virus … You know, Ochsner. He is working on a virus to get Castro.” Haslam added, “Freckles’ comment was an indication of Latin perceptions of Ochsner’s politics and evidence that a rumor did exist in certain Latin circles that Ochsner was or had been involved in a medical project which was trying to kill Castro.”
Street knowledge. Garrison was nicknamed the Jolly Green Giant because he put fruits and nuts in the can.
The Audubon Building on Canal Street. Haslam visited a suite of offices inhabited by some mysterious men with boxes of files documenting the evils of Communism. He met Ed Butler, a man who once taped an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald and was the executive director of the Information Council of the Americas. Alton Ochsner founded INCA in 1961 to “prevent Communist revolutions in Latin America by teaching the sordid truth about Communism to the Latin American masses … It was a right-wing propaganda mill loosely modeled on Radio Free Europe.”
Did AIDS emerge from a secret laboratory in New Orleans?
An early and discarded theory on the origin of AIDS was that that the
virus mutated out of nowhere. Another theory centered on the creation of
the virus by scientists working in a germ warfare lab. Others
attributed its origin to contaminated monkey tissues used in making
substandard batches of polio vaccine sent to Africa in the 1950s
In Dr. Mary’s Monkey, author Edward T. Haslam opines that AIDS originated from a botched experiment in a secret underground laboratory in New Orleans during the 1960s. A Tulane professor and Ochsner orthopedist experimenting with mutated monkey viruses was brutally murdered as part of the cover-up. A rouge CIA operative, later under the spotlight of Jim Garrison’s assassination probe, spirited the virus off to Haiti for a clandestine release that resulted in today’s AIDS pandemic.
The polio immunization theory fell by the wayside a couple of years ago. Scientists found old batches of the implicated vaccine in a laboratory freezer. It tested negative for DNA to all known monkey viruses and strains of HIV.
The origin of AIDS is now widely accepted by scientists. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) jumped from primates to humans. Many diseases jump from animals to people. West Nile, influenza and hepatitis B are common examples of viral diseases that originated in other species.
Recent work by virologists, evolutionary biologists and molecular geneticists genetically traced the HIV virus infecting humans to wild chimpanzees living in a Cameroon jungle. There may be no cure or vaccine to protect against AIDS but the mystery of its origins has been solved.
Dr. Mary’s Monkey: How the Unsolved Murder of a Doctor, a Secret Laboratory in New Orleans and Cancer-Causing Monkey Viruses are Linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK Assassination and Emerging Global Epidemics
New Orleans Author Ed Haslam Discusses His Book "Dr. Mary's Monkey"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbMpivbkV0o 
In the death of Doctor Mary Sherman, strange myths pale next to stranger facts
https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/article_7022729c-95bf-5fc7-b9ab-8000e1336f6a.html
At 4 a.m. July 21, 1964, a seemingly routine call came into New Orleans police. Juan Valdes, a tenant at the Patios Apartments on St. Charles Avenue, could smell smoke. Officers arrived at the scene to find a blaze in Apartment J, at the back of the building.
Firefighters hauled out a burning mattress, and found the body of Dr. Mary Sherman lying face up on the floor. She was severely burned on her right side. Her liver, intestines and charred lung were exposed. And her right arm and right torso were gone.
Blood spatter on the walls, floor and chest
indicated she had been stabbed there in her apartment. She was sliced
through the heart and several times in the abdomen and on her left arm,
possible self-defense wounds.
Neighbors told police that Sherman's car, a white 1960 Valiant, was missing from its usual parking spot at the complex at 3101 St. Charles Ave. Detectives found it at 1:08 p.m. that day, about nine blocks from Sherman's house, parked in the 2600 block of Chestnut Street. A tube of lipstick, an empty Diet-Rite can and a black perfume dispenser lay on the street. A spent cartridge of a tear gas container was found nearby. The car's keys were missing until the following day, when a man clipping a hedge three blocks away, at 1233 Conery St., found them. No fingerprints were recovered.
The coroner ruled that Sherman had been killed by a stab wound in the heart.
Though the murder occurred 50 years ago Monday, it remains unsolved. And theorists and crime writers have alleged a government cover-up as well as connections to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which occurred eight months prior.
But a 117-page police report and 70 pages of case files recently obtained by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune paints only a picture of detectives tracking leads that went nowhere. The report contains no obvious smoking gun, no definite suspect to the crime. But it does show police tracking down what they at one point describe as the "word on the street" with little other support: that the murder was a crime of passion, committed by a woman who was involved with Sherman.
In the interest of that hunch, detectives scurry around French Quarter hangouts while giving less weight to the testimony of those that Sherman spent most of her time with: the doctors she worked alongside at Ochsner, where she was recruited to work in 1952.
On the day after the murder, John L. Ochsner walked into Sherman's lab and told residents, "You better have a good alibi." As he recalled in an interview with documentary filmmaker Stephen Tyler, he had made the comment in jest - an example of a doctor's gallow's humor - but from the very first interview conducted at Ochsner, as reported in the case file, administrators told police to look at other hospital residents or at one of Sherman's "deranged patients."
Rather than focus on those suspicions, the report shows detectives looking in every other direction. In an investigation that lasted five years, detectives questioned at least 104 people and snooped around 49 locales in the New Orleans metro area - from dive bars in the French Quarter to Moisant Airport, where flight records might reveal the names of those who fled the crime by air.
The report contains a never-publicized letter from the Metropolitan Crime Commission, which reported receiving a all from an anonymous woman. The woman said that Sherman was "the second one of my friends here at Oschner who has been mysteriously killed in the past year." She told the MCC that Latin Americans, wrapped in casts, were coming into the Ochsner clinic and disseminating drugs in a narcotics operation that went all the way up to Mafia boss Carlos Marcello.
(Read the MCC letter to NOPD.)
Those allegations do not appear, in the police report, to have ever been taken seriously.
Who was Doctor Mary Sherman?
Born in Chicago in 1913, Sherman was trained to sing opera by her father, a voice instructor, and studied in Paris before returning to receive a medical degree from the University of Chicago. An internationally-known orthopedic surgeon known for her work in the treatment and research of bone cancers, she was the director of the bone pathology lab at Ochsner Medical Foundation. Somehow, Sherman still found time to mingle with the literary set in the French Quarter - including novelist Max White and playwright Chris Blake, whose work she once supported with a $2,000 check.
They must have been an entertaining crew, to balance the dryness of hospital work. Her best friend, a doctor named Carolyn Talley, told officers that Sherman had warned her about going to White's apartment - Talley would not like him much. Officers did not either. White spoke "in a typical novelist's fashion, being very dramatic," the police recorded.
(Read the police interview of Max White.)
Some New Orleanians hearing about Sherman's strange death would not need a novelist's imagination to compare the crime to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. For District Attorney Jim Garrison, the connection was in the fact that Sherman studied cancer, that an alleged associate of Lee Harvey Oswald's had an amateur interest in cancer research, and that the man who shot Oswald before he could stand trial - Jack Ruby - died shortly after of cancer.
https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/article_7022729c-95bf-5fc7-b9ab-8000e1336f6a.html
CIA Operation 40 killed JFK and more than one hundred witnesses
This photograph was taken in a nightclub in Mexico City on 22nd January, 1963. It has been argued by Daniel Hopsicker that the men in the photograph are all members of Operation 40. Hopsicker suggests that the man closest to the camera on the left is Felix Rodriguez, next to him is Porter Goss and Barry Seal.Hopsicker adds that Frank Sturgis is attempting to hide his face with his coat. It has been claimed that in the picture are Albertao 'Loco' Blanco (3rd right) and Jorgo Robreno (4th right).
Operation 40 allegedly charged with assasinating Fidel Castro killed a bunch of other people instead,
Operation 40 was the code name for a CeIA counterintelligence group composed mostly by Cuban exiles.
It was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban Revolution. The group was presided over by Richard Nixon and included Admiral Arleigh Burke, Livingston Merchant of the State Department, National Security Adviser Gordon Gray, and Allen Dulles of the CIA.
CIA assembled virtually the same team that was involved in the removal of Arbenz: Tracey Barnes, Richard Bissell, David Morales, David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Rip Robertson and Henry Hecksher. Added to this list were several agents who had been involved in undercover operations in Germany: Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and William Harvey.
Tracy Barnes functioned as head of the Cuban Task Force. He called a meeting on January 18, 1960, in his office in Quarters Eyes, near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which the navy had lent while new buildings were being constructed in Langley. Those who gathered there included Howard Hunt, future head of the Watergate team and a writer of crime novels; Frank Bender, a friend of Trujillo; Jack Esterline, who had come straight from Venezuela where he directed a CIA group; psychological warfare expert David A. Phillips, and others.
Vice-President Richard Nixon was the Cuban "case officer," and had assembled an important group of businessmen headed by George Bush Sr and Jack Crichton, both Texas oilmen, as fundraisers.
It seems that Operation 40, created to remove Fidel Castro, had been redirected to kill Kennedy, as part of a freelance operation. David Atlee Phillips in the unpublished manuscript entitled The AMLASH Legacy wrote: "I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt." And Frank Sturgis stated that "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents."
The 488th Military Intelligence Detachment
In 1956 Jack Alston Crichton started up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment in Dallas. Crichton served as the unit's commander under Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, who was in overall command of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. In an interview Crichton claimed that there were "about a hundred men in that unit and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department."
In November 1963 Jack Alston Crichton was involved in the arrangements of the visit that President John F. Kennedy made to Dallas. His close friend, Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin, and a fellow member of the the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment, drove the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade. Also in the car was Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. The pilot car stopped briefly in front of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lumpkin spoke to a policeman controlling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm.
As Russ Baker points out in Family of Secrets (2008) Crichton served as the "intelligence unit's only commander... until he retired from the 488th in 1967".
RICHARD NIXON, THE CASE MANAGER OIF OPERATION 40
RICHARD NIXON, THE CASE MANAGER OIF OPERATION 40
November 21, 1963 - Richard M. Nixon in Dallas, Texas
The Dallas Police preparing for the visit of President Kennedy ...
https://www.youtube.com › watch
Operation 40 Members:
Alvin Ross;
Antonio Cuesta;
Antonio Veciana;
Barry Seal
Bernard Barker
Carl Elmer Jenkins;
Carlos Bringuier;
David A. Phillips
David Sanchez Morales
E. Howard Hunt,
Eladio del Valle
Eugenio Martinez (‘Musculito’);
Felipe Rivero;
Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia;
Frank Bender
Frank Sturgis;
Gaspar ‘Gasparito’ Jimenez Escobedo;
George Bush
Gerry Patrick Hemming;
Guillermo Novo;
Henry Hecksher.
Hermino Diaz Garcia;
Isidro Borjas;
Jack Crichton
Jack Esterline,
Jose Basulto;
Jose Dionisio Suarez;
Jose Sanjenis Perdomo, Chief of Police Cuban Pres Carlos Prio
Juan Manuel Salvat;
Luis Posada Carriles;
Nazario Sargent;
Orlando Bosch;
Paulino Sierra;
Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz;
Porter Goss;
Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quinterol
Ricardo Morales Navarrete
Richard Bissell
Rolando Masferrer;
Ted Shackley, CIA station-chief in Miami
Thomas G. Clines;
Tracy Barnes
Virgilio Paz Romero;
William C. Bishop;
William Harvey.
William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee;
William “Rip” Robertson;
(1) Report on Jack Ruby by the Institute of Juvenile Research in 1922.
He is egocentric and expects much attention, but is unable to get it as there are many children at home. His behavior is further colored by his early sex experiences, his great interest (in sex) and the gang situation in the street. From a superficial examination of his mother who was here with him, it is apparent that she has no insight into his problem, and she is thoroughly inadequate in the further training of this boy.
(2) The Warren Commission Report (September, 1964)
There is also considerable evidence that Ruby tended to dominate his employees, frequently resorted to violence in dealing with them, publicly embarrassed them, sometimes attempted to cheat them of their pay, and delayed paying their salaries. Other employees reported Ruby continually harassed his help, and used obscene language in their presence. However he frequently apologized, sought to atone for his many temper tantrums, and completely forgot others.
One of the many violent incidents that were reported took place in 1950, when Ruby struck an employee over the head with a blackjack. In 1951, after his guitarist, Willis Dickerson, told Ruby to "go to hell," Ruby knocked Dickerson to the ground, then pinned him to a wall and kicked him in the groin. During the scuffle, Dickerson bit Ruby's finger so badly that the top half of Ruby's left index finger was amputated. In approximately 1955, Ruby beat one of his musicians with brass knuckles; the musician's mouth required numerous stitches.
During 1960, Ruby and two entertainers, Breck Wall and Joe Peterson, entered into an agreement that the performers would produce and star in a revue at the Sovereign in exchange for a 50-percent interest in the club. After performing for 2 months, the entertainers complained that they had received neither a share of the profits nor evidence of their proprietary interest. Ruby responded by hitting Peterson in the mouth, knocking out a tooth. The two men left the Sovereign's employ, but they subsequently accepted Ruby's apology and resumed their friendship with him.
In September 1962 Frank Ferraro, the Carousel's handyman, became involved in a dispute at a nearby bar. Ruby told him not to get into a fight, and Ferraro told Ruby to mind his own business. Ruby then followed Ferraro to another club and beat him severely. Ferraro required emergency hospital treatment for his eye, but he decided not to press charges since Ruby paid for his hospital care. In March 1963, during an argument about wages, Ruby threatened to throw a cigarette girl down the stairs of the Carousel.
(3) David Reitzes, In Defense of Jack Ruby (2000)
Many take it for granted that if there was an assassination conspiracy, Jack Ruby must have been involved. In fact, many people believe there was a conspiracy precisely because of Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, which had the effect - intentional or not - of silencing the accused assassin.
But whether there was a conspiracy or not, there is no reason to assume that Ruby must have been involved. In fact, logic tells us that no conspiracy could profit by silencing Oswald in a public fashion: What's the point of eliminating one suspect while simultaneously handing the police another? Also, were it Oswald's intention to "talk," he'd already had nearly 48 hours in which to do so. Every minute he waited only diminished the chance that others involved could be apprehended. By that time, any conspirators would have to assume he'd already spilled his guts.
Another factor to be considered is whether Ruby was the type of person to be entrusted with any responsibility, when a single word from him could have resulted in the arrest of others involved. Dallas reporter Tony Zoppi knew Ruby well and says one "would have to be crazy" to entrust Ruby with anything important, that he "couldn't keep a secret for five minutes. . . . Jack was one of the most talkative guys you would ever meet. He'd be the worst fellow in the world to be part of a conspiracy, because he just plain talked too much."
(4) Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby's attorney, wrote about the case in his book Dallas Justice. At first Ruby claimed he had a mental blackout. Later he claimed he had killed Lee Harvey Oswald to protect Jacqueline Kennedy from having to testify at a court case. .
With a weary gesture, Ruby slapped his hands down on the metal table between us and shook his head impatiently. "What are we doing, Mel, kidding ourselves?" he asked.
I was tired too. "What do you mean, Jack?" I snapped.
"We know what happened," he said. "We know I did it for Jackie and the kids. I just went and shot him. They've got us anyway. Maybe I ought to forget this silly story that I'm telling, and get on the stand and tell the truth."
He was absolutely sincere. At that point, with his mental examination behind him and the outline of our defense clearly established, he was suddenly ready to admit that he had shot Lee Harvey Oswald deliberately and that our contention that the shooting had occurred during a blackout in which he was incompetent to know what he was doing was a fraud.
(5) The Warren Commission Report (September, 1964)
Between 1949 and November 24, 1963, Ruby was arrested eight times by the Dallas Police Department. The dates, charges, and dispositions of these arrests are as follows: February 4, 1949, Ruby paid a $10 fine for disturbing the peace. July 26, 1953, Ruby was suspected of carrying a concealed weapon; however, no charges were filed and Ruby was released on the same day. May 1, 1954, Ruby was arrested for allegedly carrying a concealed weapon and violating a peace bond; again no charges were filed and Ruby was released on the same day. December 5, 1954, Ruby was arrested for allegedly violating State liquor laws by selling liquor after hours; the complaint was dismissed on February 8, 1955. June 21, 1959, Ruby was arrested for allegedly permitting dancing after hours; the complaint was dismissed on July 8, 1959. August 21, 1960, Ruby was again arrested for allegedly permitting dancing after hours; Ruby posted $25 bond and was released on that date. February 12, 1963, Ruby was arrested on a charge of simple assault; he was found not guilty February 27, 1963. Finally, on March 14, 1963, Ruby was arrested for allegedly ignoring traffic summonses; a $35 bond was posted.
When Ruby applied for a beer license in March 1961, he reported that he had been arrested "about four or five times" between 1947 and 1953. Between 1950 and 1963, he received 20 tickets for motor vehicle violations, paying four $10 fines and three of $3. In 1956 and 1959, Ruby was placed on 6 months' probation as a traffic violator.
Ruby was also frequently suspended by the Texas Liquor Control Board. In August 1949, when he was operating the Silver Spur, he was suspended for 5 days on a charge of "Agents Moral Turpitude." In 1953 Ruby received a 5-day suspension because of an obscene show, and, in 1954, a 10-day suspension for allowing a drunkard on his premises. On February 18, 1954, he was suspended for 5 days because of an obscene striptease act at the Silver Spur and for the consumption of alcoholic beverages during prohibited hours. On March 26, 1956. Ruby was suspended by the liquor board for 3 days because several of his checks were dishonored. On October 23, 1961, he received another 3-day suspension because an agent solicited the sale of alcoholic beverages for consumption on licensed premises.
(6) Seth Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby? (1978)
An hour after the shooting of President Kennedy I encountered Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital. Ruby was someone I had known at the start of the Kennedy administration, when I had been a reporter on a Dallas newspaper. He sought me out at Parkland, called me by name and, later from jail, wrote me a warm, personal note. But he later denied that he had been inside Parkland Hospital at that critical time. As a result, the Warren Commission questioned both Ruby and me in June, 1964, about the Parkland encounter. In the end, page 336 of the Warren Report declared that "Kantor probably did not see Ruby in Parkland Hospital.
Now, however, after reading this book, Burt W. Griffin, the Warren Commission attorney who developed these conclusions about Jack Ruby for the Warren Report, has changed his mind about Ruby not appearing at Parkland soon after the President had been brought there. Griffin, who since has become a judge in Ohio, now says "the greater weight of the evidence" indicates I did see Ruby at Parkland.
(7) David E. Scheim, The Mafia Killed President Kennedy (1988)
Despite official denials. Jack Ruby had indeed been a "professional gangster." Furthermore, telephone records and other documents showed extensive contacts between Ruby and underworld figures from across the country in the months before the assassination.
It also emerged, disturbingly, that evidence establishing these criminal ties had been repeatedly suppressed or distorted by the Warren Commission, the government body initially charged to investigate Kennedy's murder. For example, the Commission reported that "virtually all of Ruby's Chicago friends stated he had no close connection with organized crime." But a trace of the Commission's cited references revealed that one of these "friends" was a notorious Mob hit man credited with planning some of its more important executions. More than half of these cited friends, in fact, had some racketeering associations.
(8) J. Edgar Hoover made a telephone call to President Lyndon B. Johnson on 29th November, 1963.
This fellow Rubenstein (Jack Ruby) is a very shady character, has a bad record - street brawler, fighter, and that sort of thing - and in the place in Dallas, if a fellow came in there and couldn't pay his bill completely, Rubenstein would beat the very devil out of him and throw him out of the place... He didn't drink, didn't smoke, boasted about that. He is what I would put in a category of one of these "egomaniacs." Likes to be in the limelight. He knew all the police in that white-light district.... and he also let them come in, see the show, get food, liquor, and so forth. That's how, I think, he got into police headquarters. Because they accepted him as kind of a police character, hanging around police headquarters... They never made any moves, as the pictures show, even when they saw him approaching this fellow and got up right to him and pressed his pistol against Oswald's stomach. Neither of the police officers on either side made any move to push him away or grab him. It wasn't until after the gun was fired that they then moved... The Chief of Police admits that he moved him in the morning as a convenience and at the request of motion-picture people, who wanted to have daylight. He should have moved him at night... But so far as tying Rubenstein and Oswald together we haven't as yet done. So there have been a number of stories come in, we've tied Oswald into the Civil Liberties Union in New York, membership into that and, of course, this Cuban Fair Play Committee, which is pro-Castro, and dominated by Communism and financed, to some extent, by the Castro government.
(9) Matthew Smith, JFK: The Second Plot (1992)
At Parkland Hospital a bullet had obligingly rolled off an unoccupied stretcher. It was a bullet from a Manlicher-Carcano, and the Commission promptly identified it as 'The Magic Bullet'. Commission Exhibit 399, as the bullet was marked, was claimed to have rolled out of Governor Connally's thigh wound and lain on the stretcher until the stretcher was later disturbed. Since the Governor still had fragments of a bullet lodged in his thigh, the idea of a bullet rolling out of the wound was not supported. The hospital staff were unconvinced that Connally had ever occupied the stretcher in question, Darrell C. Tomlinson, the senior technician, testifying to his 'best recollection', that it had rolled off a stretcher 'wholly unconnected with the one of Governor Connally'. And then there was CE399 itself. The bullet was in pristine condition (see photograph) and even a witness 'friendly' to the Warren Commission, Commander Humes, the surgeon who led the Bethesda autopsy team, could not accept it. Questioned by Arlen Specter, a Commission lawyer, about CE399 in relation to all Governor Connally's wounds, Humes replied, 'I think that extremely unlikely . . .' Aware that the Parkland doctors had spoken of fragments of bullet remaining in Connally's thigh, Humes said, '. . . I can't conceive of where they came from this missile.' CE399 was in such pristine condition that had they weighed it then added the weight of the fragments removed from Governor Connally's wrist and thigh they would have been looking at a total weight greater than that of an unused bullet of that type. But, regardless of all this, the Warren Commission clung to its single-bullet theory, for without it, their entire case for asserting that Lee Harvey Oswald had, alone and unaided, shot and killed President Kennedy was totally demolished.
As a consequence of the desperate need to maintain their position on CE399, 'the Magic Bullet', the Warren Commission refused to accept evidence from a reliable witness which might have thrown light on how the pristine bullet really found its way to Parkland Hospital. Seth Kantor, a member of the White House Press Corps, rocked the Commission's boat when he reported having met Jack Ruby, who was to slay Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement car park of Dallas Police Headquarters but 48 hours later, at Parkland Hospital less than an hour after the President was shot. He knew Jack Ruby and reported in some detail their handshake and conversation. Could Ruby have been there for the purpose of planting CE399? The Commission were not disposed to finding out. They ruled Kantor was mistaken.
(10) Hugh Aynesworth, JFK: Breaking the News (2003)
Jack Ruby was the quintessential wanna-be but never-was. Full of big stories, bigger dreams and lusty braggadocio, the strip show operator was first and foremost a lowlife, a man who searched for class as though he understood what it was.
Often he would tell his pals that someday he'd have a club in Las Vegas. That, to him, was class. Once he told his lawyer Stanley Kauffman that when he made it big in the Nevada city, he wouldn't have to worry any more about years and years of difficulties with the Internal Revenue Service. "He said, 'They never bother the big, important guys. You don't see guys hassled once they become somebody in show business.'"
Hardly a week went by in Dallas when you wouldn't see Ruby promoting some inane product, chasing fire trucks, pushing himself into public displays or passing out his Carousel Club calling cards at the fights, in the bars, or on downtown streets.
One time it might be promoting a young black singer/dancer, another time an exercise board, or a potion "sure to make you thinner and more powerful." Once he touted a gangly Arkansas girl as a "dancer," predicting she would be a smash hit at the Carousel. "She'll be the only Jewish stripper Dallas has ever seen," he told Don Campbell, the News ad executive. The girl never graced his stage.
(11) The Warren Commission Report (September, 1964)
The Commission has reached the following conclusions concerning the killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963:
Ruby entered the basement of the Dallas Police Department shortly after 11:17 a.m. and killed Lee Harvey Oswald at 11:21 a.m.
Although the evidence on Ruby's means of entry is not conclusive, the weight of the evidence indicates that he walked down the ramp leading from Main Street to the basement of the police department.
There is no evidence to support the rumor that Ruby may have been assisted by any members of the Dallas Police Department in the killing of Oswald.
The Dallas Police Department's decision to transfer Oswald to the county jail in full public view was unsound.
The arrangements made by the police department on Sunday morning, only a few hours before the attempted transfer, were inadequate. Of critical importance was the fact that news media representatives and others were not excluded from the basement even after the police were notified of threats to Oswald's life. These deficiencies contributed to the death of Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Commission has found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy. The reasons for this conclusion are:
The Commission has found no evidence that anyone assisted Oswald in planning or carrying out the assassination. In this connection it has thoroughly investigated, among other factors, the circumstances surrounding the planning of the motorcade route through Dallas, the hiring of Oswald by the Texas School Book Depository Co. on October 15, 1963, the method by which the rifle was brought into the building, the placing of cartons of books at the window, Oswald's escape from the building, and the testimony of eyewitnesses to the shooting.
The Commission has found no evidence that Oswald was involved with any person or group in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, although it has thoroughly investigated, in addition to other possible leads, all facets of Oswald's associations, finances, and personal habits, particularly during the period following his return from the Soviet Union in June 1962.
The Commission has found no evidence to show that Oswald was employed, persuaded, or encouraged by any foreign government to assassinate President Kennedy or that he was an agent of any foreign government, although the Commission has reviewed the circumstances surrounding Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union, his life there from October of 1959 to June of 1962 so far as it can be reconstructed, his known contacts with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and his visits to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico City during his trip to Mexico from September 26 to October 3, 1963, and his known contacts with the Soviet Embassy in the United States.
The Commission has explored all attempts of Oswald to identify himself with various political groups, including the Communist Party, U.S.A., the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and the Socialist Workers Party, and has been unable to find any evidence that the contacts which he initiated were related to Oswald's subsequent assassination of the President.
All of the evidence before the Commission established that there was nothing to support the speculation that Oswald was an agent, employee, or informant of the FBI, the CIA, or any other governmental agency. It has thoroughly investigated Oswald's relationships prior to the assassination with all agencies of the U.S. Government. All contacts with Oswald by any of these agencies were made in the regular exercise of their different responsibilities.
No direct or indirect relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby has been discovered by the Commission, nor has it been able to find any credible evidence that either knew the other, although a thorough investigation was made of the many rumors and speculations of such a relationship.
The Commission has found no evidence that Jack Ruby acted with any other person in the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald.
(12) Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993)
FBI documents released in 1979 show other instances in which key information was either altered before it reached the Warren Commission, or else withheld altogether. For example, judging from Warren Commission records, the FBI covered up Jack Ruby's connections to organized crime. The Commission did not receive an important interview with Luis Kutner, a Chicago lawyer who had just told the press (correctly) about Ruby's connections to Chicago mobsters Lennie Patrick and Dave Yaras. All the FBI transmitted was a meaningless follow-up interview in which Kutner merely said he had no additional information.
Apparently the FBI also failed to transmit a teletype revealing that Yaras, a national hit man for the Chicago syndicate who had grown up with Ruby, and who had been telephoned by one of Ruby's Teamster contacts on the eve of the assassination, was about to attend a "hoodlum meeting" of top East and West Coast syndicate representatives, including some from the "family" of the former Havana crime lord Santos Trafficante.
(13) G. Robert Blakey was interviewed by ABC News in 2003.
ABC News: Let me ask you: 40 years after the fact and 25 years after your investigation, who killed John F. Kennedy?
Blakey: Lee Harvey Oswald killed John Kennedy. Two shots from behind. The evidence is simply overwhelming. You have to be lacking in judgment and experience in dealing with the evidence to think that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President Kennedy. That's really not the problem. The problem is: Was there something beyond Lee Harvey Oswald? And now what you do is you look at the evidence.
ABC News: How many shots were fired at Dealey Plaza?
Blakey: What we did is determine that there were in fact four shots. Our scientists looked at a tape we found, and they did a scientific analysis of it, and it indicated four shots in the plaza, three from the depository and one from the grassy knoll. That meant there were two shooters in the plaza, two shooters in the plaza equal a conspiracy.
The first shot from the depository by Lee Harvey Oswald missed. The second shot about 1.6 seconds later, hit the president in the back of the neck. (The bullet exited Kennedy and) hit John Connally. It hit his wrist, hit his leg. Now six seconds from the second shot, we think a shot came from the grassy knoll. It missed the president. The shot from the grassy knoll missed. The X-rays, the autopsy, all of that indicates the president was not hit by a shot from any other direction. Seven-tenths of a second after that, the third shot, fourth in the row, third shot from the depository, hits the president right in the back of the head.
The shot from the grassy knoll is not only supported by the acoustics, which is a tape that we found of a police motorcycle broadcast back to the district station. It is corroborated by eyewitness testimony in the plaza. There were 20 people, at least, who heard a shot from the grassy knoll.
ABC News: In your book you point the finger squarely at Carlos Marcello and his organization. Why would he want to kill Kennedy?
Blakey: Carlos Marcello was being subject to the most vigorous investigation he had ever experienced in his life, designed to put him in jail. He was in fact summarily, without due process, deported to Guatemala. He took the deportation personally. He hated the Kennedys. He had the motive, the opportunity and the means in Lee Harvey Oswald to kill him. I think he did through Oswald.
ABC News: How central is Jack Ruby's murder of Oswald to your understanding of this case?
Blakey: To understand who killed President Kennedy and did he have help, I think you have to understand what happened to the assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. I see Jack Ruby's assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald as a mob hit.
This is in direct contradiction to the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission portrayed, wrongly I think, Jack Ruby as a wild card who serendipitously got into position to kill Oswald. I think in fact he stalked him. I can show you from the Warren Commission's evidence that he tried to get into where he was being interrogated, number one. That he tried to get in where there was going to be a lineup, number two. That he was seen around the garage, where he was announced that he was going to be moved. And we know, from Jack Ruby himself, that he had a gun with him at the time of the lineup.
I believe that Ruby was able to get in to kill Oswald through the corrupt cooperation of the Dallas P.D., that he was let in through a back door and he was given an opportunity to kill Oswald. I see that, therefore, as a mob hit. And if that's a mob hit, there is only one reason for it, and that is to cover up the assassination of the president himself. You kill the killer.
ABC News: Since you believe that Lee Oswald shot the president, and you also believe that Carlos Marcello was behind the assassination, what connections do you point to between Oswald and Marcello?
Blakey: I can show you that Lee Harvey Oswald knew, from his boyhood forward, David Ferrie, and David Ferrie was an investigator for Carlos Marcello on the day of the assassination, with him in a court room in New Orleans. I can show you that Lee Harvey Oswald, when he grew up in New Orleans, lived with the Dutz Murret family (one of Oswald's uncles). Dutz Murret is a bookmaker for Carlos Marcello.
I can show you that there's a bar in New Orleans, and back in the '60s, bars used to have strippers and the strippers circuit is from Jack Ruby's strip joint in Dallas to Marcello-connected strip joints in the New Orleans area. So I can bring this connection.
Did Lee Harvey Oswald grow up in a criminal neighborhood? Yes. Did he have a mob-connected family? Did he have mob-connected friends? Was he known to them to be a crazy guy? He's out publicly distributing Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. If you wanted to enlist him in a conspiracy that would initially appear to be communist and not appear to be organized crime, he's the perfect candidate. Ex-Marine, marksman, probably prepared to kill the president for political reasons.
Could he be induced to kill the president for organized crime reasons unbeknownst to him? I think the answer is yes and compelling.
(14) Dan Rather interviewed Barney Weinstein, The Warren Report: Part 3, CBS Television (27th June, 1967)
Dan Rather: Ruby operated a pair of sleazy nightclubs, The Carousel and The Vegas. In the free and easy atmosphere that seemed to characterize the boom city, Ruby was also a hanger - on of the police, entertaining off - duty officers in his strip joints, often carrying sandwiches over to the Police Building for his on-duty friends.
These are some of the people of Jack Ruby's world - his roommate, a competing nightclub owner, and two of Jack Ruby's girls. Mr. Weinstein, why do you think Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald?
Barney Weinstein: I think it was on the spur of the moment, that he really wanted to make himself look like a big man. And he thought that would make him above everybody else, that the people would come up and thank him for it, that people would come around and want to meet him and want to know him, "This is the man that shot the man that shot the President."
(15) Walter Cronkite, The Warren Report: Part 3, CBS Television (27th June, 1967)
Jack Ruby was convicted of the murder of Oswald, but the conviction was reversed by an Appeals Court which held that an alleged confession should not have been admitted.
Ruby died six months ago of cancer, maintaining to the last that he was no conspirator, that he had killed Oswald out of anger and a desire to shield Jacqueline Kennedy from the ordeal of a trial at which she would have had to appear as a witness.
(16) Michael Kurtz, Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination From a Historians Perspective (1982)
The Warren Commission's claim that Ruby wanted to spare Mrs. Kennedy the personal ordeal of a trial seems flimsy. When Earl Warren interviewed Ruby in his Dallas jail, Ruby pleaded with the chief justice to let him testify in Washington, where he would tell the real story behind the whole assassination controversy. Inexplicably, Warren denied Ruby's request.
While it is possible to imagine numerous motives for Ruby's act, there is no reliable, independent evidence to substantiate such speculation. Whatever Ruby's reasons, they remain unknown.
(17) Hugh Aynesworth, JFK: Breaking the News (2003)
In my view, were it not for the pervasive influence of a handful of individuals, there would be no plague of conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
The first of these regrettable characters was Jack Ruby, who by stealing the executioner's role, created generations of doubters, and not unreasonably so. It was an audacious, desperate act that would seem to make sense only if Jack Ruby had a very powerful, rational motive for killing Lee Harvey Oswald.
The truth is that he did not; the hard evidence in the case supports no other conclusion.
Based on indisputable facts, I believe that Ruby acted spontaneously in the basement at City Hall. The opportunity to kill Lee Harvey Oswald suddenly presented itself, and Ruby acted accordingly. He could just as well have been driving home from the Western Union office at that moment.
(18) Joachim Joesten, How Kennedy Was Killed (1968)
And so Jack Ruby, on December 9, 1966, - exactly one day after he had learned that his new trial was going to be
held in February or March 1967 at Wichita Falls, about 140 miles from Dallas - was stricken with a mysterious disease first diagnosed as a common cold, then as pneumonia and finally as generalized cancer.
For more than three years, with a death sentence hanging over his dead for most of the time, Ruby had been as fit as a fiddle in the custody of Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker. At no time before December 9, had the prison doctor who visited him regularly, detected any flaw in Ruby's splendid health. But now, with a new trial in prospect in a different place, death quickly overtook the man who knew perhaps more than any other living person (with the possible exception of David Ferrie, then still totally unknown to the public at large) about the real background to the assassination. He passed away in the morning of January 3, 1967 - and another inconvenient trial was happily averted.
As always, my critics are likely to counter at this point with the challenge: 'Where is your evidence that Ruby was murdered?'
The evidence is there, plain to see for anyone with an open mind, but it is purely circumstantial, not tangible. (The people who arranged for Ruby's death, as they had previously arranged for the overt murders of President Kennedy, Patrolman Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald, to say nothing of the 20-odd witnesses who have also been disposed of, weren't stupid enough to leave any palpable traces of what they had done.)
(19) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)
Ruby had a coffee business in Cuba in the 1950's. He also engaged in arms trafficking. He is very tied to former president of Cuba, Carlos Prio.... There is a U.S. version of this story that says a Cuban gave a letter to Ruby asking him to sell weapons to Cubans in 1959. We know very little about this incident at this moment. However, we found an ex-officer of our Cuban army who knew of an attempt to sell jeeps on behalf of an American citizen whose name he cannot remember, more or less the same time Ruby was in Havana. That's all we know about this.
(20) Greg Parker, Alternative Ruby Timeline (23rd November, 2004)
The number one cause of lung cancer is cigarette smoking, representing 85 to 90 percent of all cases. Other causes include exposure to radon, asbestos, nickel, chloromethyl ether, chromium, beryllium and arsenic (a by-product of copper), as well as exposure to passive smoke or "second-hand" smoke. A person is "at risk" of developing lung cancer if they: smoke; are over the age of 50; work in industries where substances such as asbestos, nickel, chloromethyl ether, chromium, beryllium or arsenic are used; have or have had a lung disease; have a family history of lung cancer; are former smokers; have been exposed to second-hand smoke over many years or; have been exposed to radon. (Tenet Health Care Corporation Library)
As a non-smoker, Ruby’s only risk factors would, on the surface, appear to be his age, and long-term exposure to second-hand smoke. In jail, Ruby reported to one of his psychiatrists, Dr Manfred Guttmacher, that he had been to see Dr Ulevich on November 11, 1963 due to a bronchial cough. Dr Ulevitch took x-rays, but Ruby had been too busy to get the results. He believed he had "walking pneumonia". (DPD JFK files)
The previously mentioned, Dr Walter Bromberg, stated in his report that Ruby had felt he suffered pneumonia on and off for a number of years. (DPD JFK files) It was a diagnosis of pneumonia, as we have seen, which resulted in Ruby being sent to Parkland Hospital. "Walking pneumonia" is caused by mycoplasma – the smallest free-living organism known to man. One of the characteristics of these tiny organisms is their ability to completely mimic or copy the protein of the host cell which can cause the immune system to attack the body’s own cells; an event that happens in all auto-immune diseases. First isolated in humans in 1932, it was not until the 1950s that one strain was identified as the cause of atypical ("walking") pneumonia. (Web Article: Mycoplasmas - Stealth Pathogens).
Before death, Ruby’s cancer had spread to both his liver and his brain. This tends to rule out second-hand smoke as the culprit because although small cell lung cancer is the type that spreads quickly to other organs, it is most often found in people who are themselves heavy smokers. (Rhodes Island Cancer Council).
What we are left with then, is some other carcinogen as the probable cause. Beryllium is one logical answer given beryllium dust shuts down the immune system, allowing the lungs to be damaged, and tumors to form and spread to other organs. It also creates ideal conditions for mycoplasma to thrive. (The Unified Health Physics Modelling Scientific Report).
It is not a stretch to suggest that Ruby may have first come into contact with beryllium whilst in the Army Air Force and stationed at Farmingdale where the F-12 was being built, since this heavy metal is much used in the aviation and space industries. His association with the National Research Corporation through John C Jackson provides a second possibility for beryllium exposure to have occurred. The NRC was named in a May 25, 2001 report issued by the US General Accounting Office as being one of the locations where beryllium was used or detected. The evidence however, points only to low grade exposure in the 1950‘s (and possibly back to the 1940‘s), causing atypical recurring pneumonia, and a weakened immune system rather than cancerous tumors (which would have required a higher exposure): nothing lethal if he kept fit and otherwise healthy. That Ruby was a health and fitness fanatic indicates he may have had some knowledge of his exposure.
So what did happened to trigger his cancer ? Alan Adelson tells us in "The Ruby Oswald Affair" that Jack’s sister, Eva Grant, first noticed Jack’s illness as early as June, 1966 , and that by September, he was throwing up every day. If his illness was evident in June 1966, then it is feasible that the onset of cancer coincided with Dr Jolyon West’s visit in April, 1964 to administer hypnosis and drugs. This was the month after the trial ended, and when appeals would be in full swing. It is unfortunately common for such a period of time to pass between onset and when symptoms become manifest. In this case, it took another 7 months after the onset of symptoms before a diagnosis of lung cancer was made. It is possible, but unlikely, that Ruby had the cancer prior to the assassination. This is because of the x rays Dr Ulevitch took of Ruby’s chest on November 11. Though not fool proof, most lung cancer patients show an abnormal x ray. (Cancerline UK).
It is widely known that Ruby believed injections he was being given, were cancer cells. He truly believed he was being murdered in this most unusual manner. And why would he not be paranoid about such a possibility since in January 1964, it was widely reported that elderly patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn had been injected with live cancer cells as part of an experiment conducted by two eminent physicians from Sloan-Kettering? A court battle over the records of patients involved kept the story bubbling until at least 1966. Deputy sheriff Al Maddox claimed to researchers in the 1980s that the doctor who gave Ruby the injections was from Chicago. Though not from Chicago, Alan Adelson said he had met with Dr Jolyon West in the Windy City to discuss the case. (Earl Ruby HSCA testimony)
The last word however, probably should go to the Inspector General in reference to CIA medical experiments: "The risk of compromise of the program through correct diagnosis of an illness by an unwitting medical specialist is regularly considered and is stated to be a governing factor in the decision to conduct a given test. The Bureau officials also maintain close working relations with local police authorities which could be utilized to protect the activity in critical situations." (July 26, 1963 memo from JS Eamon to Director, CIA).
(21) The Guardian (27th November, 2006)
Anti-terrorist detectives are poised to fly to Russia and Italy in an effort to solve the fatal poisoning of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.
But as John Reid, the home secretary, said the police inquiry had been upgraded from an "unexplained" to a "suspicious" death, experts voiced doubt at the theory that anyone acting alone could have used the isotope polonium 210 to kill Mr Litvinenko. One scientist said polonium 210 would only kill so quickly if combined into a "designer toxin" with another isotope, beryllium, in a complicated process that would require state sponsorship. Such a process was used by Britain in early atomic weapons in the 1950s.
"No individual could do this," said John Large, an independent nuclear consultant. "What you are talking about is the creation of a very clever little device, a designer poison pill, possibly created by nanotechnology. Without nanotechnology you would be talking about a fairly big pill, a pea-sized pill. Either way you are looking at intricate technology which is beyond the means and designs of a hired assassin without a state sponsor."
He said the likely poison pill that killed Mr Litvinenko would have to have been manufactured in a special laboratory over two or three weeks and then used very quickly - possibly within 28 days - because the half-life of the isotope polonium is only 138 days.
Senior police officers are drawing in experts from the International Atomic Energy Authority, and from the Atomic Weapons establishment at Aldermaston. Every option is being considered, from Kremlin involvement to the theory that Mr Litvinenko's work in the anti-corruption unit of the FSB, Russia's MI5, created enemies with the means and knowledge to assassinate him.
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