From - Mon Jul 27 15:58:41 1998 From: 6489mcadamsj@vms.csd.mu.edu (John McAdams) Newsgroups: alt.assassination.jfk Approved: jmcadams@execpc.com Subject: Clinton Witnesses [Repost] Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 03:42:10 GMT Message-ID: <35b953f3.2696045@mcadams.posc.mu.edu> References: <1998060307411200.DAA18514@ladder01.news.aol.com> <1998060615511900.LAA09649@ladder03.news.aol.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 NNTP-Posting-Host: 169.207.130.48 Lines: 242 Path: mcadams.posc.mu.edu!169.207.130.48 On 6 Jun 1998 13:48:13 -0500, mtgriffith@aol.com (MTGriffith) wrote: >In article <1998060307411200.DAA18514@ladder01.news.aol.com>, >blackburst@aol.com (Blackburst) writes: > >> >>I do not agree that there cannot be doubt about the Clinton-Jackson >>identifications, > >So you think ALL those witnesses "erred," even given Ferrie's odd >appearance, and in spite of the certainty those witnesses expressed about >their identification of Oswald? What do you think of Norman Mailer's >treatment of this issue in OSWALD'S TALE? > >If this were an ordinary case, wouldn't the Clinton-Jackson witnesses's >testimony be universally viewed as entirely credible? > Unfortunately, yes, at least in 1963. Modern rules about "discovery" would probably make a huge difference, however. >>or that there cannot be doubt about the allegations of such >>people as Perry Russo, Jack Martin and Delphine Roberts. > >So ALL of these witnesses were lying, and ALL of the Clinton-Jackson >witnesses were "mistaken"? > When Mike asks whether "all" those witnesses could be mistaken, the implication is that, while one or two witnesses might be mistaken, the odds are against five or six people all being mistaken about the same thing. This would be true, *if* the witnesses were randomly selected members of the population. But what if the witnesses have been pulled out of a larger population, and presented to us precisely *because* they were telling "interesting" stories? Six or eight or fifteen witnesses, all mistaken, becomes easy to believe. The following is from CASE CLOSED, pp. 143-148: ------------------------------------------------------ The second piece of evidence for an Oswald-Ferrie relationship is the testimony of witnesses from Clinton, Louisiana. The witnesses were found by Jim Garrison's investigators, in 1967, when they interviewed more than three hundred people in Clinton and the neighboring township of Jackson, some 20 percent of the local population. From this enormous dragnet they produced six witnesses. The allegation is that in early September 1963, Oswald conspicuously appeared in Clinton, a dusty, backwater town of fifteen hundred people, some ninety miles from New Orleans. At the time of the supposed appearance, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was organizing blacks to register to vote in the still-segregated South. According to the way the witnesses now tell the story, on the same day that long line of black residents waited to sign forms at the registrar's office, a large, expensive car pulled in to Clinton and parked near that office. It attracted considerable attention in the poor, rural town. One man got out and joined the line of blacks waiting to register. That man was identified as Oswald. According to Garrison, since Oswald was the only white man in the long line, the witnesses found his face and the scene "unforgettable." One of the other passengers in the car was identified as David Ferrie. Garrison says "There was no doubt that this was David Ferrie ." Other Clinton witnesses say that Oswald got a haircut while there and asked about obtaining a job at a local mental hospital. Not only is the Clinton episode used to establish the Oswald-Ferrie link, but some give it greater significance. Summers says it might be "connected with the FBI's infamous Counterintelligence Program, better known as COINTELPRO," a program to infiltrate political groups such as CORE. History professor Philip H. Melanson says that the incident "might even be part of an illegal CIA domestic spying effort on leftist organizations like CORE." The House Select Committee interviewed six Clinton witnesses and found their testimony, fifteen years after the event, "credible and significant." The committee concluded that they were "telling the truth" and "[t]herefore, [is] inclined to believe that Oswald was in Clinton, La., in late August, early September 1963, and was in the company of David Ferrie, if not Clay Shaw." While the Select Committee sealed the testimony of the Clinton witnesses under the confidentiality cloak of executive sessions, it firmly established an Oswald-Ferrie connection as part of the historical record. Since Garrison's investigators uncovered the Clinton witnesses, evidently no researcher has gained access to the witnesses' original statements. The author, however, obtained affidavits, handwritten statements, and summary memoranda to Garrison regarding the initial stories the witnesses told the investigators. Their initial statements reveal substantial confusion, and only after extensive coaching by the Garrison staff did the witnesses tell a cohesive and consistent story. By the time they testified to the Select Committee, they had told their story so often that they had ironed out fundamental contradictions. The following discussion is based on the witnesses' original statements. The first problem arises over the time of the purported visit. Summers says the episode took place in "early September." It is imperative that the alleged visit not have taken place later because Oswald permanently left New Orleans and Louisiana on September 24. But Edward McGehee, the Jackson town barber who claimed to have cut Oswald's hair and advised him about a job at the local mental hospital, said it "was kind of cool" on the day he saw Oswald. He remembered the air conditioning was not on in his shop. Reeves Morgan, the state representative for the parish, said Oswald visited him at his home to inquire about obtaining the hospital's job. There was a chill in the air, and Morgan recalled lighting the fireplace. Review of U.S. Weather Bureau records for the period through September 24 show daily temperatures above 90 degrees, with only a few days dipping into the eighties, with high humidity. There was certainly no day that was "cool" or required a burning fireplace. The registrar of voters, Henry Palmer, felt very strongly that the visit was the "first week of October, possibly around the sixth or seventh." Oswald was in Dallas then. In their testimony at the Shaw trial, and in subsequent statements, all the witnesses described a black Cadillac entering the town. Summers says that "everyone agrees" the car was a black Cadillac. In his statement to Garrison's investigators, Corey Collins, the local CORE chairman, said it was a big black expensive-looking car, probably a Nash or a Kaiser, but probably not a station wagon. Since the Garrison trial, the witnesses have consistently described only three men-Oswald, Ferrie, and Shaw-in the car. However, originally, they were not clearly as certain on the number of people, much less their identifications. Corey Collins said the driver of the car (whom he later identified as Clay Shaw) was about forty-five years old and wore a light hat that prevented Collins from seeing his hair. John Manchester, the town marshal, said the driver did not have a hat, and his hair was grey. Henry Clark, a local resident, said the man had no hat and "looked like a movie star." McGehee, who claimed that Oswald sat in his barber chair staring at a photo of Martin Luther King at a Communist training school, said a young woman may have been the driver. McGehee also said that only Oswald and the young woman were in the car, with a baby bassinet in the rear seat. Andrew Dunn said there were four men and that on of them was Estes Morgan, a local resident. "I knew Estes Morgan personally," said Dunn. At the Garrison trial, Dunn described only three men and omitted Morgan. Town marshal John Manchester said there were only two men in the car and that about that time he also saw Estes Morgan , whom he knew well, in the voter-registration line. Corey Collins remembered two men in the car. At the Garrison trial Collins identified three. Henry Brunell, on the other hand, said there was only one man in the car. He said he saw Ferrie, "or his twin," on another day, and recognized him from photos because his hair was "bushy and stood up [in] all directions on his head like he had been out on a drunk all night." Bobbie Dedon claimed she did not see the car but that she spotted Oswald at the nearby Louisiana State Hospital applying for a job. She also connected Oswald to Estes Morgan, but dropped that association during her trial testimony. Another hospital employee, Maxine Kemp, testified that she did not see Oswald, but saw a job application with his name on it. A thorough search through the hospital's records shows no such application existed or had been filed. Registrar of voters, Henry Palmer, at the Garrison trial, gave the most potentially damaging testimony identifying Oswald. He said that when Oswald was attempting to register to vote, he had interviewed him. He later told Summers, "I asked him for his identification, and he pulled out a U.S. Navy I.D. card...I looked at the name on it, and it was Lee H. Oswald with a New Orleans address." But Palmer said much more than that in his 1967 statement to Garrison's office. Not only did he think the visit was in October, but he said there were only two white men in the voter registration line that morning, and as a result they were very conspicuous. When he spoke to them, he learned one was Estes Morgan and the other was Lee Oswald. He said he interviewed both Estes and Morgan separately in his office, and said Oswald produced a "canceled Navy I.D. card" and that Oswald told him he had been living in Jackson for six months with a doctor from the hospital. Palmer could not remember the doctor's name. In his trial testimony and subsequently, he omitted Estes Morgan and the story of Oswald living with a local doctor for six months. He saw two men in the black car outside the voter registration site and identified one as Ferrie, solely upon his "heavy eyebrows." Palmer told Garrison investigators that he only had a side angle of the driver and "could not positively identify him." Yet at the trial, under oath, he emphatically picked out Clay Shaw as the driver. None of the Clinton witnesses had a good explanation for why they had not contacted the authorities if they had thought they had seen Oswald. One, Reeves Morgan, testified he had called the FBI after the assassination. There is no record of such a call. There is little doubt the Clinton witnesses are telling the truth as they now recall it. However, their original statements to Garrison's staff reveal considerable contradictions, so much so that the very heart of their story is invalidated. Oswald clearly was not in Clinton in October or when it was cold, nor was he there with Marina, nor did he live there for six months with a doctor, or apply for a job at the local mental institution. Garrison's staff realized that the local resident Estes Morgan had no connection to Oswald, Ferrie, and Shaw and therefore required the witnesses to drop their reference to Morgan being with Oswald. The evidence shows the witnesses saw Estes Morgan, whom they personally knew, with someone they later mistook to be Oswald. Garrison never mentioned Morgan because he did not support his hypothesis. (The author was unable to locate Morgan.) It was almost six years after the alleged incident in Clinton that the witnesses first testified at the Garrison trial. Garrison's staff, when questioning the Clinton witnesses, had only presented photos of Oswald, Ferrie and Shaw, and incorrectly said that others had already identified those as the people who had visited the town. This power of suggestion, and later coaching, developed the testimony that today has been repeated so often that the House Select Committee found it so convincing. Irvin Dymond, the New Orleans attorney who led the legal team that defended Clay Shaw in 1967, told the author that the Clinton testimony is "a pack of lies. What the motive of the Clinton witnesses is I do not know But it is clearly and demonstrably false." There is no credible evidence that Oswald knew either Guy Banister or David Ferrie. Marina cannot visualize him working with an accomplice. "I am not a psychiatrist...but living with a person for a few years you at least have some kind of intuition about what he might do and might not. He was not an open and trustworthy person. So, personally, I seriously doubt that he will confide in someone." As Oswald moved toward more radical actions a the start of August 1963, he was acting quite alone. ------------------------------------------------------ If anybody doesn't trust Posner's secondary account, they might check out: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/collins1.txt It shows how the testimony of one witness "evolved." .John The Kennedy Assassination Home Page http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm